Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom

by Cameron Pierce

  Cyrus took a long sip from his chocolate milkshake to mask the fishy taste lingering in his mouth.

  “We receive most of our nutrients from blood, but we eat and drink other things as well, if only for pleasure. Some vampires belonging to the generations coming up after me don’t even like the taste of blood, but they still have to consume it. Without blood, they’ll die.”

  “How awful. Imagine hating the very thing that keeps you alive.”

  “I think they’re just picky eaters who will grow out of it.”

  “But what if vampires are evolving? What if in a few thousand years, none of you can stand the taste of blood?”

  “I suppose we’ll have to face our troubles as they come. Right now, Cthulhu is probably destroying the planet.”

  Burn Girl took the last bite of her strawberry milkshake with a somber expression. Cyrus could not tell if she was sad because her milkshake was gone, or because Cthulhu was destroying the planet.

  “I’m sorry for dragging you along with me,” she said.

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m having a wonderful time.”

  She hung her head and cried. “I’m not strong enough to fight Cthulhu on my own.”

  Cyrus slid over into the seat beside Burn Girl and put a comforting arm around her. “Who said you’ll be fighting Cthulhu by yourself? I’ll be right there by your side.”

  Burn Girl raised her head. “You will? You mean you weren’t kidding earlier?”

  “Of course I wasn’t kidding. Now let’s go kick some squid god ass.”

  Burn Girl kissed Cyrus on the cheek.

  This, he imagined, might be something worth dying for.

  She slid out of the booth and reached into her flaming belly. She pulled out a pistol and fired a shot into the ceiling.

  The typical diner choreography stopped dead. A fork and knife clattered onto a plate, dropped from the flippers of a tiny whale.

  “This is a stickup,” Burn Girl said. “I want to talk to the manager.”

  “That would be me,” a seahorse stammered.

  Burn Girl pointed the gun at the seahorse. “How many pickles do you have in this joint?”

  “We keep an entire storeroom of pickles. They’re our specialty,” the seahorse said.

  “I want a team assembled to haul every last pickle ashore. Do you understand?”

  The seahorse began to protest.

  Burn Girl clicked back the chamber. “I asked if you understood me. I’m not asking twice.”

  “Yes.”

  Burn Girl shot the seahorse anyway. She turned and addressed the other sea animals in the diner. “Let that be a warning to everyone. I don’t give second chances. Now form a single-file line and prepare to work your tails off. We’ve got pickles to haul!” She turned and said to Cyrus, “Find the pickle storeroom and start dispensing barrels.”

  Cyrus wanted to ask what she wanted with so many pickles, let alone how some of the smaller creatures—the ghost shrimp and anemones, for example—could be expected to haul entire pickle barrels ashore, but the gun in her hands and her warning about second chances stripped him of any desire to ask questions. Let the ghost shrimp and anemones figure it out for themselves.

  A fish waitress showed Cyrus to the pickle storeroom, which was a vast warehouse that appeared, through some illusion or trick of light, to be larger than the diner itself.

  After failing to budge a single pickle barrel, Cyrus decided to call the sea animals into the storeroom one at a time. They could pick up their own damn barrels. They shuffled, crawled, or swam in and out while Burn Girl barked orders at those still waiting in line.

  Cyrus wondered what happened to the cute girl who had asked him to accompany her for a milkshake. Burn Girl was acting as cruel and demanding as Kayla at her worst—and she’d killed a seahorse! Perhaps love was always like this. Summoning eldritch gods, thieving diners of their pickles; the same submissive bullshit act.

  He gave pickles to the animals.

  Burn Girl yelled.

  He gave pickles to the animals.

  Burn Girl shot a porpoise.

  He gave pickles to the animals.

  He gave pickles.

  He gave pickles.

  What could Burn Girl possibly want with so many pickles?

  Lola, it’s Franz. We made it safely out to sea. Is everything alright?

  My family is gone.

  Gone?

  Dead. Gone. I don’t know.

  I’m so sorry.

  I need you here, Franz.

  I will be there soon.

