“To life without angles,” said Manabe, without even stopping to think about it.
I lifted my glass in response, but Kanako shook her head.
“No. I hate that!”
“Well, then, to the beautiful suit you’re wearing, Mrs. Manabe,” I proposed. She giggled.
“This scarf looks good on me, doesn’t it?” she asked, grasping it by the end.
“Yes, it doesn’t have an angle on it,” said Manabe, and Kanako burst into laughter. Her wineglass toppled, red wine seeping into the tablecloth in a blotch that was also rounded.
“What is the matter with you?” demanded Manabe, brow furrowed.
“All you ever talk about is whether or not there are any angles. That’s all you ever think about!”
“It’s a crucial issue. The Womb is safe because it has no angles. I can sit here drinking wine because of it.”
“Of course. It’s safe because it has no angles, and I. I…”
She pulled on the end of the scarf, unwinding it to reveal her slender, white neck, and the red mark, like a scar, that flamed there.
“What is that?” asked Manabe, quizzically.
“All you worry about is future generations, and you’ve forgotten what men do here.”
“What in the world.?”
“It’s a kiss mark!”
She laughed triumphantly, white teeth flashing. I joined her in laughter, captured by her spirit.
“So you slept with Izumo. so what?”
“Are you jealous?”
“No,” denied Manabe, shaking his head. “If you have sex with both of us, the chances of being impregnated will increase. Your infidelity fits perfectly with my original plan to save humanity.”
Her laughter faded as Manabe continued.
“Was it good? Maybe we should try it together, then, tonight, all three of us. I don’t mind either way. As long as we preserve the species.”
“Hold on one minute, Manabe!” I broke in, unable to hold back any longer.
“What?”
“Are you serious? You spend a fortune building this spherical coffin, you leave my wife to be eaten alive, and then when a painter steals your wife you just suggest maybe we should try a threesome! What the hell do you think is going on outside? The world is ending! And you! All you can do is.!”
“It’s not ending,” he broke in. “There are no angles here, so They can’t get in. The world will not. ”
He suddenly broke off, slapping his hand to his mouth, eyes blinking wildly, searching left and right. From behind his hand, the sound of a clogged drain oozed from his mouth, a pause, then the sounds of his stomach violently surging back up his throat. His hand slipped from his mouth, letting thin, translucent tentacles snaked out, like wet slugs or tired noodles. They writhed, squirmed, heads twisting and seeking.
“It’s Them! Oh God, it’s THEM!”
Kanako leaped from her chair, shrieking.
A jellyfish gently began testing the air from inside his nostril.
“But how.?” he asked, voice muffled, and his right eyeball popped out, little ripping noises, as tentacles lifted it up from the inside.
“No angles. there are no angles!”
I drew back from the table and the shaking mass that was Manabe, and answered him: “There are angles, you fool! The oldest angle of all, the human triangle!”
“Ridiculous!” he tried to cry. His right eyeball fell, trailing the debris of nerves and blood vessels, and dozens of jelly-like tentacles writhed in the gaping wound.
“You’re an occultist! You of all people should know that metaphors and analogies can be truth! We painters have known that for centuries!”
“Just playing with words. ”
A smile bloomed on Manabe’s face. A smile of understanding? A sneer of self- mockery? Before I had a chance to find out which, his face was hidden behind a twirl of ropey tentacles, wrapping him up.
Tentacles were already bursting from his ears, from the bottom of his pants legs, squirming, writhing.
“Kanako! Where’s the remote?” I cried.
“Here! But. what?”
I answered as I took the remote control from her outstretched hand. “We’re leaving. Getting out of this spherical hell!”
We ran toward the exit, urged on by a bestial roar from the dining room behind us. Kanako flinched.
“It’s all right.That’s Manabe’s death rattle.”
A horrible tearing sound came from the dining room, and the smack of raw meat slapping into the floor. A pause, and then innumerable milky tentacles, jellyfish or squid or whatever, came creeping from the dining room. I tore my eyes away, and pressed the button.
The doorway irised open, a camera shutter revealing a pitch-black world awaiting us.
“Beasts, global catastrophe. Bring it on! Even with angles, it’s better than staying here!”
Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, we plunged through the circular doorway.
Translation by Edward Lipsett
WHAT BRINGS THE VOID
Will Murray
It was the dark season of the portmanteau word. Ragnageddon. Yog-Narok. Demondammerung. None of them caught on.
It was not the twilight of the gods long prophesied. It was sunset for the human race. Or sun blot. For the sun’s fate was the first cosmic sign of the uber-apocalypse.
In the Western hemisphere, it was past midnight when the moon simply winked out. Few noticed. It was still there, of course. In the Eastern hemisphere, the sun just shut down. No sun, no moonlight. In the darkness of the void, the stars brightened. Yes, there were fewer of them than before. That hardly seemed to matter.
A bluish filament of light traced across the utter night like a crazed comet. The Sothis Radiant had touched the sun with a groping tendril, extinguishing it with appalling finality. But few cared. Things shifted so fast that the past and its causes were lost in the torrent of violent ever-present change.
I was walking the streets of Washington, D.C. that first night of First Dark. I sensed the moon’s death. Darkly luminous, a weird cobalt-blue cloud rolled in, smothering the night sky. It seemed to hang lower than any terrestrial cloud had any right to hang.
Down from it had fallen two cloudy appendages, like fat tails of some boneless monster. I turned a street corner and there they were. Where they fell, they right-angled like torpid boas. At the blunt tips of each, the misty heads seemed to have taken on the form of squat dogs — a sheepdog and a bulldog. Or was one a chow? They were dull impressionistic apparitions. Both stared at me with their hollow cloudy unreadable eyes.
I reached out to touch one, thinking it some trick of the night fog. It shrank from my touch.
This cloud is alive, I marveled. The doggy form collapsed in on itself as the tentacle silently withdrew.
I found a rope and threw it toward the other — the bulldog. I thought to dispel it with its manila weight. Instead, the rope caught in its shadowy mouth — or was caught.
I felt a distinct tug. Dropping the rope, I fled.
Mankind was in a new reality.
The sun never rose again and what the moon did no one knew. An extinguished lamp, it was never seen again. Nor were most of the Milky Way stars. Without them, time simply stopped. It became 2012 forever.
No one knew what killed the global power grid. It simply stopped functioning. A greater night clamped down. Machines stopped cold. But just as importantly, world currencies — reduced to electrons moving unseen through fiber optic cables — collapsed. With no gold or silver to back paper bills or coin, the global economy popped like a soap bubble.
Civilization as we knew it was over within a month. Two unknown satellites rose in the sky eventually, twin orbs of emptiness, one a sickly bone white, the other the hue of coal. Those who knew their Necronomicon gave them names — Nug and Yeb. Need I say more?