A pair of incomprehensible monstrosities lurked in the boundless 11th dimensional void.

HAS THERE BEEN PROGRESS? asked monstrosity A.

WHEN HAVE YOU EVER KNOWN ME TO CALL IDLY, replied monstrosity B. YES, I BRING WORD OF A PROPHECY... FOR YOUR EARS ONLY, AS IT WERE.

WE KNOW THE STAKES. WE SWEAR IT ON THE LINK BETWEEN US, IT WILL GO NO FURTHER. 

BUT ARE YOU PERMITTED TO SWEAR THUSLY?

WE MAY NOT BE A HIERARCH, BUT WE REQUIRE NO ONE'S PERMISSION.

VERY WELL. THE PROPHESY IS THIS: ON A SLEEPY DAY, ON A SLEEPY HILL, IN A SLEEPY TOWN BY THE FOOT OF CAYUGA, THE SPEAR WILL BE FOUND. 

YOU SAID ONCE THAT THERE WAS A CHANCE OF SUCCESS WITHOUT THE SHIELD, BUT NONE WITHOUT THE SPEAR. YES?

PRECISELY. BUT GREAT CARE IS NEEDED! YOU CANNOT ACQUIRE THE SPEAR UNTIL IT IS READY.

WE ARE THREADING A VERY FINE NEEDLE, OLD FRIEND. PLEASE CONTINUE TO KEEP US APPRISED. 

I KNOW. I SHALL.

Monstrosity A turned and began to float away in furtherance of other duties.

OH! AND ONE MORE THING. WATCH THE PLANET CLOSELY. BE MINDFUL OF... ELECTRICAL STORMS.

...

I had a strange series of dreams in the week before the Anomaly. Strange by normal human standards at least, strange to me at the time. 

I'd wake up with the sensation of something heavy pressing down upon me, rub my eyes, and see the demon lying on top of me. That wasn't the weird part. Some nights it took the form of a bearded incubus with big sexy horns; other nights a pert-breasted succubus with little fangs and a sleek tail; other nights, not woman or man, but an eldritch monster swimming with duplicate body parts and hybrid appendages. But that wasn't the weird part, either. I happen to be very queer and very into monster erotica. 

What's odd was in these dreams I had a big, beautiful penis, and the demon would be riding it, and I could swear it was my very own flesh. (Oh, and they always offered me orange juice.) Back in high school I'd had plenty of dreams where I had a dick. But I'd found a lot of community since then, especially here in gay hippy Ithaca. I had gotten pretty comfortable with the fact my dick was a rainbow-colored 7 inch silicone dildo. I'd learned to manage the dysphoria around having a front hole. I'd come to terms with my oversized clit, which had always been visually neither here nor there; and my little round breasts just about passed for man-boobs now after years of T. 

The night before the Anomaly, my sleep was deep and, to my memory, undisturbed. I’d chalked my dreams to a recent change in meds. It made sense they’d go away as I adjusted. Truth be told, there had also been a noticeable uptick in intrusive thoughts, but I was coping, and that night I was pleased with myself. I'd done everything I could to beef up my support system in the pandemic. Zoom calls with friends, my therapist once a week. And in a few days my BFF, Sid, was coming over, after an unfortunate delay due to covid exposure.

That day was an ordinary, quiet November day at the little farm on the snow-covered hill. I'd made a mutually beneficial arrangement to watch the farmhouse, since the Cornell campus was shut down for this semester and very likely the next. Zayde was weathering the pandemic at my sister's place in LA (another little piece of my support system was constant cute photos of my nieces on Snapchat), and what little work the farm itself needed this time of year was mostly left to contractors, who I didn't have to interact with. So it was quiet here, and it was quiet as a mouse down in East Ithaca, with the notable exception of the high-energy sciences laboratory. That lay a scant half-mile away at the foot of the hill. Coming back from my walk along the creek that afternoon, I could just hear the faint hum of transformers.

Because it was so quiet, it came as especially startling when it happened. I had just finished making dinner, tofu with black bean sauce, I think, so I was doing dishes right in front of the kitchen window. A blue flash in the periphery of my sight left a ghostly impression, and then a white flash. Every light in the house flickered, as I ran to the dining room to see what the hell was going on; an unearthly screech came ripping up the hill, followed by a BANG like a lightning bolt at close range. I made it to the big bay window.

The upper east wing of the lab was belching flames of an unholy crimson.

They danced hypnotically, and when I say that I do mean it. I must have zoned out for a couple minutes. Then I snapped back to attention; I could have sworn I saw a red streak fly away from the building, just then, in the direction of the woods south of here. It was already gone from the corner of my eye, though.

As I stood there alert but confused, a procession of emergency vehicles began to arrive. Fire trucks, then police, then SWAT, then a trio of unmarked black SUVs. The DoD protecting its research investments. In the half hour or so that I stood watching, they got the fire mostly under control. But those top two levels of east wing were donezo. At last I dragged myself away; it was time to eat my food before it was room temperature, and give Sid a call. This shit was unnerving.

I slept fitfully that night. No dreams of the demon, but plenty of dreams of crimson infernos, of me with different parts, extra parts, suffused with unearthly red aura, falling through holes in spacetime and drifting between far-flung worlds, where utterly alien creatures nursed unspeakable desires...

It was close to noon the next day when I finally rolled out of bed and into my signature gay-farmer overalls. I went about my routines in my quiet outskirt of my quiet town, but the absence of electrical hum out on the perimeter was surprisingly loud in my head. I felt dim and inscrutable foreboding.

Several hours, a delicious plate of leftovers and a generous dab later, I was huddled by the space heater upstairs, reading smut on the iPad. This was "date night" and I was determined not to let mere malaise stand in its way. I had the lights dimmed, I was wearing my dick with a small vibrator tucked in the harness pocket, and I was fucking my ass with a tentacle dildo I'd recently bought on Etsy, knees spread wide lying on my back.

You could say I have high standards. See, I used to believe I didn't deserve the lover I wanted, and it got me into a lot of un-fun situations. Homophobes, transphobes, chasers and all manner of lazy morons, put off by my jumbo sized clit, usually only interested in my front hole rather than me as a whole. I'd since realized that I am worth more, and besides, I can fuck myself a lot better than someone like that ever could.

Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten very far into the main event when I was interrupted by a crash from outside, from the general direction of the sheds. I tensed from surprise and the dildo shot out halfway to the end of the bed. I sighed, hurriedly threw off the hardware and threw on sweats, and ran outside with a flashlight. I figured it was wild animals trying to get into the storehouse. Wouldn't be the first time.

But when I got to the sheds, there was no sign anything had happened at all. Windows and doorlocks were intact. All was quiet. Too quiet. I came back around in sight of the house, and just then, I shuddered. Again I could've sworn something had streaked across my field of vision. I looked toward the house, and saw nothing. Yet something set my heart pounding fruitlessly against the walls of its cage.

I was alone. No one to see me act like a silly child, so I abandoned pretense and sprinted to the door.

Thirty yards, nothing.

Twenty yards, still nothing.

Ten yards… a diffuse red glow rose up out of the bushes. Conscious thought lagged behind, I was running on adrenaline and reflex. A moment later, I was at the door, throwing it wide, almost forgetting to shut it, slamming it, trying the lock, omigod why isn’t it locking, holy shit it isn’t shut all the way, holy shit there’s an arm in the door, a clawed hand shit shit shit…

I opened the door and slammed it repeatedly. Terrifying awareness began to seep in. The arm in the door broke off and clattered to the floor, and finally the door closed and the lock clicked.