He was looking forward to a chilled tumbler of Scotch, his deep recliner and  newest book, ‘The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories,’ by H. P. Lovecraft, as he, the night manager, turned the key in the restaurant’s backdoor lock. He had two days off and looked forward to the coming respite.

Hobarth Stonegrinder lived only a mile away, less if he took the short-cut that led through the local cemetery. Since he was in a hurry, and since it looked like it might storm, he quickly walked to the corner and up the hill into the cemetery.

He was a quarter of the way through the quiet place when he heard a set of voices coming from behind him somewhere in the absolute darkness. He quickened his pace as he heard a louder voice say, “There’s one now. Get it!”

Hobarth took off at a sprint, fearful that some smart-aleck kids were intending to run him down and do whatever kid’s do to people they found in graveyards. Ten, 20, 30 steps – and suddenly the earth fell out from under Hobarth and he toppled into space.

The fall had been into a recently dug grave site, left half uncovered and completely unseen by the now dazed Hobarth. He had slammed into the packed clay with both knees and smashed his face into the side of the hole, barely missing the thick plywood that lay at an odd angle across the far end of the fracture.

Gathering his senses, he moved into the deeper darkness of the well provided by the cover of the plywood. There, Hobarth Stonegrinder huddled, listening to the voices as they searched about, trying to find him.

He quickly glanced at the luminescence of his Timex: 12:41. It was practically the only light available at the moment.

His nose began to throb and he felt the area, realizing he was bleeding, “Must have happened when my face hit the side.”

Whereas he had been certain he’d heard footfalls mashing down and swishing through the dew shrouded grass surrounding his accidental hide-away, all sounds had died away, save for the frogs which joyfully chirped their night-songs in the distance. Hobarth took this to mean that the ‘coast is clear,’ since the rhythm of the frogs appeared totally undisturbed.

Quietly, Hobarth created foot-and-hand holds in the compacted dirt wall before him. He eased himself up until he could reach out and grab a fist full of grass with his right hand.

With his hold secure, he shot his left hand out, grabbing for another clump of grass. Instead his hand seized on something canvass and as he realized what it was, it was too late.

As he thought, ‘shoe,’ a piercing scream of unbridled terror cut through the dark, with the unmistakable words, “It’s alive!” close behind, followed by a multitude of bright and white and yellow flashing stars. Hobarth Stonegrinder had not seen either the person nor the foot to which the shoe belonged, as they violently lashed out with a well-placed punt.

Nor did Hobarth know that his body had arched backwards from the unseen blow, causing him to clock the back of his head on the cock-eyed board that half-covered the empty well, as he helplessly flopped back into its depths. For the next few hours, he slipped in and out consciousness, never becoming fully aware of either time or place.

He was shivering with a damp coldness and was completely soaked as he tried to open his eyes. He couldn’t tell if he were blind or if he simply had dirt caking them closed.

He gently felt them; puffy and as sensitive as an egg souffle. He further felt his plugged nose and realized it was like the thick end of an uprooted tree stump.

It was raining, how long he couldn’t even think clear enough to hazard a guess. But it was enough to fill the bottom of the hallow with at least an inch of water and leave his black suit, white shirt and black tie both soaked and stained a muddy brown.

Slowly, Hobarth sat up, having to rest his left hand on the side of the crater to steady his swooning head. The violent twisting of his balance threatened to toss him back into the mud as he rose, still leaning on the wall, to his feet.

Dizziness over took Hobarth Stonegrinder as he stood holding the dirt side of the chamber, then he heaved violently, but nothing came up. He stepped back under the board and leaned in the corner.

With time and more rest, he grew stronger and more confident that he could finally make it out of the vacuity. Again, he placed his feet and hands in the previously dug-out holds and lumbered upward.

He threw his right arm over the lip of the grave, grasping a large clump of grass and pulled. It took much of his strength as he clawed for another handful of grass, dragging himself further out of the cavity.

To his surprise, before him stood a man, leaning on a shovel waiting to begin his work day. Having not spoken for several hours, the first sound to come from his throat was not the word, ‘help’ as he intended, but more like an ‘ack.’

The working man jumped and spun following the unhuman sound. He cried in his native tongue, “¡Jesús sálvame!,” and after witnessing too many ‘dia de los Muertos,’ as a child, using the flat-edged spade as a weapon, slammed it on top of Hobarth’s barely visible head.

