The cosmos. Incommensurably and unfathomably vast, and yet familiar for want of experiences extraneous to it. Although we may never sound its furthermost reaches, if of furthermost we can speak at all concerning an entity which may be unbounded, nor learn of all its evolutions and vicissitudes through aeons untold, there is nothing we know and cherish that was not wrought within its bountiful domain, where we ourselves run the course of our limited yet all-encompassing lives. Nothing has ever touched our knowledge that was not born of the very universe we tread within, and which permeates all there might be rightly said to pertain to our existence. We are one with its being, its matter and its form, and it was it which taught us that all things are or are not - that there are voids of cold and darkness, barren of all which we conceive to be bound with our living world, and that likewise there surround us countless multifarious wonders of substance. The cosmos is all to us - our cradle, our grave, our home; and yet...

...And yet, the cradle and the grave would not be such were there something which is not a cradle or a grave, even though their tenants be unaware of it; and that which is all to us may not be all, or, indeed, be at all, to something which is itself not us. To every home there is a stranger; and, however immense the cosmos might be, the mind struggles to rid itself of the ever-returning interrogative of what there is beyond its limits, whether it have any or not. An idle question, it might appear, and mayhap it is so; yet its persistence is as unyielding as curiosity itself, and as curiosity reckless. For it might be that certain things it is not meet for a dweller of the universe to light upon other than in conjecture, if even thus: for if one thinks overlong of the abyss, it can so happen that the abyss think back.

Amidst the palely gleaming suns of distant galaxies, untroubled by the placid grinding of the celestial spheres, the void hovered in its quintessential nonexistence, no shard or speck of astral detritus drifting to mar the absolute perfection of its inmost nature. A stillness unbroken for epochs beyond reckoning hung over the expanse rent by wandering rays of light, its ever-shifting confines flowing at tremendous speed unperceived, yet perpetually frozen in a curious regularity of demarcation. Patterns ephemeral and inconceivable wove themselves in a matter of instants and dissolved just as suddenly, their vortices of generation and renewal seemingly chaotic, yet in truth governed by laws so ancient and fundamental that their origin could scarcely be even guessed at by the cognition of the flitting motes of vitality which peopled certain sparse nooks of this grandiose design. The cosmos lived and breathed in this strange regularity, its motions seeding the shapes of matter with new variations, and in turn by them revitalised and given structure and purpose. The universal cycle thrived in its own circularity, and with it all that was contained therein thrived also.

Anon, there seemed to come a subtle change over the scene. An unseen shadow flitted over the still radiance of the far-off stars; the flight of the spheres grew infinitesimally slower with anticipation; the great rhythmic patterns pulsed interrogatively, almost stopping in their tracks. Moments or ages, which was all one in the shifting immutability, swept by; then, there was something. One could not say whether it had come as an encroaching advance, or had been as abrupt as the incineration of a dying world, nor if it was indeed there, or that was a mere reflection of something galaxies away, nor, indeed, what it was; all that was certain about it, if certainty could there be, was that it was where nothing had been, and, indeed, should have been. The void was no longer void, and yet, through some suspension of its inmost principles, it remained void, and such a suspension was dreadful to imagine. All the while, there was no presence or entity to fill it; all there was was an emptiness which was empty no longer.

Then it came. A distortion given shapeless form, undulating as a stellar ocean of aethereal taint, spreading ravenously as a tumorous growth festering on incorruptible regularities. Welling from the abnormality of the defiled void in cacophonic silence, an un-thing which could not have been, for no language, conceivable or not, could have expressed its modality of transcosmic being-without-being, clutched with concave, curvilinearly angular extensions at the heat of stars and the shadows of drifting planets to pull its mass, or rather its conspicuous lack thereof, through a gateway which could not have been opened, for it did not exist. Its impossible presence grew with such rapidity that there could be no mention of speed in a thorough, if futile, attempt to describe it, enshrouding increasingly vast fractions of infinity, till it could have been apparent that the absence of any limits was yet a limit too harsh for its tremendous expansion to suffer. The Un-Thing's immobile forms writhed in quiescent frenzy, reaching for depths of dimension the cosmos could not have, and shaping them where they failed to find them. Though it could not be otherwise than satiated, it craved more - more of what was beyond all, yet, failing that, of all itself. And all the while, the torn, mangled shreds of the universe's patterns no longer sang, but, shrinking from a hunger which could not be sated for it never could have been there, murmured in unutterable, crushing dread one thing, and one thing only:

The Outsider is within.

