The ground trembled. The skies quaked. Forty-one calves were born with three heads and no legs. Whispers floated on the wind.
Gurg was coming.
Puddles reflected leaves on other trees from stranger places. Rabbits attacked wolves. The salmon swam upstream, then downstream, then slid into the riverbed and sank into the bedrock.
The great and powerful Gurg was there.
The clouds cracked, the dogs went silent, and a hundred cities were no more. Lands roiled and turned and boiled and died, and the world was a stranger.
The great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse had arrived some time ago.
But nobody seemed to notice.
***
At seven in the morning everyone woke up, got dressed, ate a thing, got in their cars.
At eight in the morning they were stuck in traffic.
At eight fifteen, the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse strode overhead, legs a league long, nine mouths screaming, ten nostrils flaring, and its endless eyes drowning in many flames. Four condos were drawn into its body to sate its bottomless urges; fourteen billion dollars in property damage done in its wake, and the foul stench that billowed at its heels drove thousands to the emergency room, or the early grave.
“It’s been a lousy morning,” admitted the mayor. “But we’ve put it behind us. We can adapt to this, and we’re tough people here.”
***
At noon, the beachfront was calm.
As everyone finished lunch, the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse strode into the sea and turned it to churning death. Boats sank, gulls cried, the world became a hellscape of water and tortured wind.
“There are allegations,” announced the second-wisest news channel host, “that this event could be connected to the alleged giant ravenous monster, Gurg, which reports claim is also known as the ‘blasphemous apocalypse.”
The wisest news channel host furrowed their brow at this and considered it with deep insight.
“No,” they said. “What if that wasn’t actually a thing?”
“Hmm,” said the second-wisest news channel host. “That’s a good point. I guess we need to consider that as well. After all, there’s a lot of different sides to this debate.”
At two-thirty the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse uprooted the entire news station and shoved it into its most fearsome orifice, shredding it instantly. The third-and-fourth-wisest news channel hosts maintained an attitude of cautious yet healthy skepticism, and warned against the dangers of alarmism.
***
By that evening, people in search of informed facts had trawled the entire internet. Much of what they had found was, according to standards, useless, but there was a sizeable slew of interesting photos and videos from Micronesia several weeks ago, where many citizens had recorded the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse annihilating the homes and businesses of their friends and relatives. In fact, several alleged that the monster had been steadily awakening there for over thirty years in an increasingly obvious state of agitation, its limbs gathering speed and strength as it clawed its way out from under the seafloor and into a waking nightmare of reality. The past six months were particularly dense with these allegations, which appeared to be growing increasingly annoyed that nobody was paying any attention to them.
“This seems like it could be true, or possibly bad, someday, if it were to happen to us,” pondered a few people, here and there. But their friends and neighbours weren’t so sure, and some of their in-laws were positive it was nonsense, so in the end everyone agreed to disagree.
***
By the following morning everyone had remembered that they probably had someone who could do something about anything that might happen or maybe not, and so word was dispatched to the presidential golf course to see if he knew anyone who could help.
“Help with what?” asked the President.
The President was informed that the great and powerful Gurg, also titled the Blasphemous Apocalypse, could very well be growing in strength at this moment in time, unless it wasn’t.
“I don’t know,” said the President. “That doesn’t seem real to me. I think you’re making this up.”
On the far side of the presidential golf course the great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse leaned down and violently shat out six tornadoes from its primary anus, eradicating all greenery within forty miles for all time.
“Bit breezy out here today,” said the President. “Go away.”
***
By week’s end, some people were, against their own will, common sense, and apathy, becoming slightly perturbed. The great and powerful Gurg the Blasphemous Apocalypse, if it actually existed – which it might not, after all – was acting like a real nuisance. The fields lay fallow and full of live infant mice; the factories were a riot of burning ectoplasm; the lakes were a-boil and the cities were a-buzz and there was a very real and present danger that some of the things that were happening might actually matter and/or exist. This was troubling, particularly to the younger people who had envisioned a whole life of doing something or other that wasn’t being squashed and eaten or transported into horrifying beings of flesh and pine.
“Best not to dwell on it,” was the general advice. “It can’t help and will only trouble you. Ignore Gurg the Blasphmeous Apocalypse – who may take decades to get around to impacting you – and focus on being happy.”
It wasn’t the advice anyone would have chosen, but it was the advice they’d got, and so it was taken and followed with diligence, and prudence, and indolence, and a hint – just the tiniest, the most ephemeral smidge – of existential fear.
***
A relatively short while later, the great and powerful Gurg, the Blasphemous Apocalypse, having swollen all out of insanity, eradicated the notion of notions, forcing all creatures on the planet to make prolonged and uncomfortable eye contact with it and thereby instantly destroying half of humanity utterly. Very little changed.