Tales of an Insomniac
Greg had no idea what was going on when he first woke up. A few moments previously he had been awash in pleasant dreams of hordes of nubile young women professing their undying love for him, and the next moment he was falling to his knees in the middle of his room, feeling cheated. During the hours of the night, the station selection knob on his clock-radio had been mysteriously moved, so that instead of the usual loud rock music that usually greeted Greg at the gates of slumber, his room was now filled with a squall of white noise. Greg, somewhat of a sensitive sleeper, had practically vaulted out of bed when the alarm went off, before his conscious thoughts had disentwined themselves from nubile dream-women, and his feet, tangled as they were in his sheets, had decided to not accompany the rest of his body on the jaunt to turn off the alarm. Greg’s mind caught up with his body just in time to realize the pain in his knees when they dropped to the hard wood floor with an audible flood. Still a little dazed as he hobbled over to the alarm clock, the usual string of cusses that would have issued forth was replaced by a simple low growl and a brutal slam down on the alarm’s off button. Looking at the blue digital display of the clock, he realized that he had not reset his alarm clock the night before, and that he had been awakened for his 9:00 AM Monday class on Tuesday, when his first class wasn’t until noon. Grumbling sourly, he reached into his cell phone case, pulled out a bag of grass and hobbled over to his computer desk.
He fell into the black leather chair with a wince as his bending knees made clear their displeasure with the earlier shenanigans of the morning, and shuffled around the mouse to dispel the geodesic rotating patterns of his screen saver and bring up the desktop. After a few clicks, his media player was playing an old animation about a line and a scribble fighting over the romantic attentions of a dot. He pulled his psychology textbook out of his bag, emptied a portion of the bag onto the surface of the book, and began to sort through the marijuana to pull out the seeds. By the time the line was lamenting his lack of spontaneity, Greg had packed the bowl of his small glass pipe and was searching about for his lighter, and a flicker of irritation ran through him as he looked at the corner of his room above the alarm clock, and the small, bat-like creature there.
The creature more or less looked like a three-inch long hairless lemur with bat wings. Its four-inch tail, which it would taunt people with when it flew around, was currently wrapped around a peg in the wall, over a small coffee cup, which caught the drops of orange slime that fell off the creature as it slept. Putting aside weed, book and bowl, Greg walked over to the radio, turned down the volume, and let the static resume at a less deafening level. The little critter had probably twisted the knob while Greg was asleep because it loved white noise so much. The miniature lemur head yawned, and the wings unwrapped from around the torso and stretched. Underneath the wings, rows of tentacles stretched out from the critters chest, dropping the lighter they had been clutching into the coffee cup of orange goop. Greg turned off the radio, and changed the setting back to the original setting, hoping that the fitfully sleeping little beastie didn’t wise up and change it again after Greg went to sleep that night. He gingerly pulled the lighter out of the cup of slime, wiping it off on the small square of cloth he had put under the cup to keep splatter to a minimum.
Now equipped with a lighter, Greg sat down in front of his computer to smoke and watch the cartoon. He inhaled deeply and the dot was giggling like a schoolgirl that didn’t know what to do with her hands. A few hits later, the dot was telling the scribble that he was as meaningless as a melon, and Greg decided he should look for his pants. He decided to skip a shower, since he had taken one the night before. He had been planning on going out that night, but his now ex-girlfriend had decided to cancel both their plans and relationship because she felt that he wasn’t committed to her. Apparently she had decided that since he would never bring her over to his house and because he and his roommates were always “sharing looks” whenever they talked about their house, that there was a woman living there that he was having sex with on a regular basis, and he wasn’t about to waste his time trying to explain the real reason he never brought her over. Explaining, and even demonstrating, that there was a portal in his basement that regularly spewed out extra-dimensional horrors might have made her understand why he didn’t want her coming over, but it wouldn’t have changed the fact she was an emotionally co-dependent, boring, neurotic little princess. In truth, he was kind of glad to be rid of her, since he had more or less acquired her by accident when he got drunk, woke up next to her and had not escaped before she had awakened. She’d been holding the fact he’d taken her virginity over him for six months, the last two of which she’d been giving out blowjobs like party favors. Upon reflection, he was quite glad to be rid of her. He located his pants, pulled them on, and sauntered to the kitchen to make some breakfast.
