"It was all the ultimate apex nightmare,
made worse by the blasphemous tug of pseudomemory."

H.P. LOVECRAFT
The Shadow Out Of Time

Bekka stumbled from the stone gazebo in the park and fell to the grass. The odd coldness of the green blades denied the heavy heat that hung in the air, a steady pall. Her head spun as Bekka held her breath, looking to the sky. The clear skies over Valhalla, Texas were no longer golden as the morning first found them, but a peculiar gray. This alone stunned the girl of seventeen years, reminding her of the one time it snowed there when she was ten. If the edges of the sky were not bending down like the edges of a scroll, Bekka would have felt much better.

The tiny town was silent, as always, but every building seemed empty and soulless to Bekka. Not even the theater bustled with what should have been early Saturday traffic for the half-price matinee. Bekka peered up, transfixed by the one thing that assured her that this version of Valhalla was not her own. For if this empty husk of what had been was real, then she did not know if she could deal with it.

The blackness of a void crept around the edges of the sky, leering at her, making Bekka cognizant that it was surely a dream that she experienced. Unlike any dream she ever experienced before, this vision raged with vivid colors and filled her mind with dread. Fingers of sickly black peeled at the sky, like a man trying insanely to rip apart the parchment that structured existence was written on.

"It's all over!" a howling voice screamed from nearby, making her spin and spill the flowers that she picked. From their gathered up place in her blue shirt the flowers fell, scattering like a rainbow's colored prisms. When they touched the verdant grass, each radiant blossom turned a terrible gray. It was like once having met the earth their life sucked out, she mused, appalled and confused. The blood freezing tone of doom came to her along with a harsh, icy wind. Wildly staring and skin pricking in goose bumps from more than the sudden cold, she lay shocked in the wake of this faceless menace. "Repent for the end draws nigh!"

Getting to her knees, Bekka threw her long black hair over her right shoulder and looked at the park. The usually vacant recreational playground, devoted to the area Veterans of WW2, was filled with people of all kinds, people young or old, of all races, and some even looked like they were dressed in period costumes for a cheesy play. Her mind spun, knowing this was not true a few minutes before. Where did these folks come from? Her legs wobbled as Bekka stood and faced the man on the water fountain dressed in a dirty robe and sandals.

"Repent! All of you!" He howled. His filthy, scraggly beard wagged back and forth like a mangy mutt's tail as he waved scrawny arms into the wind with furious abandon. Bekka tried to deal with this new, bizarre development as the next moment the world ripped in two.

Steadying herself, she waved him off and tried to understand why so many different nationalities were suddenly in her hometown. Mostly, Valhalla was Caucasian save for a few Hispanics. All of these people present wore different colored clothes, types of dress and expressions. Confusion, fear, anger and shock paramount amongst them. One woman, dark of eye and exotically beautiful, wore nothing more than an angry expression as she strutted down the sidewalk.

Confusion reigned in Bekka's mind, and it registered to the raven-haired girl that not only was the darkness trying to peel off the top of the world, but also the very earth itself was transforming into something out of a surrealist's painting.

Abruptly, the trees jumped, wagging branches like a sad old man shaking his head at the state of the world. Their leaves exited the branches that clutched at them like a child holding a blanket when a monster tugged at the covers - No! It was the flight to the sky of a million brown birds. So many of them flew that the gray sky was almost blotted out. As they flew, she saw some of them shift into long lizard like creatures with flaming eyes and bat wings that slashed the air with membranous swords.

The blackness snared two of the birds from the sky with their panicked shrieks filling her ears. While they gasped, the dark gobbled them up like delicate candies. After a dozen nude black men with their bodies painted in esoteric designs ran past her waving spears, she tried to place what was so odd concerning these birds. One of them fell dead at her feet, smothered in the massive flock that rose to heaven. Its eyes glazed, but the same void color as the ever-encroaching chaos. Bekka grasped the bird, thought it a large pigeon. At least it was not one of those lizard-things. "Impossible," she gasped, an A+ Science student, recognizing the avian from the semester of environmental studies. "Passenger pigeons are extin - "

"Yes, you!" the wild man in the robe shouted as he clutched Bekka's shoulders and pulled her up. Eyes wide, she did not struggle. Looking into the man's bloodshot, frightened blue eyes, Bekka found them as deep and dark with insanity as the slithering world above her head. Saliva spattered her face and the man howled, "Repent you little bitch! It is the worse of times!" She shrank back in loathing of the terrible disorder that rose from him in a palpable stink.

