The last thing Gerald expected was to bump into some eldritch, horrifying creature on the way to bed. The creature didn’t look too pleased about bumping into him, either.
It was about eight feet tall, and mostly appeared to be made of tentacles. Gerald would have liked to give a detailed description of the thing, so that he could feel a little bit less mad when telling the story later on, but the thing about eldritch horrors is that they tend to do quite a good job of defying description.
There were definitely tentacles, and things that seemed to be eyes peering down at him. Some were possibly peering up at him, too. The top and bottom of the thing seemed to be in constant disagreement about which was which. Gerald got the general feeling that on top of it having a lively debate with gravity, it was also attempting to squeeze itself into rather less dimensions than it was used to existing in.
It made him go crosseyed.
It was only after a moment of attempting to process the sight before him, and the fact that he had just bounced off the thing like a rubber ball, that his brain told him he should probably scream. In the absence of any better ideas, he went ahead and did it.
His cry of alarm made the thing with all the wiggly bits go even wigglier, the pair of them recoiling away from each other. His brain was still trying to catch up with current events, so it was up to Gerald’s body to respond by itself. It decided to reach out an arm, point at what he couldn’t quite focus on without getting a slight migraine, and let out another yell of shock.
Later, Gerald would claim that his intimidating roar had scared off the abomination. If you had managed to find the abomination it would probably have melted your brain trying to communicate what happened from it’s extra-dimensional perspective. But before your mind turned into a poached egg, you would get the feeling that what the creature had felt was more akin to “how rude, I didn’t come here to get screamed at.”
In a flash of what was definitely not light, with a sound that was almost not sound, and a pang of feeling entirely unlike being happily relaxed, the being folded itself up, down, inside out, backwards, and then in a direction that made absolutely no sense to Gerald whatsoever. With that, it was gone.
It did, however, leave a strange smell behind. Gerald sniffed cautiously, and to his surprise found that it smelled distinctly and clearly like goldfish food.
After a moment, a small head poked around the corner ahead of him, eyebrows raised with a look of surprise and concern.
“You alright there Gerald?” the diminutive figure asked.
Gerald blinked, cleared his throat, straightened up and brushed imaginary dust off his coat. Some of the imaginary dust floated upwards in a rather unnatural way, then fizzled out of existence. Gerald ignored this and puffed out his chest with annoyance.
“Fucking hell, Ed, did you not see that, that.. that thing?” he cried out, keeping the hysterics almost out of his voice.
When Ed shook his head, looking slightly perplexed, Gerald huffed and strode towards him, wafting away the smell of fish food with annoyance. He stormed into their room and sat down hard on the closest seat, mouth opening and closing as he fought to find the words to describe what he had just seen.
Ed carefully came over and hopped up next to him, placing a hand on Gerald’s thigh. “Whatever it was, probably best to talk it over after a good sleep, eh?” he suggested reassuringly.
Gerald let out a sigh, and allowed himself to lean reassuringly against Ed for a second before replying. “Yes, I suppose you’re probably right.” He squeezed Ed’s hand in thanks, before standing up and approaching his coffin.
“Help me with the lid, will you? It takes ages to get it seated right from the inside,” Gerald asked, but before he had even finished the sentence long green fingers were lifting the dark, heavy coffin lid.
Ed watched as Gerald clambered inside, and smiled a wry smile. The sort of smile that particularly suited his pointed goblin features. “Rest well, old fellow,” he said to the vampire lying pale and well-dressed in his coffin, before the two of them wiggled the ill-fitting lid back into place.
Ed turned away and sighed, looking over to meet the gaze of the large, furry, winged creature with enormous red eyes that clung to the nearest wall. “We’re running out of dark corners, mate,” he told the mothman. “It’s getting bloody crowded.”
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