Free Nightmares From a Lovecraftian Mind by Jordan Krall Page A

true.”
    I nod, open my book, and start reading
something about licorice and conspiracies. Some man who goes to the moon had
come up with some crazy ideas about hooded men in space shuttles, dropping
documents onto the lunar surface.
    Casey sits on the edge of my bed. “You
tired?”
    “Not yet.”
    “I’m going to use the bathroom,” Casey says,
getting up from the bed. He walks out the door and slams it shut.
    My eyes blink through the book on my lap.
Now the sounds come.
    The toilet flushes and spheres spiral down
the staircase and onto the wood floors. I hear them roll into the furniture,
into the walls, into the silence like manic round vacuums.
    Casey slams the bathroom door, opens it, and
slams it harder. It opens once again. His footsteps echo in my bathtub. The
faucet turns on. Water splashes on his shoes. I hear his shoelaces become limp
with moisture.
    “What are you doing in there?” I shout. No
answer. “Don’t make a mess!”
    The bathroom door slams shut. The sound of
it combines with the clunking of the spheres as they make their way back up the
stairs.
    There was a time years ago when the stairs
were covered in toys so much my father tripped and broke his neck. He had died
instantly. But now the spheres are the only toys haunting the steps.
    A scream breaks through my bedroom door. It
takes me longer to get up off the floor than I expect. I feel old and rusty
like an unused bicycle. I throw open the door and look into the hallway. At the
bottom of the steps Casey is sprawled out like an octopus.
    He has fallen down the stairs.
    I know at this moment my gloom will become
legendary.
    All around me the wallpaper falls down in
strips: tongues with stale glue and unwanted paint calling me into the bathroom
where I’ll find the black sun deep within the drain.
    I turn the water on to flush it out while
behind me the spheres shuffle into an obscure formation I’ve never seen before.
    The water refuses to go down the drain and
stays on the outskirts of the sink, refusing to be burned beneath my sink. The
water’s flesh crawls around the faucet and onto my hand.
    I spit fire, burning my fingers into loops.
They fall down the drain, unwilling to bow to the sun in fear.
    I think of Casey.
    My gloom turns to soft babbling hope.
    I run out of the bathroom and down the
stairs, dodging imaginary toys and hysterical strips of fatherly wallpaper.
Casey’s body has turned more grotesque. It resembles chewing gum stretched over
a bundle of broken sticks.
    “Get up,” I say. “Get up.”
    He twitches but does not get up.
    I walk back upstairs and into my room. I
take the elevator back to the first floor and walk outside back to the library.
The stairs to the third floor are covered in hollow trinkets that trip me up at
every opportunity. I make it to the top, though.
    It takes me only a minute to find the book:
A Brief History of Industrial Parks by Julie Antler.
    I sit down on the floor between the stacks
of books, adjusting my pants so I’d be most comfortable. The florescent lights
above me flicker and buzz in code.
    I start to read. The pages smell like old
age and doom. Words upon words slip through the haze of my most recent
memories. Antler briefly explains the history of the pallet.
    Paper cuts spread across my hands like
rivers on maps. My knuckles are broken apart like five-and-dime toys. I pinch
the skin between my thumb and index finger.
    It doesn’t take me long to fall asleep to
the sound of gloomy spheres and soft babbling of unread books.
     

XNOYBIS ITSELF
    I. Here, a
swifter glimpse of the horns as they transform into heralds of my obliteration,
my visions of annihilation, my mind’s gradual disintegration into the infinite
ocean. My grey matter becomes blue-green, submerged in seaweed and shells, and
sparks appear on the surface and we all hear the voice announcing it,
announcing its arrival. I listen.
     
    II. The
horns fade into the mouths of desert predators, the heat forcing my brow