What to Expect When You’re Expecting Cthulhu

1. Cultists.

2. A terrible, unstoppable yearning for the cold, salty depths of ocean trenches, far from the corrupting stink of humanity, which you will now realize, not for the first time, must die for the sake of interstellar beings that you’ve never actually spent much time thinking about before.

Also, for fish.

You will really want fish.

3. Bloat. This is normal and expected and has absolutely nothing to do with your increased nightmares of worshippers falling at your feet and your craving for their blood. You are not filling with blood, just water.

4. Confirmation of travel plans that you are absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent certain you did not make to such locations as the mountains of Antarctica, an oasis in the Sahara Desert that does not currently appear on Google Maps, the Mariana Trench, and Walt Disney World.

5. Cancellation of all of your credit cards for “unusual activity,” followed by a statement from your credit card company that alleged origins in remote corners of the Andromeda Galaxy do not preclude account owners from obtaining a Social Security number just like everyone else and that suspicious activity, which clearly means you, can and will be reported to the Department of Homeland Security.

6. Blemishes on your neck, which may be developing gills, the marks left by your fingernails as you found yourself scratching at your neck and screaming in horror, or just hickeys.

7. Morning sickness, which may or may not be aggravated by the stress of finding increasingly combative correspondence from several anthropology departments allegedly associated with universities with increasingly improbable names, and continued issues with your credit card companies, who really ought to be consumed by Cthulhu anyway and you should get working on that.

8. Changing eye color.

9. Mysterious visits from people who may, or may not, have gills, many of whom will try to touch your stomach without asking permission. Try not to think about it, or about your fears that this all happened because you found yourself apologizing to fish and cold evil creatures everywhere for comparing them, however favorably, to your ex-boyfriend.

10. Constant anxiety. This, like people touching your stomach, should be regarded as normal, and not at all related to your ever increasing credit card bills, or the ongoing challenges of boarding an aircraft or ship to various remote destinations when your eye color doesn’t match the one listed on your official identification.

11. A need for contact lenses. Just for cosmetic purposes. You really don’t want to see what’s coming.