  The S.S. Kadath, moving slowly with only one sparsely manned tier of oars, soon hovered into sight between the icy cliffs known as Sodom and Gomorrah, where swam the most fetid horde of Cthulhu’s monstrous army.

  Lola, the sea is beautiful. We’re surrounded by monsters and it’s still beautiful.

  Be safe, Franz.

  By this time Commander Pink, with the aid of Franz and Bruno, had divided the vampires into three parties: two to fight a naval battle aboard the S.S. Kadath, under Franz’s helm, and its sister ship, the S.S. Dream Quest, led by Commander Pink, while a third party remained ashore to ensure that the Dream Quest and the Kadath would not be instantly overtaken by sea monsters. Seeing that death was not imminent, the third party, commanded by Bruno, boarded the anchored ship S.S. Acker and towed out to meet the other ships, which sped through the strait to attack the monsters crawling amidst the outcropping sea cliffs.

  The frightful detachments of the moon beasts and shambling things had lumbered up to the top of the headlands and were shockingly silhouetted on either side against the grey twilight sky. The thin hellish flutes of the ghouls had now begun to whine, and the general effect of those hybrid, half-amorphous processions was as nauseating as the actual odor given off by the toad-like lunar blasphemies.

  The monsters are playing music, Lola. It’s horrible.

  Then the two parties of the ghouls swarmed into sight and joined the silhouetted panorama. Javelins began to fly from both sides, and the swelling meeps of the ghouls and the bestial howls of the shambling things gradually joined the hellish whine of the flutes to form a frantic and indescribable chaos of demon cacophony.

  Their song will drive me mad!

  Now and then bodies fell from the narrow ridges of the headlands into the sea, in the latter case being sucked quickly under by certain submarine lurkers whose presence was indicated only by prodigious bubbles. Meanwhile, Franz texted Lola.

  A ghoul nearly climbed aboard! It tried to steal my Ice Chatter when I pushed it over.

  I’m so afraid. Please don’t die.

  I won’t die. Our battleships are equipped with cannons.

  Is Cthulhu around?

  No sign of him anywhere.

  For half an hour the battle raged, and Franz continued texting, until upon the west cliff the monsters were completely annihilated. They were slowly retreating to the slopes of an iceberg.

  We’re winning! I think we’ve won the battle.

  Commander Pink ordered reinforcements from the party in the town to help seal the victory. The last of the toad-like horrors fought desperately with great spears clutched in their powerful and disgusting paws.

  Vampires leapt onto the ships of the monsters. The fight became a hand-to-hand contest. Franz remained aboard his battleship, crouched by the stern, texting.

  As fury and recklessness increased, the number falling into the sea became very great. Those striking the harbor met nameless extinction from the unseen monsters beneath the surface, but of those striking the open sea some were able to swim to the foot of the cliffs and land on tidal rocks, while the few winged ghouls swooped down and rescued several moon beasts. The cliffs were unscalable except when the monsters had debarked, so that none of the ghouls on the rocks could rejoin their battle line. The rest were killed by cannon fire.

  Several ghouls swarmed over the helm and Franz had to put the Ice Chatter away. He picked up a harpoon and blasted the center gho
ul in the heart. The ghoul remained standing, tugging at the large treble hook embedded in its chest bone. Franz ran a wide circle around the ghouls while they were still crowded together. He tied them together with the razor-wire rope attached to the harpoon. When they were securely tied, he jerked hard on the harpoon gun and sliced their fishy heads off.

  He called on two vampires and they helped him pitch the heads overboard. They left the heap of bodies twitching.

  Finally, the moon beasts and the ghouls being safely in the distance and the invading land army concentrated in one place, Franz took out the Ice Chatter and texted Lola again:

  Do you remember the first time we talked on Ice Chat?

  Yes.

  I told you that if I could just go out to sea, like a sea wolf, I’d die a happy vampire.

  You were so romantic.

  Well here I am at sea, but the sea is not the reason I would die the happiest vampire of all, if I died right now.

  No?

  You are the reason, Lola.

  Oh Franz. You shouldn’t be texting right now. It’s dangerous.

  I love you.

  Return home safely.

