'”How do we kill him?” Nyarlathotep asked, in the same nonchalant tone he might use to inquire about the time of day.

  “Come on,” Ricky said under his breath.

  “Should we skin him alive and serve him his own cooked flesh?”

  The monsters roared in approval.

  The shadowy figure was nearly skipping with glee as he ticked off horrible ways for Ricky to die. “Burn him alive then drown him? Drown him then burn him?”

  Ricky broke out in a cold sweat, this was not what he'd planned for.

  “I've got it! Let's cut out his intestines and hang him with them! OR!” the shadow man said, dramatically holding one finger up in the air. “Cut off his fingers and toes, then hands and feet, then arms and legs, then cut out his eyeballs, slice off his tongue, cut off his ears...”

  Nyarlathotep continued, hardly pausing for breath, getting more and more worked up with each sadistic idea. If Ricky didn't put a stop to this now, he'd never get his chance...

  “Hey douchebag!” he yelled when the figure below had finally stopped talking long enough to receive a standing ovation from the demoniac creatures in attendance.

  Nyarlathotep glanced up at Ricky, bemused smile on his face. “It seems as though the brave little human finally has something to say.” He waved the crowd to silence as they began to protest. “No, no, let’s hear him out. It'll be the last thing he ever says...”

  Ricky hesitated, spinning slowly.

  “Well?” Nyarlathotep said, becoming annoyed.

  “Eat me, you sanctimonious, shit stain looking cunt.”

  For a moment, Nyarlathotep stared at his prisoner. His form began to change shape, seeming to grow in mass. The corners of his arms and legs bulged out and his head took on feral properties. A low growl formed in his throat, and suddenly he resembled the shadow of a gigantic bear more than that of a man. Then, just as suddenly, his form snapped back to that of a tall thin man.

  “Eat you? Eat... YES!” The shadow man jumped up into the air with excitement as though the revelation was the best idea of the entire evening. “PERFECT! Eat him! Whatddya say, gang? Should Great Cthulhu eat this defiant little pest alive to show his fellow monkey men that you do NOT fuck with the Elder Gods?! Let him stew in the boiling stomach acids of He-Who-Shall-Herald-Their-Return, clinging to his final moments of life while we bring forth the supreme rulers of this dimension??”

  The ensuing cacophony of supportive cries from the nightmare contingent was deafening. More than one of the human slaves flung themselves against the cold, slimy stones until they bashed their own brains out in order to escape the monstrous jubilation.

  “A tribute, then, to the coming of the GRAND MASTERS of this reality!” Nyarlathotep exclaimed. And finally, Great Cthulhu stirred from his throne, reached out, and plucked Ricky off the dangling rope with no more effort or care than yanking a grape from the vine. The enormous octopoid's face tentacles quivered in anticipation for the bite-sized meal they were about to receive. The longest of the dozen tendrils licked across Ricky's face, leaving a wet, drippy smear in its wake.

  Ricky took a deep breath and closed his eyes. This had better fucking work, he said to himself, silently willing his final, desperate plan into motion. Doubt crept into the young man's mind when he opened his eyes again, as Cthulhu opened his seemingly fathomless maw, revealing innumerable smaller tendrils laced with razor sharp teeth running down and down, further and further into the behemoth creature's gullet. I don't want to fucking die! Ricky screamed inside his own head. Holy fucking shit, I'm fucking donezoes!

  “Wait!”

  Relief rushed through the captive human, as this momentary reprieve gained him another precious few seconds of life. He looked down to see who'd interrupted his impending execution.

  Boss Crab stood directly beneath him, looking more astonished than usual. “You have to tell me,” the unblinking crustacean said. “After everything, was-was it worth it?”

  Ricky glanced around the huge banquet hall. Took in all of the horrific monsters gathered around to witness his demise. Looked out into the sea of human faces, each and every one of them in awe that one man could stand so defiantly against the madness and futility before him. He looked back at the Great Cthulhu about to swallow him whole, and back down at the small group standing on the platform with him. He let his gaze linger for an extra moment on Karen and Fishbowl standing behind Boss Crab, and then he smiled, setting his sight back on his former boss. “I'll tell ya in a minute.”

  “What?!” Boss Crab asked, puzzled.

