Category Archives: Free Stories

Free Story: Ass Worship

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Ass worship and many other exciting stories are available NOW in Kevin Strange’s short fiction collection, Murder Stories for your Brain Piece on Amazon Kindle and in paperback here. 

Ass Worship

by

Kevin Strange

The Glutoids were created by a very cruel and sadistic child-god who cursed them to live inside of a giant woman’s ass. They lived miserable, short lives. Generation after generation of Glutoids tried to find ways to manage the gigantic, brown noxious matter that forced its way across the walls of their world day after day, sometimes including with it a tsunami of toxic water. Not to mention the tornadoes of rancid wind that blew through their fleshy home ten or more times a day.

Time and again the elder Glutoids were killed in their attempts to create a better life for the younger generation.

It was put on Filipo the Gnarled—son of Filipo the Ghastly—then, when his turn as elder came to pass. He was named as such because when his mother birthed him from her outer sac, a titanic bowel movement hurdled past the anus walls, yanking his mother to her death, nearly taking Filipo with her. He survived the ordeal, but not without injury. His head was almost crushed by the turd, leaving him permanently disfigured with a screwed up looking noggin.

Not that Glutoids looked good to begin with. Their child-god was in a very bad mood when she dreamed them into being.

Their bodies were oblong shaped, wrinkled and reddish-brown to match their shit-tunnel environment. They had long, thick black insect-like hairs that jutted up off their arms, legs and back as a way to gain traction on the walls of the giant woman’s intestine.

Their eyes were huge and matched the black of their coarse hairs, but the Glutoids were mostly blind. There isn’t much light up a woman’s ass, after all. Their noses were tiny, almost non-existent. Their child-god had spared them that, at least. They didn’t have to smell the shit surrounding them for their entire lives. Their mouths, though, that was a different story. Their mouths were almost as big as their eyes and contained hundreds of little tiny needle-like, razor sharp teeth for which to bite into the tough flesh of the inner intestine walls. They had two stomachs: one to digest the flesh they ate, and the other to digest the shit that inevitably caked the flesh they needed to eat.

The Glutoids’ lives sucked. And now it was up to Filipo to lead them. About forty thousand Glutoids lived in the giant woman’s asshole, most of which lived inside the grooves and folds of intestinal tissue in groups of four or five.

As oldest living elder, Filipo was given the largest hovel in the whole asshole, which also happened to be the safest. With him lived his wife, their four children (who, much to Filipo’s horror, shared his facial disfigurement), and the four children of his wife’s dead sister, as was often the case up the giant woman’s ass. Relatives died. A lot.

Even with all the luxurious space of the hovel, Filipo was still cramped. He still found himself too irritated by the constant babble and fussing of the children to concentrate on how to keep the Glutoids from dying at a rate faster than they were being born.

Only last year the census had counted their numbers at seventy five thousand souls.

As Filipo sat in his corner of bunched-up asshole flesh that served as an office, contemplating how to save his race from butthole extinction, his youngest niece Succinna threw one of her trademark tantrums.

“I wanna go outside! OUTSIDE! I WANNA GO OUTSIDE NOOOOOWWWWW!!!!”

Filipo rubbed his deformed temples with his claw-like fingers, trying his best to shut out the noise as more children joined in on the screaming.

“Gimmie back my meat-binkie!” one of his daughters yelled, yanking a disgusting piece of bloody, drippy flesh from an older cousin’s hands.

Filipo’s wife Shanatra was already passed out—drunk off butt-juice—as she always was by this time of day. That left the children to fend for themselves.

Succinna threw herself to the fleshy floor and flailed her arms and legs. “OUTSIDE!!!!”

Filipo leaped off his butt stool and spun around, teeth clenched. “You cannot go outside!” He jabbed a finger-claw at the clock on the wall next to him. “In a few minutes, another brown boulder will smash through our home killing god-knows how many of our people. Do you want to die with them???”

The child blinked her tears away, shocked at the sudden outburst from the elder Glutoid. Of course she didn’t understand what he said, but his tone and mannerisms were enough to shut her up, at least temporarily.

Filipo collapsed back onto his butt stool, sighed heavily and put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry Succi. I wish you could go outside. I wish we could all go outside. I—”

Filipo stiffened. He jumped off the stool and grabbed Succinna in his arms. “Of course! Outside! Outside! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before? You’re amazing, little one!” The elder planted kiss after kiss on the little girl’s cheek as he whooped and hollered loud enough for the family in the next fold over to hear him.

For a month he drafted a proposal to present to the council at the next meeting of the elders. When the day came, he nervously paced back and forth inside his office, a fold in the flesh chasm that served as city hall, trying to memorize his notes. When the time came, he threw his notes into the garbage—deciding instead to speak directly from the heart—and stepped up to the podium in front of the other elders.

His speech was moving and passionate, and while not all of the elders agreed with his plan to move the entire Glutoid community out of the giant woman’s asshole, enough of them were swayed by his words to vote his plan into action. When it was all over, Filipo didn’t know if his plan was the right thing to do, but at least he’d decided to do something.

Another thing Filipo didn’t know was that the giant woman he lived inside of wasn’t actually a giant at all. She was a normal sized woman named Janet who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the Glutoids themselves who were microscopic in size.

While Janet may have been a normal-sized woman, her sexual appetite was anything but. Janet loved big men with even bigger cocks. Preferably black dudes. Preferably with dicks bigger than ten inches. And unfortunately for Filipo and the rest of the Glutoids, Janet’s new boyfriend Marquo was into anal.

You see, in every universe, there exists a balance. A balance of fundamental forces, a balance of elements that create stars, planets and life, and also a balance of luck. Filipo, whether his child-god had intended it or not, happened to be the unluckiest sentient being in her particular corner of the Omniverse. Incidentally, the luckiest being in the Omniverse was a space trash-man by the name of William Weird. But that’s another story.

And so it was, with his people behind him, that Filipo laid out plans to escape the confines of Janet’s asshole. They would take their chances outside in the abyss. The Glutoids were well aware of the world beyond the butt, but as Janet’s asshole had only ever opened as she was expelling shit into her toilet, the Glutoids knew of the outside world only as a giant swirling liquid vortex that stole the gargantuan shit away into nothingness.

Filipo’s plan was to pack the entire Glutoid civilization onto his people’s backs, and use grappling hooks to secure a ride on a piece of shit to slide out of Janet’s asshole. Using a secondary hook, they would rappel away from the turd once it cleared Janet’s anus.

For the next several months, Filipo employed the strongest, most hearty Glutoids to brave the twice-daily passing of the shit, using tools to slice off thin layers of poop that were then used to fashion the tens of thousands of ropes needed to execute the elder’s plan.

Janet, for her part, was no slut. She’d never done anal before and wasn’t about to just let Marquo plunge into brown town without working for it first. He wined her and dined her for weeks before she even sucked his dick. But as the months passed and the Glutoids neared completion of all the necessary requirements to enact Filipo’s plan, Marquo began to drop hints that an ass fuck was eminent.

