Chapter 1
Holes in reality, and the fun stuff that comes out of them.
The day began with a bang. OK, so not exactly a bang, it was more of a smash. Or a continuous series of arrhythmic smashes. Also, it was 2 am, so you can't say the day had begun exactly. Even though an argument could be made that a day begins at 12:01am, by 2 am it would be after the beginning by a good bit. Others however would argue that it was not day, but still night, and “the day” wouldn't begin for hours yet, when the sun came up. None of this mattered to poor Jack though, because when that strange noise began, he had been lying in bed, trying to sleep, like many people do at this hour.
Now however, Jack jumped out of bed. Or, it might be better said that he tried to. What actually happened was he startled awake, jumped up, still tangled up in a pile of blankets and promptly smashed into the floor, face first.
“Owwwwww. Fuuuuuuuuuuck” He groaned.
The banging noise from downstairs had changed. There was now something of a roaring element to it, and possibly an unintelligible screaming sound as well. Looking around the room Jack was disoriented; he didn't recognize this room at all; he worried that he might have a concussion from falling on the floor like that. Finally locating the door in the large unfamiliar room, he dashed out of it and half stumbled down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs the hall opened into a large open area. Slowly Jack's consciousness continues to boot up. Right, he thinks, he is at his uncle Randall's house. His great uncle Randall's house. His dead great uncle Randall's house. Bit by bit, Jack's somewhat meager reason came back just in time for it to be presented with something that defied that reason. In fact, it very nearly broke his reason into tiny little itty-bitty weeping pieces.
In the middle of the room was a large hole. A hole in reality. A bleeding rent in the very fabric of space and time. Probably. Standing, if you could call it standing, in front of the 12-foot-tall absence, was an eldritch abomination, a Lovecraftian nightmare of indescribable appearance. Granted, with time it could probably be described, but not at this moment by Jack, as his brain was still traumatized by its introduction to Randall's guest bedroom floor. Jack's brain simply refused to process the data its eyes were sending out. Jack's brain was grievously protesting its early morning meeting with the inside of Jack's skull when Jack's face likewise met with dead great uncle Randall's house's hard wooden floor. Maybe Jack's brain would function differently after Jack drank some coffee.
What Jack's brain did show him was the angry screaming man who appeared to be fighting the shambling mound of tentacles and mouths, seemingly floating in midair. On closer inspection, the man wasn't floating, hut lifted into the air. Held, really. By a black and purple tentacle, the size of a human thigh. Coincidentally, it was also currently wrapped around a human's thigh. The human thigh of the angry screaming man. The screaming man did not seem happy about it. Neither did his sword, which was also screaming, in a very non-sword-like way. Jack thought this was understandable, as the sword was on fire, and Jack was convinced that if he was alight with greenish fire also, that he would very likely also be screaming.
Jack stared, an open mouthed and drooling moron, as the large muscular man continued quickly and skillfully swung his sword at the tentacles flying all around him. Drops of blood and mucous and other unsavory things flying off both sword and tentacles streaked through the air, covering the walls, floors and half-destroyed ceiling of dead great uncle Randall's living room with what looked like the collaborative work of Jackson Pollack and Jeffrey Dahmer.
With a blindingly fast strike from a comparatively small sword, the monstrosity was pushed backwards, into the gaping hole in the fabric of space. The strange man's sword flew forward again, but this time it hit the edge of the abyss, which wobbled and flashed, and then rapidly collapsed, shrinking so fast that it sheared off the tentacles still sticking out of the nothingness, including the smaller tentacle still wrapped around the now exhausted looking, now non-screaming man who, no longer supported by the obscene tentacle monster, fell to the floor. For a moment, the room was eerily quiet, seemingly more so due to the incredible noise from moments ago. Then an explosive bolt of lightning flashed from outside through the windows, followed immediately by a thunder so powerful it shook the house and rattled the windows. It appears that a storm had been brewing while Jack had been asleep. A glance out of the picture window, a glance that before had been blocked by a ten-foot-tall malignant Hentai centerfold-of-the-month, showed nothing. Not literal nothing, as Jack had seen through the “hole” a few moments ago, but instead of an outside, what jack saw was a roiling white wall, occasionally lit by distant, and not so distant flashes of light.
“Lightning during a blizzard?” Jack said to nobody in particular. Because it is a tradition in Maine to talk about the weather after seeing unspeakable horrors. And Jack was nothing if not traditional. So, speak of the weather he would. And while he properly participated in this age-old ritual, his newfound guest was not a local and instead of the traditional response of 'uh-yuh' he instead babbled incoherently instead while trying to open a bottle of pills one handedly. And failed miserably. Then the nameless man's eyes rolled back into his head as he slumped over, seemingly unconscious.
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It is at this point that Jack's brain began processing the last few minutes and came to a conclusion. Jack has a guest, and Jack hasn't offered him a beverage. Jack is a bad host. So, he walked into the kitchen and retrieved an unopened case of beer from a shelf that appeared to have no other purpose than to hold cases of beer. Unusual perhaps in the average American home, but quite common in the homes of those living in northern Maine.
“Right. Unconscious. Here you go, man.” Then Jack poured out the beer on him.
