The Idolaters of Cthulhu

by H. David Blalock

  I swing and miss, for she rolls to one side. She kicks out with both feet but she misses. I jab with the jack handle and catch her in the kidneys again. She hurts, but she struggles on. I swing and hit her on the head. Dazed, her struggles weaken. I go for the stomach again, several times. She loses all the fight. I bind her more, adding layers of tape.

  She regains some of her breath and senses as I finish. She stares at me. She wants to kill me. After all I’ve done to her, she is still unafraid. Oh, Jessica. I lean in and kiss her on an ear. She turns her head and then tries to head butt me. She misses, because I dodge. I hit my head on the hatch for the trunk. She lashes out with her feet but misses. I grab her legs and punch her repeatedly on one thigh. When she’s had enough, I stop.

  I tell her, “Be still and quiet, and this will go easier. Keep up the struggling and you won’t be any good for the others, and that won’t do. You have to be of use to the others.”

  She flashes those furious eyes at me. She looks a lot like she does in the real, dancing in His wake, stepping from skull to skull in time to the tom-tom beat. I want her.

  “You know the ones I’m talking about, don’t you?” I ask, “The ones who remember their dreams like I do, like you almost do. Or do you? Do you remember? Nod if you remember. If you remember, I can release you and find another. If you remember,” I say leaning in, “we can be together.”

  She lashes out with her feet again. I can’t believe it. Her kick takes me right in the chest. If she were braced better, it might have knocked me out, but I only fall back, stunned for a moment. As I gather myself, she is up on her knees, trying to get free. I’m angry now, really angry. I was only doing what was necessary before, but now I want to hurt her. I hit her hard across the face with my fist. I don’t know where the jack handle fell. Her head hits the trunk hatch, and her eyes close. She falls sideways and lies still.

  I feel good. I knocked her out with one punch, properly motivated. The others will be pleased with me. We will dance in His train together.

  I get back in the driver’s seat and start the car back up. I return to the highway and follow the signs toward New Orleans. I’ve got another split knuckle. It’s a badge of honor. I drive. I hear no noise from the trunk.

  Later, I stop and fill the tank all the way. There is no noise from the trunk. I wonder if I killed her. No, I couldn’t have.

  It is night. I has been for some time. I drive. I dream. I drive in the wake of His destruction, safe. I drive between the monoliths dripping with green ooze. I navigate like a bat by the reverberations of the tom-toms. I see all of them, the ones who remember, except I don’t see her. It’s okay, she’s in the trunk.

  The road ends at water. I guess it’s a bayou, but I wouldn’t really know. It seems swampy. I put the car in park and look around. It seems familiar. Yes. There’s an islet across the water. I can tell, for someone is lighting a bonfire on it. I can see the pedestal. I gasp and almost cry for joy. By the bonfire’s leaping light, I can see the statue, the image of him. I see the scaffold. I remember my mission. I go to the trunk and stand before it, fumbling in the dark with my keys. I put the key in the lock and open it. The light comes on, and I see her lunging out, free of her bonds, the jack handle plunging into my belly.

  The air evacuates my lungs. I go down. I don’t know how it happened. She leaps or falls out of the trunk. She groans and rises unsteadily. She is standing over me in her Wonder Woman costume. She hits me hard with the jack handle on one knee, and the knee turns to fire. I scream. Oh, by Him, by the chant I can’t repeat, by all that I fear and desire, I scream. She hits me on the other knee. Oh, Jessica.

  “How’s that working for you, Mr. Raines?” she asks me.

  I whimper. It hurts. I don’t see much, just flashes of light that aren’t there. I taste grass and dirt. I push up. I try to push up. She kicks me with those red boots. She kicks me in my kidney on my right side. I cry. She kicks me several times. She hits my right elbow with the jack handle. There is more fire. I scream and cry, but I lie still.

