“That’ll be $30.95,” Stan said, balancing the stack of pizzas. The customer, a tall man with glasses and dark circles under his eyes, blinked wearily at the deliveryman. He was dressed in a robe, hood up, and holding a book under one arm. Stan wasn’t sure what his deal was. He was just there to deliver the pizza and get paid.

  The man unfolded a wad of crumpled bills. “Twenty, twenty-five,” he muttered, looking up. “I’m sorry, I appear to be short. Give me a moment to get the rest.” Leaving the door open, he took off at a brisk pace.

  Stan waited a moment. He waited a great deal of moments, in fact. After about five minutes, he checked his watch. “Everything okay?” he called. There was no answer.

  That was most likely Stan’s cue to leave. Instead, he stepped into the house. “Hello?” That was when he saw all the cult stuff.

  The customer, his face now covered with the hood of his cowl, sprinted at Stan. The deliveryman stepped back just in time. Snarling, his attacker turned around, shadows writhing around him. He made a sweeping gesture with his hands, and Stan was thrown backwards by an invisible force. He managed to hold onto one pizza box in his shock—the other one went flying.

  As he grimaced in pain, Stan realized that he’d landed in the middle of a glowing circle. It was filled with intricate designs, some of which were floating off the floor towards him. He rolled before they could entrap him further. The cultist snarled again, glanced down at his book, and shot another spell.

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  Stan dodged it not a second too soon. The cultist read another spell, unleashing a storm of daggers just inches away from Stan’s head. Stan dared a glance at the arcane circle. A translucent creature was rising up from it, growing more opaque by the second. He didn’t have a chance to catch another look, because another spell was coming at him.

  The next time the cultist looked down at his book, Stan was ready. He took the moment of his opponent’s inattention to fling the pizza at him. It spun through the air like a frisbee, and by the time the cultist looked up, it was too late. He got a face full of pizza in the worst way possible, and it hurt. “Take that, you psycho pizza face,” Stan shouted. Then he looked up. “Oh shoot.”

  The summoned entity had taken form. A monstrous heap of eyes and sinew, it nearly filled the room. Surging over the unconscious cultist, it surrounded Stan and towered over him. “Fool! I am Garganarch the Unnerving, scion of the Carrion King! You will suffer for—wait a minute. Is that pizza?”

  Stan glanced at the pizza box, and then at the monstrosity. “Yeah?”

  The entity considered him for a moment. “What type?”

  Stan checked the order. “Uh, there’s one pepperoni, and one plain cheese.”

  Garganarch muttered to itself. Then its eyes shifted, and it flattened itself against the floor. “Okay. Two pizzas…do you accept payment in soul shards?”

  “Er, we accept most major credit cards?”

  “Eh, that works too.”

  Two weeks later, Stan was checking his list of deliveries when a coworker called him over. “Another order?”

  “Yeah, we sure are busy today.” She glanced at the phone nervously. “The customer, er, said they were from the Chitinous Citadel beyond the gates of life and dreams. They wanted to know, do you deliver there?”