Tentacle Death Trip Read online

  And now to think Jack might be within those walls.

  Silver’s voice interrupted his meditation. “It looks magnificent, doesn’t it? Almost makes you glad all the modern cities have been destroyed. They were all fucking garbage anyway. Trash heaps full of worthless meat.”

  Drac shouted. “What makes you think I’ll race again?”

  Silver said nothing. He stepped over the scraps of Paulo on the stage and stood on the edge. “Because…..”

  Drac felt a crack and saw a flash. He brought his hand to the back of his glass skull and felt a small gash. Then he fell into a laughing, black abyss.

  V.

  Samson heard Drac hit the ground. Another hulking thug similar to Cop stood behind him holding a club with small spikes protruding out of it. This guy was identical to Cop except on his chest was written the word SLAVE.

  Silver spoke again, this time his voice sounding less amused and more intense. He took a few steps off the stage and stood close to Samson.

  “You’re going to get into your car and you’re going to race across the bridge to the city……..to Jack.”

  Samson trembled with adrenalin. There was so much anger it actually calmed him, covered his body and mind with a blanket of focused intensity. Everything had led to this, his one chance of finding Jack. Tomato Joe had mentioned Silver and how he bought people. But could that scumbag biker be trusted? Was Silver just playing with him? He had to find out.

  Samson stood watching Cop and Slave putting Drac into his car. They pushed it up onto the bridge. Then they turned around and stared at Samson, their milky eyes glowing.

  “Fine,” Samson said. “I’ll race.” He got into his car.

  Silver smiled widely, his voice becoming cheerful again. “Okay then. Let’s get this show on the road….”

  He was interrupted by the roar of the crowd and for a minute, Mr. Silver thought it was simply because of the announcement but then he heard shouts by the finish line.

  “Oh my god!” someone yelled. “It’s Gabby!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Didja hear that, folks? Gabby’s back!

  Yowzah!

  *

  Mr. Silver smiled as Gabby clawed her way out of the huge hunk of Yugg meat he had awarded Drac.

  It had been such an ingenious plan to resurrect that crazy bitch and put in the meat. The look on Drac’s face was priceless, that look of shock and awe.

  Gabby crawled out of the gooey cube of flesh. Her limbs were twisted like misshapen tree roots, her nude body covered in dark green moss and gaping holes that oozed black goo. She pulled her hammer out from between her legs and her cell phone from her ass cheeks. One hand held the phone to her ear while the other waved the hammer in the air. She ran over to the crowd and started to make quick work of the spectators.

  “Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-chat!” she muttered through broken lips into the cell phone while using her pink hammer to attack the crowd indiscriminately. Young women were beaten to a pulp, their breasts crushed, ripped off, and thrown into the air. The skulls of children were bashed in until brains flew into the air like wet popcorn. Several men had the pleasure of the pink hammer slamming into their scrotum, popping their testicles into oblivion.

  Silver nodded in approval, loving the spectacle of it all. He looked at Samson who was staring at his hands as they gripped the steering wheel. Silver scoffed. Some people just didn’t appreciate good entertainment.

  After a few dozen people were slaughtered, he turned to his enforces. “Okay, you can get that cunt out of here now,” he said to Cop and Slave. The two hulking thugs ran over to the audience.

  Just as they got to her, Gabby ran down the stands, tripping over several spectators who did nothing but watch the bloody entertainment. The two hulks stomped through the crowd, following Gabby and finally getting a hold of her at the bottom of the bleachers.

  Cop grabbed Gabby’s shoulders, his fingers digging into the gaping holes. Slave grabbed her waist and squeezed hard. The top half of Gabby’s body fell to the ground and pulled from Cop’s grip. It started to crawl away while the bottom half kicked at Slave.

  “Gabby! Gabby! Gabby!” the crowd cheered and dozens of people pushed Cop and Slave aside. They started stomping both pieces of Gabby into mossy pulp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Well, gang, you saw it for yourself. Not only did you get a hell of a race but you were witness to Gabby’s violent return and her second violent demise. Two deaths for that sweet little bitch! Wow!

