Microfictions

Love Craft

Ïa, ïa, ïa... the alarm clock was howling.

Great Cthulhu stretched his arms and tentacles, then rubbed his ichthyic eyes. He had been asleep for aeons, but the stars were right, and it was time to wake up and get out of bed. It was a big day today. He had a date.

He had lived alone since Idh-yaa had broken up with him geological ages ago, and his brothers Gtuhanai and Hastur had been nagging him about it since at least the last ice age. Not that it was their business, of course, but they did have a point that Cthulhu had let himself go a bit, practically sleeping his days away, and he wasn't the same old horror he had been when he was on the dating market. So, reluctantly, he had agreed that it was time to start seeing people again.

Hastur had suggested internet dating. Cthulhu didn't know much about that, but after having it described to him, he had agreed that it sounded like the place where an eldritch horror would lurk, ready to pounce when an unsuspected love interest came along. So, he had downloaded Tinder to his R'lyeh-phone and created a profile. "Great Old One looking for love". Hastur and Gtuhanai had helped him select profile pictures.

It hadn't been a roaring success. As Cthulhu had understood the system, the app was supposed to present him with candidates appropriate for mating, but it had done nothing of the sort.

First, it had merely presented him with profiles, so he could screen them himself with a ridiculous left/right classification system, thus leaving him to do the work the app was supposed to do. If he had paid for the service, he would have demanded his money back.

Second, once he had made his preferences clear to the damned thing, nothing happened. 'They need to swipe right as well', Hastur had explained, but that made little sense. He was Great Cthulhu, so obviously excellent dating material. The damned thing should already know this.

For weeks, absolutely nothing had happened with the application. Cthulhu had searched the internet for an explanation, but all he had found was news stories about a sudden inexplicable epidemic of temporary insanity amongst Tinder users, who were apparently going quite mad from something they saw there and then mercifully repressed afterwards. Cthulhu hadn't experienced anything like that at all, but if people were afraid of using the app now, that might partly explain why he didn't get any matches.

But then, twelve days ago, his phone had unexpectedly both beeped and vibrated. It had given him a slight fright, to be honest, and it had taken him a while to figure out that it was a notification from Tinder that he now had a match and that his match had sent him a message.

Her name was Agatha Pennyworth-Marsh, and it was with some trepidation that Cthulhu had scrutinised her profile. She wasn't much to look at, she had no visible tentacles, and her face was more mammalian than what Cthulhu usually went for. Still, her interests included dark magic and the utter destruction of planet Earth, so at least they shared hobbies. That was important. If you plan to spend untold aeons together, you need common interests.

They had written together every day, and last week they had finally decided to meet. Agatha didn't have her own car, and she wasn't able to bend dimensions to her will the poor thing, so they had agreed to meet in her home town of Poor Harbor.

Poor Harbor lay on the New England coast of the Atlantic, and it was a bit of a swim to get there from R'lyeh, so Cthulhu got ready to leave as soon as he had finished his morning shower and coffee. He wasn't sure why he took a shower; he was under the ocean for Elder Gods' sake, but the internet had been quite clear that you were supposed to shower before you go on a date, and he didn't want to make a bad first impression.

As he rose from the waves, tentacles glistening from the salty water, he was met with a cacophony of screams from the small town in front of him. People were fleeing in panic from the seaside cafés, pointing towards the ocean in terror as they did. Cthulhu looked behind him but couldn't see the source of their alarm. The sea was calm, and it was by all measures a pleasant autumn afternoon. The sun was shining from an almost cloudless sky, and there were no ominous rips in reality to speak of.