The blow, dropped Hobarth into the bottom of the cistern as if he were a sack of unwanted bricks and with as much gravitational force. As for the man with the shovel, he raced away in an unholy terror and before his supervisor could learn what had scared the otherwise stoic man.

When Hobarth next awoke he was puzzled about where he was. “You’re in the hospital,” a nurse told him as he attempted to ask after realizing his tongue was half-bitten off.

“You’re in Intensive Care,” she said, “With a skull fracture, a broken nose and a double-concussion, among other injuries. Now get some rest.”

After she left, Hobarth, shifted slightly, wiggling further down into his fresh and clean bedding, and finally relaxing, enjoyed the softness of the pillow beneath his shattered and scabbed, but stapled head, dozing off. Hobarth Stonegrinder’s respite didn’t last long, as another nurse came to his bedside, a large medicine-filled syringe in her gloved hand.

A Nevada State Highway Patrol Trooper is making his regular late-night patrol when jus’ before midnight, he spots a lone car parked in an out of the way ‘Lovers Lane.’ Believing he’ll catch the occupants in the throes of passion, he decides to investigate.

As he carefully approaches the car to get a closer look, he sees a young man behind the wheel, reading a computer magazine. He immediately notices a young woman in the rear seat, filing her fingernails.

Puzzled, the trooper walks up and gently raps on the driver’s window, and flicks on his flashlight. The young man lowers his window. “Uh, yes, officer.”

Shining the light in the young man’s face, the trooper asks: “What are you doing?”

The young man says, ‘Well, Officer, I’m reading a magazine.”

Pointing the beam towards the young woman in the back seat, the trooper asks, “And her, what’s she doing?”

The young man glances in his rear-view mirror, “She’s filing her fingernails, sir.”

Now, the trooper is totally confused. A young couple, alone, in a car, in separate parts of the vehicle, at night in a lover’s lane, and nothing’s happening?

The trooper asks, “What’s your age?”

The young man says, “I’m 22, sir.”

The trooper asks the young woman, pointing the flashlight at her again, “And what’s your age?”

She looks at her cellphone then up at the trooper, answering, “I’ll be 18 in less than 10 minutes, officer.”

His note, found on the front seat of his Tesla 300, explained silently, “Whatever this eldritch thing is, I dared not speak its name into the air, for to do so, I would have brought the beast upon humanity.” It would prove to be part of the last missive undertaken by the portly, middle-aged University professor, whose course of study being that of Mesoamerica mythology.

Avery Pierce sat comfortably in his cloth and wood-framed lounge chair under his umbrella as it shielded his pallid skin from the burning orb floating many millions of miles above the earth’s sphere and shining directly onto and across the lake, they nicknamed ‘The Jewel of the Sierra,’ in which he thereby rested. He checked his cellphone as it laid atop his red-and-white ice chest; not yet noon and he’d beaten all sun-worshipers to the strip of sand that he thus occupied.

He closed his eyes and relaxed, allowing himself a few minutes to meditatively relax in the warmth of the day. But then a chill overtook his countenance and he opened his eyes to a frightful sight; the once blue and clear skies had altered and were now dark, as if an inky shadow had been cast over all.

Avery Pierce watched in horror as the lake before him filled with what he could only assess as tar. And as the ground shuddered beneath him, he concluded that he was witness to an earthquake of an unknown magnitude.

The foul stench that emanated from the dark mound forming before him caused him to wretch violently. It seems to come upon him in waves, ever stronger and with a great winded-force that he found himself unable to avoid taking in, leaving him utterly weak and teary-eyed.

The once crystalline water before him had turned to a hideous, debauched stew of shattered bones of all shapes and sizes, oozing flesh that appeared melted and bottom dwelling plants in full gaseous decay. He finally stood, as from the nearest center of this mass rose a singular monolith of shiny marble stone.

Avery Pierce moved closer to where the water had at one time been the lake’s shoreline and gazed upon the elevated structure. Fascinated, he grew bold and picking his way across the rotted detritus, stood before the ancient and worn obelisk and its abhorrent cyclopean monolith perched upon its pentacle, attempting to decipher the pictographs, crudely carved into its four sides.

On it shown shapes of known water dwellers, beginning at the bottom, with each form above those, becoming more and more hideous in design. Then he came upon the unbelievable — man-fish, large-eyed and bipedal, followed by a dual-legged, humanoid and winged, and half-cephalopod, half-reptilian creature that defied all manner of common description — and that face — too macabre to describe!

