Gub’mint Joe was just a guy running a dry-goods store with his parents when his world got turned upside-down. Not to mention a whole bunch of other worlds.

The story updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Read on, reader…

PART ONE: “When he brushed by me he felt like dry firewood in a gunnysack.”

PART TWO: “A feller come out of the first truck and pointed some kind’a machine at ‘em all. Like a big silver gun with a silver dinner plate at the end.”

PART THREE: “He was real prideful’a all this, like they was nothin’ wrong with takin’ a livin’ breathin’ man an’ pullin’ his brains out’a his head.”

PART FOUR: “But that old skin-bound book they found had a bunch’a gods they ain’t never heard of, said Joe, like Gollmorgoth the Cosmic Eye an’ another feller called HE WHO MAKES CONGRESS WITH ATROCITY.”

PART FIVE: “Right away about half’a them assistant docs lost they minds an’ started tearin’ out they hair an’ shoutin’ in a language ain’t nobody spoke for a thousand years.”

PART SIX: “They was big slithery octopus arms everywhere, an’ big hairy spider legs an’ crab claws, an’ slime drippin’ all over everything, an’ a big face that looked like a man an a bug at the same time.”

PART SEVEN: “Heck, this might be the world’s only shot, Joe figgered.”

PART EIGHT: “Soon enough Joe realized ol’ Karthos had a plan’a his own.”

PART NINE: “I know, I know. It don’t make no sense.”

“The Sad Tale of Gub’mint Joe” is copyright Kevin Ott, 2012. Want to reprint it somewhere? Contact me.