Newspaper Nerd Masterpiece (part I)

The sun is beneath for the night and the moon casts shadows off the slinking animals that rule the night. Television sets glow like they are wont to do. The clear skies, chilly November seem pregnant. Dozens sit and wonder what they are seeing without any luck. Their signals display new footage.

"Ohhhh... MY FILES..."
"I just made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds."

The horrible buzzing fills the empty space and expands the dull spaces. It feels like something important is dying beneath us and we don't very much feel it. The buzzing traps our sensory receptors and shuttles our emotional content somewhere else. In the coming days those not in the know will act as though they were aware of the events but only those present have shared in a strange secret no one else will gather.

"I still see an X... I STOLE CBS..."
"Freakin' Librel"

The screaming and violence aren't going to stop but we kept watching anyway. In the morning I know I'll be called in and I'll be tasked with getting to the bottom of what goes on know.

"They're coming to get me!"

Someone must be taping this. I can go to bed now. Who's going to know. The mattress beckons and it seemed so comforting. Even if it was empty. These things happen. My head falls to it and I am so apathetic I fall into a nightmare. I don't remember much, except for a truck on a mountain. I only remember it's a nightmare. Like the others.

As I lay asleep I eventually feel the sunlight on my back and slowly the bed disgorges me as I rise for the adventures that come with the morning. Last night's television broadcast is sure to be remembered for years to come. I pick up my telephone, ringing for an indeterminable time now and wait for the whezing voice on the other end. I can recall a time when that phone woke me up, a man can desensitize himself to anything though and now that phone rings for hours without me reacting or caring.

"I need you to find the unruly duckling. Bring the whining chimp in."

"Okay..."

I'm not sure what that means but I can guess. The boss makes up code at random intervals. The logic behind that idea is lost to me, but it must make sense to him. Either way, I can't think of anything else I would be in a position to do from here. I grab my coat and hat and walk out the front doors, my head is ringing somewhat, I'll need to get food from Diney down the street. It's filled with '60s nostalgia. I think I lived through the 1960s but can't remember. Most people I tell that too say something about how they were too baked to remember anything also, but I'm different, I really don't remember a damn thing about 1967. I think I was in my twenties around then since I'm in my forties now. I know I have a knack for finding things out. That's how I landed my job doing whatever it is I do.

The streets are covered in chewing gum and feet. A child brushes past and tries to pick my pocket. There's nothing to take and he walks away with a handful of used tissue and a ticket stub. The light is dull and unassuming this morning. Every once in a while the Sun comes out behind the cloud and I feel it on my back. A grim bright light. It depresses me somehow.

I open the door of Diney and take in the psychedelic imagery some more. The hair on waitreses, the flashing lights and the claustrophobic sounds. The whole thing is like a live animal and it pulses with a vitality that can't be matched or bargained with. I feel it and take a few solid breaths. I walk in fingers crossed and I manage to resonate with the walls. I feel everything in this room humping the things next to it in tune with all five songs playing at once. I hear a new one, on the far corner. A sound I recognize but new words. I know I listened to this band in the 1960s. A fragment of memory explodes in my head and I sit down. I pull a menu over my face so no one can see the drool and I let the memory pass...

It is 1964 and I am surfing recklessly, I drink in the sun and hallucinate about all the monsters that could be in the ocean wildly. A kraken sidles up next to me and cthulhu rises up next to me and devours the kraken. Cthulhu swallows me whole and I surf down his insides. Whole galaxies in the stomach of the monster. Which ones were born there and which were absorbed? Which ones will die there, and will the Old One himself die?