Julie shoved another slice in Tivton’s mouth. She followed with it with a swig of chocolate milk. Julie dabbed at Tivton’s chin with her sleeve.

  “What about the front desk? I wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble, taking such good care of me.”

  Tivton patted Julie’s arm. She purred and pulled an Android phone from the pouch. The screen showed a closed circuit view of the Inn’s deserted lobby.

  “It’s hooked into the security cams. And the switchboard, and all the alarms. Anything happens, somebody calls, I’ll know. But since nothing ever happens and no one ever calls, de nada.”

  Julie fed Tivton the remaining pizza piecemeal, pausing in between slices to trickle chocolate milk in his mouth. She moved the portable desk to the writing table.

  “I bet you’d like a nice desert to top it all off.”

  “Do you have package of Twinkies in your pouch?” Tivton said. “Maybe I should call you kangaroo girl.”

  Julie giggled. She unlaced her blouse and shrugged it off her shoulders. She sauntered to the bed and poised herself over Tivton in a hands-on-hips stance. Julie thrust her bare breasts in Tivton’s face. He blinked as their blue-dyed nips threatened to pierce his eyes.

  “Beats the living shit out of a couple of Twinkies. And they’re more nutritious.”

  Tivton licked his lips.

  “No argument here. Ouch, what happened?”

  Tivton fingered a swath of crimson bruises crunched in Julie’s pale mammary. She flinched when he touched the serrated blotches.

  “Got tired of my nipple rings,” Julie said. “I had a bitch of a time getting them out.”

  “I’ll be gentle,” Tivton told her.

  “Not unless I tell you to, you won’t.”

  Julie plunked herself on the bed and kissed Tivton. She forced his lips apart and licked inside his mouth. Julie retracted her tongue and smacked her lips.

  “Pepperoni, chocolate, and you. Yummy, yummy.”

  Tivton grabbed her bare shoulders. Julie jerked free from his grasp and wagged her index finger at him.

  “Whoa, big…”

  She clutched Tivton’s crotch and squeezed his burgeoned erection.

  “Yeah, big fella. I showed you mine. Shit, I guess I’m still showing them.”

  Julie giggled and jiggled her breasts.

  “You show me yours. I’ll do it, don’t get, ha, ha, up. Too late for that.”

  Julie tugged Tivton’s polo shirt over his head. She tweaked his nipples and brushed the curled wisps of hair encircling them. His member tingled with further arousal when he inhaled her aroma of perfumed mold. Julie leaned down and blew in Tivton’s bellybutton. His stomach contracted under the blast of her peppery breath. Julie slurped Tivton’s navel. He gasped several long, contented sighs. Julie raised her mouth and giggled. Spit tinged with her smeared blue lipstick dribbled on Tivton’s stomach.

  “All your body holes are a g spot,” Julie said. “We can check each other’s all over, like a contest. Whoever makes the other cum-scream the loudest wins. Bet I have an advantage. You think so, Bill?”

  Tivton half-opened his eyes and nodded.

  “Only I have an early class tomorrow. I teach at the University. Right now I have to show up all the time to honor my contract.”

  Julie clamped her lips on Tivton’s and blew a wet raspberry. She pulled a fountain pen from her pouch and drew on his skin.

  “See if you still worry about your precious class once I get through writing all the things I’m going to do to you. It’s good you don’t have a shaggy belly. I’m not into the Sasquatch look.”

  Julie stopped scribbling when she noticed Tivton’s puzzled and apprehensive gape. She licked the pen’s nib.

  “My own special ink, melted licorice. I’ll be licking it off later. I need to write that down, too.”

  Julie resumed writing. Tivton stared at the skewed words and symbols she inscribed.

  “What’s it supposed to say? I don’t recognize any of it.”

  “Oh, it’s real freaking old. You teach at Miskatonic. Heard about the Necronomicon?”

  “Some of the geekier geeks get themselves in a lather whispering about it. I figured it was one of those pathetic comic book conventions.”

  Julie guffawed and rolled off the bed. Tivton smiled an igneous grin at her response.

  “Let me in on the joke, girl. Don’t be rude to a guest.”