  He put the Ice Chatter away, wondering if losing an arm forfeited a safe return.

  Just then, Commander Pink pulled alongside Franz and the S.S. Acker. Commander Pink waved and urged them forward for an aggressive assault, for the monsters had begun to rally.

  They landed a considerable force in the enemy’s rear, after which the fight was short-lived. Attacked from both sides, the ghouls were rapidly cut to pieces or pushed into the sea, until by evening Commander Pink agreed that the area was clear of them.

  When the security of the first two ships was assured, Bruno’s galley sallied forth and rescued such vampires as were on the rocks or swimming in the ocean after being forced off enemy ships.

  So by night Commander Pink assembled all the vampires and counted them with care, finding that over a fourth had been lost in the day’s battles. The wounded were placed on bunks in the galley, for Bruno, of all vampires, discouraged the old ghoulish custom of killing and eating one’s own wounded, and the able-bodied troops were assigned to the oars or to such other places as they might most usefully fill. Under the low phosphorescent clouds of night the galley sailed, and Franz was not sorry to be departing back to the underground.

  Goodnight, he texted Lola before passing into a deep slumber, lulled by the rocking of the waves.

  When he awoke in the morning, he found the ship very close to shore, where a few vampire sentries still waited, squatting in the birthday cake like gargoyles.

  He got up and searched for Bruno, but the buff vampire was nowhere to be found. Someone aboard the S.S. Acker reported that Bruno fell into the sea during the night and had presumably drowned.

  Franz went straight away to Commander Pink and reported the tragic news, but the commander had other things on his mind.

  “I am thinking of a great design,” he told Franz as they took to land and began the march back to the underground. “If it fails, I fear we are doomed despite this great victory.”

  “Do you care to confide?”

  “I want to build a giant vampire.”

  “Out of what, may I ask?”

  “Out of vampires, of course.”

  “And for what purpose?”

  “To take on someone our own size.”

  The lunacy of Commander Pink’s plan was only matched by the lunacy in his eyes, but the vision of a giant vampire rising from the underground and uniting the vampires as they had not been united in fathomless centuries was also brilliant. Franz worried that he may have been infected by Commander Pink’s lunacy. He shrugged away the notion. They had won the battle at sea, but at the expense of a quarter of their men. Winning petty squabbles would still lose them the war. They had the bravery and the spirit. Now they needed the triumphant, all-encompassing victory, and that meant risking everything in a head-on confrontation with Cthulhu. That meant beginning construction immediately.

  “It’s not you, it’s me,” Cthulhu said to the I Can Has Cheezburger animated .gif cat on the screen of his Ice Chatter. “I thought we could work through our differences. We even spent some time apart. I realize now that we’re just two completely different people.”

  “Meow?”

  “Of course you were good to me, Lolcat. It’s just, you’re a cat and I’m a totally sinister god. We were never meant to last.”

  “Meow?”

  “I know we had good times together. Great times. Nobody can take those memories from us. But these past few eons, I feel we’ve been holding each other back.”

  “Meow?”

  “I know I was sleeping all that time, but that’s precisely my point. I was only dreaming because I was unhappy in our relationship.”

  “Meow?”

  “I know you can has cheezburgers, Lolcat. The truth is, I can’t. I still feel a twinge of guilt every time I spell ‘cheeseburger’ with a z, and that’s not even the half of it.”

  “Meow?”

  “Lolcat, please. Don’t blame this on our problems in bed. I’ve imagined for so many years that if only I experienced perfection in a hamburger, I would have everything made. Do you know what I learned today?”

  “Meow?”

  “No, not that I should undergo species reassignment surgery and become a cat. I learned that hamburgers are impossible. For me they are, anyway. I don’t have a burger spot, Lolcat. I’m a sushi man at heart.”

  “Meow?”

  “You’ll find your perfect mate someday. There are plenty of hamburger lovers in the sea. I have to go now. I’ve got a dinner date with my old flame.”

  “Meow?”

  “Yes, Lolcat. I’m going out with sushi.”

  “Meow?”