As luck (or lack thereof) would have it, the day Filipo decided the Glutoids were ready to finally exit the hell they’d suffered for generations (in reality only 5 years had passed since the ill-fated day Janet had eaten a piece of blue pizza from Papa Jo Jo’s, implanting the bacteria that would later mutate into the sentient creatures that lived in her rectum), also happened to be the day that Janet decided it was time to take a huge black dick up the ass for the first time.

Janet was a healthy, athletic woman. This included a sensible diet rich in fiber, making her consistently regular with her bowel movements for much longer than Filipo had been alive (about a year and a half). The Glutoids had told time by the passing of the shit since before his grandfather’s grandfather. The passing happened at 11:00 am and 9:30 pm every day, without fail.

On the rare occasion that Janet found herself with a stomach flu, the entire race of Glutoids had nearly been drowned and wiped out. They called those moments The Great Brown Flood in their history lessons and still told of the harrowing survival of only a few brave Glutoids when they gathered to tell each other stories.

And so, on that fateful day, as Filipo gathered his entire community together in one gigantic group with all of their belongings on their backs, ready to hitch a ride on the piece of shit that would make its way through their homes at roughly 9:30 pm, it happened.

Janet had done her research. She knew better than to let Marquo jam his fourteen incher up her poop chute without some preparation. She sat in the bathroom, naked, reading the directions on a box of suppositories. Satisfied she knew what she was doing, she tore open the package, took the small white pill-shaped, jelly bean-sized item into her hand, bent over the toilet and pulled her butt cheeks apart.

“No, no, over there!” Filipo shouted, exhausted. He’d spent the entire day, since just after the 11:00 am passing making sure that all of the Glutoids were positioned for their trip. Twenty thousand men, women and children stood on either side of the colon, grappling hooks at the ready. As Filipo wiped the sweat from his brow, he smiled. It was the first smile he’d smiled in as long as he could remember. It was possibly the first smile of his life. After all was said and done, he was confident that his plan would work.

Then Janet shoved a suppository up her ass.

At first, Filipo mistook the screaming for cheering. His misshapen grin widened and he turned to see what the other Glutoids were excited about. The crooked smile fell from his face as he saw the gigantic white suppository crush a thousand of his people, sending a wave of panic through the crowd that led to the trampling death of two thousand more as the contingent of Glutoids tried to escape the melting mass coming at them from the wrong side.

Using his grappling hook to swing up and out of the way, Filipo watched in horror as the suppository passed below him, coating the walls and floor of the rectum in a translucent film. He gasped as his ugly neighbor Branjino who lived in the anal fold adjacent to his own reached out to him, stuck to the tacky suppository along with dozens of other Glutoids writhing in agony, desperate to escape the melting nightmare. Branjino bobbed in and out of the translucent gunk, helplessly flailing with terror in his eyes, as he finally sank deep into the liquefying mess, and drowned.

And then it was gone. Just as quickly as the foreign object had come, it disappeared around the bend, deeper into the bowel, leaving only the dead and dying in its wake.
Filipo rappelled back to the anus floor, careful to avoid the sticky pools of suppository medicine, totally numb from shock. As he stumbled around bodies crushed, drown or half-melted from the strength of the pill’s juices, he heard chanting coming from a few folds down the way toward the asshole.

Dumbly, he staggered over and pushed back the flesh drape. Inside the small flesh fold stood three female Glutoid elder priests, one of which held a knife to the throat of a small ugly-ish girl with ratty black hair. The priests had been chanting ancient Glutoid prayers until they spotted Filipo.

“What are you doing?” he asked. His voice sounded distant, as if the screams of the thousands of dead were still ringing in his ears.

“The God of this realm,” the knife-wielding priest said, pressing it tighter to the ugly girl’s throat, “is punishing us for your defiance! We must offer expiation in exchange for our lives! This place is where we belong! Where we’ve always belonged! Where we’ll always remain! It is our lot to suffer. It is why we exist. You cannot change the will of the way! We offer this young virgin as a blood sacrifice!”

Without hesitation, Filipo walked up to the priest and slapped her hard across the face, knocking her to the ground. He grabbed the ugly little girl by the hand, leading her out of the flesh fold.

The priests howled in protest behind him, but he ignored their accusations of blasphemy and abandonment. When they were far enough away from her captors, Filipo bent down to the ugly girl’s level. “Do you know where your parents are?”

“Dead,” the girl replied. Her expression was blank, emotionless.

“Any siblings, aunts, uncles who could take care of you?”

“Dead,” she replied.

Filipo sighed, closing his eyes as the renewed weight of hopelessness climbed back onto his shoulders. His plan had failed before it had even begun. He should have known better than to try to change the course of the inevitable. The priest women were right, it was the Glutoids’ lot in life to suffer. To be tormented, to die in misery.

That’s when it began, first as a tremble, then growing into a deep rumble that knocked Filipo off his feet. “Earthquake!” he yelled, shooting his grappling hook into the wall to stabilize his balance and regain his footing.

And then he saw it. There was no earthquake. It was the flood. The Great Brown Flood.

From the unfathomed depths of the intestines came a roaring, liquid mess of diarrhea shit that swept up every living, dead and dying thing in its path.

Filipo was able to wrap his spare rope around his arm and the ugly girl just before the wall of sludge slammed into them, nearly tearing Filipo off the wall.

He held his breath, gripping his grappling hook so tightly, his hand bled. He felt his grip on the ugly girl slipping. Circling his wrist, he pulled the spare rope tighter against their hands, trying desperately to keep the girl safe. But the force of the Brown Flood was too great. With a popping sound and a loud tear, he felt his grip give way. He’d lost her. The girl was gone.

Followed by the flood. Just as fast as the suppository had come and gone, so had the torrent of diarrhea shit, cascading out of the open maw at the end of the rectum like a great waterfall. A moment later the asshole closed back up, engulfing the Glutoids in darkness once more.

Filipo, now covered in the disgusting brown sludge, lowered himself off the wall. That’s when he noticed that the popping and tearing noise he’d heard was actually the sound of his thin, spindly arm tearing out of its shoulder socket. It was gone and blood gushed out of the torn shirt sleeve.

The pain hit him almost as hard the wall of shit. He collapsed to the ground, scooted up against a fold in the wall and waited to die.

But the horror was not over yet. Indeed it had only just begun. As Janet wiped up and flushed the toilet, her doorbell rang. Marquo had arrived. After being teased with kinky text messages and pictures of Janet’s ass all afternoon, his cock was already hard. And he was ready to fuck.

Filipo concentrated on his breathing. Glutoids were parasites, and as such, were built for extreme situations. They were able to slow their heart rates down to almost nothing in order to conserve energy if no food source was available. They could also survive dismemberment, as their blood was thick and congealed quickly, which came in handy when gigantic turds smashed them against the intestinal walls. No, Filipo’s wound was not fatal, but at that moment, he wished it was.