  And not only that…but we have a second race ahead of us! Sure, Drac had to be, uh, persuaded but he’s been strapped into his car and the engine’s revved up. He’ll be waking up any second. And look at Samson there, I haven’t seen him so intense since the race started. This is going to be one hell of a show!

  *

  I.

  Drac woke up with his hands gripping the steering wheel. What the hell happened? He remembered looking up at Silver and then….

  Pain pierced the back of his glass skull. Yeah, he remembered. Someone must have sucker punched him.

  He looked through the windshield at R’lyeh and shuddered.

  Streams of memories flooded through his mind. Intricately drawn blueprints in a rotting book. Words of an unknown language carved into stone. Ancient machines pumping gasoline into his body. An atrous sky falling. A cascade of tentacles.

  Millions of tentacles.

  He felt a sinister familiarity. Hadn’t his father mentioned a city like this once? Didn’t he say a man couldn’t gaze upon it without going insane?

  Drac was no stranger to the preternatural but the very sight of the city made his bowels ache in fearful anticipation. This was no ordinary city of ancient times. This was no quaint Atlantis or beautifully obscure Carcosa. This was a city that was carved from horror itself, a pulsating totem to an ultra-terrestrial civilization.

  From outside he heard Silver’s voicing blaring, “Get ready, drivers!”

  In the rearview mirror he saw the boardwalk, the audience standing on their seats, and Silver’s face on a giant video screen. Drac went to put his car in reverse but then felt a rumbling.

  The part of the bridge behind him was collapsing into the water.

  Silver’s voice sounded again. “You better get going, gentlemen. The bridge is taking part in the race, too!”

  Drac quickly looked over at Samson whose car was right next to him. The two men’s eyes met for a split second, silently acknowledging that they both had to get the hell out of there.

  They sped off down the bridge.

  II.

  As he drove down the green bridge alongside Drac, Samson looked into his rearview mirror and saw the bridge collapsing behind him in a cloud of emerald dust as green rubble fell into the sea. There was nowhere to go but forward, no turning back from the race into this mysterious city.

  The bridge seemed to go on forever and the city of R’lyeh didn’t seem to get any closer. Samson looked at Drac, expecting to see some guns drawn or some other threat but was surprised to see the glass-skulled racer looking straight ahead as if in a trance. Maybe the guy had made the same decision as Samson. He was simply going to go forward with the expectation of violent, bizarre death. There was no other outcome. Silver had made sure of it. How foolish they both were to expect any different.

  There were no happy endings.

  But what about Jack?

  Had Silver bought him? Was Tomato Joe just one of Silver’s tools for domination? Maybe he went around stealing kids for his own amusement, for entertainment.

  Samson knew he was a fool to believe Silver was going to give him the opportunity to find out the truth about Jack. That wasn’t the type of game Silver played. But maybe, just maybe…..

  Any hope was good hope.

  He looked into the sky above R’lyeh and wanted so much to see Jack’s face up in the clouds, some evidence the boy was in some sort of heaven. The city seemed to rise up higher and block his view of the
clouds. Samson could see now that Silver had placed some of his troops on the walls of the city. This was surprising since it didn’t appear to be an easy task getting anyone up on top of those bizarre and misshapen walls. The troops were dressed in bright yellow armor constructed mostly out of pre-war police uniforms and whatever material Silver had hoarded. Demonic masks covered the faces of every soldier, reminding Samson of golden gargoyles.

  It would have been great if he could have slowed down and gotten behind Drac, letting the guy take the risk of being first within the city. But because the bridge was collapsing behind them, Samson couldn’t do it. They had to go in together.

  They were a quarter mile away from the city when Samson saw the dark crimson light at the entrance, glowing in between two monstrous sigils engraved on the wall. The light opened like an incarnadine anus, expanding until the wall was replaced by an orifice large enough for the two cars to get through.