Overhead the grumble of a 747 in descent filled her ears. Abrupt and loud, the plane crashed beyond the park, causing the ground to shake. Her eyes flitted to the boiling smoke plume that rose from the ground where the plane fell, and the faint scent of exhaust fumes met her nostrils. Slowly, it changed to the perfume of a thousand flowers.

Bekka, a tough girl, could not help but scream out. The bleary eyes of the crazed preacher could not hold her focus. This maniac could not obscure the parachuting men behind him, falling as tiny seeds carried on the wind. One of them, the last one to jump, was snatched up with a bloodcurdling scream like the birds that went before him. Soldiers in green landed by means of billowing white parachutes and wore perplexed expressions, until their chest erupted in blood founts of gore. Bekka looked to the bushes and spotted a man in a gray helmet, operating a machine gun, mowing them all down. He wiggled, slapping at things that she could not see, missing shots and hitting some of the people standing around innocently. Screams of terror and insanity rang through the air and blood spattered Bekka's cheek.

"Yes my dear!" the preacher foamed as he gripped her jeans by the front and breathed fetid breath on her face. "It is the best of times; it is the worse of times!" As he pressed his member to her leg and giggled, she saw a chariot carrying a Roman soldier collide with a 4 X 4 Chevy Truck, decapitating the Roman. His helmet rolled around irregularly with the sound of a kicked can until a tribe of pygmies used it for sport. "Best and worse of times, shit, it is all of them at once!"

She fought him, but the man's hold let go in an instant when his left eye erupted in a fount of blood, spraying her with hot, sticky death. Bekka heard the report of a gun at the same time and turned to see where it came from. A tall man on a brown horse adjusted his dirty straw cowboy hat and put a long barreled Navy Colt back into his right holster. This motion to his hip was performed with such an ease that suggested he had done it many a time. The suntanned man tumbled from his mount as a geyser of water shot out of the grass, taking off the left hind leg of the animal. The gelding's dying screams mingled inseparably from those of the people around her. With moderate grace, the big man rolled over and sprang up on his dusty boots. Bekka saw him look back at his horse, frown, but his emotions were soon changed. The waterspout flushed out into a full flood sweeping the injured animal away to their left.

"I..." Bekka said, looking around her at the chaos helplessly. She was tough but...she read a sign that was sprouting out of the ground, painted crudely. It was in old English, reading The Lamb and Hart. Briefly, she looked away and then peered back, her stomach dropping. It read the same thing. This madness was not a dream, then.

The cowboy in jeans and a tan shirt grabbed her by the elbow, tugged on his hat, and said, "I'm John. C'mon. Keep movin' sweetheart!"

They ran out of the grass of the park as lightning ripped across the darkening sky. The flashes of light twisted and curved in a way that no sane electricity would. But then, she thought bitterly, with a hysteric giggle, none of this place was sane. "I'm not your sweethe - " she started to say.

John turned his scruffy face to her and shouted over the death knell of a detachment of guards in red from Buckingham palace, all crushed under the tumbling trailer of a semi. A group of Eskimos were aghast and one vomited when a pack of wolves adhered to the bodies of the British guards. "Yer gonna gimme crap now? Wake up, honey child! Look around!"

Her eyes returned to the sky, seeing the edges of it peel and the corners again bend down. Bi-winged planes twisted and collided with stealth bombers, as a hot air balloon expired not unlike that of a child's burst toy. A cackle sounded, as deep and threatening as thunder as she saw the glint of obsidian eyes as huge as worlds from the void. "Is it the end?"

The cowboy chuckled, his breath smelt of tobacco, coffee and bad hygiene. Sun bleached blue eyes twinkled out from a mass of wrinkles that mapped hard times on his face. It was a kind face, but she kept waiting for it to erupt in a mass of blood and gore, or perhaps grow snakes like Medusa. "Sure looks like it is all comin' to an end!" He pulled her to one side of the street, avoiding a car wiping out a group of men in Arabic robes and facemasks. As soon as the car hit them, they exploded. One remained, trying to crawl away without the lower half of his body, cursing melodically. He slumped over a moment later, dead as some creature that looked amazingly like an oversized wolf with very large canines descended upon him, slavering.

"Armageddon? In Valhalla, Texas?" she stammered as a flock of Dodos hustled past. A small, quick flash by her eyes brought her attention to a scaly creature with a feathered crest, sharp claws and a stiff tail. It crooned, alien eyes staring at her. Ornithoraptor, she named inside her head dreamily.

He shrugged and grunted, "As good a'place as any!"

Falling from the sky were spirals of flame. After they hit the ground, Bekka saw a humanoid shape emerge from each one. The first proclaimed, "I am Kali and have returned!" Black hair tumbled down the horribly distorted female shape, burning eyes matching the crossed swords across her chest.