  Julie stifled her laughter and scrambled to her knees. She etched a knobbed curlicue on Tivton’s stomach and dotted it with a jabbed period. A blood droplet beaded on Tivton’s pierced skin. He attempted a muttered protest. Tivton’s mouth remained closed and his vocal cords locked. His muscles stiffened and raised his body in a rigid slouch. Julie smirked at him as she laced up her blouse.

  Tivton heard the door open and close. He watched a creature he thought resembled an oversized lobster as it shambled across the shag carpet and hovered over the bed. Tivton stared at the crustacean’s mix of human and clawed appendages. He nearly felt a paralysis-suppressed shudder. The creature toted a silver cylinder tucked between a hairy black and spiny red arm. He gripped a tiny silver attaché case in his pincer. Julie leaned on the crustacean’s outer shell. The antennae on his bobbing head vibrated as he addressed her in a static drone.

  “Practice has perfected your transcription abilities, sweet one. I sensed the words’ completion immediately. Their effect on this individual is evident.”

  Julie patted Tivton’s cheek.

  “No offense, Bill. You’re not as bad as some of the stink bums I used to do. But I got a fella who really is out of this world.”

  Julie licked the crustacean’s leathery neck. He cooed and stroked her with one of the claws that grew from his upper body.

  “Unfortunately, sweet one, removal and transfer must commence.”

  The creature set the attaché on the nightstand and snapped it open. He plucked a silver stylus from the case and presented it to Julie. She clapped and bounced in place.

  “No shit, Yeogurath? I get to do it?”

  The creature nodded.

  “I told you following the last operation it would be so. Unlike the hollow assurances of the Old Ones, a Migo promise is honored.”

  Julie snatched the stylus and jabbed Tivton’s forehead.

  “Ring around the skull, then I lift the top off for the brain disconnect.”

  Julie cleaved an oval line around the circumference of Tivton’s head. Blood trickled from the gash she carved.

  “Relax, sweet one,” Yeogurath said. “You will drain an unacceptable excess of blood.”

  Julie slackened her grip as she linked the ends of the incision in a seamless line. She cinched a handful of Tivton’s hair and yanked. His scalp and the attached skull cap popped loose. Julie tumbled backwards into Yeogurath. The Migo steadied her and patted her rump with a pincer.

  “You neglected an instruction. A slight tug is sufficient to release it.”

  Julie rapped her knuckles against her right temple. She draped Tivton’s scalp on the headboard and peered in his yawing skull. Yeogurath stroked her with both a pincer and a hand.

  “You have watched me perform the procedure. The brain survives the disjoin and remains active even when the cranial ties have been severed.”

  Julie gulped and reached inside Tivton’s noggin. She closed one eye as she sliced nerves, capillaries and connective tissue. Tivton’s head wobbled atop his backbone.

  “Cut the remaining tie,” Yeogurath said. “Then a simple lift.”

  Julie groped underneath the throbbing brain and squeezed the spinal cord. Tivton’s brain pinged and bucked. Julie splayed her fingers around it and held it down.

  “A little ninja sound effect to help,” she said. “Eeeee-yah!”

  Julie chopped through the spinal cord as she shrieked. She dropped the stylus and grasped the bottom of Tivton’s brain. Julie hoisted the loosed organ and frowned.

  “Feels all wrinkly, yuck.”

  Yeogurath opened the cylinder. Julie plopped in the wiggling brain and wiped her hands on the bed sheets while he resealed the canister.

  “You performed without exception, sweet one. That is technology your planet’s inhabitants might approximate in a millennium, if they are allowed to. Move away now and avoid being a collateral in the conveyance procedures.”

  Julie stepped to the window. Yeogurath balanced the cylinder on the upturned palm of one of the attached human hands.

  “Our early time on this planet required we perform manual transportations to Yuggoth. Activation of the long-dormant celestial pathways has much accelerated the process.”

  The Migo croaked a dozen guttural palindromes. The elevated ceiling’s plaster split and churned into a maelstrom of flamed stars and swirled comet dust. The seething hole sucked up the cylinder. The maelstrom collapsed and imploded. The ceiling smoothed itself and filled in the cracks.

  “That mind possesses further race memories that will assist in determining what methods were employed by your ancestors to successfully push the Old Ones from your world. I remain incredulous at that accomplishment, but the evidence is inconvertible. With that information, the Migo can confront the Old Ones and roust the false gods from their watching posts. We will banish them to a celestial sphere so distantly beyond the cosmos, they will expand all their energies simply ensuring their survival. The Migo will replace them as the ascendant power!”