  As they approached it, Samson thought about driving off the bridge and into the water. Maybe he could swim somewhere safe, forget about the goddamn race. He could start a new life somewhere, find an uncontaminated beach, and just live.

  Or maybe he could just drown himself, finally give himself up to fate, to death, to whatever unknown is waiting out there.

  But what if Silver wasn’t lying? What if the truth about Jack was somewhere in the city?

  Side by side with Drac, Samson entered the city of R’lyeh, a thick, reddish darkness enveloping them. They were sucked into the crimson light.

  III.

  Drac wasn’t surprised Samson had chosen not to attack. Sure, it was a race to the death but since the events on the shore, it was clear that Samson and Drac were, as strange as it sounded, in it together. Drac knew the two of them would probably not survive.

  When they entered the city, Drac took his foot off the gas pedal and coasted his way inside. He hadn’t expected there to be such darkness. It was as if there was a roof over their heads where there wasn’t one. Drac looked to the sky but there were just inky shadows, like jellied smoke.

  He engaged his car’s tentacles to act as feelers but they weren’t working. Had Silver messed with his car when Drac was asleep?

  The headlights of the cars didn’t do much to disperse the blackness so both Drac and Samson coasted slowly, now realizing that anything could be waiting for them. Where were they supposed to go?

  Drac didn’t know.

  So he just kept driving into the black.

  IV.

  There were roads now. Samson hadn’t really expected there to be considering the city was supposed to be an ancient one built before mankind even had use for them. But Drac and he drove down a street that ran between massive insectoid skyscrapers.

  The road itself was made of smooth, glistening obsidian and the buildings were rocking back and forth, squirming and quivering like monolithic tongues. Gaping holes in the buildings puffed out clouds of yellow mist that spread out like sinister parachutes.

  As if made of clay, the buildings started transform into bizarre shapes, hanging over the road like sinister tree branches. Samson sped as fast as he could, worried the buildings might just drop right down on him, crushing him beneath their ungodly weight.

  Drac was right behind him, swerving now as if dodging invisible obstacles.

  A rush of sound erupted from Samson’s right and he grabbed his ear in pain. A hole in one of the buildings had erupted with tiny flying things, things too small for Samson to identify but he could hear them biting at his car, scraping the paint off.

  Some of the things crashed into his windshield and he put his face close to the glass. They were tiny octopoid creatures with wings. Their tentacles frantically kicked at the glass.

  Some of the creatures flew in through the back of his car where the back window used to be. One flew around Samson’s head and landed on his nose, sticking its tentacles in his nostrils, intertwining with his nose hairs.

  “Goddamn!” he swatted at the thing, crushing it against his skin, its body popping into a gooey stain. He sent his fists around the car, grabbing some of the creatures and squeezing until they burst. Soon the remainder of them left the way they came and went back to attacking the front of the car.

  Samson turned on the windshield wipers and slaughtered dozens of them.

  There was an explosion behind him that rocked his car. In the rearview he saw a fireball growing behind Drac’s car.

  “Shit,” he said, as he drove on, wanting to avoid being caught in the fire or being rammed by Drac. Up ahead there was a cathedral-like building that looked like it had been constructed out of glass, machine parts, and elephantine intestines.

  The machine parts were like nothing Samson had ever seen: misshapen gear-like things turned at obscure angles, twisting into shapes and forming new spires of the cathedral. Black holes formed and disappeared on the brick walls while green metal spears jutted out and were quickly sucked back like serpent’s tongues.

  A figure cloaked in a yellow robe stood in front of the cathedral. Samson turned just in time, barely missing the figure but glimpsing the thing’s face. It looked like the underside of a horseshoe crab with glistening segmented appendages that wiggled obscenely.

  Drac was right behind him as Samson sped down another street, this one with buildings made entirely of red crystal. He could see there were things encased within the crystal, like insects in amber. But these weren’t insects.

