The Cthulhu Leak - A Short Story

The Cthulhu Leak

Frank paused to watch the two courtesy clerks from the all-organic supermarket. The pair of young men stood behind a large dumpster marked "Recycling," the container overflowing with broken-down cardboard boxes. Each clerk had one hand in the air and was wiggling his fingers. One of them was speaking in a sing-song voice. Frank approached them. They didn't notice, each intent on an iPad that they both held as if one were about to swear the other in at a court of law. They squinted as the tablet caught some of the glare of the late morning sun.

The younger of the two continued reading aloud, stammering through words that Frank knew weren't English. The words didn't belong to any language spoken by man. No wonder the lad was having trouble with the triple diphthongs. The older clerk was suppressing giggles. The read words sounded like a near-repetition of some kind of chant. The younger one now laughed, interrupting the flow of his recitation.

"Hey there," Frank said.

The two were startled. The older clerk took the tablet and concealed it behind his back. Both were now blushing.

Frank shook his head slowly. "I'd be careful if I were you."

"We weren't doing anything," the younger clerk said. He wouldn't meet Frank's gaze.

"Of course you weren't. But I'm going to be inside getting a coffee. Don't summon anything until after I leave."

***

The self-serve urns held three flavors of coffee. Frank pumped French Roast into his large paper cup and added some whole milk. He watched the white liquid churn in with the dark coffee. He managed not to spill as he carried it to one of the few empty small tables near the coffee bar located in the front of the grocery store.

"Crazy news, can you believe it?" an elderly woman sitting next to him said. She held a gigantic cup of slightly brown coffee drink with a light white foam on top. On the table in front of her was a black tablet propped up, the screen open to a news website. She wore thick orange lipstick, but amazingly none of it was on her cup. Her beverage didn't steam like the other custom beverages being served at the counter. Perhaps she hadn't taken a sip yet. Her questioning eyes probed Frank's face.

"Don't believe everything you read," Frank said.

"It's hard to know what to make of it all."

Frank crane his neck to see what she was reading. She didn't appear to mind, even tilted the tablet in his direction. A red banner read "News Alert!" with a muted video box showing a reporter standing in front of yellow police tape. Behind the reporter stood a large plantation-style home. A second banner on the screen read "Darrow, Louisiana." The house was wrapped in a swirling blizzard. Yet it was summer and the blue sky above the reporter held no clouds. Several law enforcement officers were in their shirt sleeves, both cops hot judging by sweat stains darkening their uniforms. Yet near the house the snow formed in layers on the shutters and window sills. Small icicles hung from the gutters.

"Maybe it's El Niño," Frank said with a shrug.

The woman's brow curled. Her head shook slightly. Her expression held a need for comfort and she hadn't found it with Frank.

"El...Niño?"

"Sure."

Frank leaned back in his chair and opened his phone screen. The woman turned to her other neighbor who promptly ignored her.

With a tap of his finger, Frank opened his own news search and started to read headlines. Reuters reported an entire class of twenty middle-schoolers spontaneously dancing themselves to near-death exhaustion in Lucerne, Switzerland. BBC had a front page story about self-styled druids sacrificing some German tourists in an old stone circle in Bohonagh, Ireland. Frank spent a few minutes on CNN. There were sightings of glowing-eyed ghouls in the subways of New York, London, and Tokyo. And apparently all of Florida had been engulfed in a purple hazy fog bank where all radio, television, and even internet signals had ceased except for a repeating binary code broadcasted in multiple AM radio frequencies that translated to a repeating chant of "He's late but will be here on time" in the ancient Sumerian tongue. The entire state was a no-go zone, as boats, planes, and ground vehicles, along with a motorized recon unit from the 10th Mountain Division went in but never came out.