Cucked by Cthulhu
With a bloodcurdling scream, the honey-haired damsel throws herself into the archaeologist’s broad, masculine arms. Trapped in the claustrophobic sepulcher, the pair can only watch in mounting horror—clinging desperately to reason as they cling to one another—while the fetid crypt air bubbles and bursts, the veil of reality rupturing like a rotting pustule, a gaping, seeping wound yawning wide into a twilight portal, a forsaken doorway, through which pushes, scrambles, claws, an indescribable monstrosity—a primordial evil, a celestial abortion—shapeless and ever-shifting, its pale, luminous skin bristling with writhing stalks, wandering eyes, and slithering tentacles riddled with insatiable, ravenous maws.
“Wait a minute.” The Archeologist furrows his brow. “Why is it always tentacles?”
The woman’s manic scream breaks off. “Oh Richard, don’t.”
“Don’t what, Janet?” He gestures to the ineffable nightmare crawling through the blight-hole in God’s creation. “It’s always tentacles with these things.”
“Hey, you mind?” The Eldritch Abomination speaks in the nauseous buzzing drone of ten thousand locusts. “I’m working here.”
Janet leans in, lowering her voice. “I’m so sorry. He always does this.” She turns, slapping the man’s bare chest. “Stop it.”
“Ow!” He yips, rubbing his pec. “What was that for?”
“You know exactly what it’s for,” she scowls. “You’re ruining the moment.”
Richard scoffs. “I’m ruining the moment?”
Janet shoots him a look that would send shoggoths running.
“You’re serious. He’s the one rending the fabric of reality and I’m ruining the moment.”
“Yes,” she huffs. “You always do this.”
“Do what?!” he cries, utterly baffled.
“Analyze everything!” She tosses her hands up. “You’re always in your head, Richard! You never just live!”
“Not when I’m about to die.”
She presses a hand to her chest. “I need to live, Richard! I need to live in the moment!”
He squints. “The moment where a viscous, polydactyl, protoplasmic aberration tears me in half and drags you kicking and screaming into a void-realm beyond human comprehension.”
“Yes!”
Before Richard could respond, the Eldritch Abomination sighs with the hundred maws forming and unforming across its rippling, squamous flesh. “Hey, are we doing this or not? I got ten more stops today and my shift ends at 5.”
“No.” “Yes!”
Richard turns to Janet. “Yes?”
She glares, unflinching.
“What do you mean yes?”
“We need this Richard.” She insists, her tone softening. “I need this.”
“Oh.” Richard’s expression shifts, his eyes flicking between Janet and their transplanar assailant. “I get it. I see what this is now.”
“Richard.”
“You just want a little thrill on the side. Something to quench your needs.”
Her face darkens. “Don’t.”
“No, no. It’s fine. You’ve been cold ever since we had that talk. You wanted to open things up and what better opportunity than an unholy fissure in the space-time continuum.” He gestures.
“Oh damn.” The Eldritch Abomination recedes, lifting his innumerable tentacles. “Leave me out.”
“Richard, this isn’t about that. You’re enough.” She lays a hand on his chest. “And you’ll always be precious to me.”
“Yeah, but I’ll never be prehensile.” Ω