  They looked humanoid except they had red and white tentacles instead of heads. As Samson drove by, each of these things started to move through the crystal. He grabbed his gun but realized it’d probably be useless against so many of those things.

  Drac pulled up along side him, his arm out the window, shooting at the tentacle-head things that were now crawling out of their homes and leaping onto the street like angry gorillas. Samson drove straight into one, flipping it over the car. He looked into the rearview and saw it splatter on the road.

  He brought his gun up and shot out the window at some of the things. They jumped onto his car. Samson swerved back and forth, successfully rocking them off but not before one reached into the car and started to strangle him.

  “Jesus Christ!” he said, pistol-whipping the slimy hands of the creature. Its tentacle reached into the car and slithered between Samson’s legs. It caressed his crotch and then shot down to his feet, pushing down the brake pedal.

  The car skidded but Samson turned the wheel to the right, whipping the creature off the car and into the path of Drac who ran into it, decorating the street with gore.

  Samson lost some headway but he stepped on the gas and followed Drac down the road, shooting at the creatures who dared to get near the car.

  At the end of the street there was another cathedral, this one a gigantic mass of sludge and vegetation. Samson saw there was nowhere to go but into the building. Its huge sigil-covered doors opened and he followed Drac into the darkness of the chthonic temple.

  V.

  The sound of chattering teeth.

  That’s all Samson heard. The roar of his engine was no match for the noise of something that waited in the darkness. Next to him he could make out the faint interior light of Drac’s car which illuminated the guy’s glass skull, making it appear as if it floated there in the car separate from its body.

  Up ahead there was a flash of viridescent light. Samson slowed down and swerved to the left, knowing he might very well end up in some hole or trap. Instead, he ran something over, something that crunched under his tires. Something slammed into the right side of his car. It was Drac who was trying to avoid the same green flash.

  “Watch yourself,” Samson said, pretending for a moment that the other driver could hear him.

  The green flash grew into a door, a gaping hole that led them into a chamber of what looked like it was constructed out of lizard skin. In the chamber there was a seemingly infinite number of floating spheres. Samson and Drac drove straight into them.

  The spheres
bombarded the two cars, cracking glass and splattering unearthly goo. It was like driving in a rainstorm if the raindrops were huge and glowing, quivering into different forms. The spheres turned into things Samson could not comprehend, could never describe.

  Ahead of him the cascade of sphere-things pulled apart like a curtain, putting a hole in the lizard-skin room and Samson found himself driving straight into a courtyard full of………

  VI.

  Flowers.

  It was a shocking juxtaposition, driving from a spooky spherical abyss to a courtyard of light and flowers. Drac kept trying to get his tentacles to work and finally they listened to him, coming out from underneath his car like reluctant kittens. Drac tried getting them to feel things out in front of him but it was no use. After a few seconds, they drooped. It was as if the city itself was sucking the energy from the tendrils, making them nothing but flaccid appendages.

  “What the hell?” he said, his jaw dropping in glassy shock. In the center of the courtyard was large stone slab and on top of it was a gigantic flower made of flesh and feces that shimmered with a brunneous glow.

  The courtyard itself was as at least two miles long. The sky was barely visible above because of the thick, ugly clouds that were filling in quickly. In addition to the fecal-flower, there were hundreds of other organisms Drac could not identify. Some were similar to flowers but with an added form of abnormality: flat tendrils instead of leaves, throbbing thorns leaking neon poison, gaping mouths filled with more gaping mouths, leafy blobs hanging from obsidian obelisks.

  Drac and Samson kept driving through the bizarre foliage, their cars tearing fishy vines and smashing through organisms that resembled sunflower-jellyfish hybrids. Oceanic gore splattered their windshields. The moldy floor of the courtyard slowed them down and as they kept driving, they felt like they were losing ground instead of gaining it.

  From out of the stone slab came a plethora of black tentacles. They grabbed onto Drac’s car and wrapped around it like a greedy child holding a treasured toy.