  But then it was too late to ask any more questions. Great Cthulhu finally spoke,his voice a terrible echoing boom that scattered Ricky's brain and made it hard for him to focus his thoughts, almost as though a thousand tiny wasps stung at his consciousness all at once.

  “Enough!” the giant beast roared. And with that, he tossed Ricky into the air, letting his face tentacles grab the tiny human—no more than the size of a toy truck to the awesome monster—and stuff the captive man into his expansive throat.

  Karen cried out and dropped to her knees. Nyarlathotep let out a whoop of joy. Boss crab looked stunned by the whole thing. And Fishbowl stood ever silent, staring straight ahead.

  The throng of writhing, chomping, snapping things erupted into the loudest cheer yet, as Great Cthulhu stood from his throne and raised his arms into the sky, spreading his dragon-like wings as he did so, their vast width enough to stretch the entire length of the platform, dwarfing all other creatures standing below him.

  “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh gah'nagl fhtagn!” the impossible horror screamed.

  “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh gah'nagl fhtagn!” his congregation of monsters responded.

  And so the chant rose to the watery heavens, increasing in pitch and fervor until even the slaves below were forced to join in, at the threatening tips of many stingers, claws and slimy wormish appendages. Even Karen, sobbing hysterically from the floor of Cthulhu's grand platform, eventually gave in, resigned to her fate, and began to chant the hideous words that would spell an end to everything.

  High above, Yog Sothoth came into greater and greater focus as the chant continued, pulsing brighter and brighter in that unnamable color of horror. A spiral of smoky, liquid, solid-like substance descended from the center of its jelly-like body, splitting off into many smaller tendrils, each falling until they reached the top of each of the giant thrones encircling Cthulhu's platform.

  Hideous shapes began to form on those thrones and their half-heard voices joined in with the nightmare chant.

  “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh gah'nagl fhtagn!”

  “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh gah'nagl fhtagn!”

  “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh gah'nagl fhtagn!”

  And then a funny thing happened.

  The hulking behemoth towering above the congregation of horrors stopped chanting. He staggered a few steps, nearly crushing Nyarlathotep beneath his immense bulk, then clutched his stomach and let out a fart so long and loud, the entire proceedings ground to an immediate halt. Beady little fish eyes registering shock, Great Cthulhu opened his mouth to speak when another stomach cramp doubled him over. This time, putrid, liquidy pink shit shot out of his asshole, creating a huge puddle at his giant clawed feet.

  The tiny humanoids sharing the platform with him all staggered backward, trying to avoid the growing puddle of cosmic feces splattered against the stone floor, and now shared Boss Crab's look of astonishment.

  Another stomach spasm forced the gargantuan beast to his hands and knees, where he began to dry heave into his own shit. A final spasm ended with Great Cthulhu opening his impossible maw and projectile vomiting a glut of spew large enough to fill a small landfill, before he collapsed headfirst into the fetid mixture of shit and puke.

  The entire banquet hall fell silent for a tense few moments.

  No creature dared to move a muscle, terrified that whatever force had managed to fell the Great Cthulhu would target them next. And then, each of the netherworldly tendrils attached to the grand thrones encircling the platform slowly pulled away, causing the half-formed denizens of unspeakable dimensions to vanish once again from the Earthly realm.

  “NO! Wait!” Nyarlathotep screamed. “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh gah'nagl fhtagn!” The shadow man pumped his arms up and down, encouraging the contingent of monsters to re-join his chant and continue the ritual. “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh gah'nagl fhtagn!”

  But it was no use. The monsters' eyes were locked on the twitching form of felled Cthulhu, and the movement from the mountain of puke next to his head.

  A gnarled, acid-eaten human hand thrust up from the noxious sludge. The crowd of alien beasts gasped in unison as the haggard form of Ricky pushed itself out of the muck so recently disintegrating his body.

  Impossibly, the man stood upright and smiled—or at least he appeared to smile. Most of the hair on his head had been eaten away, leaving nasty, yellow exposed areas of his skull where there was not pink, welt-ridden flesh. One of his eyeballs had glazed over white, the eyelid and most of the flesh around his orbital bone all but gone. The tip of his nose had melted away, and both sides of his cheeks lacked all skin, save for two small strips next to his bruised and swelled lips, giving him the appearance of a sinister, grinning ghoul.