  Julie goosed Yeogurath’s dangling fantail.

  “You know what that talk always does to me.”

  She shimmied and hip-bumped the Migo’s shell.

  “Clean up, then we can get on with the business of getting busy, baby. But you need your nourishment before it coag… Before it gets thicky and icky.”

  “Coagulation, sweet one. You function well as a watchful caretaker.”

  “Ha, my turn. It’s caregiver. Or is that wrong? Wait a minute. You did that on purpose. Rock Lobster, you crazy shit.”

  She poked the Migo’s shell and giggled.

  “I’m rubbing off on you, too. Good one.”

  Yeogurath patted her with a pincer.

  “You indeed influence me, sweet one. As I require no further replacements, total exsanguination is now possible.”

  Yeogurath plucked a clear tube from the case. He attached it to the stylus and jabbed Tivton’s jugular. Blood flooded the tube. Yeogurath clamped his planed mouth around the hollowed pipe and sucked. The Migo’s neck tensed and contracted as he guzzled plasma.

  A pounding blow rocked the room’s door. Julie swore and walked towards it.

  “I’m the fricking desk clerk and this is a private room. Go back to yours or I’ll throw your ass out.”

  The door wobbled under repeated strikes and split apart. Two stocky men dressed in black jeans and turtlenecks charged the room from the hallway. Yellow ski masks hid their faces. Latex gloves covered their hands. Each man grasped a leash attached to the rawhide collar of a German Shepherd. The dogs growled when they spotted Yeogurath. They lunged the length of their reins and snarled at the Migo. Julie backed away from the canines.

  “Yellow Clan shit,” she said.

  The window shattered behind her. Three Yellow Clan members slid through the break on climbing ropes attached to the Inn’s roof. One of them grabbed Julie. He twisted her arms behind her and dragged her to the corner. The second and third unclipped batons from their belts and pressed buttons on the handles. Spring-loaded fishing line attached to barbed hooks shot from the sticks and snared Yeogurath. The Migo shrieked when the commandos pulled on the batons and ripped chunks from his pink flesh. Thick green sap oozed from the jagged wounds they tore in his neck and abdomen.

  The shepherds strained against their leashes when they smelled Yeogurath’s blood. One of the dogs stood on his hind legs and foamed at the mouth. The canine’s handler swore at the drag on his arm.

  “We got to let them go, Pratt. They really want a piece of that pus fungus.”

  “Just making sure they’re good and ready, Sims,” Pratt said. “I love it when they get real crazy and tear into it.”

  Pratt unclipped the leash from his dog’s chain link collar. The shepherd jumped over the bed and clamped onto one of Yeogurath’s natural arms. The dog ground his teeth into the crusted skin and held his grip as Yeogurath flailed the arm and screeched.

  “Too hot to trot, Sims? Your turn.”

  Sims grabbed at the dog’s collar, missing it twice before he grasped it and unhitched the links. The shepherd sprinted around the bed and crunched his sharpened teeth into Yeogurath’s clawed foot. The dog spat cracked shell on the floor and bit into the exposed flesh. Yeogurath screamed and stomped his foot. The canine shredded the Migo’s skin and gobbled the bloodied tatters. His green-tinged drool stained the carpet. Julie started to cry.

  “Rock Lobster, no!”

  She tugged her arm free and punched the Yellow Clan commando in the groin with her balled fist. The commando grinned back at her. Julie grabbed his crotch.

  “You cut them off?”

  “So we may better serve the Yellow King.”

  “You guys are fucked.”

  Pratt stared into Tivton’s open skull. “Freshly removed,” he told Sims. “I can bring it back, with what the Old Ones showed us to do. We might get some info on Yuggoth.”

  Pratt raised his head and chanted a buzzed repetition of rhymes at the ceiling. A wormhole opened in the plaster. Pratt stretched his arm and caught the Migo brain-cylinder as it tumbled through the breach. Snapped wires hung from the double-pronged outlets in its underside. Pratt nodded at the stylus as he opened the canister. “I’ll put it in, you do the connect and seal.”