He was exhausted and mentally broken. He just wanted to stop his heartbeat, to slip into a coma and forget about his awful life inside Janet’s asshole. To silence the screams of the dying Glutoids echoing inside of his misshapen skull.

A wet, sloppy suction sound coming from the end of the rectum pulled him back from the brink of unconsciousness.

Something was happening. Something bad. Worse than the suppository, worse than the Great Brown Flood. The asshole was pulsating. Thick droplets of saliva oozed inside the anal cavity until the anus began to open, revealing a huge, pink, slimy tongue working its way in through the hole, darting in and out.

Soon it was replaced by an enormous finger, probing slowly at first but then deeper and deeper still until Filipo got to his feet and retreated backward into the safety of darkness, yet never taking his eyes off of the intruding digit.

The invading extremity struck fear into the elder Glutoid. In all his life he’d never even heard stories of some gigantic thing like this attacking his home. He never knew it possible for danger to come from outside the asshole. Filipo’s heart hammered at his chest. How stupid had he been to believe he could just leave the ass? He knew nothing. He was as ignorant of the outside world as a newborn Glutoid straight out of its mother’s outer sac. And it terrified him.

Then another titan digit worked its way in through the out hole, stretching the anus walls to their limits, obliterating its folds, smashing cowering Glutoids into smeary paste.

Filipo’s mind reeled. This was the end. Obliteration. Extinction. And all he could do was stand as a statue, crooked mouth agape as these twin monsters twisted and groped blindly as if trying to scoop out everything and everyone he’d ever known.

When they withdrew, Filipo felt no relief. He shuffled forward, looking over the dead, lingering near the maimed and mortally injured as if there was anything a one-armed old man could do for them. All he managed was to weep. He cried for his people, he cried for himself. He cried for their misery and hopelessness.

Then Marquo pushed Janet’s face into her pillow, yanked her hips up until she was stationed on her knees, spit on his huge black dick, and shoved it up her ass.

Filipo was not prepared for the gargantuan beast that rammed into the anus next. However wide the foreign fingers had stretched his home, just this cyclopean thing’s eyeless head caused it to expand to four times that width.

The creature dripped slime off of its shiny, helmet-shaped head as it burrowed deeper into the rectal cavity before retreating back, almost all the way out, only to jam itself back, even deeper still. The sheer size of the monster sent anal fissures tearing through the delicate intestinal walls, causing a rain of blood to splash down onto the scores of mangled Glutoid bodies.

Filipo along with a few dozen other able-bodied citizens raced as far back into the anus as possible, constantly falling and scrambling back to their feet from the spasming of the sphincter muscle below them. They ran and ran trying to outpace the cock-beast, but with every stroke, it burrowed deeper and deeper still until it caught up with the frantic Glutoids, ramming them, causing them to stick to its slimy head, then dragging them backward, only to thrust forward, smearing most of them against the torn and bleeding walls.

Filipo survived, somehow defying his terrible luck, by falling free from the monster dick upon its withdrawal, leaving him several seconds with which to scamper out of its reach. Breathless, he looked on in abject horror as the brutal monstrosity picked up speed and force, rocking the only home he’d ever known with shock wave after shock wave.

Filipo was screaming, but could hear nothing over the pounding of the dick monster, sliding back and forth in a lather of frothy shit, blood and ass juice until the Glutoid leader thought his brain would explode from the vibration.

And then the cock stopped, jerked twice, spasmed, and then unleashed a torrent of white fluid so great, it covered the entire length of the asshole top to bottom in three mega-spurts.

Filipo could only stare on in awe. Was this the god the priest women had warned about? Should he drop to his knees and beg its forgiveness for his heathen ways?

Before Filipo could do anything, the dick withdrew from the asshole with a sickening pop. Distorted and stretched far beyond its normal limits, the butthole did not close, instead it hung there in a ragged O shape, dripping fluids like a flooded cave mouth.

Utter shock kept Filipo frozen in place. His remaining limbs shook as tears dripped down his fucked up face. That’s when the other Glutoids began to emerge from the white gunk. They pulled themselves free of its sticky embrace and helped others away from the juice.

Eventually there were Glutoids standing all around Filipo, murmuring about what had just transpired and what to do now. Still Filipo stood as a statue, unable to unlock himself from the awful things he’d witnessed. That is, until he saw his wife standing in the crowd.

“C-Cara?” he stammered. Slowly he walked up to the bruised and sticky woman. “Honey, are you ok?”

She looked stunned, dazed. Her eyes were unfocused and stared off into the dark chasm that lead to the large intestine. Filipo put his hand on her shoulder. “Everything’s going to be all right, now.”

That’s when her body ripped in half, cleanly down the middle, and the worms attacked.

Marquo had also eaten a piece of blue pizza from Papa Jo-Jo’s on that fateful day. Only instead of developing sentient butt parasites, his sperm had been infected with a parasite of its own: killer worms.

Each worm was white and about as thick as one of Filipo’s spindly arms, but four times as long. Their color hid them in the pools of cum Marquo had left behind in Janet’s ass. All around him, Glutoids burst open. The worms tunneled out of eyeballs, noses, assholes, or simply burrowed out of chests and necks.

The shrieking of dying friends once again filled Filipo’s ears as the two halves of his wife’s body staggered around, animated by the coiled up bodies of the worms hidden inside. They stumbled toward Filipo trying to get inside his body as well.

That was it. That was his breaking point. Filipo shrieked louder than any of the mutilated people around him. He took off running toward the still gaping butthole, determined to fling himself to his death. He dodged worms as they struck out from the many puddles of Marquo’s spunk and made it to within twenty yards of his exit when the entire asshole tipped up and contracted.

As per Marquo’s request, Janet sat up, and cupped her hand under her ass. She squeezed, sharting out his jizz into a thick puddle in her hand.

“You like that, baby? Is that sexy?” she purred as she playfully licked at the mess of spunk in her palm, not realizing how many bodies of dead Glutoids and parasitic worms lay inside the puddle.

“Fuck yes,” he said, as his dick throbbed back to life. “Do it.”

Janet smirked and tossed the hand full of cum into her mouth, swallowing it with one enthusiastic gulp before Marquo stood up and mounted her face again, shoving his huge black dick in and out of her throat.

As for Filipo, well, having the worst luck in the Omniverse is a bitch. Glutoids, as I’ve already said, are a hearty folk. The stomach acid disintegrated all of Marquo’s cum and his parasitic worms, but not Filipo. Filipo’s thick carapace and ability to hold his breath for more than a day kept him from dying, even as he bobbed, face down in Janet’s belly, completely unconscious.

In fact, the Glutoid elder did not wake up until he’d been completely passed through Janet’s digestive system, finally regaining consciousness only to find himself right back where he’d started: Sitting just inside Janet’s butthole, counting down the hours until her next shit, screaming.