  “No! NOOOO!” Nyarlathotep howled. “How did- How could???” he stammered in disbelief, darting his shocked eyes back and forth between the ghoulish man and the fallen god, still spasming on the floor.

  “It was easy,” Ricky said, brushing the remainder of gunk off his shredded flesh with bony, skeletal fingers. His voice was now an octave lower, having no doubt swallowed some of Great Cthulhu's stomach acid during his short time in the beast’s stomach, irrevocably damaging his vocal chords. “I didn't just poison the bodies of the people I was forced to murder and cook for you cosmic swine. I also poisoned myself.” This time Ricky did smile. The action tore free the thin line of flesh still connecting his cheek and lip on the left side, causing his mouth to fall open in a hideous permanent grin.

  Nyarlathotep just stared, mouth agape.

  “After Sam and I experimented on a few of Boss Crab's buddies, figuring out what combination of chemicals your kind is most susceptible to, I started drinking the poison little by little, building a tolerance to it, infusing it into my blood stream. You ever seen the movie The Princess Bride?”

  “What?!?”

  “Nothing, never mind. Anyway, I've been poisoning myself a little every day, right up until today. I didn't think it would do anything besides kill you fucking waterlogged scum, but…” he said, feeling his face and looking at his skeletal hands. “I don't feel any pain at all. In fact... I feel...strong! There must have been some kind of chemical reaction between the poison and Cthulhu's gut acid. That's... unexpected!” The ghoulish man smiled and laughed again, causing his mouth to open up wider than his entire ghastly head. “The poison was Sam's idea. He knew we couldn't escape. Even knew we'd be caught poisoning the food. He knew we couldn't trust those other people either,” he said, motioning toward Karen. “He was a smart motherfucker. Smarter than me. But he knew I was stronger. Knew I could survive. So he chose me to drink the poison, and chose himself to die. All I had to do was make sure Squiggle-face over there ate me. Hell, that was the easy part.”

  Nyarlathotep recovered from his shock. He began to grow again. Two new pairs of arms burst out of his midsection. His fingers elongated and became sharp talons. His head stretched out, his mouth filled with red daggers. Four new sets of hateful glowing eyes opened up below his primary pair. His torso grew until he towered over the ghoulish Ricky. “You will not outwit the Elder Gods!”

  “Uh, yeah,” Ricky said, “already have.”

  Suddenly, Fishbowl tossed Karen to the ground, reached up and unlatched the clasp on its diving helmet, freeing the noxious substance residing inside. Just as suddenly, a deluge of brackish nightmare erupted from the helmet. It looked like a fire hose had exploded from inside Fishbowl's suit, only it coiled through the air, waving and turning like a snake. The amount of hideous eyeball stalks, thin, hairy legs, dripping tentacles and oozing mouths darting in and out of the thick geyser of black liquid was nearly incomprehensible.

  Nyarlathotep turned to see what was happening behind him too late. Fishbowl’s chaotic form separated into two halves at its front, creating a sort of giant pincer claw, and darted forward like a striking snake, splitting the shadow man's beastly visage cleanly in two at the middle. Nyarlathotep's severed halves crashed to the stone floor. Weird, nearly translucent fluid gushed from the open wound of his trunk, while his orphaned legs twitched, now laying beside his head.

  At this point, the mob of creatures lining the stands broke their silence. They murmured amongst themselves, and some even began to move toward the banquet hall's exits.

  Fishbowl stalked forward—abandoning Karen where she lay, shocked and astonished on the ground—until its suited form stood shoulder to shoulder with the deformed, acid-bleached Ricky.

  “H-how could... you... betray your own k-kind?” Nyarlathotep stammered, clear fluid leaking from his fanged mouth.

  “Cause she's in love,” Ricky said, ripping the buckles on the front of the wetsuit open, revealing dozens of tiny, writhing forms latched on to what appeared to be monstrous nipples lining Fishbowl's humanoid midsection. Each of the little tentacled beasts bore a human head, the face of which was an exact copy of Ricky's.

  More monsters broke for the exits as the tide of the battle raging on Cthulhu's throne platform had clearly begun to turn in favor of the enemy. Now it was the slave contingent's turn to hurl insults at the fleeing beasts, causing some of the alien sea monsters to turn around and jump into the slave pit to attack the defenseless humans.

