Pthbbth
 

The rising sun peeked over the horizon, bathing the fields in the golden light of the coming dawn. “Hey Ma, what’s for breakfast?” Twelve-year-old Charles Lustcraft asked his mother, Becky. She opened the fridge, peered inside, and groaned.
“Uhh, maybe we’ll have some onion and fried sauerkraut sandwiches. There ain’t much here, Charles. I forgot to go to the market, so we’re stuck with whatever we got in here right now. Sorry, hon,” she replied.
“Oh boy! Onion and fried sauerkraut, my favorite!” Charles exclaimed excitedly.
“Son, why the HELL do you like onions and fried sauerkraut?” asked Charles’s father Howard.
“It’s so good! Don’t you like it, Dad?”
“Ew, no. Weirdo,” said Howard. “Oh hey, by the way Becky, Octavius is gonna be in town for a few days, and I promised him he could stay here. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“Octavius? Octavius Jones? Isn’t he that one pirate friend of yours?”
“For the last time, Becky, Octavius is NOT a pirate! He wears an eyepatch because he accidentally sucked his eyeball out when he was five, and the hole looks nasty. And his beard is MUCH bigger than a pirate’s beard.”
“Fine, whatever, he’s not a pirate. Hey, what’s Octavius doing in Farmville anyway? There’s nothing out here, this town is dead smack in the middle of nowhere. I mean, there’s NOTHING in Nebraska.”
“True, but he wanted to come see Archie, that mammoth fossil.”
“Why? It’s like an elephant, but with fur. Except that there isn’t fur, because it’s a skeleton. So it’s essentially the same as looking at an elephant.”
“Look, I don’t know WHY he wanted to come see Archie, but he was going to be in town and we’re old friends. I said he could stay here for a night or two. Just answer the question, oh my god. Is that alright?”
“Whatever. Sure, Blackbeard can stay. As long as he doesn’t take Charles hostage or something.”
“OH MY GOODNESS! MA, CAN I PLEASE GO WITH THE PIRATE MAN? BEING A HOSTAGE SOUNDS LIKE FUN!”
“Shut up, Charles,” said Howard.
Five days passed. But suddenly, during family game night, a shadowy figure could be seen walking over the horizon.
“OCTAVIUS!” Howard screamed, running out to meet his friend. “Oh my gosh, it’s been SUCH a long time!”
“Yeah, it has! What, 30 years or so now?”
“Yep, something like that. How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been alright, how about you?”
“Pretty good. I have a kid now, and just between you and me, he’s kind of a moron.”
Right about then, Octavius and Howard had made it back to the house and Octavius was greeted by Becky.
“Hey Blackbeard, how’re you?
“I AM NOT A PIRATE!”
“WOW, IS THIS THE PIRATE GUY? MR. PIRATE, CAN YOU TAKE ME HOSTAGE?”
“What? What’s wrong with your kid, man?” he said to Howard.
“Like I said, he’s kind of an idiot.”
“I see what you mean.”
Howard invited Octavius inside, and they all sat down to eat. Amidst laughter and merriment, Octavius accidentally touched on a subject Howard had been successfully avoiding telling his wife for years. It concerned where Howard had gotten his money. He had actually earned a mediocre fortune peddling rock candy on the Eastern Alaskan black market, specifically to cocaine smugglers crossing between Alaska and British Columbia. Octavius was unaware that Howard hadn’t told his wife anything concerning this, so when Howard tried to shush him, he thought he was just joking around and kept going. When Becky heard how Howard earned their money, she threw him out. She let Octavius stay, however, much to Howard’s dismay.
Octavius took the opportunity to go into depth on how Howard acquired his fortune. “Story time,” he said. “Ages ago, back when we were young and dumb, Howard and I thought it would be fun to live a life of adventure. So we ventured into the mountains with nothing but the clothes on our backs, a tent, rations for five days, and 50 kilograms of cocaine. We sold the cocaine to whoever we went by, which in retrospect was probably a bad idea given the amount of law enforcement in those parts. Well, either way, the problem was that we didn’t know what the terror of those mountains was. See, there was a cave up on a hill that was PERFECT to use as a hideout. Unfortunately, there was a bear that thought the same thing.
We settled in, set up the tent, and set down all the coke. But RIGHT after we did that, we heard the roar from the back of the cave, and the huge black shadow rushing toward us from the darkness. Both of us panicked and ran, and the coke was our savior. The bear accidentally stepped in the pile, and curious by what it was, sniffed it. Man, bears on coke is probably the funniest thing you’ll EVER see, I promise. Anyway, the bear, let’s call him Ted, went rolling down the hill sneezing and wheezing. Howard and I tried to run, but we were too busy laughing. But once Ted got over the initial shock, he was on us. Both of us ran as fast as possible, except Ted was MUCH faster.
Now, Howard’s eyes were better than mine even back then, and he yelled “SHARP RIGHT UP AHEAD!” We hurdled a log and made a hairpin turn. It was then that I saw what Howard saw, which was that we were running toward a gulley. Both of us missed it, but Ted went tumbling down. We took a minute to breathe, but this was when the coke worked against us. Ted hadn’t felt any of the pain of rolling down the hill and came charging right back up. However, this time Howard and I had the uphill advantage. We both kicked Ted in the chest so hard that he was blasted out into the air, and so instead of rolling to the bottom he just fell. The damage he suffered rendered him unable to climb back up, and Howard and I returned to the cave. Having learned from the Ted Disaster, we never settled in caves again, and spent the next ten years living off the land and coke sales.”
“Wow, that sounds really interesting,” said Becky.
