My fill for May Trope Mayhem 2025’s day 6 prompt: Tiny Adorable Eldritch Horror!
I’m using original stories for each prompt fill. The story has been adapted into a Twine game format, which you can find here.
Summary: “I keep my abomination in a fish tank,” Yogj said.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: around 300 words
Content Warnings: There are no relevant/applicable content warnings for this work.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with Duck Prints Press, who is hosting this writing challenge.
“Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine.”
– In The Court of the Dragon, from The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers
[1]
Once there was a shadow which came unstuck from the earth. It floated in usual place for a while, its tail trapped, and finally unshackled.
One day drifting along it came upon a river and saw its reflection. It resembled the garden-variety snakes it had seen on its aimless journey, but tapered at the end to a thin, almost indistinguishable point, and the head was fat and bulbous.
The river shimmered with passing fish and spider-bugs skating above the water with dew on their feet. Overhead clouds covered the sunlight and the shadow found itself cast long across the riverbank.
[2]
Sometime later the shadow had drifted along a bridge and gotten itself stuck to a man’s foot.
The man’s name, as the shadow found out, was simply “KKL”. That was listed on the man’s ID card as well. This notion struck the shadow as quite mysterious, though its curiosity was more piqued by the man’s obsession with aquariums.
After the shadow had gotten free of the shoe, it first noticed the shoe’s well-shone leather, and then a large room. Surrounding the walls were glass boxes of every size; within them careful rock formations and organisms the shadow recognized as fish.
[3]
The man had chanced upon the shadow at this moment. The shadow, having never thought of a name for itself, came up with noise “Yogj”, and introduced itself as thus.
When the man was questioned about inside the glass boxes, he replied inside most tanks were prawn, but some contained multicolored shrimp.
“I keep my abominations in a fish tank,” Yogj said. Indeed before coming to Earth Yogj had kept various malformations inside a fish tank brought from Earth by a compatriot; the memories came flooding back to Yogj with astonished relief.
Despite this Yogj was stuffed into a tank.