“Huh, #CallCthulhu is trending,” Julius said, looking up from his phone.

  “What?” Alex replied incredulous. “What's it mean?”

  “I don't know. The tweets are just strings of random numbers and letters. My account tweeted one out too.”

  “So Twitter got hacked?”

  “I guess. Maybe it's some marketing thing.” Julius put his phone back in his pocket. He never used social media that much, and figured it would get sorted out soon enough. He sat in the passenger seat of Alex's car, a generic silver, mid-line sedan, and looked out at the road. He rolled down the window, and appreciated the first truly warm day of spring. A new movie had come out, so they were on their way into the city to watch it. The car slowed down as they passed through a small town. One of those where you never see anyone outside, and get annoyed that you have to slow down.

  Then with no warning or fanfare, the sky ripped in two. A ragged hole now bisected the sky showing a purple and black swirling vortex.

  Naturally Julius screamed, and Alex slammed on the brakes pulling over onto the shoulder of the road. Julius staggered out off the car, and got a better look at what remained of the sky. Alex got out also, and they both stared wild eyed for at the sky transfixed. The spell broke when a massive eye appeared, and stared back. It was huge, twice as large as the Sun, and strangely human in shape. Suddenly irrationally afraid Julius spun around, and saw that the Sun was still in the sky, the fact very slightly relieved him.

  “Maybe it's not so bad, it looks like the tear gets smaller to the north,” Alex said, in what Julius could only think of as a stupidly calm tone.

  “Maybe it's not so bad!” Julius practically shrieked back.

  “Although it does look wider to the south. It might not be bisecting the entire sky, so that's...” Alex stopped and seemed to struggle to think of a word. One that would describe the hope that the sky wasn't literally torn in two.

  “Auspicious though still apocalyptic?” Julius suggested. “Auspocalycius, perhaps as a portmanteau. If we are going to have to be describing such events a lot over the course of the next few minutes. Before the atmosphere ignites, or the ground turns to god-damned blood.” Julius finished. The opportunity to be sarcastic had calmed him a bit, and he risked looking up again.

  The eye was still there. The iris a mesmerizing shade of green in the center, but brown near the pupil, and merging into blue streaks at the edges. The white of it seemed bloodshot, but instead of red, the veins were golden. Julius forced himself to look away, staring at his shoes. “Do you also see the eye?” Julius asked just to be sure.

  “Yes,” Alex confirmed in a strained voice.

  “Then the most likely conclusion would be that we've both gone mad. Or I'm mad and just imagining talking to you,” Julius said.

  “Perhaps we've been kidnapped and are in some C.I.A. Mk-Ultra type drug fuelled simulation. So none of this is real,” Alex added.

  “The idea we are in a simulation is stupid. You can never prove that existence is real and our perception isn't just a dream of some, some...” Julius stuttered as he finished the sentence, glancing up briefly. “Fifth dimensional eldritch god.”

  “So we've gone mad?”

  “We spend most of our time together. It would seem possible we would both go mad at the same time.”

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  “So then we find some third party, and ask if they also see the sky ripped open?”

  Just then, as if to finish Alex's sentence, a car slammed into an electrical pole on the other side of the road. They both turned, but saw the driver hadn't been wearing their seat belt. He had flown headfirst into the pole, and no longer had much that could be considered a head, with his torso laying on the hood. The sudden gore nearly turned Julius's stomach. Alex was always more resilient to that sort, and turned away only grimacing. “Well that could have been a coincidence. It doesn't prove anything,” he reasoned.

  “True. In either case, apocalypse or insanity, a car accident doesn't really seem that important.” Julius replied following Alex's lead, and turning away from the scene. Drawn from the noise of the crash an old woman, who reminded Julius of his mom, stepped outside. She saw the crash and looked away upwards, then caught sight of the sky. She began screaming long and hoarse. The noise drew others outside, and they began screaming also. Soon enough a cacophony of wails, cries, and screams filled the air.

  Then something deeper pulsed through the air. Julius could feel it pass through him, making his spine shiver. He looked up, and saw the tear grow wider. One massive, green skinned, clawed hand gripped the edge of it. Innumerable tiny coloured sparks followed it, and shot across the sky.

  At that point Julius joined in with the chorus of screams. It seemed like the only sane response to it all. Alex climbed back inside the car, and shouted for Julius to get in. Hearing his name snapped him out of the mass hysteria. Julius got into car, and buckled up his seat belt. Seeing Julius do it, and then glancing over at the car wreck, Alex followed suit. Alex turned the key and the ignition rattled, the engine refusing to turn over. “You've got be fucking kidding me!” Alex swore, banging the steering wheel in a fury.