Filipo’s threats and curses aimed at the child-god, all alone down there up Janet’s ass, amused her to no end. She couldn’t wait until he finally died, so she could rewind time, and make him do it all over again.

***

To read the rest of the stories in the Murder Stories for your Brain Piece collection, click here to buy it on amazon Kindle or paperback now! And be sure to check back next month for another FREE short story, only from KevinTheStrange.com!

Free Story: The Old Man And The Black Water

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The Old Man And The Black Water and many other exciting stories are available NOW in Kevin Strange’s short fiction collection, The Last Gig On Planet Earth And Other Strange Stories on Amazon Kindle and in paperback here. 

The Old Man And The Black Water

by

Kevin Strange

The old man sipped his hooch; anger drawn across his wrinkled, weathered lips. Stomping across the gnarled red stained porch, the Old Man’s daughter dropped the heavy box she’d been carrying. Its contents rattled violently. “Dad, for real we have to go.”

Her husband and two young children hurried -with boxes of their own- down the rock path that lead to the driveway. They were careful not to step on the black water puddling and oozing its way toward the house.

“Careful with that china now. Was your gran’s.” The Old Man said, taking a large swallow of his home brewed liquor.

His daughter huffed, and stomped away. There had been much huffing and stomping in the seventy two hours since the Mississippi river spontaneously began spewing that slimy, unidentified black liquid up into the world.

All across the river bend, but primarily in Hopp’s Hollow, due to its immediate proximity to the river, chaos and mass panic erupted. But not at first.

Local officials -led by a red faced, fat bellied sheriff named Paul Jones- first mistaking the substance as oil, attempted to trace the eruption from its source.

The geyser formed just off Lookout Point; the marina which sat at Hopp’s Hollow’s southern most tip, at 5:15am on Friday, June 17th 2012.

The Old Man -Dale Mitchel to Town’s Folk- had risen early, as always, and was among the first to notice the dark sludge issuing from the muddy river.

Sheriff Jones showed up at the Mitchel residence at 7:45am with a HAZMAT team. He asked and received permission from Dale to use the property as a staging ground for their operation due to its location as the closest to the river bank; even having a dock in the backyard with which to launch their boast.

Kryssi Mitchel, Dale’s Daughter, walked back the porch, obviously having collected herself. “Dad, c’mon, we’ve almost got all the essentials. We can be on the road in the next ten minutes.”

“Pistachio and Parsnip.” Dale said, never taking his eyes off the black tide rising toward his home.

“what?” Kryssi asked, puzzled.

“The final two ingredients to my hooch. The stuff I never told you ’bout. The stuff that makes it so sweet.” He finished his cup, and poured himself another.

Kryssi stared at him with amazement that quickly turned to anger. “Why would you tell me that? You’ve kept that recipe secret for- Dad! You’re not staying here! Get your ass up and get in the truck, we’re leaving now.”

At Nine Fifteen AM on Friday, two divers jumped into the river just outside the growing pool of darkness that had begun to emanate from around the geyser.

At Noon on Saturday they were declared missing and presumed dead. At approximately the same time, the lab in charge of identifying the strange liquid returned their results on the black substance as “unknown and potentially hazardous.” The Dark Water had, by this time, reached the shoreline, completely overtaking the natural body of water from horizon to horizon.

“Ain’t leavin’. Ain’t no black water gonna scare me off.” Dale shifted his brown and green camo John Deer hat to keep the morning sun out of his eyes.

“Dad, you know what’s going on out there, you’ve seen those…things, with your own eyes. You can’t- Unbelievable!”

“What’s wrong?” Kryssi’s slim-figured husband yelled from inside the U-Haul. “He wont leave! The stubborn bastard wants to die here.”

At 2:00pm on Saturday, As the first local news team set up to film the peculiar river anomaly -which by now had driven its black tendrils past the docks, over the marina, and up onto the very edge of Dale’s property- one of the divers surfaced.

The news crew immediately went live, asking the bewildered man what had happened; how he’d survived underwater with one hour of oxygen for over twenty four hours.

“My God.” He said to Ten Million viewers across the country affixed to their TV sets, all wondering what was happening in the mid-west. “It was like another world. So Beautiful. They. It- I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to describe what I saw; where I was. So beautiful…” He began to cry. “They sent me back. They sent me with a message. Death isn’t the end. There’s nothing to fear. There’s something, unimaginable waiting for us on the other side. And the water’s bringing it here to us. It’s just so- I’m sorry, I- I can’t say anything more.”

by 10:00pm that night, the main interstate highways into Illinois that lead to Hopp’s Hollow were jammed bumper to bumper for miles as people from across the country piled into the little community wanting their own glimpse of what some were calling the Rapture and others called the 21st century Mecca.

“Dad. We’re leaving.” Kryssi was crying. The kids were in the truck, her husband behind the wheel. He honked the horn, motioning for her to hurry up.

“What can I do to convince you to come with us?”

Dale was staring thoughtfully at the creeping liquid lapping at the porch steps, meters away from his boots.

“Nothin’ sweetheart. You get the kids outta here. Far away, you hear me? Away from any large bodies of water. No lakes, ponds, ‘specially rivers. How much bottled water you got in that truck?”

“Enough for a few days.”

“That’ll be plenty of time to find some more. You got that hooch too. Don’t give that to them boys, but ‘tween you and Vern, you’ll be fine.”

Kryssi looked back at the truck. “You know we wont, Dad.”

“Nonsense now. Vern’s a good man. He’ll take care a you.” Dale did his best to sound convincing; did his best to lie. “There’ll be plenty of other people tryin’ a survive out there. You just get as far inland as you can.”

“And you? What are you gonna do Dad?”

“I recon I’ll make my way up to the roof if I have to. Don’t think it’ll come to that, but if it does I’ll be fine up there. Can’t see this lastin’ more ‘n a couple days. Week at most.” He was never a good liar.

Kryssi broke out in a sob. “Daddy please!” She knelt beside his ancient rocking chair. “I don’t wanna do this without you.”

Dale knocked on his prosthetic leg. “Wont do nothin’ but slow you down, kiddo. I done had my time; lived my life.” He pushed a strand of hair out of his daughter’s face and looked her in the eyes for the first time since the water began to rise. “If there’s any life left to live out there, well, you go on and live it.”

By 3:00pm on Sunday, June 19th the town of Twelve Thousand held Thirty Five Thousand within its borders with more jammed up a hundred miles across the tri-state area.

Vast revival tents had been erected in the night. Religious hymns and songs of worship both live and recorded boomed from the new shoreline Three blocks into the business district. Men, women and children waded into the dark ichor. Sermons were preached as dozens of members of this new congregation were baptized in the black water before swimming off into the deep; before disappearing into its inky depths.