A tuft of hair began to poke into one of her eyeballs again. She should get to trimming them, eventually. But they were just the right amount of pointy. What to do, what to do. Jo was facing quite a dilemma. She made an attempt to get off of her bed and clear her head. Nada. Too tired from the night before, and a tad too hungover as well. The aimless bouncing that resulted from her futile attempts at getting up was enough for her to give up all efforts on being the least bit productive this day. Or evening. Instead, she stretched her limbs, a pleasant sensation that almost made her forget the complete glitch of an ailment that was the booze-flu, and remained in a position that kind of looked like crucifixion. Arms stretched to the sides, expression of profound agony and all. Fumbling about on her covers, and making involuntary snow angels while she was at it, she recalled fragments of previously transpired events with a mixture of amusement and "oh fuck why".

The bruises weren't helping her relax either. With each small movement, stinging pains coursed through her low back and arms. A fight? Who knew. Her stomach wasn't bothering her that much though, but it was bound to once she decided to lay gut-down. Boy, she was a mess alright. Miraculously enough, the sudden realization that not even staying in bed could help, became the jolt needed to raise her from the ever-so comfy black hole. Rolling and practically falling out of her bed, she quickly gathered herself and adjusted her tank top with jittery motions. Scanning around an elegantly messy room, she retrieved a military-style jacket with a white, fuzzy collar and hastily put it on as she left her bedroom. She loved that goddamn jacket so much, by the way. It had a savage-meets-action hero sort of feel to it that just clicked with her on a spiritual level. Passing from a cramped kitchen, she downed a few good gulps of coffee (brewed in god-knows-when b.C.) straight from the pot, before unlocking a shoddy door and pausing for a moment to smell the fresh air.

By the time she reached Phil's Phantaseum, the sky had began to darken in color, and clouds amassed above the town. Despite feeling like hell, she was not below enjoying the pleasant sensation of a winter's Friday afternoon. The streets were somewhat empty, somewhat sleepy, with the few remaining drivers probably returning to a warm home from their nine-to fives. Days like these, the town seemed like it was readying for bed. It was oddly charming, and Jo was glad she was instead awake. The crisp air was doing its' job well, and she was already feeling more, well, not energetic, but functional. Jo pressed her hands and face against a glass door that was, just like most of the shop's display, covered from the inside, with colorful posters of obscure decade-old movies and games to a ridiculous degree, and forming a fist, bashed against it several times with zombielike repetitiveness, threatening its' already questionable integrity.

"Hey. Hey, Phil. Open up."

Silence. She bashed it again, harder, and finally a fierce voice replied, muffled by the distance and perhaps a closed door.

"Who is it? We're closed goddammit!"

"It's your girlfriend, Phil. I'm here to rescue you from a life of crippling loneliness and tentacle p-"

A continuous whumping sound grew louder as the store's owner drew closer, presumably knocking down all sorts of shit in the process. A somewhat plump, bearded face with rosy cheeks greeted her behind a half-opened door.

"Hey! What's up Jaws! -Jesus Christ, you look like shit. Ya sick or something?"

"Worse." Jo blurted out with disgust. "Hungover."

"At it again, huh? Well, come on in, I've got just the thing for that."

