Chương 1: How to Botch an Eldritch Summoning in Three Easy Steps!

Gnal's incorporeal form floated near the center of the mildew-infested basement, watching the body collection unit sweep pieces of smoldering corpses into neat piles. There was a crudely drawn sigil etched on the concrete below. It was a pentagram—further testament to humankind's severe lack of originality. If Gnal's sense of smell was to be trusted, it'd been painted with pig's blood. Who in their right mind thought marking a sigil in blood was a good idea?

Did the humans not realize a cosmic horror had to step in that to pass through the rift? No respectable abomination wanted to track blood home and get it all over the carpet! Gnal wasn't even going to get started on the scented candles. No wonder the summoning had gone sideways. It was as if the cult had followed How to Botch an Eldritch Summoning in Three Easy Steps! to the letter. This was Gnal's first assignment of the evening and, already, she felt the strain of exhaustion weighing her down.

As a level-three eldritch horror, she could shift her body to whatever form she fancied. Solid shapes required an excess of mental energy, which is why Gnal had given up, allowing her particles to rearrange themselves at will. Presently, she appeared as a floating, transparent shadow fitted with an ever-changing number of eyes and appendages, ranging anywhere from twelve to twelve hundred. Normally, she had forty-two mouths. Tonight, she had only one. It was frowning.

"Fourteen dead," the lead body collector read from his notes. His lower jaw clung to his face by a single scrap of green-gray flesh on the left side. Gnal found it difficult not to stare. Averting several hundred eyes, Gnal watched as the rest of the body disposal unit approached the smoldering piles of human flesh with their arsenal of rubber gloves and collection bags held at the ready. The unit lurched forward as one, a wall of pristine white jumpsuits, moving like a tsunami caught in slow motion.

They, like all body collectors, were zombies. Anything salvageable would be taken back to their dimension and repurposed as replacement parts. Based on the charred state of the remains, it would be slim pickings tonight. Gnal turned her attention to her clipboard. Possessing a boundless memory, she didn't actually need to write anything down to remember it. She liked to think the clipboard made her look more official, though. That, and it gave her an excuse to use her expansive collection of novelty pens.

Tonight's selection showcased a pink, fluffy bird on its end. The bird's googly eyes wobbled as Gnal skimmed her itemized list, ticking boxes as she went.

"The summoned party?"

"Returned home all in one piece," the body collector replied with a wet slurp. Some good news, at least. Humans were relatively easy to clean up after. A dead eldritch abomination was an entirely different matter. It was the cosmic equivalent of nuking a rotten egg in a microwave for two minutes. A single missed glob of flesh had enough latent magic to generate a dimensional rift all on its own.

As the night rift manager, it was Gnal's duty to prevent such cosmic tears from cropping up between unsuspecting dimensions. Gnal ticked another checkbox. A few hours of vigorous scrubbing and the inhabitants of Earth would be blissfully unaware that a handful of their idiot brethren had torn the very fabric of space and time, allowing a creature from another dimension to step inside. It wouldn't be the last time. It never was. There was a reason the Earth Summoning Sector ran all hours of the day.

The limit to human foolishness knew no bounds. The body collectors finished their retrieval without incident, managing to do so without dirtying a single white jumpsuit. Gnal wished all units ran half as smoothly. That line of thinking, however, bordered on delusion. Gnal's hope for an uneventful night was shattered the moment she summoned the portal back to the station. Proper protocol stipulated that each unit was to vacate the premises before the next arrived.

The sanitation crew didn't have the patience for protocol. They elbowed their way in, pulling a clattering cleaning cart in their wake, ignoring the orderly line of zombies patiently waiting for what should have been their turn. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The sanitation crew consisted of three goblins, all varying shapes and sizes, fitted in orange rubber hazmat suits.

Each one was missing their protective headgear and gloves, because what was the point of safety protocols if not to be ignored? Unlike the body collectors, Gnal knew each sanitation crew member by name—on account of how often she had to use them. Gnal glared over her clipboard at Mop.