At 11:00pm, while doing his fourth consecutive interview that day, The resurrected diver -recovering peacefully in a local hospital- began to vomit copious amounts of vile smelling black water.

550 Million viewers were tuned in to the live news feed broadcast from Hopp’s Hollow’s News Channel 6 when the diver, with wild, terrified eyes grabbed the camera man and pulled him close.

“It’s a goddamn lie!” He screamed between dry heaves, ropes of black gunk pouring from his nose and mouth. “Some thing; some intelligence took over my body, forcing my consciousness into submission. I’ve only been able to watch in horror as it spewed these wild stories to you people! Stay out of the water! Stop- Stop drinking it for Chrissake! They need our bodies. They use the water as a sort of conduit to our brains. They don’t have physical bodies like us. They vibrate at different frequencies but- But they mean us harm! They mean to destroy us! This is an invasion!”

Just then the slime issuing from his mouth congealed into several bands or ropes of snakelike appendages, rendering speech impossible. He shook uncontrollably for several seconds before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he attacked the throng of curious onlookers, drawn to his bed by his lunatic ranting. Three police officers shot him dead after he rushed them, wildly swinging his IV stand, mumbling incoherently through his tentacle mouth.

“There comes a point in every man’s life,” Dale said. “When he gets his routine all set. When the idea of changin’ that routine is too much to bear.” He wiped the tears from his Kryssi’s face. “I been in that routine so long I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. And the thought of Movin’ outta Hopp’s, outta this house my grandpa built with his bare hands- Well, let’s just say, I’d rather take my chances with what ever’s in that water, Baby Girl. Now go on. Your family’s waitin’ for you.”

As if in answer, her husband honked again.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, pumpkin.”

At 3:30pm on Sunday, Sheriff Jones called the governor personally to ask him to declare a state of emergency in Hopp’s. That’s when he learned that the Black Water was no longer isolated to his little community; That geysers had sprung up in every major body of water around the world an hour before. There were no available national guard troops to deploy to Hopp’s. There would be no FEMA rescue. The world had its own Black Water problem, now. They were on their own.

Mass Chaos erupted through town. After witnessing the Diver’s rampage on Television, a lynch mob formed and attacked the throng of Black Water worshipers who had declared themselves “The Anointed Ones”. Hundreds died. Thousands were maimed, trampled, and left for dead as the multitude of human bodies, drove, pushed, and stomped their way out of town like a flock of petrified geese fleeing the first sounds of buckshot from a hunter’s rife. The relentless tide pushed forward 10 blocks deep into the residential part of town; the part of town now utterly abandoned. Only floating bodies and discarded vehicles told the story of what happened in Hopp’s Hollow.

At 5:15am on Monday, June 20th as Kryssi and her family drove away through two solid feet of Black Water, the sleepy little town of twelve thousand had been reduced to one tired old man sipping his home brewed alcohol.

After they were out of sight, Dale reached into his pocket and pulled out his Colt 38 six shot revolver. By the time he got around to loading the gun, it was well past Six PM and he was good and drunk. The water had risen steadily throughout the day. Dark shapes occasionally surfaced where lookout point once stood; angry shapes. Shapes making noises he’d never heard in his Seventy Four years. Noises he was pretty sure no one had ever heard before.

He finished off the last of his hooch as the water lapped at his chest. Careful to keep the gun from getting wet, he cocked the hammer back, placed the barrel to his temple and thought of Kryssi’s beautiful smiling face one last time.

***

To read the rest of the stories in the Last Gig On Planet Earth And Other Strange Stories collection, click here to buy it on amazon Kindle or paperback now! And be sure to check back next month for another FREE short story, only from KevinTheStrange.com!

Free Story: Joreck and the Shoggoth Steel

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Joreck and the Shoggoth Steel and many other exciting stories are available NOW in Kevin Strange’s newest collection, All The Toxic Waste From My Heart on Amazon Kindle and in paperback here. 

 

Joreck and the Shoggoth Steel

by 

Kevin Strange

The lich’s hair was as red as a devil’s dick. Joreck watched her from behind the red rocks as she crept through the valley in the fading light.

Stupid lich, he thought. Her decomposing flesh stunk so bad, Joreck would have been able to track her from two hundred paces, let alone the mere twenty he put between them on this day.

The lich turned, casting a tentative glance behind her. Even in death, the woman still retained some of her beauty; in life, she must have been a magnificent creature to behold. The filthy rags she wore did little to hide her dead body’s curves.

Her right breast hung full and still quite perky. Her left had been obliterated by some sharp object, no doubt intended for her heart. This wound was probably what ended the lich’s mortal life (be it by foe, friend, or self-inflicted, Joreck didn’t know). This wound left her breast neatly cleft in two halves, directly through the nipple, almost giving the impression of three breasts hanging from her chest instead of two. The center of the two halves of breast meat was a dark black hole which spiraled out into spider webbing cuts.

Joreck should have been disgusted, but the soft, fair features of what was left of her face, wide hips, round ass and her three tits, combined with that red hair, made him strongly aroused.

The thick barbarian shook his head to clear his lustful thoughts. His shoulder-length white hair tousled back and forth. He wasn’t here to fuck. He was here to kill the stinking lich for what she’d done to him and his warriors.

He jumped over the red boulder hiding him from view down into the valley, landing solidly, his furry Thurmskill skin boots absorbing the impact. He’d slain the awful beast with his own hand, making the sturdy footwear for himself and his band of mercenaries. The pair of thick straps crisscrossing his barrel chest and the thin loincloth covering his sex were procured from the same many-horned monster. Indeed, the creature’s horns jutted out this way and that from the tops of his nearly knee-high boots, and he wore a necklace of the blood-stained things around his enormous neck.

“Wench!” Joreck yelled, standing straight up, sticking his sweat-drenched chest out. “Return my people at once and I shall grant you a swift death!”

Three Tits turned at the same moment Joreck reached for his sword with his right hand. The lich’s rags billowed from the motion, revealing a huge, muscled right arm hastily sewn to where her own should have been. The telltale leather bands around the bicep and wrist adorned with Thurmskill horns made true what Joreck had just discovered.

When he reached for his sword, he felt neither blade nor arm. The pain hit him like a Gurock running with all six legs. He looked down, gape-mouthed. Blood crusted over the same type of crude stitching that now held his arm affixed to the lich.

When he looked up, the lich had cleared the distance, standing now face to putrid, half-missing face.

“Y-you… you took—”

This? Three Tits grabbed Joreck’s sex through his loincloth with his own right arm.

Still reeling from the sudden realization that his limb was stolen from him, Joreck flinched backward, but the lich did not release her grasp. Strangely—even through the pain, the noxious odor the lipless creature emitted through her decaying mouth only inches from him, and the fact that it was his own hand gripping his tenderest parts—Joreck could not help but become further aroused. Be it from the weird circumstances or the natural beauty under the living corpse’s necropsy, he could not be certain.