He had always considered cooking to be a bit of an adventure, especially since the time the invisible tentacle creature had taken up residence in the knife drawer. Jamie and Tim had long since rooted the little bastard out of there, but just in case, they kept a box of baking soda on the counter. Most of the smaller horrors hated the stuff, and always went running for the basement when covered in it. Next to the box of baking soda was a small jar of mints, from which Greg pulled two. Popping one into his mouth, he tossed the other one into the fridge as he opened the door. Sitting on the top shelf was a horror with the body of a kitten, the head of human and a scorpion’s tail, all with a green tinge. This one, unfortunately, was not averse to baking soda, and quite the contrary had taken up residence inside the baking soda box they kept in the fridge. He was more poisonous than anything else in the area, and to make things worse, he was smart enough to claim that the fridge was his personal domain and that he had the right to demand tribute. Fortunately he had a taste for mints, and was willing to take one in tribute for the whole day. Having received his homage, he contracted himself to slip through the bars of the top shelf, drop one shelf down, and scuttle to the back to enjoy his prize within the comfort of his box of baking soda.
Greg surveyed the interior of the fridge. The assorted runes they had discovered in the books in the attic had, once placed upon the interior of the fridge, kept the little horror’s aura of corruption from utterly destroying the purpose of the fridge, but he could still ruin food by sticking his tail in it if he was displeased with the human occupants of the house. His favorite thing to defile was milk, since it was always what most irritated the humans when it went bad. Fortunately, the black chunks the critter’s poison created in the soured milk kept the Greg and his housemates from accidentally drinking it when he got a bee in his bonnet, but it was still a pain. Also fortunately, the little monster seemed to be in good spirits, for the food was all in good condition. Greg pulled out the milk and gave it a whiff, just in case, but was satisfied that nothing was amiss, and went about making his cereal. He poured himself a bowl of corn flakes, thankful that Jamie had managed to banish the demon weevils. It had been impossible to keep any kind of cereal in the house when these little hellions had been loose, but at least they had cleaned out the cockroaches, and neither weevil nor cockroach had been seen since the banishing. Armed with cereal, Greg went into the living room.
Nothing was seriously amiss since the night before. All of the chairs and sofas were in the usual places, the television was right side up, and the eyeball was sleeping on the couch. At least, Greg was about as sure of it being asleep as he was ever sure of the thing. Somehow, no matter how hard they tried to keep it in the basement, the damn thing always was back the next day, sitting on the couch, as if nothing could happen, and no one ever knew how it got there. It continued to be a mystery to Greg how a two foot diameter eyeball on a mass of tentacles managed to get about unnoticed, but it did. The eyeball was staring straight at the television, as it usually was, and two of its tentacles were wrapped around a purple, plush Cthulu doll that Jamie had brought with him when he moved in. Were it not so damn creepy, Greg would have thought it was kind of cute. Sitting down on the couch next to the eyeball, Greg turned on the television and started eating. A few minutes later, the tentacles shifted under the eyeball, putting down the Cthulu doll and shifting the eyeball to look directly at Greg, who got the distinct impression that the eyeball was irritated at having been awakened.
“Hey man, there’s an open bedroom with a cot in it, you’re the one that decided you wanted to live on the couch.”
The eyeball crossed its tentacles and settled down to watch TV.
Greg and the eyeball were watching Scooby Doo when the phone began to ring. Greg leaned over to the end table, picked up the phone, and began packing the bowl of his pipe again.
“Hello?”
“Greg! Thank God! You’ve got to get out of that house, you’re in terrible danger!”
“Professor?”
“Yes?”
“Haven’t we talked about you calling before noon?”
“Yes, of course we have, but you’re in terrible danger, I’ve had a terrible vision.”
Greg sighed heavily. “Professor, we’ve been over this ever since you moved out of the house, and we moved in. Extra-dimensional horrors, creatures from beyond the grave, blah, blah, blah, but you don’t call before noon.”
“Yes, I know, I’m sorry, but -“
“But what?”
“But the Eater of Souls is going to come through the gate!”
“Which one?”
That took the professor a moment to process.
“What do you mean, which one?”
“Professor, you’ve given us dozens of books about the things that pop out of that gate, each of which has at least one, and as many as five different creatures given the ominous title of Eater of Souls, and from what I’ve read, the only ones that are actually dangerous are far too large to actually fit through a gate the size of the one in the basement. I mean professor; most of the things that come out of that thing could fit in the trunk of a Miata. So what’s the big deal?”
“Its Ever Hungry Jack, the Devourer of Flesh, the Ender of Salvation, the -“
“Professor? You’re late for class, call back after noon.” Greg hung up the phone, lit up the pipe and took a hit. Leaning back to watch Scooby Doo, he turned the pipe towards the eyeball. One tentacle reached for the piece, the coals burned brightly for a moment, and the eyeball shifted back as well, his pupil dilating slightly. Greg took another hit and tried not to worry about the mechanics of what just happened. A few moments later, Jamie stumbled into the room, wearing a silk Chinese robe.
“How do you smoke all the time?”