  Ricky patted Fishbowl on top of her diver's helmet. “One day, I was bored at McHumans, so I decided to drag a stepladder over to this big scary motherfucker and jack off over her open helmet. I figured, what the hell, what's the worst that could happen? She kills me? Good! I'd be out of this fucking wet nightmare once and for all. Turns out she liked it, though. So it became a thing. I'd jack off over her fishbowl head, and she'd tickle my balls with her gross ass sloppy appendage till I'd bust nuts. She gobbled em up, and next thing you know, we're in love, and I'm a daddy.”

  “R-ridiculous!” Nyarlathotep managed. The flayed ends of his severed halves had already begun to slowly work their way toward one another. The shadow man was regaining his strength, putting himself back together.

  “Yeah, maybe. But you know what? We beat you.” Ricky lowered his head to within inches of the wounded being's face. Then he whispered, through thin, acid-eaten lips, “I know where the plug is.”

  Nyarlathotep's eyes widened and he lunged at the man with his huge clawed hands, but Ricky and Fishbowl were quicker. Ricky sidestepped the blow, darting behind the creature in the diving suit. Fishbowl's exposed appendage whipped down, scooping up Nyarlathotep's severed lower half. The chaotic, writhing appendage threw the dismembered limbs into the air and, before gravity forced them back down, the appendage transformed from a menacing claw into a grotesque mouth. It snatched the shadow man's legs out of the air and gobbled them down.

  Screaming out in terror, Nyarlathotep scrambled toward the edge of the platform, intent on throwing himself down into the slave pit, much more confident of his chances with the disheveled humans than the monstrosity before him.

  But the gigantic mouth, which housed many legs, feelers, eyeballs, and tentacles as fangs, swooped down and took the remainder of Nyarlathotep's body into its disgusting jaws.

  “We will never be stopped!” Nyarlathotep cried, feigning bravery, even as his voice quivered and broke. Even as the stands emptied far below, removing any chance of a valiant rescue attempt by his fellow monsters, and high above him, the jellyfish-like body of Yog Sothoth disappeared from his place near the top of the domed banquet hall, closing the dimensional rift that would have allowed the Elder Gods’ passage into this world.

  Nyarlthotep had failed his masters.

  Trying to maintain his dignity, the shadow man closed his eyes and sobbed out, “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and-”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ricky interrupted. “And with a chomp and a bite, even evil fucks like you can die!”

  Nyarlathotep's screams of terror were cut short as Fishbowl made quick work of his mauled body, pulling the whole gory mess back inside her helmet. The top slammed shut with a loud CLANG!

  “Make sure you chew your food,” Ricky said, grinning. “We don't want him coming back up later.”

  With that, the ghoulish man turned around just in time to see Boss Crab fleeing between the two gargantuan bodies of the Leviathans toward the spiral staircase that wrapped around the humongous platform and led down to the slave pit below. Re-opening the top of Fishbowl's helmet, Ricky stuck his whole arm inside, rooting around for something inside the impossibly large dimensions of the interior of the cosmic horror's suit.

  “Stop him,” Ricky said, pulling out the very same fire ax Boss Crab had made him use to murder his best friend.

  Boss Crab stumbled down the staircase, frantically looking back over his shoulders every few steps to see if he was being followed. He made it around the pillar once, seemingly without notice. Confident he could make a break for it and lose himself in the chaos of monsters and slaves below, he took off at a sprint, intent on clearing the last few steps four or five at a time, when—

  WHAM!

  —he slammed into something hard, causing him to stumble backward. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked up to see a titanic wall of scummy, fetid black water, home to thousands of disgusting, writhing things blocking his passage.

  “Y-you work for me! You can't do this!” Boss Crab screamed, looking up the vast pillar to the top where Fishbowl stood, helmet open, preventing her former boss from getting any further. The creature said nothing.

  Boss Crab looked off the side of the staircase, but it was impossible to judge the distance to the floor. He was afraid he'd crack his shell if he jumped. Hearing something fall and land behind him, the giant crustacean spun around, just in time to see Ricky raising up out of a crouched position, having jumped off the platform above.