Worse, the barbarian realized that he could still feel with his dismembered appendage. He was not in control of its movements, but nevertheless felt the sensation of his soft, veiny bulge being stroked by his missing hand.

As Joreck became fully erect inside his own grip, Three Tits lightly touched his face with her female hand and leaned in close, whispering, This is my power. I am death. I decide what you feel, and when you get to die. How ’bout I rip your head off and make you suck your own cock?

Joreck furrowed his brow. He was Joreck, son of Joreck the Mighty Moon King. He would not be spoken to in such a manner. He had slain an entire flock of winged Gengo in the Tileck forest with but a single quiver of arrows. During the Ranghalo beast mating season, at that!

The barbarian spotted his sword under the lich’s dirty robes, slung across her back. With his remaining arm, he snatched the blade, flipped it in the air, caught it with the blade pointing downward, and ran the lich through before she had time to react.

She screeched, releasing his member, and collapsed to the ground, her fiery red hair covering her face. Black blood ejected from her mouth as she wailed, covering Joreck’s prized possession.

His Moonblade glowed with a hint of blue even as it was defiled with the stink of the undead, its beauty crying out to be saved from the clutches of the forsaken.

Joreck’s father’s father’s father had seen the molten steel as it came crashing down to the ground in a great ball of blue fire. A Blacksmith by trade, Joreck the Elder forged the sky-metal into the greatest blade to ever slay a Nogmura. Its edge needed never to be sharpened. No substance was safe from its killing strike.

Joreck himself had inherited it from his father after the king’s unfortunate poisoning from the bite of a rabid Zill when they were adventuring together in the far-off forests of ZORR. The Zill made King Joreck mad with disease. Joreck the Junior was forced to strangle him to death with the thorny vines of a Reek Tree, lest he be attacked and poisoned as well, thus giving him full rights to the Moonblade.

Three Tits’ wails continued as Joreck lectured the lich about his hereditary right to the special blade, when the creature’s shoulders started to bounce up and down and her wailing suddenly turned to laughing. With Joreck’s left hand, she grabbed the blade, instantly slicing it down to the bone.

Joreck’s lecture ended instantly. He winced in pain, pawing at the empty space where his hand would have been, had it still been connected to his body. To his horror, the lich woman stood fully upright, yanking the blade from her wound.

You big, dumb oaf. You have no idea the power this metal possesses.

As if to accentuate her point, the blade began to vibrate, glowing brighter until the once perfectly straight sword began to fold and wave like a flag in a strong wind.

“Sorcery!” Joreck yelled, shielding his eyes as the blade’s shimmer increased. Squinting through his hands, he staggered back and fell to his knees at what he saw.

His precious Moonblade was melting! The blade liquefied, covering Three Tits’ hands and arms in shimmering blue liquid metal. The metal crawled up her shoulders, across her cleaved chest, finally covering her face and legs until the entire lich was encased inside the Moodblade metal, save for her luscious red hair.

Joreck cried out in confusion as the shape of the lich began to change. She grew taller, her mouth wider, filling with metal fangs. Her hands tripled in size and her fingers became long talons. Insect-like legs grew from her back as her own legs fused together, forming a thick trunk which split into two and curled up over her head and back around, ending in sharp, spiked tails.

The barbarian fell backwards, turned and scrambled to his knees, trying to find purchase, but succeeded only in falling over something blocking his path. Joreck turned his head to see, to his horror, that he’d tripped over the carcass of Orilious, his most trusted commander, the man whom Joreck had fucked and killed with for nigh on twenty cycles. Orilious’s eyes had been gouged out, and behind them Joreck could see that his brain was gone, his head an empty husk as though its contents had just been sucked out.

Glancing around, the barbarian shuddered in disbelief. Strewn all over the valley were the dismembered remains of his entire group. Across the way was Nirod, the half-shaved giant gorilla-man Joreck had always counted on to breach any fortification his crew came across. Now he lay with his shaved half propped neatly against a rock, bleeding out his life’s blood onto his hairy half, cleaved neatly down the middle.

Over there lay Treena, the sole female in the group. She’d proven to be the stealthiest of assassins when she was able to sneak up on and apply a blade to both his and Orilious’s throats while they both enjoyed a bar wench with a huge ass so wide it was able to accommodate both men’s cocks. She solidified her place at Joreck’s side when she joined in, proving her sexual appetite for big bar wench asses to be more than Orilious and himself combined.

Her ornately braided hair had been torn from the scalp, along with the skin from every limb and both her tits. Flayed alive.

Joreck closed his eyes. He hadn’t the time to mourn them, but he would live to avenge them, he swore silently to the most savage of his gods.

Joreck felt a pinch and pressure in his chest. Suddenly he was high above the ground, kicking his feet and swinging his remaining arm. He looked down and saw the metallic appendages poking out of his ruptured skin. He was skewered like a human shish kebab.

Further pain throttled any attempt of escape as the three-titted metal monster sunk its claws next to where its tails already penetrated Joreck’s large frame. The barbarian wheezed through punctured lungs, unable to even scream as unrelenting agony bombarded his shocked senses.

The monstrosity pulled Joreck close, breathing boiling hot breath next to his ear. Save your friends, barbarian. They need you.

That’s when Joreck heard their voices. Looking out across the valley, Joreck found it in himself to scream, despite the severity of his wounds.

All of his men were somehow alive, somehow in pain, all moaning his name, reaching for him with gnarled limbs and stumps dripping fresh blood as if they’d only just been cut down in that instant.

Joreck! Joreck! Joreck!

Save them, barbarian. Kill them. The metal beast whispered. Release them from their suffering.

“I-I…,” Joreck labored, his mouth filling with blood. “I cannot!”

With that, the monster flexed her limbs and ripped Joreck into thick, bloody pieces, dropping him amongst the living corpses of those he held closest in this mortal life.

The dead dragged themselves toward his chunks, moaning his name in maddening rhythm.

As they descended on him, shoving his gory pieces into their mouths, he could not move.

Could not defend himself.

Could not scream.

Could not die.

***

The barbarian woke screaming. His blood boiled. Sweat drenched his body. It took several moments to gather his bearings.

He was still in the canyon. Taking ragged breaths, he felt across his midsection, finding it intact. He breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a dream. A fever dream.

His memories flooded his mind.

The lich. Yes. She was real. She had attacked his mercenaries as they marched home in victory after vanquishing the cruel wizard Haramond for his atrocities against the bird people of Dorchhun. Their king had paid a hefty ransom for the head of Haramond, and Joreck’s warriors meant to spend every last coin of it.

Still drunk on mead and wench from the night before, the pack of barbarians fell victim to the lich woman as they sang songs and washed cock at the river Rickendale. The images of his men being struck down in an instant by the powerful witch swam across Joreck’s fever-pickled mind.