The door's hinges let loose a soft, drawn-out screech as the chubby man opened it all the way. He shortly retrieved a small remote and lowered a revolving steel door that slowly began to cover the display as his guest headed for the usual room in the back before looking around for anything new. The Phantaseum's interior was perhaps messier than its' exterior image, with shelves and tables full of mismatched game cases, comic books, action figures, other memorabilia and even VHS tapes. Despite being somewhat roomy, the sheer amount of stuff within, the walls covered with more posters than the glass panes and perhaps that one Slayhammer panorama in the middle made the space feel smaller than what it actually was, though not claustrophobic. Rather, the atmosphere more closely resembled that of an oversized pillow fort.

Having settled in the dimly-lit back room, an even smaller space containing nothing notable other than two couches, an aged television, a coffee table, a laptop and a great stack of cardboard boxes, the two friends finally began catching up. It had been a while, after all. Pushing aside a couple of pillows and blankets, that signified the back room also served as a crude living space, Phil reached out and gave a hearty pat on Jo’s shoulder.

“So, how you been, J-”

“Ah, shit! Don’t touch me there, I think it’s bruised.”

“That good, huh? So, ya managed to do anything with the job thing?”

Jo only responded with staring at the concerned burly man, and, shuffling on her seat, uttered a disheartened “Nah.”

“Aw, fuck dude. I wish I could give you something to do here, but I’m barely scraping by as it is-”

“It’s alright, Phil, I know.”
“Y’know I’d literally have nothing to-”

“Fuck, man it’s fine!”

Jo raised her hands in frustration, followed by a short chuckle.

“Alright, alright. Anyways, I may have something to, uh, help with your pain.”, Phil commented, a sly grin forming on his face. She immediately responded, more surprised than anything.

“Jesus, man, I’ve only been here for, like, five minutes.”

Phil simply stared back at her, immobile, the same grin etched on his face.

“Fine.”

Soon enough, the room was filled with smoke, the last rays of the sun carving parallel lines from a small, half-closed windows’ shutters, the former placed near the ceiling. Even though she did not admit it, this whole thing was exactly what she needed. Not just the stash, though it was most certainly a nice bonus, but a simple, laid-back good time with an old friend. They laughed like mad, they caught up, Phil shared his recent love life disasters, Jo made fun of them. And just when they were halfway through some nonsensical Webm clip, Jo felt a large, genuine smile forming on her face. She ran her hand through the thick cloud wafting gently through the room, and for the first time in a while, she had an almost crystal-clear thought.

And at the same time, in some faraway corner of the cosmic spheres, another being, sitting upon an impossibly massive throne, made the exact same motion. The entity's’ hand, clad in gleaming golden armor, clawed through the Mists of Scrying, and surprisingly enough, it observed the unfolding scene with great fascination.

Surrounded by swirling, ululating vortices of frozen silence, the Un-Thing leapt and devoured, folding astronomical distances in tides of sweeping growth and extinguishing star after lightless expanse in jagged coils of translucent, strange-hued darkness, replete with disjoined intersecting parallel shapes. Crackling discharges of raw force sizzled at the edges of the crumpling infinity that was being reduced by exponentially increasing fractions as it, ever boundless, was hemmed in and mangled by the encroaching pestilential, alien nonexistence-that-was. As the churning void advanced, it seemed to take shape, its indescribable features lengthening and smoothening into forms recognisable as something resembling a product of an universe which might once have been this one; yet, at the same time, a degenerative evolution gripped and wracked its entire informity, preserving even the least of its foully unworldly traits in static transformation. There was nought that could have withstood its immobile onslaught; not the brightest stars, nor the darkest awning gaps in the fabric of matter, nor indeed the invisible yet formidable irradiations of uncountable toxic galaxies could so much as delay the haste which was a delay unto itself.