The next was a bizarre creature, human in shape but bearing several arms, shouting, "I am Shiva and I have returned!" The two deities looked at one another and grinned, pointed fangs in the female's face and a more benign smile in the other.

John looked at Bekka and pushed her away from a crowd of Mongolian raiders chasing topless Polynesian women. "I'd thought sure Jesus woulda shown up by now!"

Bekka groaned, "Give that up!"

John hauled her away from the street as two more flaming bodies fell from the sky, affecting the two triumphant gods. "I don't think you get it, sunshine!"

Her brown eyes returned to the previous self-proclaimed gods and the new arrivals. One landed beside Kali and puffed up his chest. This giant was white haired, wearing armor, an eye patch, a raven on each shoulder and wielding a spear. With no haste, he ran Kali through with the weapon and howled, "Odin the All-father has returned!"

Atop Shiva an enormous man flopped, knocking the multi-armed being down. As the red-haired giant arose, waving his hammer, Bekka faced John and spat, "What? Am I not taking the apocalypse well enough for you?" Thor thundered laughter when he saw the two mortals arguing and went to grappling with the arachnid arms of the Indian god. The stabbed goddess hissed and backed away from Odin, weaving her swords in front of her. Another flaming fireball fell and a tall, proud woman out of Grecian legends stood up, breastplate and helmet shining bronze. Bekka stared unabashedly at Athena.

John gripped Bekka's shoulders and shook her. "What's the last thing you remember today, hon?"

Bekka almost told him to go to Hell, but she was pretty sure the horde of bat-winged creatures riding wooly mammoths coming down Main street were from there. Hell wouldn't be much of a walk. "I was in the park and all this started!" The screeching creatures distracted her as they goaded the mammoths on. From Hell? They sure looked demonic enough.

John frowned and dodged a cobra, then punched a man in blue Union army dress in the face as he passed by. She looked at John in horror as the cowboy shrugged, wiping off blood and teeth on his jeans. "Damn Yankees. Sorry. Old habits die hard. Think hard hon."

It was surprising that I can think at all, she thought wryly. Her right hand went to her mouth. "The acid! The drug I took with Billy Donalds! Oh god! This is all a hallucination!" At least I hope it is. Bekka took out the other pieces of the tiny acid blots. On the tiny purple colored stamps was the face of Jesus Christ. "The purple Jesus acid! I - "

John pulled her against the wall of the bakery as the mammoths thundered on past, trumpeting. One bat-winged creature flew off his mount and faced them. John shot him three times in the chest and the beast fell. With a bewildered voice John said, "Funny thing is, I never run out of bullets!"

"It is all a dream!" she sighed half relieved. "Bullets couldn't affect a demon!"

John gave her a distasteful look. "I wish it were sweets. Ya see, I was droppin' peyote buttons with my bud over yonder...shit, I dunno when. What year is this?"

"2003!" she gasped, noticed the rough hand made shirt John wore. A terrible concept dawned on her, that this man was not from the country or a nearby ranch.

John laughed and shoved her away from the bakery. The weathered red bricks collapsed and a rather thin, oriental man tumbled from the sky and said, "Buddha has - " but his words stopped when the hammer of Thor split his skull in two. Bekka was puzzled because she always thought Buddha was fat. Athena grinned at the Norse god and they set to sparring over the broken corpse of Han, a darkness goddess, felled by Horus...who did not cotton to the looks Odin the All Father gave him.

"Damn, hon," John said as he ran with her from the madness. "That was freakin' over a hundred years ago when I did that. Shit, seems like a few seconds ago. Don't ya get it?"

She stopped and tried to catch her breath. "We are in the same drug dream? The same trip?" It seemed amazing to her that it could happen, but then, none of her trips had ever been like this. There was that time, though, with the purple slug ...

John took her chin in her hand and said, "Naw, sweetheart. We both just died the same way. Ever hear the theory that when ya die ya' know nuthin' and are accelerated to the last day on Earth?"

She shrugged and felt her stomach. "Well, I don't know...I feel alive! You mean I have to spend eternity in ... this?" she gestured wildly to the macabre circus that went on around her.

John nodded. "Ya look pretty good, too. But naw, that ain't it exactly. We ain't even seen what is next yet. I think we all gotta do it together! What I'm sayin' is..." he looked to the sky and Bekka saw it droop down as if the ceiling of a tent suddenly lost a pole. Atlas slumped; looking pissed, shrugged, and kicked a small, gray mammal out of the way. "...I think we are outta time!"

Bekka could not suppress the giggle that erupted at this massive understatement.

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