It should perhaps be noted that Jack was not well at the moment. Despite being raised as a 'Mainiac,' which is what people from Maine are called, he had some issues. For instance, Jack was afraid of a lot of things, the dark being one. Which is why every light in the house was on, even while he slept. Jack was terrified of waking up and not being able to see where he was, which is ironic because this morning he awoke to a well-lit room, but still had no idea where he was. It was further ironic that upon reaching the living room that the also well-lit room only served to show Jack what darkness truly looked like, in the form of a terrifying gaping hole in reality. Or was it maybe out of reality? Though it is worth mentioning that what with everything else going on, Jack had failed to be terrified of the lightning storm, something that had turned him into a gibbering wreck since he was sixteen years old. That was the day that he and... err... Nope. That he had been struck unconscious and smoking by lightning. He alone. There definitely wasn't anybody else there when that happened. Jack's brain was adamant on that fact.
Over the years many people have made fun of Jack because of his “irrational fear of the dark”, which is ironic, because if the room had been dark when Jack entered it, he would not have seen the giant gap in space or the Brobdingnagian monstrosity reaching through it, and he might now retain the bulk of his sanity. So, needless to say, Jack's current behavior is, to a degree, perfectly reasonable. For a half-crazy Mainiac. Well, technically not crazy, not anymore anyways. That is what the Doctors at the Institute had said anyways; that He had been 'cured' and that his series of complex delusions and 'false memories' had likely been created by his inherited Pararibulitus flaring up from the lightning strike and the subsequent months he had spent in a coma. Jack wondered what they would say now, if he tried to explain these last few minutes. Probably nothing good for Jack, and it would likewise probably result in another 'forced vacation' in the rubber mansion.
The tentacle, wrapped around his new friend's leg and torso still pinned his arm to his side, and it hadn't relaxed completely after being sheared off. It throbbed and pulsed a bit when the beer made contact with it. No wonder these things are so popular in Hentai. Disgusting. Deciding that his new buddy probably wouldn't like a big nasty tentacle thing all trying to get up in his business, Jack began peeling it off him.
About halfway through unwinding it, Jack found a hidden surprise. There are eyes and teeth all over these tentacles and in removing the tentacle Jack accidentally impaled himself. Pain blossomed in his hand, a fiery burning that threatened to travel up past his wrist. Jack just poured beer on it and kept going until the entire nasty, throbbing, homophobia-inducing nightmare was coiled up in a bloody slimy mess of a pile beside Jack. That's when Jack saw the bottle of pills on the floor and he remembered that this guy had been trying to open them but hadn't managed it. The bottle was much easier to open with two hands, something he made note to mention to his new friend later, and Jack had no trouble pouring all but one of them down his rudely unconscious friend's throat. Then Jack poured some beer down the man's throat, washing the wad of pills down with the rest of the beer. Because medicine tends to work better if you take it with beer, this being common knowledge to those from Maine. Taking the last pill himself, Jack hoped it would take the sting out of the puncture marks on his own hand, though Jack swallowed it dry, as he really didn't enjoy the taste of beer very much. That didn't stop him from drinking it though, when the occasion warranted it.
Jack went upstairs to the master bedroom, which unsurprisingly now sported a large section of missing floor which looked down into the destroyed living room, and quickly packed up a pile of medical supplies and bandages. Good thing old great uncle Randall had all kinds of medical issues, thought Jack. Or at least it's good for this guy, maybe not so much for great uncle Randall. It never occurred to Jack that these weren't the usual type of medical supplies one tends to find in the master bedroom of a nonagenarian, or any old guy, really. These were Army medical supplies, the sort that would be common in a field hospital on an active front. And they were all brand new, never having been used, or even opened. Jack couldn't have known any of that though, because the Army doesn't let 'nut-jobs' join. OK, to be fair, it actually does, but only when the Army doesn't actually know that those people are 'nut-jobs.' Also, to be fair, as soon as it recognizes that said soldier is a 'nut-job,' they are politely dis-invited from the Army.
Washing off the bloody wounds from his guest's groin to his neck with beer, Jack then carefully wrapped and bandaged every one that he could find. If Jack had been in his right mind, he might have wondered at how very little blood was leaking from those wounds, however he wasn't, and he didn't. And when he finished his boy scout-inspired first aid, he sat down, in a pile of junk which last night had been a leather sofa and a coffee table, and started rooting around until he found what he was looking for: his cigarette case.
Inside the fancy leather wrapped metal case, half of his cigarettes were covered in disgusting multicolored fluids, blood or whatever gross stuff leaked out of tentacle monsters, but the other side of the case was still good. Throwing out the contaminated ones, he took out a cigarette, lit it with the book of matches, and looked at the fat joint he brought in case of emergency. Well, if being at the scene of a desperate battle between man and the Things Man Was Not Meant to Know didn't count as an emergency, then really, what did? Jack then smoked that joint as if his very sanity depended on it. And it was lucky that he did, because as he will come to find out, his sanity did depend on it. Finally somewhat relaxed after the most harrowing ten minutes of his life, Jack leaned against the living room wall, and promptly passed out.