Lovecraftian writing contest!

Write your mythos story and submit it by October 15th. We 3 judges will read the work and make
our choice based on a few simple guidelines.
Firstly: the basics of having clear writing, correct spelling and proper grammar. 2000 word
maximum.
Secondly: to make things interesting, the story CAN NOT have death. It MUST include "Internet"
and be "multi-cultural."
Finally: all stories must be submitted in the body of the email. No attachments nor pictures are
necessary. Just give us a wall of text.
Winner will receive an Amazon gift card, respect and admiration of everyone (Other prizes may be
added later). This is just for fun, so just enjoy yourself and feel free to express your inner horrors.

The sun was touching the ocean, framed by the Golden Gate. There was a soft breeze
coming off the water, and a gentle haze of sunset. I was watching TV. Yes, it was a beautiful day in
the City by the Bay...too bad I live in Sacramento.
Then she walked into my office. A cool drink of water to my eyes, her hair shining like a
waterfall of russet silk. Her smooth skin shone with the smile she wore, and I knew she had a blush
that would light a room with vermillion heat. My darling Eve perhaps carried a few extra pounds,
but to me she was beautiful and untamed as a Native American goddess. Oh yeah, maybe I should
introduce myself. The sign on my office door reads Nick Nichols, Private Eye.
"We've got a sweet one, doll!" I said out of the corner of my mouth, around the stem of my
meerschaum pipe. "We've been offered twenty g's to find a painting that was stolen out of the
client's home. Some weird piece called 'Assault on Devil's Reef.' It's supposed to be
unmistakeable."
"Twenty thousand dollars? It sounds good, Nick, but what's the catch? I mean, I love you
and all, but it ain't like we're the top dogs in the PI biz. How'd the mark hear of us?"
"He has a reference from the priest at church, sweetheart." I was referring to the Unitarian
church Eve and I attended. "Seems he knows someone who knows someone who knows we're not
exactly the god-fearing christian type, and this painting has some weirdness about it. I talked to the
mark on the internet today-he wishes to remain anonymous, but he used the word 'eldritch', for what
it's worth."
"'Eldritch', eh? Sounds like it's right down our alley! Where do we start?"
"Where else, my love? The library, tomorrow. If you find as much information as you can
on the painting, I'll search the newspaper morgue for unsolved B&Es of occult objects or weird
artifacts. We'll compare notes over supper and see if we can't uncover some leads. For now, lets go
home."
As we left the office, the lights flickered and switched to the nighttime setting. The shadows
in the odd corners of the old building grew long and dark, and I heard the mechanical clunk of the
ancient lift shutting down for the night. 'Drat!' I thought, 'now we have to take the stairs. I really
need to move to a newer building.' Echoing my thoughts in her inimitable way, my wife
complained about the stairwell. As well she should: when we opened the door, we saw that the only
light was an infernal crimson glow emitted by the safety lights at each landing. As I worked on the
third floor, these were the only lamps we had to navigate by.
The steps were steep and perilous, narrow and worn to a slick smoothness by at least fifty
years of use. A fetid smell pervaded the stairwell, and I wondered who left their dinner to rot under
the steps. As I stepped onto the first few treads, I realized that someone must have spilled their
office's seafood order: the stairs were slimed with a foul-smelling ooze. I imagine the poor shmuck
must've wanted to die on the spot. All the way to the ground floor, the stairs were slippery and
treacherous with the slick residue. "What do you think this poor sucker spilled, Eve? I don't know
of any chow with this combination of, ah, scent and texture."
At the moment we stepped onto the last landing, we heard the ground floor outside door
slam shut. Eve and I looked at each other, and took the last stairs as quickly as the goop on the
steps would allow, and cautiously left the building. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my
lovely and capable wife had her piece out and hidden behind a fold of her skirt.
"Look here, sweetheart! The guy must be leaking the stuff from a bag or something. There
seems to be a trail leading to the road." As we left the building's fire door behind, we heard a
metallic clang from the alley mouth. We ran out to the road, and Eve called my attention to a
nearby manhole: the slime trail ended at its edge. "He must've ditched the stuff and lammed, Nick.
There's nothing else here."
"Alright, angel. Let's dust, before a street cop shows up and hassles us for disturbing the
peace or some such nonsense." We headed to our work car: a long, low Plymouth Prowler in basic
black. My dame, being a gearhead as well as a dish, had made some modifications: under the hood,
the car sported a Porsche engine tuned for speed. The chassis had been reinforced, and the brakes
and suspension upgraded to compensate for the increased power. As we slid into the slate-grey

