Challenge #01798-D337: A One Horse Christmas
In one town, a natural disaster isn’t something that comes around every once in a while—it’s constantly there, like forest fires always glowing just over the hills, a tornado cycling down the same streets every day, or an earthquake constantly jolting the town. And instead of moving away, the town and its people have simply adapted to it. -- Illuminate-Prompts
Welcome to One Horse. It's simply liminal! People who actually see it as they pass by read it as something else. But those who live there... exist there... know differently. In fact, a vast majority... are differently.
There are houseboats built on fault lines, so that liquefaction doesn't get them down. There is an actual road called Tornado Alley. It is wide, and packed dirt, and all the houses along its twisting path are built like bunkers. If you stay there during August, you will find out why. Long about the middle of that month, a twister comes down that exact path. Usually a category 3, it follows the road like it's on rails. Forming at one end and petering out at the other. And then the residents throw a huge party because tornado season is done for that year. And it is where a perfectly ordinary split-level home with a white picket fence is neighbour to an eldritch abomination designed by both Lovecraft and Escher simultaneously, and their hydrangeas are always on fire.
Baq'oth'met, scourge of several dimensions, was hanging up his Christmas Lights. He was still getting the hang of mortal holidays and careful observers would note that some of those jolly, twinkling lights were in the shape of skulls. He was wearing an abominable Christmas sweater, but that was not because of his demonic attributes. It was because it was a gift from his best friend in the world. Neighbour Steve. Who was also setting up the ladder for his seasonal lights and actively trying not to flinch again at the sight of an eight-foot skeletal hellbeast with a deer skull for a head. Well. Mostly a deer skull. "H41l 4nd w3ll m3t, th1s m3rry m0rn, n31ghb0ur!"
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