Alex Lee Martinez - Gil's All Fright Diner

"Pretty sure."

He revved the engine. Steaming fissures cracked the parking lot. The massive tentacles of Frush'ee'aghov thrust through the earth. A writhing wall began sprouting in front of Gil's All Night Diner.

Earl mashed the accelerator while a gap of opportunity remained. The pickup's wheels spun. The truck didn't move. A glance in the rearview mirror showed a gray tendril holding the truck by the tailgate.

"Goddamn it!"

Earl pushed harder, but the pedal was already all the way down. The engine roared. The truck stayed put.

"We're not going to make it!"

Cathy jumped from the cab and hopped in the bed. She brought down her bat on the tentacle's tip. Frush'ee'aghov didn't even notice. Blow after blow after blow accomplished nothing.

"Damn it, let go! Let go!"

Rusted hinges surrendered to opposing forces. The tailgate bent and snapped off. The pickup shot forward, rocketing toward the shrinking hole in the barricade and the unholy temple behind it.

"You're persistent," Tammy mused. "I'll give you that."

Duke was a bloody mess, barely able to keep standing. Organs spilled from a tear in his side. He held them in with one hand, using the other as a third leg. Ragged, wheezing breaths slipped from his throat. His right leg trembled. A jagged bone poked from his left thigh.

Tammy flicked her finger at him. A new cut slashed across his muzzle. She waved her hand, and five cuts tore into his already thoroughly serrated flesh.

"I'm beyond death now. Beyond the pathetic mortal speck I was, and very soon I'll take my place beside the old gods." She gently cupped his muzzle and raised his head to look into his eyes. "I like you, Duke. You were the one thing I desired I could not have when I was but a child. And even though you could not kill me, you gave it a good try. I respect that. I respect you." A long, red tongue darted from her lips and licked his nose. "That's why I'll offer you this. Join me. As I sit by the new masters of the world, you shall sit by my side. What do you say?"

He spat out a glob of phlegm, vomit, and blood. "Fuck you."

"Have it your way. I could kill you, but I wouldn't dream of denying you the honor of witnessing my ascension to glory."

She slapped him to the floor and turned away. He was of no consequence. She stroked Frush'ee'aghov's slimy mass with loving fingers. The light would forever extinguish soon. In her joy, a flitting thought danced barely in her consciousness. She wondered where Earl and Cathy had gotten to. No doubt crushed beneath Frush'ee'aghov's great body or fallen into hell itself.

A broken headlight cut through the darkness. A battered pickup smashed its way through the front doors. It swerved around a tower of tentacles and collided with the central pillar. The front end wrapped around the cracked column.

Frush'ee'aghov screeched. Tammy felt the Gate narrow. Arcane energies slipped away, but the damage was not enough to stop her. She didn't know how they knew, how they came so close to breaking the matrix. But they had failed, and now she was to become a living goddess. A long, rough chuckle bubbled up within her.

"I cannot be denied!"

The pillar trembled. The pressure of holding up the ceiling and holding open an interdimensional gate were too much to bear. The brick column began to crumble.

"No. This isn't right. This isn't how it's supposed to be."

The central column collapsed, crushing the truck cab, and what was left of the roof fell in. The old gods bellowed as their portal to Earth swung nearly shut. A fraction of their power filtered through the remaining crack. Tammy's body shrank into a vulnerable human shape. Suddenly her will alone anchored Frush'ee'aghov to the world. The strain was immense, almost unbearable, but she need only weather it for a few more moments.

A savage growl issued from behind her. She whirled on the werewolf limping toward her.

"Stay back, or suffer my wrath!"

But there was no wrath to suffer. Even a rudimentary magic required concentration, and all her arcane power was focused on holding open the Gate.

Duke's clawed hand punched through her chest and ripped out her heart. The still beating organ looked tiny in his hand. Tammy stumbled. The old gods poured all their energies into her, but she was dying. If she could just hold on a little longer.

"Stop screwing around, Duke!" Earl called.

Duke squeezed Tammy's heart in his fist. It popped. The priestess of the old gods hissed her last breath.

"Aw, shit."

Frush'ee'aghov sank into the earth. Flailing and thrashing, he fought the irresistible pull. His nearly open eye sucked back through the Gate. A desperate tentacle wrapped around the pickup and dragged it along to hell. Earl and Cathy jumped from the doomed vehicle.

"Damn it!"

Earl tried to save the wreck of twisted steel. The pickup and he had been through a lot together, and he wasn't going to let it go without a fight. The bumper came off in his hands. The automobile bobbed, tipped downward, and sank into the turbulent linoleum sea. It disappeared into the void with a heartrending scrape of warping metal. The dark fog swirled into the bathtub drain of Creation. The many rifts and crevices sealed themselves shut so tight not even the tiniest cracks remained. The old gods shrieked one last defeated cry from their prison.

But it was a distant wail, hardly worth noticing.

The portal closed with a belch and spit out a muffler that came to rest at Earl's feet.

Cathy grabbed him and whirled through the once again seemingly normal diner. There were a few screwups. The tile ran slightly askew. A table stuck through a wall in a mingling of space. The bathroom door had relocated itself several feet from where it once stood, but these were all minor slips in the space-time continuum and easily ignored at the moment.

Napoleon cautiously trotted into the dining area. Cathy knelt and took the dog in her arms. "We did it, boy! We actually did it!"

Duke and Earl glanced up through the gaping lack of roof. The moon and stars were back in place. The thousands of twinkling lights beamed down upon the diner with a blinding brilliance compared to the eternal twilight that had nearly smothered the world. In a hundred years of endless night, Earl had never seen anything as beautiful.

"Thought we cashed in our chips for a second there."

Duke nodded.

Earl stepped in something wet and squishy that had fallen from the leaking gash in Duke's side.

"You alright?"

The werewolf shoved his drooping organs back in place. His canine lips peeled back in a weak smile. "I'll live. How you doin'?"

Earl took a good long look at Cathy. Napoleon licked her face while she laughed. The beauty of the reborn night paled beside her musical giggle.

"Never better."

Things returned to normal by the end of the week. The citizens of Rockwood were far too accustomed to such happenings to make a big deal out of a little thing like a near apocalypse. The world hadn't ended. Everyone pretended not to notice. Life went on.

There were changes, small shifts in Rockwood's paradigm. The sun shined brighter. The brown grass turned a healthier shade of yellow. A wren was spotted singing sweetly on a diner sign amid a flock of ravens, and a stain of blood on a linoleum floor was finally mopped away for good. And in McAllister Fields two new ghostly guardians stood watch.

Somewhere in the back, two young lovers lay side-by-side, laid to rest in a single ceremony that they might find the happiness in eternity denied them by a tragic coyote attack.

Tammy stood at the graveyard gate. Nothing stood between her and the other side, but she just couldn't step across. It wasn't like there was an invisible wall, yet every time she thought about lifting her leg and crossing, the foot stayed put.