At a point in time, or space, or both, which might have been soon or never, the abnormal intrusion had consumed, in a frenzied bid to assuage the absence of its hunger, its way to reaches which, if observed from a vantage point higher than the greatest eminence in a space where dimensions were uncertain and there was, in truth, no actual concept of above or below, might have seemed vaguely familiar to someone hailing from a spot in endlessness ever so distantly related to the environs of that which we are accustomed to calling our home. No time passed, and the foremost distortions of immateriality drew ever near. Clusters of suns too vast for their numbers to be counted within the collective lifespan of entire species flickered out in the twisting maelstrom of the bloated, insatiable aberration’s relentless stillness; the emptiness grew slanted, celestial bodies rolling down its smooth inclination into the chasmal rise expecting them, or indeed crawling forth to seize them as they ascended. A few more glimmers of eternity, and that space was no more. Before the enormity’s faceless visage, or above and below it, there lay a many-dimensioned expanse; and somewhere there, almost too insignificant to be mentioned, was the very core of the cradle of the feeble, grasping consciousness we know as our own – an Earth among myriads of earths. Omniscient in its obliviousness, the Un-Thing gathered its nought over what was but a splinter of its unsought prey, looming as an invisible threat fearsome to behold, then, at the same time, came rushing forth in paradoxical decay of motion, clutching at yet-new things to absorb and unmake in a momentous, cosmos-shaking impact…

---

Tiriliriling-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-

Sieben Uhr.

As a brief burst of triumphal music blared through the room, followed by the enthusiastic voice of an announcer who apparently delighted in bringing to the expectant ears of the nation the daily share of mostly dismal global novelties, something vaguely recognisable as an arm draped in tangled bedsheets stirred in the nigh-formless darkened heap that was the bed. Reaching falteringly for the bedstead, the appendage groped its way over the simil-wood surface, did not, to all evidence, find what it sought, and disappointedly withdrew. Soon afterwards, an indistinct figure rose from where it had sunken, clumsily stretched its sleep-numbed limbs, and shuffled towards the centre of the room with an audible yawn, followed by a sound akin to “och”. Having remained still for a few moments as if in indecision, struggling with the last shreds of somnolence besetting its mind and body, it finally struck upon a shambling course for the window, and, grunting, drew open the blinds. The dim, grey light of a winter morning flowed into the room, banishing the previously sovereign darkness to its customary haunts in the nooks and corners, and washed over the now almost-awake figure, who stood, transfixed, before the gleaming rectangle in the wall marred by its weathered paper coverage. Thus, with pale sunlight on his drowsy features and with some pop song whose only quality was being forgettable in the background, did Johannes Schmidt greet the new day.

Having satisfied his need to gaze into the luminescent void for a few moments to bring himself a step closer to a functioning condition, Hans headed resolutely towards the bathroom. Daily ablutions completed, he threw a glance at the mirror hanging over the washbasin. If confronted with that very sight, anyone else would have observed a set of features so unremarkable as to be almost an exemplar of the modernistic era (to say nothing of the postmodern undertones) which had been inconspicuously smuggled into the world by such figures as Leopold Bloom, Giannini’s Uomo qualunque and their ashen-clad ilk and clung to it as persistently as stains to cutlery, and felt their gaze involuntarily slide off it, lacking anything well-defined enough to which to cling; all that Hans himself saw, however, was that he fortunately did not need to shave yet. Bolstered by the cleansing effect of water upon his features, he returned to the illuminated bedroom, his steps hastening as he grew increasingly conscious of the fact it was a Friday morning and he ought to be on his way to the Straßenbahn stop by half-past seven at the latest. As the radio continued to drone on, interspersing fragments of suitably generic music with the humming of news and weather forecasts, he donned with practised motions one of an indefinite series of sweaters of the hue of rat fur, along with the necessary complementary articles of similar colour, and proceeded to the kitchen.