"You're supposed to wait until the body disposal unit has vacated the area." It was common practice for goblin parents to bestow their children with names related to the profession they wished for them to pursue. Mop and Bucket had done their family proud. The third member of their team, Lawyer, didn't like to talk about it.

"Were we?" Mop asked innocently. Bucket and Lawyer scattered, cleaning supplies in hand, grateful for the opportunity to let Mop face down Gnal on her own. Mop was their unofficial leader. Not through merit, but because she possessed the unique ability to talk over everyone else in a room.

"This is not the first time we have had this conversation, Mop." Regretfully, it would not be the last time, either.

"You don't say."

"It's like you want to be written up again." Mop flashed a mischievous smile.

"Well, I was starting to run low on toilet paper." Several of Gnal's eyes roved upwards with a groan.

"Oh, come on, Gnal. It was funny!" Gnal shooed the grinning goblin away with a tired sweep of her vaporous tendrils.

"Go clean something."

"Yes, ma'am!" Gnal watched as the last of the body disposal unit disappeared through the spinning portal. Only their lead remained. He raised a deteriorated hand into the air and bid farewell.

"Good night." Unlike the rest of him, his eyes moved rather quickly. They darted to something behind Gnal. What was left of the zombie's eyebrows furrowed in confusion as his body lurched backwards into the portal and he was swallowed by the swirl of dimensional darkness. His disembodied voice echoed from within the rift, growing fainter with distance.

"Where'd the goat come from?"

"Goat?" Gnal whipped around to find Bucket hurriedly stuffing said animal into the confines of his oversized hazmat suit.

"Where did you get a goat?" Bucket pulled the zipper all the way to his chin. He looked like a toothpick that'd swallowed a beach ball.

"What goat?" Gnal recited from memory regulation twelve, section three, of the sanitation handbook.

"Any living organic matter found on the premises must be left on the premises, in the same condition in which it was found."

"No living organic matter here." Bucket patted the bulge in his strained hazmat suit. It bleated. Gnal held her tongue, allowing the ire of a thousand narrowed eyes to communicate her deep displeasure. The goblin's resolve wilted like a spinach salad under the full intensity of a food-grade heat lamp.

"Fine." Bucket unzipped the front of his orange hazmat suit and a squirming goat came tumbling out. It picked itself up onto four wobbly legs and then ambled away, unfazed by the incident. The goblin's face pulled into a wrinkled frown.

"Funny how you conveniently overlook the rules when it comes to your fancy pens." Gnal's attention drifted back to her clipboard.

"Pens don't disrupt the fabric of space and time."

"Yeah? Well, what about this candle then, huh?" Bucket snatched a bell jar from the scorched ground and waved it overhead.

"Can I take this?" If Gnal had nostrils to speak of, it was at this point she would've wrinkled them in disgust. The candle smelled like the inside of a craft store. That sort of hot, artificial spice that hung in a thick cloud near the entrance, waiting to jam its metaphorical fingers up your nose the moment the automatic doors drew open. Gnal was familiar with this phenomenon as she regularly subjected herself to such fluorescent-lit hellscapes in search of new pens. On her own time, obviously.

A professional level-three eldritch horror kept her work and home life separate.

"You may keep the candle." Gnal refused to lift her eyes from her page. Bucket would only be punishing himself. A goblin's sense of smell was three times as powerful as her own.

"Bah!" Bucket didn't appreciate having his bluff called so quickly.

"I don't want no stinkin' candle. I want the goat!"

"You can't have the goat."

"It's not fair!" he wailed.

"Mop gets a baby and I get nothing!" Gnal's incorporeal form spasmed, sending streams of crackling sparks in a multitude of directions. The clipboard and pen fell from her vaporous tendrils and struck the cement with a clatter. Her bird pen lost one of its googly eyes. It rolled several feet across the ash-riddled floor. Gnal took no notice, focusing instead on the cowering goblin.

"What baby?"