Roger\u2019s sleep was haunted by dreams where he was chased by shoggoths that seemed to mock him by matching his speed and keeping within reach of their tentacles that flicked at the back of his neck and his flailing hands.\u00a0 Their cries echoed in his ears and when one finally gripped his wrist and spun him to face his pursuer the raw panic woke him from this nightmare.<\/p>\n
After assuring himself that no real danger was imminent, he consciously steadied his breathing and formulated his plan for getting back to the tunnel leading to Dunwich.\u00a0 Rather than chance a sprint back to where he believed it was, he decided on the painstaking but \u201csafe\u201d option of stopping at each tunnel and waiting for a shoggoth to activate the \u201cshoggoth exclusion principle\u201d before proceeding to the next step.\u00a0 And he congratulated himself.\u00a0 And not just mentally.\u00a0 His calm had been so thoroughly cracked that he found himself muttering his thoughts out loud, \u201cThat\u2019s smart Roger, that\u2019s right, that\u2019s how we\u2019ll do it!\u201d<\/p>\n
So, employing this smeagolian dialectic technique he steeled himself for the return trek.\u00a0 And after a few minutes a protective shoggoth appeared and as soon as it exited the open circle Roger stepped into the open and tensed for his dash.\u00a0 And barely avoided running into the side of a shoggoth emerging from his destination.\u00a0 The screeching monster shot past him heading to his left.\u00a0 Roger froze and held his breath.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly there was no hint of annoyance at the collapse of his exclusion principle theory.\u00a0 But fifty feet beyond him the living nightmare stopped its forward motion and let out a new sound, a rumbling roar that split the air.\u00a0 It spun around.\u00a0 Shivering from head to toe, Roger swallowed his fear and took off as fast as his legs would carry him to where he imagined the Dunwich tunnel opened.\u00a0 He could hear the shoggoth bellow again but all he could do was aim for the tunnel entrance and pump his legs.\u00a0 Maybe it took fifteen seconds.\u00a0 Roger reached the entrance and made the turn.\u00a0 And what he saw was a window.\u00a0 He had guessed wrong.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t the Dunwich tunnel.\u00a0 What he could see was dying red light and mountain walls.\u00a0 He hesitated at the brink.\u00a0 But just then the shoggoth slammed into the tunnel behind him and Roger leaped through the looking glass.\u00a0 He rolled onto sandy ground and started running again as fast as his heart and lungs could provide.\u00a0 And right behind him came the shoggoth trumpeting its chase.\u00a0 It was only a few feet behind Roger when it shot out a tentacle and snagged his wrist.\u00a0 As in his dream he was spun around by the pull on his arm and crashed to the suddenly hard ground facing his pursuer.\u00a0 He felt none of the pain in his back from the crash but stared in horror as the monster formed a gaping mouth full of teeth.\u00a0 He heard the triumphant bellow of the creature.\u00a0 But then he heard another bellow.\u00a0 It was familiar but he couldn\u2019t place it in the desperate scene he currently inhabited but it got steadily louder.\u00a0 And then he remembered.\u00a0 It was an air horn.\u00a0 The tractor-trailer hit the shoggoth broad side at about eighty-five miles an hour.\u00a0 The driver hadn\u2019t seen the creature because an outcrop of Nevadan red rock obstructed his view at a curve of the road.\u00a0 His truck was filled with a shipment of refrigerated beef and the vehicle punched a pretty convincing hole right through the gelatinous protoplasm of the unsuspecting hell-spawn.\u00a0 On impact, the tentacle holding Roger released him so he was still facing the mouth of the shoggoth but it seemed to have lost interest in him after its evisceration.\u00a0 And as he watched, the flesh of the beast began to steam in the air and evaporate before his eyes.\u00a0 It was sunset and, in the distance, he could see the lights of Las Vegas brightening an otherwise darkening sky.\u00a0 He staggered away from the blacktop of the highway and slowly trudged toward the now stopped truck.<\/p>\n
He could hear himself saying, \u201cNow, how am I going to explain all this?\u201d\u00a0 And then he started laughing hysterically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger\u2019s sleep was haunted by dreams where he was chased by shoggoths that seemed to mock him by matching his speed and keeping within reach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1289,1263,4],"tags":[3341,200,354,1290],"class_list":["post-37989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-dunwich","tag-fantasy","tag-horror","tag-my-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n