X's for Eyes by Laird Barron

unsheathed the kukri strapped to his hip.
    There were two Minotaur, in fact. The first heaved itself into view—an infantile giant hunched to accommodate the confines. Naked and gaunt, except for a bulbous skull and distended belly, knob-knees outthrust, snowshoe feet gray as marble, talons broken and oozing claret. Wet, lank hair obscured its features. Nonetheless, Dred recognized a mutant and corrupt incarnation of himself grown to the hideous dimensions of an emaciated grizzly bear reared on its hind legs. The creature paused to survey them with a crimson eye. Its companion emerged and there was a nightmare version of Mac, drooling and smirking through a jawful of needle fangs.
    The boys fled backward the way they’d come. A few steps only—they met the creeping wall of darkness head-on and it engulfed them.

HERE COMES THE SUN
    Mac stepped across an improbable void (he beheld the arm of a spiral galaxy whirling beneath him!) and onto a high desert plain. A black sun dominated the horizon above a range of spiky peaks. The disc swallowed a third of the heavens. Lambent flame seethed along its rim. The remainder of the sky curved away, starless black streaked pink as the nipples of a burlesque queen he’d known.
    A breeze filled his nostrils with odors of ash as he walked toward the eclipsed sun. His feet hurt despite the conditioning exercises of the Mountain Leopard Temple. Mukluks weren’t designed for rocky terrain. His stomach hurt too. The chunk of Nancy’s data core crystal had burned through layers of clothes and fused with the flesh of his navel as though his belly button struggled to disgorge a misshapen seed. The crystal pulsed crimson and dripped blood through his shirt. He tugged at it gently. The corresponding bolt of agony indicated this was not a dream.
    He trudged past the petrified skeleton of a bison. Its familiarity nagged him. In another life the bison plodded past the boy’s picked bones. “I’ve been here. Again and again.”
    In a million other lives, said the black sun. It bulged with each word and emitted lances of fire as it spoke inside Mac’s brain. It sounded exactly the same as Big Black the fabulous crystal computer. I am curious if now of all moments is appropriate to entertain fantasies of dancing girls.
    “Beats me when there’d be a better time. Have you looked at this place lately?” The boy hoped the being couldn’t pick apart his thoughts or sense his terror.
    Vast ethereal visages tumbled across the sky as the black sun chuckled. Many light years stand between us, Macbeth Tooms. I peep at you through one lens of a magic lantern that magnifies a dead past. Be grateful for this disk you apprehend as an occulted star. Those who gaze upon my true form undergo startling transformation. By the way—does anyone ever call you four-eyes?
    Mac clenched his scarred fists involuntarily. “Once.” He exhaled. “Azathoth, is that you?”
    Azathoth? So insist fools and donners of tinfoil. There are better appellations. Emperor of Ice Cream. Old One. Eminence Grise. The celestial object that looms before you? It is my microphone. I reside far from this rural locale. Wouldn’t do to shred your sanity by revealing myself au naturale .
    “The Emperor of Ice Cream, you say? Have to admit, I could go for a gelato.”
    Call me Mr. Gray. It suits your uncouth charm.
    “Just don’t call me four-eyes or Beth, or I’ll have to cut you.”
    Such spunk. Are you not dreary, dutiful Galahad in this play? Isn’t your brother the smart aleck? The jester?
    “Normally, I think too much while my brother hardly thinks. As for my humor, this circumstance is passing absurd. I’d be a rube to take it soberly.” Mac noticed shadows detaching from the gloom on his periphery. The shadows glided low as wolves. Eyes glinted crimson as the pack spread in a crescent. He walked faster.
    It may be the finale of seem and there shall be no more double scoop cones of pistachio mint ice cream. You have observed