  “I know. It happened fast, but you can’t control these things. For so long I forgot how much I love to eat sushi. Now that we’ve been reacquainted, I understand the mistake I made in ever saying goodbye to sushi.”

  “Meow?”

  “That’s not to say I never loved you, only that I must go.”

  With a lone tear in his left eye, Cthulhu tossed the Ice Chatter into the sea. “Let’s go,” he said to the salmon roll that had been standing behind him, and tried to ignore the electric mewls of the Lolcats as they sank to the bottom.

  Bruno muscled his way onto the mussel-strewn shore of Muscle Island. Thanks to his bivalve friends, Muscle Island appeared as nothing more than a small rocky island, but within each of their clamped shells, the brute joy and manly wonder of Muscle Island waited to be unleashed. For many seasons, Bruno had anticipated springing the crowning achievement of his life’s work on the vampires, and although the project had yet to reach maximum buff capacity, the opportunity dawning before him might never come again. He would activate Muscle Island, kick Cthulhu’s ass, and save the vampires from extinction. He would be everybody’s hero, their god, but most importantly, their personal trainer.

  Bruno lay sprawled on his back, exhausted. After falling off the S.S. Acker, he’d nearly drowned twice on his treacherous swim toward Muscle Island. He checked his Ice Chatter for incoming messages from Sarah. He’d received no word from her in quite some time. Before saving the vampires, he intended to stop by the Lugosi’s and rescue Sarah.

  He loved Sarah, but he couldn’t muster the courage to tell her because legally, she was still married to Fang Foot. Between sucking a girl’s blood and confessing your love for her, you had to draw the line somewhere. He felt bad about the whole affair.

  He got to his feet and began cracking open the mussels, which sighed wearily as their jaws drew back and revealed the muscles within. Bruno plucked the muscles from within the mussels and tried not to think about Sarah as he worked. He imagined himself to be a giant manta ray trying to make ketchup out of a field of tomato plants.

  When he came to the last mussel, he paused from his work to look up at the sky, and there above him floated a bright big beautiful arm, larg
e as a galleon. The arm was made of pure muscle.

  Bruno pulled the batch of muscles from the last mussel and raised them to the arm above. The arm descended, fingers extended to accept the final muscles, its fingernails.

  Buff fingernails, Bruno thought, nodding.

  The arm came down lower and Bruno hopped onto its wrist, straddling it like a horse. He thought about that funny arm emporium joke he made to Franz, who he hoped to see again and maybe become friends with, even though that guy was sort of a dork.

  Right now, he had a woman to save.

  He held on tight to the muscular giant arm and shouted, “Mush!”

  The arm took off into the sky.

  To hell with waiting for love. As soon as he held Sarah in his arms, he was going to lay her down and make love to her, chewing on her face until she wept.

  Or maybe a simple “I love you” would suffice.

  After Commander Pink gathered everyone together and described what he wanted, the vampires began nailing nails into their arms and legs and hearts and hands. They nailed themselves to other vampires, but something wasn’t quite adding up. For all the holes they had created and all the precious blood they had spilled, they weren’t getting any closer to the formation of a giant vampire.

  “Perhaps we should bring in a scaffold,” Barthelme suggested.

  “The vampires may prove stackable,” Barthelme agreed.

  Commander Pink put his arms around Franz and Lola’s shoulders and said, “Perhaps we ought to go have a chat with Fang Foot. I think what we’re missing here is our big toe.”

  In the cell where Franz and Lola had been kept, Commander Pink explained their plan to Fang Foot, who looked very meek, sprawled on the floor of his cell. He was apparently no longer possessed by the farming demon.

  “I will absolutely not be somebody’s toe,” Fang Foot said after hearing the breakdown. “Toes, in fact the entire thing we call a foot, belong to the body’s lowest class. I am head of the Council. I belong in the head.”

  “The Council has dissolved,” Franz said, because someone needed to break the news to him. “You are no longer in charge. Anyway, this isn’t about pride. It’s greater than any individual. It’s about who fills each role best. You may have been head of the Council for many years, Fang Foot, but in your heart you’re just a big toe. And the big toe is where you’re needed.”