interior, I caught sight of my wife's gams. I never grew tired of her exotic beauty, and I often
wondered how such a looker ended up with a mug like me. I have medium-brown hair and a face
only my mother could think handsome. I carried more than a few extra pounds, and had legs that,
while formed well enough to pull off a kilt, were barely long enough to reach the ground. Eve, on
the other hand, had pins that didn't stop, and cheekbones that could cut glass. Descended from the
Cree on one side and the Mohawk on the other, with a healthy dose of Irish in-between, she carried
her heritage on her face. The only piece of jewelry she wore regularly was an ancient brooch in the
shape of a dreamcatcher, designed around the image of a burning eye centered in a star, handed
down from mother to daughter over the last four centuries. She never left the house without it.
We pulled into the garage under our Victorian townhouse and killed the engine. As the
garage door closed, I thought I saw something slither under it from outside, but the place was clear
when I snapped on the lights. "I think the sewers are gong to back up again, Nick." my wife
complained, with her nose wrinkled like a schoolgirl's. "It smells in here!" Once she mentioned it, I
could smell it myself: a fetid, nauseating odor reminiscent of the American River at high noon in the
middle of July.
"We'll keep an eye on it, sweetheart, and call the city water department in the morning. We
have work to do tonight." We went inside, and I plunked down behind my desk and booted up my
computer. Eve brought me a cup of tea, and sat down at her own desk in our home office. The first
thing I looked up online was upcoming auctions of artwork, then ran a search for keywords "Devil's
Reef", "Eldritch" and, just on a hunch, "odor". I struck out on the auctions, but my hunch paid off,
sort of. I got a hit on a quote by an author called "Lovecraft" that read "By Their smell can men
sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features
of those They have begotten on mankind". It seems that there are these unimaginably powerful
beings from other worlds that have been holed up here on our rock since before the dawn of time,
and they have a foul odor about them. This, of course, made me think about the stinking slime trail
I saw at my office, and the smell of sewage Eve mentioned downstairs. Being of a naturally
suspiscious nature, I grabbed my trusty .38 Detective Special out of my desk drawer and crept
towards the door of the office. When my wife started to get up, I motioned her to stay still and be
quiet.
I padded downstairs to the kitchen, and in one sudden move, I turned on the garage light and
threw open the inner door. There, against the backdrop of the low-slung Prowler, I beheld an
aberrant amalgam of fish, man, and toad that exuded a loathesome stench. I fought for my sanity,
keeping my wits about me long enough to notice that this blasphemous, batrachian beast was
wearing a dark sweatsuit over its misshappen, corpulent body, before losing my cool and gibbering
in horror. I blindly burned powder from my bean-shooter at the beast. It croaked what sounded like
a curse at me, then bowled me over as it rushed into my home, through the kitchen, and out into the
alley, bursting the house's rear door nearly off its hinges in its haste to escape. When I returned to
my senses, my dish was hovering over me worriedly. "What happened, Nick? What was it?"
"I don't know, sweetheart...but it bleeds. Look there!" From the wide-flung drops of foulsmelling ichor on the kitchen wall, I winged it. "Whatever it was, it's too big to die from an arm
shot. But at least I hit it."
"When I found you, brighteyes, you were rocking back and forth and muttering something
about Grendel, toads, and the river. You scared me: I've only seen you like that around the Fourth."
My darling Eve was referring to the wartime flashbacks I suffered when the Independence Day
fireworks get too close. I'm no coward, but I don't react well to explosions that seem to be right
overhead. "You've been out for an hour; I was about to call a meat wagon. The tin stars were here,
and I told them you shot at a burglar and chased him off. What really happened?"
"There was a...thing...in the garage. It was hideous: the face looked like a cross between a
toad and a fish, but it walked upright like a man, and it wore clothes...and it talked." Just describing
the creature made me want to curl up and hide until everything went back to normal. Somehow,
though, I knew that nothing could ever be the way it was before, not now that I knew such
blasphemies existed. I pulled myself together, with the help of a slug of Irish courage to steady my

nerves. "I called it Grendel, eh, doll? Well, I remember where Grendel lived in the story. To hell
with the library, I think I know where the painting went. Come on."
My steadfast wife hugged me and said "Have I ever told you your courage and insight are
two things I love about you, Nick? Let me get our coats. And a reload for your revolver." While
she did that, I slipped a hip flask out of the kitchen cabinet and filled it with more whiskey. I had a
feeling we'd both need it before the night was over.
We pulled out of our garage and hit highway 50 East, hotfooting it towards Folsom lake. As
the mythical Grendel lived in a lake when Beowulf hunted him, I was willing to bet that if I called
this thing by that name, it was my subconscious giving me a hint. The nearest sizeable lake was in
Folsom, the next city East on the highway, and only a double handful of miles away. I would lay
money on the beast easily being able to cover that distance at night in an hour.
When we got to the lakeshore, I realised I had hit the thing in a leg instead of an arm. It had
only just arrived here a moment before, and it dove into the water as our headlights hit it. It had left
its bloodied sweatsuit on the beach, and from that point I could follow the ripples in the moonlight.
My sweetheart pulled out the nightvision binoculars she got me last Christmas and trained them on
the lake. "It's heading for an island about a klick out. He's an ugly mug, ain't he? Looks like
there's also a rowboat about a hundred yards to your left, Nick. Let's go!"
"Hold on, doll! You ain't going. I have to go get the painting, but I'm not letting you put
yourself in danger..." I trailed off, as I got a good look at my wife's expression. Murderous would
be one way to describe it, but it's a little weak.
"You're not letting me...?" I could hear the beginning of a real storm in her unusually soft
voice. Before she worked up a good head of steam and belted me in the chops, I rethought my
position on the subject, and remembered one of the mantras of a long, healthy marriage. "You're
right, sweetheart. I spoke before I thought it through. We're a team, partners, and we'll go into this
together."
Deprived of her argument, Eve merely stared at me for a moment through slitted eyes.
"Okay, then, boyo. Let's hit the waves." She strode off down the strand towards the rowboat
beached on the shore. Making note of where the punt was beached, we locked in the oars and swept
across the now-quiet waters towards our target.
I can't, I won't, go into detail about what happened on that loathesome spit of rock and sandy
earth off the shore of the lake. My wife and I barely escaped with our wits intact, and we had to
take a long vacation to settle ourselves after witnessing those horrid creatures' blasphemous rites
held around a sacrificial fire on moonlit nights. I will only say that, thanks to the unsuspected
power of my wife's ancient brooch, we recovered the painting in question and collected our fee
before we went home and collapsed into a whimpering ball, holding each other, on the floor of our
shower. The scalding water rushing over us stung in our scratches and cuts, and washed away the
sweat, soot and grime covering us, but no matter how hot we make the water, no matter how many
showers we take, no matter how long we lay in the sun and sand of Tahiti, we will never be
cleansed of those charnel sights and eldritch chants we were exposed to on that accursed night!