Mechanically filling his stomach with whatever produce it was he had previously arranged in convenient positions, Hans alternated between savouring the anticipation of the week’s approaching end and distractedly intercepting snippets of radiophonic announcements. Fluctuating currency rates, neither stable enough to be reassured, nor varying wildly enough to be truly concerned; conflicts in some distant part of the world no one over here truly paid any heed to; succinct accounts of the supposed intricacies of foreign politics; in brief, the usual. He wondered why he kept using the thing at all instead of buying a proper alarm clock, but that consideration, briefly flashing through his mind as a stray comet, was rapidly drowned by calculations of clock prices, evaluations of the morning broadcast programme as an awakening influence, and a creeping certainty that it was not worth the while and he would not do it anyway. Finally, just as some sort of hip-hop monstrosity was about to begin, Hans reached over and deftly flicked a button upon the garrulous plastic box, silencing it for the week, cast an apprehensive glance at the wall clock, slid into his coat and shoes, just as unsightly as the rest of his attire, and, without so much as a deep breath, pushed the hallway-corridor door open and stepped beyond the threshold. The new day had begun.

The being sprung up from his throne, and the mountains surrounding it trembled. Leaning back a head that poked above the nebulae that stretched ever upwards from his domain, he parted the lot of them above from where he stood with nothing but an intense stare, and gazed upon the myriads of shimmering stars of a world beyond, yet at the same time adjacent to his own. After a few moments of wary scanning, the folds and tatters of his astral cloak writhed and flailed in rage, yet his jaw, dry and bony as it was, remained still. No words escaped him and he remained frozen, staring up at cosmic horizons. His gauntlet, the only other thing emerging from the mass of midnight sky wrapped around an inscrutable body, clenched and trembled in fury of a different kind. This was the wrath of a being who had, not in the uncountable millennia of its' existence, seen anything so potentially destructive and so absolutely alien as this travelling through the mortal universe.

Quickly, he returned to his seat again, and the mountains shuddered a second time. The peaceful clouds above had turned from their usual glowing reds and blues and light greens to a deep purple, the gaping hole in them twisting and widening and spiraling above the being. Perhaps it was an omen, all too literal, for a storm to come. He dismissed the now inert mists of scrying with a sharp wave of the hand. As they spiraled into invisibility and sunk back into the pool from which they came, the giant settled, spoke, and lightning followed his words, illuminating the ever-darkening valley.

"Im-Ou-Thas."

A few hours, or what we as humans would consider hours in such an place, passed, and from the mouth of a small canyon in the north, connecting the basin with whatever lay beyond, four tiny riders approached. Though covered in gauze and ancient bronze plate, they seemed almost weightless, as their steeds, similarly equipped, zipped through the valley with unnatural speed. The one leading the charge was thinner than the rest, and far less armored, only donning an ornate cuirass and the garments of a priest. His name was indeed Imouthas, and even after untold centuries, he still felt restlessness at the sound of his master’s call, although the pride that came along with it was now all but absent, and instead replaced with a creeping unease. From the moment he was called, he knew that something was not quite right.

The riders turned their bandage-wrapped heads skywards, and for a brief moment, marveled at the sight of the being approaching them. Not quite walking, not quite floating, it shrunk with every step. By the time it had reached them, it was no taller than a pine, yet it’s form was in every way unchanged. While the three guards had turned their gaze to the ground in solemn acknowledgement, Imouthas remained fixated on his master’s form, silently waiting for instructions.

”Peril comes. We must make them remember.”

Though the phrase was vague, Imouthas knew what it meant, and he could not help but be taken aback at the implications. Up until this moment, the severity of the matter eluded him.

”I am not one to needlessly doubt, great one, but even if the mortals can be made to remember, should they? They are too preoccupied with life within their concrete ziggurats to properly grasp what they once had mastered. The old ways and the knowledge that comes with them could wreak havoc on their world! They would undo themselves, of that I have no doubt.”

The being remained silent for a few moments.

”You are wise, Imouthas. And this is why I seek your counsel. It seems then that we must exercise subtlety.”

He motioned, and a small misty tendril circled around the rider and crept into his palm. He felt it getting dense, solid, but, still hanging from the being's words, he did not break eye contact.

”If we cannot reveal ourselves, then let us be found.”