  Pratt cupped his hands around the damp brain. He maneuvered it from the cylinder and dipped at the knees to lower the moist organ into Tivton’s head. Sims reared the stylus across it and reattached the severed connections. The brain shuddered and a soft glow radiated through its lobes. Sims replaced the scalp and welded Tivton’s skull together. He rearranged the hair and smoothed down a couple of pointed cowlicks. Pratt shook his head.

  “You prissy bastard. Help Dunn and Boone with the fungus. It’ll take a few minutes for his systems to kick back in. I hope this one is coherent.”

  Sims unhooked his baton and drilled Yeogurath’s neck with its barb. Yeogurath whimpered as green ichor leeched down his shelled back.

  “No, no, no!” Julie wailed.

  The commando wedged her in a taut full nelson.

  “Shit. Don’t be mad, Rock Lobster. I peeked at some more stuff in the holy holy when you were asleep.”

  Julie closed her eyes and rasped several rhyming sentences. Yeogurath jerked his head around to look at her and croaked a response. “Your transgression is forgiven, sweet one.”

  A pink aura surrounded Yeogurath with a pulsating halo. Squiggly waves radiated from the Migo and tracked the ceiling and walls. Yeogurath chirped as his body popped and grew in jerky spurts. The Yellow Clan commandos bore down on their batons and struggled to ground him. Skin flaked from the transplanted limbs. Yeogurath flexed the glistening new pincered arms that appeared from the molted human flesh. A reconstituted claw split the dermis on his foot. The tips of Yeogurath’s wings banged the ceiling and gouged crevices in it. He roared a buzzing chuckle. Julie danced a modified cha-cha.

  “I did it, I did it, I really fucking did it. Deal with that, Yellow Clan shit: Uber Rock Lobster!”

  Yeogurath shook loose the shepherd biting his foot. The dog yelped when he poised his foot above the canine. Yeogurath stepped on the shepherd and ground the animal under his freshly-shelled heel. The Migo laughed at the bloody tan and black stain he stomped in the carpet.

  The second shepherd snarled through his weakened hold on Yeogurath’s arm. Yeogurath speared the dog’s belly with his pincer and twirled the canine. Blood and viscera spewed from the animal and splattered the walls. Yeogurath flicked the shepherd through the broken window. A crash landing on the back parking lot snapped the dog’s neck and silenced his pained cries.

  “What?” Sims said. “You can’t do that to an f’ing dog!”

  Yeogurath dragged Dunn and Boone by their baton lines. He picked them up and snipped their heads with his giant claw. The Migo tipped the decapitated commandos and drank from their gushing neck stumps. Yeogurath dropped the blood-drained husks and belched. The burp’s force shook the room.

  “Well, excuuuuuuse me,” he roared.

  Julie giggled. Sims dropped his baton and ran. Yeogurath swatted him and cleaved the commando. Sims’ disconnected legs sprinted into the hall. They hobbled two steps towards the elevator before one tripped the other and they collapsed in a tangled and twitching heap. Sims winced when his torso thumped on the floor. He gaped as his blood pooled round his spread entrails.

  “Pratt!” he whined.

  Pratt retreated when Sims grabbed at his legs.

  “Lousy cocksucker,” Sims said.

  His clutching torso toppled and landed with a muffled thud.

  “ Steeee-rike,” Julie said. “You got it going on, Uber Rock. I bet you even got it over their shit ass lord and master.”

  Yeogurath clanked his claw and ignited a shower of sparks. Julie and the Migo laughed in unison.

  “Yeah, I looked in there, too. I know how to get the bastard. Simple as a pimple.”

  Julie murmured a metered chant.

  “Shut her up, Rice,” Pratt said. “She’s going to name He Who Is Not To Be Named!”

  Rice cupped his hand over Julie’s mouth. She chomped through his palm and scraped her teeth on his wrist bone. Rice yowled and dropped to his knees. Julie eked a skin bit from her incisors. She licked her blood-smeared lips and giggled.

  “Hastur,” she whispered.

  The floor quaked. Yellow tendrils snaked through the shag carpet. The golden vines intertwined and sprouted into a seven-foot stick figure. The wriggling braids weaved a hooded yellow robe around it. Webbed amphibious feet extended beyond the robe’s floor-scraping hem. Dripping tentacles writhed from the sleeves. Smaller versions furled and curled beneath the textured yellow veil that masked the shape’s countenance. The yellow robed figure spoke in a sibilant hiss.