He still heard their screaming as the redheaded demoness single-handedly broke them one by one, maiming them where they stood while Joreck watched helplessly from the middle of the river; one moment he dunked his head beneath the waves to wash his hair, the next, before he could even wipe the water from his eyes, half his men already lay in bloodied heaps at the river bank.

By the time he drew the Moonblade from its sheath upon his back and waded to shore, the others had been similarly incapacitated. Not killed. No, they each lay with broken back, shattered knee, twisted neck or other such malady that rendered them helpless but very much alive.

Joreck pointed the Moonblade at the lich as he climbed out of the river. “I’ll have your head for this, wench. And all three of your tits.”

That was the end of his memories. A yawning blackness lay between that moment and this, revealing none of its secrets.

The barbarian tried to get up but felt an enormous weight tug against him. The arm the lich had stolen in his fever dream. Panicking again, he reached out tentatively, fearing what he might or might not find. His finger tips rested on cold metal.

Joreck looked down. Even in the dark, cold valley night, the moonlight reflected off the steel, giving it a blue glow.

The Moonblade.

But how could that be? The shape that dug into his body, that penetrated his skin at various jagged, tendril-like points was gigantic. Thick as a barrel, Joreck looked on astonished and sick to his stomach as he traced the hulking piece of twisted metal with his eyes. There must have been ten feet of steel grafted to his shoulder where his right arm should have been.

He tried again to stand, but that only caused the heavy metal to dig deeper into his flesh. Trapped like a rabid Relk, he groped around on the ground with his free hand, finding a thick stone. Without another thought, he bashed it against the point of connection between flesh and steel, sending excruciating pain through his shoulder, and clanging off the metal hard enough to create a vibration that only exacerbated the agony.

Sweating away whatever fluid remained in his body, again and again he smashed the rock off his arm, yanking against the metal, ignoring the pain until exhaustion and fever claimed him.

When he awoke the next morning, two things were apparent. The first, his fit of self-inflicted rage had little effect on the connection between the metal and his arm, aside from some superficial cuts and bruises. It seemed his strength was about that of a baby dingus during his night of fevered thrashing.

More importantly, though, it was quite clear he would not survive the day. While his fever had broken sometime in the night, he was severely dehydrated. His lips were already split open and completely dry, smacking together like two worn pieces of parchment.

Utterly exhausted, stuck on a rocky slope with no shelter in sight, with no food or water, body fused to a giant hunk of metal, he simply closed his eyes and waited to die. Even a barbarian as mighty as Joreck could only overcome so much before his spirit broke.

Laying there, baking under the heat of all three suns, he prayed to the gods and readied himself for the great passage to the next realm.

That’s when he heard it.

Water. Running water. The river.

Close, too. The ridge he lay on must have only been thirty or so yards above the river bank. Joreck strained his sun-soaked head, pulling against the hunk of moonsteel, but he could not see over the ridge. If he could make it to the water, he could survive. He could heal. He could avenge his warriors.

And then he heard them. Moaning. Broken, yes, but as his last memories had shown him, the lich woman hadn’t killed them! She’d maimed them. She’d left them for dead. But at least some of them were still alive down there.

“Help! Help me!” Joreck tried to scream. But his throat was as dry as the underside of a Mulk. No sound escaped. He would die here, then. Just a stone’s throw away from those who needed him. From those whom he needed in return. Together they could live. Apart, they would all surely perish before the third sun set for the night.

The lich was keeping them alive. But why? Why not just kill them where they lay? If he was going to ponder the motives of the actions of the undead woman, why in seven hells would she bind him to a giant hunk of moonsteel and leave him die?

It didn’t matter. Not at that moment, anyway. Not if he wanted to live.

And he did, he realized. He did want to live. For his men. He needed to live so that they may live as well. He was their king. King Joreck would not die at the hands of a dirty lich, nor from the heat of three suns. He wouldn’t die from the heat of a thousand suns!

Shielding his eyes with his free hand, he surveyed the ridge, looking for something, anything to free himself from the weight of the moonsteel. The rocky surface was host to scant shrubbery, loose stones, and little else. Then he spotted it: A broken tree branch, dropped there by some passerby. Raiders, maybe, or Trorodek herders. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Joreck get a hold of it before the three suns baked him from the inside out.

Using his boot, he kicked at the stick, barely missing with the tip of his toe. He strained against the heavy hunk of metal, pulling against his shoulder until he was sure his arm was about to rip free from its socket. Finally after another few failed attempts, Joreck managed to kick it close enough to grab it with his free hand.

Exhausted, starved and overheated, he jammed the stick on the far side of the metal, giving himself the mechanical advantage with his body weight as he attempted to roll the huge block over. The stick bowed against the tremendous force as Joreck sunk every drop of energy into pulling against it until it splintered, only moving the block of metal ever so slightly toward him.

That was enough for Joreck to get his free arm around the thing and use the momentum to pull it over on top of him. He didn’t worry about burning his flesh. Moonsteel did not become heated under direct sunlight. The metal edges jutting up from his shoulder rested against a slightly higher point on the ridge, allowing him to slide his body underneath the bulky structure, finally finding cover from the merciless suns. There, under the shadow of Moonsteel, he curled his legs into his chest, wrapped his free arm around them and slept, praying he would not dream.

***

Mercifully, he did not. He did, however, wake to a tugging sensation against his lip. Keeping calm, he opened one eye. A Trorodek had stumbled into his makeshift encampment. Joreck was in luck! The gods favored him this day after all.

With his free hand, Joreck snatched the lizard by its long neck and smashed its head against the rocks before the poison-tipped talons on its sixteen legs could react. Ripping the head off the creature with his teeth, Joreck drank its blood heartily until he choked and coughed the green fluid all over himself.

Snapping a talon free of its poison sac, Joreck proceeded to gut the animal and eat its organs raw. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. Judging by the placement of the suns, he’d slept the entire day away. Two were already set, with the biggest, closest sun only a few hours behind them.

Fully rested, fed and hydrated, Joreck made his move.

He braced his free arm against the rocks. Sliding his feet firmly apart, he proceeded to push with all his might against the moonsteel until he’d managed to stand fully erect. With the full motion of his body and his rejuvenated energy, he was able to slowly drag the slab of steel over the rocks, bringing him closer to the top of the ridge.

Curiously, the sound of the river had ceased. A low chanting and wet flopping sound had replaced it. What sort of magic, Joreck wondered, could hide the sound of a river?

The answer came soon enough. Moonsteel slab in tow, Joreck reached the ridge peak, giving him full view of the river valley below.

What he saw left him breathless.

The sound of the river was gone because the river itself was gone. The flopping noises were the fish-like dondons flapping their prehensile water-wings around trying to find it again. A three hundred yard swath of now dry land lay in between two twenty-foot-high roiling waves standing motionless, one at each end, as though some giant invisible god had parted the river with its hands and stood patiently waiting for whatever came next.

In the middle of the riverbed stood the lich woman, along with all of Joreck’s warriors.