As he studied these grotesques, he became suddenly and acutely aware that he may not be alone as behind him, in the greater reaches of the depth, far beyond where the earth first percolated the appalling pasticcio, he heard the sloppy movements of a thing behind him. There, growing ever closer, crawled a feeler, dragging and lunging its way across the foulness, towards the very thing he studied.

Then he saw its massive head with a face that brought an instantaneous cold sweat to the man’s body and he slowly backed away. But it was too late, it had seen Avery Piece, as he had seen it ,and when their eyes — if one could truly say the beastly thing held eyes — he knew he must hasten an escape or died a frightful death, dragged beneath the water’s surface.

And that ghastly face!

How much further than his car had the Professor retreated, no one could tell. It was there that he had jotted down in his chicken-scratch penmanship the words he last wrote, adding “But, too late I have learned that it can read a man’s empty mind and therefore I should have never thought the name ‘Zaa-q’ran.’ This admonition comes too late as I’ve summoned her, albeit accidentally from where it resides. Forgive me!”

How much farther Avery Pierce made it beyond his still parked and now abandoned car is anyone’s guess and no one knows to this day, as he remains a missing person. And no sign of this being, this thing he called ‘Zaa-q’ran,’ has ever been found.

The man lived alone
Save for a dog he had.
But I wish I had known
His dog wasn’t all bad.

Sure, he growled, teeth
Bare and ready to bite,
Raised hackles beneath,
For what came to light,

While enjoying my stew
The beast hated my soul,
For I really had not a clue:
I was eating from his bowl.

It’s obvious that the guy who discovered milk was doing some weird stuff to the cow.

Saw the spirit of Marilyn,
Saying goodbye to Mr. Miller,
From the courthouse steps.
Followed her down
To the Virginia Street bridge,
Watching breathlessly,
She tossed her ring
Into the swift moving Truckee.
Then with no one asking
Her for her autograph,
She simply turned away,
Laughing and smiling,
Walking in Reno,
Marilyn faded away.

He looked at his bologna and cheese sandwich, then took another bite, smacking his lips noisily as he chewed, knowing it was one of the only human sounds he’d hear that day. Finished with lunch, Mo checked his watch: 23 minutes left.

Mo was the last of his breed, a Meat-sack, they called him, still working from day-to-day in an office that used mostly Synths as its labor force. The company’s only custodian, Mo could not afford his own Synth, so he was unable to work from home like everyone else.

Quietly, he got up and returned to his cart, pushing it to the nearby service elevator before speaking, “Ground.”

The elevator slipped downward, coming to an unperceived halt, where Mo wheeled his cart off the lift and across the lobby towards his small closet, where he kept his supplies. The brightly-lit lobby was quiet and empty, save for a single figure.

Seated in a chair across from the buildings guest registry sat a woman. Mo could tell she too was a Synth as her eyes glowed a soft, hazy light blue, a certain indication that she was in energy-saving mode.

After gathering what he needed from his closet, he proceeded to cross the lobby of the building back towards the elevators. As he pushed his cart by the Synth, he took notice of her exceptional beauty, and decided to sit down across from her, so he could simply marvel at her construction.

She was perfect in every detail, Mo thought. Then he saw the refection of himself in the window over her right shoulder and in it, understood his own ugly features and they shamed him.

It was also at that moment he felt in his heart the loneliness of his private existence and the sudden need for human contact. As he thought this, the female automaton powered up, stood and said, “Hello,” before heading to the lift.

While Mo watched it walk away, he whispered, “Why couldn’t I be made of semiconductors like you?”

He had four minutes left on his lunch break.

“So, what’s your birthstone?” she asked.

“Typically, ‘ruby,’” he answered, “But now it’s ‘rock bottom.’”

Do I buy new underwear or the three taco meal-deal? Decisions, decisions.

she snickered and sneered as she drove away/he didn’t know and pomposity refuses to say/she had shed him a number of times before/but none has stuck, till this slamming door.

nigh a quarter century has come and be-gone/finally two-thousand miles, became her dawn/she is shed of him quick-like, unwanted skin/where she is now free to be herself, begin again.

and there he stands vain-gloriously unaware/that she is gone for good and without a care/she is neither viper nor insect, newly peeled/no, her goal is to escape and to play the field.

finally he found that discarded wrapping she/left, translucent, cold, her needing to be free/where friendship is discarded in total dismay/and what an emotional idiot becomes by ended day.