“Yeah, it was a blast. And hey, just between you and me, we may have also pissed off an entire pantheon of gods,” Octavius
“How the hell did you do that?” Becky asked.
“Well, there was this temple, and we accidentally summoned this Lovecraftian horror that told us we needed a sacrifice. I said the first person I thought of was actually my long lost twin. Unfortunately, the person who I said to kill was Archduke Franz Ferdinand. So Howard and I accidentally started World War I, but oh well. Either way, the one we awoke was like the chief of these things, and he said that he would make sure to have his underlings placed in locations to tempt Howard and I to accidentally cause even more destruction. Hopefully he won’t run into another one of them.”
Distraught by the series of unfortunate events that had just unfolded and upset at being thrown out of his own house, Howard took a walk through the fields. However, he walked so far that he found himself on the edge of the Howling Woods. Now, a normal person would have turned right around and walked the other way. But Howard, a fearless individual, shrugged off his nagging doubt and walked in.
The interior of the forest was dank and filled with black shadows. Howard continued on, ignoring the foreboding moans and wails of the deepest section of the woods. But he began to question himself. “Why,” he thought. “Why am I walking through here?  I’m not scared, but what’s the purpose for coming in here?” These doubts began to eat at him, but still he pressed onward deeper. Finally, he realized what was happening. The forest itself was drawing him in, almost like it had a grip on him. With a start, he whipped around to leave, but the trees behind him sealed the gaps. The overgrown path deeper into the woods suddenly seemed a lot less brambly and frightening.
Slowly, Howard turned around and pressed deeper. Now Howard was terrified, and the minutes passed like hours. Finally, he reached the inner sanctum of the forest, an ancient temple. He wandered in, and noticed something resembling hieroglyphs covering the walls. The symbols depicted a person performing a specific dance, and a massive eternal deity of flame erupting from the altar in the middle. This got Howard curious, and he performed the dance according to the wall’s instructions. Sure enough, searing flames erupted from the altar, so hot the sheer heat wave blasted Howard off his feet and knocked him into the wall. The flames shaped themselves into a creature, a hideous humanoid lion with tentacles.
“I AM PTHBBTH!” the creature roared. “HOW DARE THEE DISTURB MY SLUMBER?”
“I was just curious what the dance did,” replied Howard calmly.
“THINE HAS SUMMONED ME WITH NO SACRIFICE,” Pthbbth screamed. The sheer volume of Pthbbth’s voice threatened to split Howard’s eardrums, but yet the man kept his composure in the face of a god.
“YOUR INSOLENCE IS NOT APPRECIATED. AS PAYMENT FOR YOUR RECKLESS ACTIONS, I WILL TAKE FROM YOU THE THING YOU VALUE MOST. WHEN YOU RETURN, THEY WILL NO LONGER BE WITH YOU.” And just as quick as Pthbbth had appeared, he vanished. Howard was stunned at the sudden silence and stillness that surrounded him, but only for a moment before the weight of Pthbbth’s words set in. “NO!” he screamed. A furious rage consumed him, a mix of hate and anger and sadness and fear. He exploded from the doors of the temple, running like lightning. The trees bent down to get in his way, and he brushed large branches aside like they were nothing. The woods itself reacted to try to slow Howard, but the man covered his face and smashed through everything in his way. Finally, a fully grown tree stood directly in his way. To its left and right were jagged rock formations, so Howard bent down and lowered his shoulder. He rammed the tree at full speed, shattering the trunk. The sheer impact caused him to stumble and drop to one knee, but he did not stop. The woods quickly grew lighter and friendlier, and in no time Howard had blasted out of the mouth of the wood, his strides long and his pace quick. But he was still too far away, and in the distance he saw a large cloud of flames above his house, and then an explosion from his window. The fear gave way to bloodlust, and the desire to protect gave way to the desire to kill. Fueled by a thirst for destruction and slaughter that he had never known before, Howard sped up and in two smooth bounds, leaped off his neighbor’s roof and then his chimney, soaring up to meet Pthbbth midair and delivering a wild haymaker. Unsurprisingly, Howard’s fist passed straight through the ethereal body of the flame god.
“A fighter, I see. However, you’re too late. Your son has already been burned away to a crisp.”
“I’LL KILL Y- Wait, what? My son?”
“Yes. Unusual death, to be frank. Most of them scream or something, but this one wailed about never getting an onion and fried sauerkraut sandwich or something. What have you been feeding him, man, onion and sauerkraut’s just NASTY. Like seriously, who eats that?”
“Charles, apparently. Anyway, hey, thanks for taking Charles. Nobody liked him anyway. He was kind of an ass.”
“Oh.” Pthbbth seemed to be caught off guard by Howard’s reaction. “Well, who did you THINK I was going to kill?”
“Rabies, our pet squirrel.”
“You have a pet squirrel? Who the hell does that?” Pthbbth asked, dumbfounded.
“Us. I’m surprised you aren’t going to question why we named him Rabies.”
“I thought about it, but I decided I really don’t want to know.”
“Oh, okay, that’s understandable. If you’d have killed Rabies I’d have flipped my s*** and stabbed you.”
“It is done,” said Pthbbth in a menacing voice. “Your son was obviously not a worthy sacrifice for your actions, and your squirrel is gone.” Howard let out a wail so sad it brought a tear to even Pthbbth’s eye, but before Pthbbth could think about it at all, Octavius and Becky revealed themselves as servants of Pthbbth and shot Howard in the face. The setting sun bathed the land in the color of blood, camouflaging and covering up the crimson stains of the murdered innocents.

The End