When Phil finds an otherworldly squid in his basement, he knows who to call: the Cthulhu Helpline. Lucky for him, N’larshthog, his customer service rep, is very experienced with this sort of manifestation. Learn the fate of the squid and how Phil really feels about tentacles in this slightly risque tale of the Lovecraftian mythos.
“The Squid That Came to Phil’s Basement” was originally published in Space and Time Magazine. I knew then-editor Hildy Silverman was a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos, as am I, but instead of submitting a straight Lovecraft pastiche I gave it a comedic twist. After appearing in the magazine, it eventually became one of my early experiments in self-publishing when I put it out as an e-book single. It’s now included in my short story collection The Sad Rains of Mars. The excerpt below is the opening scene of the story.
The Squid That Came to Phil’s Basement
The thing in the puddle in his basement stared at Phil. Phil clamped his hands over his ears, but the thing’s mournful wailing passed through his soul like an icy wind in the trees. His legs had been shaking when he reached the bottom step, his hand clenched on the railing. He’d followed the terrible lamentation down from his bedroom, expecting to find some crazy homeless person had broken into his house. Breathing fast and shallow, smelling an odd tang of salt in the air, he had lowered one slippered foot to the basement floor, expecting the firm feeling of concrete, not a soft splash. Oh, great, he had thought. The basement’s flooded. Was that all it was? Could that be the source of the sound, spraying pipes, a malfunctioning water heater? But as he stepped down with his other foot, something yielded beneath his weight, like stepping on a rubber hose. The dreadful sound increased in pitch, and something moved slimily along his ankle. “What the—” He caught a glimpse, a blur of color, something that he couldn’t quite focus on. He blinked and shook his head, disoriented. For a moment he seemed to see it directly, a writhing mass of tentacles, coiling and uncoiling, distending and shrinking, a moist knot of flesh tying and untying, and above the tentacles an eye, an unblinking eye the size of a softball, a giant pupil dilating into an unnatural shape as it focused on him. Phil turned and stumbled up the stairs, his soggy
slippers falling from his feet, a viscous smudge on his ankle where he’d been caressed by a cold tentacle. . . .
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