Campaign of Eldritch Horror: Twitter and #RomneyDeathRally

A Mitt Romney rally in Pennsylvania took a dark turn, according to ominous reports from eyewitnesses. Romney staffers refused to let people leave the rally, despite freezing temperatures. Disgruntled rally-goers complained on Twitter, first in anger, then in horror, then in  madness and despair, as the event transmogrified from a poorly administered rally by an incompetent campaign, to an eldritch night of unfathomable terror.

It began, as all nightmares do, with a dumb idea by Mitt Romney. Romney these days is a sweaty wreck, kept running on an endless diet of No-Doz and gnawing doubt. He must win Ohio. But what if he doesn’t? There is another way, the nameless darkness whispers. Rinse Pubis, the oily GOP chairman, knows this. Romney is convinced of it. There is a dark name that must not be uttered. He reaches into his coffee can full of No-Doz, and gobbles down a handful, gazing at the electoral vote map. There she lies, fat and sassy with electoral votes, nestled next to perfidious Ohio. He whispers her name, wistfully.

“Pennsylvania.”

Tweets of utter darkest horror emerged from the accursed rally.

Rinse Pubis gasps. “No, Mighty One, no.  It cannot be done.” Pennsylvania is the sweet siren song that lures GOP candidates to their doom. Pubis has seen it before. Jack “Crash” McCain tried it. Bob “Bob” Dole. All for naught.

“It’d work if you did that other thing, too. The dealy-o with the portal.”

Pubis stared at Romney. “Opening the Dark Portal is too dangerous, my president-to-be. Tampering with the eldritch powers–it entails great risk. Breaking the barrier between worlds is not to be done lightly.”

“Worked for Nixon.”

“Nixon?” Pubis sighed. “Aye, the fire demons Nixon enthralled bought him power, but at a terrible cost.”

“Terrible cost? He won what, forty-nine states? I’m ok with that cost. We’ll go to Pennsylvania, I’ll whip some yokels into a frenzy, and you’ll crack open that portal, and then hey-presto! The White House is mine.”

Pubis sighed again. And they went to Pennsylvania.

The next day, Willard Romney and his sons Skag, Skorn, Trag, and Marl met with Rinse Pubis in a dank room beneath the stadium at Coalburg State College in Pennsylvania. Paul Ryan waits outside, warming up the crowd in his charmless awkward way. “Okay, do your little thing,” Romney tells Pubis. The greasy little GOP chairman raises his skinny little arms out of his filthy robes, and utters the unholy words that will open The Dark Portal. “Ph’nglui maglw’nafh NIXON fhtagn!” There is a ringing crack, like a gong breaking, and Rinse Pubis falls to the ground. “I am spent,” he gasps.

“Huh,” says Romney. “I’ll be darned.”

The temperature plunged in the little room. “Gosh, dad,” Skag said. “Sure is cold, all of a sudden.”

Then, Romney felt a PRESENCE, an awful solidity in cold gasping darkness. The room filled with a light that did not illuminate, a flame that did not burn. Skorn screamed, and the beast that was once Mitt Romney shambled  out to meet his destiny.

The stadium is filled with the glow of an unnatural sun. The crowd that had been angrily tweeting about the freezing weather are momentarily pleased. The beast Romney enters, to the sound of unseen eldritch gongs. It is a music video for King Crimson made flesh. “THE RUSTED CHAINS OF PRISON MOONS ARE SHATTERED BY THE SUN!” the beast that was once Romney shouts. Paul Ryan pees himself a little. “WE WILL BALANCE THE BUDGET IN RIVERS OF BLOOD!” the beast croaks. “O BEAUTIFUL, FOR LAKES OF FIRE!” Skag, Skorn, Trag, and Marl wave their tentacles enticingly. “FOR AMBER MOUNDS OF SKULLS!” The crowd shrieks. “OMG RVRS O BLUD!!!1!,” someone tweets into the gathering undarkness. Before the undarkness descends, a member of the Secret Service detail fires off a message, using a code unused for forty years.

At a rail yard on the edge of town, a group of hoboes are huddled near a fire. An ancient skeletal specter stares into the flames.  The hobo leader, Richard “Shoeless Dick” Santorum is looking at tattered maps of Iowa. The Iowa presidential caucuses are a mere 37 months away. “Screw you in the face, Mitt Romney,” he mutters. His companion, a man the other hoboes have nicknamed “Stench,” is heating up beans. He was once a state governor, but he has really taken to the hobo lifestyle. Some hobo names are given ironically, but his is not. In the distance, there is the clang of an unnatural gong. “Gee,” says Stench, “what was that?”

The undead specter stoners call Ron Paul shrieks. Startled, Santorum spills gin on his maps. “Goddamn, Skeletor, what is your problem?” he shouts.

Ron Paul waves his skeletal arms, his eye-orbs glowing fiercely. “HE BREACHES!” he cried “THE DARK PORTAL IS OPENED! HE DESCENDS IN DARKNESS AND FLAME! FLY! FLY”

“No shit?” Santorum asks. “The portal? Willard did that? Like Nixon?” Santorum, like most Republican senators, knows about Nixon’s dabbling with dark magic. “That’s ballsy. Didn’t think Richie Rich had it in him.”

“THE ELDRITCH DARKNESS OF UNDEATH COMES !” And with a pop!, Ron Paul disappeared.

“Goddamn,” Santorum said. “I did not know he could do that.”

On a bus in Iowa, Vice-president Biden is drinking bad coffee and playing cards with the Secretary of Agriculture.  His phone makes a peculiar chirp, and he looks at the text message. “Holy shit.” He turns to his Secret Service team. “Suit up, boys. We gotta go respond to a Code Nineteen. We have a goddamned Portal situation.”

The election is today. The 2016 campaign begins tomorrow, unless the eldritch darkness of undeath consumes us all.

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