Cthulhurotica by Cody Goodfellow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jennifer Brozek, Ahimsa Kerp, Carrie Cuinn, Gabrielle Harbowy, Don Pizarro, Madison Woods, Richard Baron, Juan Miguel Marin, Maria Mitchell, Mae Empson, Nathan Crowder, KV Taylor, Andrew Scearce, Constella Espj, Leon J. West, Travis King, Steven J. Searce, Clint Collins, Matthew Marovich, Gary Mark Bernstein, Kirsten Brown, Kenneth Hite, Justin Everett

would be taken from me, but I privately acknowledged that her unstable mood could be a sign of madness. She needed help but I knew not how to provide it.
    Fear led me to choose the path of making no choice at all.
    I set about my normal duties as best I could, working at the farm during the day, taking care of her in the evening. I did our laundry and attempted to be something of a cook as well, so that when we fetched food and supplies from town on the week’s end, no one would suspect our life together was out of sorts. I lived always in the hope that whatever madness had seized her would soon pass. It was a foolish endeavor though, for having worked later than usual one evening, I returned home to find the house totally empty. Fearing some ill fate had befallen my wife, I quickly searched the surrounding fields but with darkness fast approaching, I was forced to return home in search of a lantern. I ignored the house and went straight to rummage in the woodshed… it was then I happened to look up at the bedroom finding it brightened by the warm yellowness of candlelight. Mamie was lying sound upon the bed when I burst into the room; her hair spread upon the pillow, arms crossed to her stomach and a small but welcome smile playing upon her features. I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that she was safe. Perhaps I had been mistaken and she hadn’t left the house at all but was merely out of sight; in the basement perhaps, though I knew not why. But then I looked down and saw the dirt at her feet, her toes blackened with mud, the mess of it all staining the sheets upon which she lay.
    At breakfast the next morning I asked of her excursion but she seemed without knowledge of it and I quickly found that pursuing the matter only aggravated her. Unsure as to a reason for this new development in her behavior, I put it down to an act of sleepwalking, that absurd condition I had heard the good Dr. Armitage speak of. Thus decided, I tried to dispel the incident from my mind. As I passed Mamie her toast and jam I made a lewd remark about her nightdress being too dirty to wear at the dinner table, and was rewarded as my wife allowed me to remove it from her in a most charming fashion!
    Yet the following night unsettling events happened to raise my concern over Mamie’s wanderings. I was woken from my slumber by what sounded like the loud cry of an animal. I bolted upright and looking around the room found Mamie to be gone. Again the cry came, its sound piercing the cool night air, causing me to move to the window in an attempt to gauge its whereabouts. At first I could see little, yet as I stood with my vision straining against the darkness, the moon (which had previously been obscured by clouds) broke free from its cover. The brief incandescent sliver allowed me to take in a good view of the surrounding hills.
    For a moment I was unsure at to what I was seeing, or sure that light and shadow were playing tricks on my sight, but no; there above the peak of Sentinel Hill a vast silhouette was moving against the sky, its flank lined with uncountable appendages. I stood transfixed as the giant shape moved in a rhythmic motion to and from the ground as though in performance of some ritual. Then the piercing cry sounded again and the vision was gone, as quickly as it had appeared, swallowed by the arrival of the very clouds whose brief retreat had granted me sight.
    I remained motionless, unable to believe what I had witnessed, yet the animal sound continued to rise in volume for some time before finally extinguishing itself. The silence brought me to my senses and a sudden fear gripped me. Mamie was alone in the night. I dare not entertain the thought that she had fallen prey to the thing I had seen upon the hill, and only hoped that wherever her nocturnal travel had taken her it was far from the beast I heard sounding in the dark. I ran downstairs, this time grabbing a lantern before leaving the house, and holding it aloft I began