“The portal distorts space and the minds of everyone around it so people like cops and priests reflexively avoid it, so it’s safe to grow here. That and I never have to worry about the power company because they keep forgetting this place exists, so I don’t need to worry about the exorbitant investment in power.”
“I meant how can you handle having your brain clouded all the time.”
“Jamie, there’s an eyeball sitting on a mass of tentacles on the couch between us and you’re asking how I can smoke all the time?” Greg took another hit and offered it to the eyeball, who again, by some strange turn in physics, took a hit as well. Jamie decided to change the subject.
“Who was that on the phone?”
“The professor.”
“Christ, its before noon, haven’t we told him a thousand times?”
“That’s what I told him, but he was very insistent. Usual drill, we’re all going to die, the world is ending, blah, blah, get out fast, blah.”
“Man, every other fucking morning, ‘the world is ending, get out of the house, save yourselves.’ That man needs another hobby. What are you up to today?”
“I don’t know, blackmailing Sydney to make sure she doesn’t inhibit me from getting ass for the rest of my undergraduate career, going to class, that’s about it. I was thinking about sacrificing the pasty little shrieking horror to the tribe of horrors that create the area of dead silence, but it doesn’t matter to me, its not like I’m living next to the basement. If Tim can put up with the noise, I can. What are you up to?”
“Thinking of heading down to the occult shop, buy some of the shit to refresh the runes in the fridge, I think the little bastard is pissing on it to try to ruin the ward.”
“He seemed to be in a good mood, the milk was alright this morning.”
“Did you give him a mint this morning?”
“Am I puking blood and screaming in agony?”
“Alright dumb question, you gave him the mint.”
“After the wards?”
“The Pi Phi’s are having a party, want to go bag a couple of sorority girls?”
“Which ones are the Pi Phi’s? The ones that make pledges streak?”
“Nope, they’re the ones that have more date parties than any other sorority.”
“Oh, them. Yeah sure, will there be a keg?”
“Of course.”
“Hell yeah, is Tim coming?”
Just at that moment, a spectacularly beautiful woman walked into the room. She was a redhead that hit exactly five feet and five inches with a thin, light frame, a spectacular set of breasts and round, full hips, and the face of a fawn. She waved at the room. “Hi boys. Hi Norman.” She then carried on into the kitchen. It took Greg and Jamie a moment to process what had just happened.
“Is she a succubus?” Greg asked, trying to remain calm.
Neither one of them was sure, but both Greg and Jamie thought the eyeball was nodding.
“And your name is Norman?” Jamie asked.
Again the eyeball nodded.
“So we have a succubus in the house and the eye is named Norman?” Greg asked Jamie.
“Looks that way.”
“How did we know she was a succubus?”
“I think the eye, I mean Norman, told us.”
“He did?”
Now they got the distinct impression the eyeball was laughing at them.
“Man I wish I knew how he did that. So, why is there a succubus in the house? I didn’t let her in.”
“Well I didn’t let her in.” Jamie replied. Both turned to look at the eyeball, who gave them both the most sincere “It wasn’t me” look in return, that both Jamie and Greg felt kind of bad for implicating the poor, displaced organ. Tim then proceeded to stumble into the room looking very pleased with himself.
“Whoa, guys, you will not believe what happened to me at the strip club last night.”
“Humor us,” Jamie retorted coolly.
“We’ve got time,” Greg followed up. Even the eye managed to look a little balefully at Tim.
Tim continued his story, oblivious to the looks of irritation he was receiving. “So I’m sitting there, happy as a clam, getting plowed out of my head, watching this incredible stripper. Absolutely amazing dancer. So I’m looking at her, thinking about how she must shag like a minx, and she slides across the floor to me, starts licking my face, and you know what she says to me?”
“I’m going to shag you like a minx?” Jamie asks calmly.
“She says she’s going to shag me like a minx, can you believe that?! And then she did. She met me after her shift, and gave me the best night I’ve ever had. You must have seen her on the way to the kitchen. Man, just like I want them. Cute little redhead with the kind of trunk space you want in a late model car. Whew!”
“You want to tell him or should I?” Jamie asked.
“I almost feel bad telling him.”
“Tell me what?”
Greg and Jamie both looked at Norman, who turned to look straight at Tim. Tim stopped smiling and turned pale.
“You mean?”
“Feeling a bit tired after your hot night?” Jamie asked dryly.
“A bit worn out?” Greg continued
Norman just kept staring at straight at Tim.
“You mean? Oh my God! No! But, I mean! Damn! Lola!”
“Hey baby, “ the succubus said as she sauntered into the room, and all of them adjusted their positions slightly.
Okay, that's all I got...