  “Why'd you even turn the car off,” Julius hissed. “That's like the first rule of apocalypses, you always leave the engine running.”

  “Well excuse me for not thinking logically!” Alex yelled, trying futilely to start the car again. Unable to stand sitting in the motionless car any longer, Julius struggled to unbuckle his seat belt, and got out the car. He paced around the car, listening the townspeople, most of whom had worked there way down to moaning and sobs. One picked back up, working themselves into high keening noise, and Julius couldn't take it. “Would you all just shut up!” He screamed, loud enough to hurt his throat. “Your acting like it's the end of the world,” he muttered to himself. That sent him into a fit of hysterical laughter.

  Julius laughed so hard he fell down, and then laughed at that. He finally ended up flat on his back panting. The eye in the sky now had most of a face, and it wasn't pretty. Wet green skin, and two slits for a nose, its mouth was a jumble of tentacles. “Cthulhu?” Julius said, thinking of the twitter hashtag. He pulled out his phone, thinking to take a picture for posterity's sake. His phone was overheating and unable to unlock, almost to hot to hold, he held the power button. When that didn't work he opened up the back of the case, popping out the battery, and the sim card for good measure. A second eye hadn't made an appearance yet, and the dimensional tear in the sky seemed no larger. Maybe this wasn't the end of the world, he thought, just a new normal.

  Then one of the colourful sparks coming out of the breach started to grow bigger. Julius stood and looked to Alex, who was still trying to start his car. “Alex I think we need to get out here,” he said urgently.

  “What do you think I'm trying to do,” Alex angrily replied. The spark was starting to take form as a massive red skinned monster. It got closer, till it was maybe a few hundred feet in the air, then massive wings flared out and it slowe. The red glow faded, and its details grew clearer. It looked more or less like a classical demon, twelve feet tall, wings, a horned head, but with a tail that was more like a scorpion's than anything else.

  It landed on top of the crashed car, crumpling the roof and breaking the suspension, crushing the car into its wheels. It crouched slightly, and a tongue, at least five feet long, licked at the gore on the electrical pole. The demon's clawed hands tore at the body ripping out chunks, and shoving them into its open mouth. A mist of blood filled the surrounding air. Julius heard the engine of the car fail to start again, and looked up. He wished some miracle would descend from the sky, and save him. With everything wrong that was happening, surely something good would come to balance it out.

  In the sky Julius saw Cthulhu, and over its shoulder was a monster on the same scale as it. The being was something of a cross between a gaping maw of insanity, and daddy long legs spider. Julius tried to think of a better description for it, but his mind in self-defence refused to properly comprehend such a thing. Still, his eyes could see it, and some of its brown coloured legs were poking through the breach and flailing in the sky. One leg swiped across Cthulhu's eye, seeming to scratch it. In response Cthulhu let go of the sky. It's clawed hand turned in reverse, the joints moving in all the wrong ways, and punched the being right in the maw of insanity. It reeled back, disappearing from view.

  Julius looked back down, and saw the demon had finished its meal. Both its tongue and tail lashed angrily, it's gaze focused on him. Then he heard the car start, and it was such a sweet sound. He spun and opened the driver side door, not bothering to go around, simply leaping into the car. Alex tore off, with him half on his lap and half hanging out of the car. Julius crawled forward, and got into his seat, snapping his seat-belt on. Behind them, with a noise that dwarfed all the renewed screaming, the demon roared. The sound was so great that the back windshield cracked. They kept speeding along the road until the noise faded away. “We should pull over,” Alex said. “We don't want to be going...” There was a pause as he glanced at the speedometer. “One sixty if we run into another monster.”

  “Sure,” Julius replied. They started to slow when Alex yelled in pain, and pulled his phone out from his pocket. He flung the burning thing on the dash, and swatted at his smouldering pocket. Julius grabbed a half drunken, fast-food, soda cup, and dumped it on Alex's leg. They came a stop, and Alex hopped out rubbing his thigh. “I don't think I got burned to bad,” he called. Julius fished the owners manual out from the glovebox, and used it to push the flaming phone wreckage into the soda cup, which he threw out onto the road. “The battery must have exploded, my phone was overheating earlier. Probably something to do with that.” Julius gestured up to the sky, where Cthulhu's second eye was starting to form a shadowy shape.

  “Do you see that?” Alex asked, as several flashes of light exploded against Cthulhu, lighting up the sky. Mushroom clouds billowed out along the green skin and eye.

  “Do you think those were nukes? Well that's... Auspocalycius,” Julius said, but he was drowned out as Cthulhu's tentacled mouth quivered. It was a sound that made the demon roar sound like a kitten. It filled Julius's ears, mind, and soul, to bursting.