They yet lived. There was still time to save them.

His band of mercenaries numbered thirteen. They knelt, hands bound behind them, in a semicircle facing the lich, who stood with her back to Joreck. Behind each warrior was a tall cloaked figure. In their hands, the figures held long blades to the throats of his men.

At the lich’s signal, the figures drew their blades across those throats in unison. Fountains of blood sprayed across the dondons, painting the river bed with crimson death. The bodies of the warriors slumped over one by one.

“NOOOOO!”

Joreck’s screaming gave away his location, but the anguish surging through him as he watched the murder of his people caused something else to happen.

Suddenly, he could feel his arm again. Or more accurately, he could feel the moonsteel connected to his shoulder. It felt like a limb of its own instead of dead weight straining against his body. At once he knew he had control of it.

Just as easily as he would his own elbow, he willed the thick hunk of steel to bend. Groaning, the moonsteel folded in the middle. Astonished, Joreck took his newfound will over the object a step further. He envisioned a set of fingers with his minds eye. Immediately, three points the size of small swords jutted out from the end of the metal. Joreck opened and closed a fist with his new digits. No longer did the metal arm feel like a burden. Now it felt like a powerful weapon. A weapon he would use to smash the lich and her minions to pieces!

Eyes wild with fury, Joreck lifted his giant metal arm and smashed it back down onto the rocky ridge, using the momentum of the shock wave to launch himself into the air, high above the carnage in the riverbed. Extending the arm downward and enlarging the hand as though the actions were no more than a flick of the wrist or the blink of the eye, Joreck landed in the circle, smashing two of the tall hooded figures into mush.

“Woman! You have not yet known suffering!” the enraged barbarian said, shrinking the metal arm back to its previous size. The jutting spikes coming from all sides of the moonsteel swayed like the tendrils of a Sonrook, and were just as deadly.

The rest of the hooded figures gathered around the lich.

“What took you so long, barbarian?” she asked, sneering at her foe.

Seething, Joreck sent a pair of the tendrils out, felling the two figures closest to the lich in one quick strike without ever taking his eyes off of his dead warriors. “Was one wizard really worth all of this death?”

“Haramond?” the lich laughed. “You think this is about that old man? Haramond was a heathen and a heretic. This is about you, Joreck. You and your Shoggoth blade.”

Joreck looked down at his metal arm. “The Moonblade. What mockery have you made of my most precious weapon?”

“The Shoggoth steel did not come from the moon, silly man. It came from a place far from the simple minds of your people. A beacon! A warning for what is yet to come! A tool to destroy us all!”

Suddenly, another hooded figure fell.

Roaring, Joreck’s gorilla-man climbed to his feet. Nirod yet lived. The wound on his enormous muscled neck had not been deep enough to end his life. Even with a broken arm and leg, he was unmatched in size and strength. Now the beast man tore through the hooded figures, dropping them with single powerful blows until he stood side by side with his barbarian king, panting and nursing his wounds.

“It is good to see you again, my friend,” Joreck said, embracing the gorrila-man. Their reunion, however, was short-lived.

The hooded figures stood again. Some of their hoods and robes had fallen away, revealing a nightmare patchwork of rotten corpses, multiple heads and limbs jutting this way and that from their bloated bodies. The lich had created a zombie army.

“Kill them all,” Joreck whispered.

Nirod roared again and stomped toward the nearest zombie, grabbing it up by the leg and using it like a club as he beat the zombie next to it into a pulp.

“We’re going to need those,” Three Tits said, smirking.

“You’ve lost, hag,” Joreck said, extending his metal fingers into one long blade. “Concede defeat and prepare to join the wizard in hell.”

Joreck lunged at the lich woman, but the blade stopped inches from her face. The barbarian strained against some unseen force, but could not run the evil witch through. The arm would not obey his command. Stubbornly, he continued to push forward, digging his heels into the soggy riverbed. “I…will kill… you.”

“Not today, barbarian. I need your strength. I need your rage. A far greater evil than I—far greater than anything this world has ever seen—is coming. I need you to help me stop it.”

Joreck strained against the metal, shoving with all his might. But even with his attention on his metal arm, he could feel his loins stirring again. He found himself glancing at the lich’s cleaved bosom. “Never. I’ll never help you.”

Three Tits knelt down and scooped up a handful of dead warriors’ blood from the puddle formed at her feet. She splashed the thick liquid across her face, arms and chest. Bathing in it. When she stood, her form was no longer corpse-like. Her true mortal beauty showed. She was a young woman with pale skin and features that made Joreck’s knees weak and cock hard. The only thing giving away her sinister identity was the hole in her chest separating her breasts. Her killing wound could not be hidden by sacrificial blood.

She stepped past Joreck’s blades, resting her soft hands on his bare, straining chest. “A race of beings called the Old Ones have marked this world as their own. They sent the Shoggoth metal here as a probe. As a test. But we have mastered it. You and I, Joreck. That is why I’ve done this to you. I needed you to find the power to command the Shoggoth steel on your own. To realize its mighty power as I have that we may control it together.”

She brought her face to his, brushed against his lips. “It is true. Haramond hired me to protect him from you. But then I saw you and your men in action. You are the most powerful warrior in this land, and I am the most powerful witch. Together, we shall protect our world. Light and darkness. The sun and the moon. Together we will vanquish the Old Ones and rule side by side. Forever.”

Joreck tried to push away, but the witch woman ground her body against his cock.

“My… men. You… killed them….” he said, feeling the hatred drain from his body.

She smiled again with full cheeks and teeth, her radiance disarming Joreck of whatever fight he had left in him. “Death is boring. We will raise your men when the time is right. They will fight alongside us against the horrors descending on this realm. They will fight and die again and again. Glory will be had by one and all. This I promise you.”

Joreck let his lust overcome him. He wrapped himself around the woman, kissing her deeply. Slowly, the metal blades melted away. The arm softened, covering both their bodies in liquid metal.

Nirod smashed the final zombie into green goo and retreated back to where his king stood.

“Sire!”

Standing motionless in place of the warrior and the witch was a tall metal statue—the very same redheaded dragon-beast from Joreck’s fever dream.

Suddenly, the invisible force holding back the river on both sides vanished. The two colossal waves rushed toward one another.

Nirod scrambled out of the way, reaching the bank and rolling to safety just as the waves met, smashing everything between them. Then, just as quickly, the river settled back into its normal course as if nothing had happened.

The dead warriors, the pulverized zombies, even the statue lay hidden beneath the waves. After a time, Nirod stood and limped away. Saying prayers to all of his gods, he left his king to his chosen fate.

Under the river, inside the monstrous statue, the two lovers, locked in their embrace, dreamed of horrors beyond imagining.

And waited.

***

Joreck and the Shoggoth Steel and many other exciting stories are available NOW in Kevin Strange’s newest collection, All The Toxic Waste From My Heart on Amazon Kindle and in paperback here.