  “It’s funny, Mr. Raines,” she tells me as she rifles through my pockets for my keys and wallet, “but after you gave me that right cross, and I was out, I remembered something. I remembered these crazy dreams I’d been having, which look a lot like this place here and a lot like other things which make me shudder to remember them. I think we were having the same dream. You were there. You were dancing on skulls like I was. But you liked it, you sick bastard. I didn’t. Then I woke up and remembered a video I’d watched online, thanks to a friend on social media. It was a brief tutorial by an FBI agent on how to break duct tape. It freaking worked! I’m so glad, because I don’t know what you had in mind for me, for sure, though the dreams give me an idea.”

  There is noise. There are people coming, a crowd of people. The ones who remember are coming. I giggle.

  “To hell with you and your remembering, Mr. Raines. May God help you. I’m out of here before your friends arrive.” She limps away, gasping in pain, but making it. She takes my car. I struggle to rise on my left arm, but it is no good. I turn my head and watch her turn the car around, narrowly avoiding going into the water, then speeding off down the road, back toward the highway. I cry out. What happens now? The others are coming.

  They are here. They surround me. Lights shine on my face. I blink and cringe.

  “It is him,” I hear a voice say, “but where is the one he was to bring?”

  “She is gone,” laughs another. “Look at him. He has failed. He will take her place.”

  “Let him speak the words if he can,” says another. “Let him lift the chant.”

  “Yes,” says the first, considering. He kneels beside me, but I cannot make out his features. “You are one of us,” he says, “so lift the chant, and we will find another victim.”

  I try. I’m desperate. Surely it will be clear to me now. But I am nothing. The universe is vast and indifferent. He does not care.

  “Help me. I can’t remember,” I say.

  He laughs as he rises. “He is not one who remembers,” he tells the others.

  “Can we use him?” the second voice asks. “He’s so broken, already.”

  I grasp at hope.

  “It does not matter,” says the first. “He lives. Let us take him to the scaffold and begin the rite.”

  Oh, Jessica.

  It is night. I am awake. I am facing Him. I am not behind him, but facing Him, the Old One. I am nothing. I am not safe. The tom-tom drumming begins. The knives are out. The fire is close. It is night. I live the real.

  The Meat Junkies

  by

  E. Dane Anderson

  The ice cream shop was the only inhabited storefront on the block, and only at night. The soft glow of its lights illuminated a small portion of the otherwise barren street around it, casualties of urban decay. The rest of the neighborhood was nearly devoid of human activity, especially past dark. The taxi drivers avoided it, so did the cops. Even the few surrounding buildings were empty of squatters. There was something almost instinctual that kept most of them away.

  There was only a trace of the words “Fresh Ice Cream” pained on the front window, faded to the point where the decades old brush strokes were becoming visible. The interior was conspicuously missing the usual expected items for such an establishment. A silent cooler sat next to the front counter, containing only trace amounts of the substances that it once held, dried bits of browning and yellowish stains clinging to the inside. On the wall behind it were the remains of a nearly unreadable menu, containing barely recognizable words such as vanilla and rocky road alongside a few numbers referring to prices now long out of date. The annoyingly humming and flickering phosphorescent lights bounced and refracted around the white room to such an unnatural degree that nothing created a shadow. All was silent but the sounds of traffic far in the distance, the ambient hum of a freezer in the back, and the buzzing of the flashing “closed” sign.

  A pudgy man walked up to
the front door. He was in raggedy clothes with a hood drawn up over his head. His shoes were falling apart. Small tendrils of black, putrescent ichor were pushing their way through the gaps in their dirty, white canvas. Taking no notice of the flashing closed sign, he pulled the squeaky door open and walked right in. A figure appeared behind the counter, standing nearly motionless in his clean white uniform and light blue striped apron. There was no need for him to go into the usual explanation of how the store was closed, that the freezers were broken, and that he was only there waiting for the repair man. Without a single word between them, he knew why the pudgy man had arrived.

  "Relax," said the figure behind the counter who called himself Jack, even though that wasn’t his name. Shoggoths didn’t have names, at least not in the human cultural sense. Jack saw that the pudgy man was having some serious difficulty with maintaining a convincing human shape. The thing that he was using for a face was beginning to show the obvious signs of deterioration as well, barely hidden by his raggedy hood. The skin color was shifting to that tell-tale shade of greenish-blue that signified death. Skin suits could only be kept looking fresh for a limited time. He was going to need something new. "You're among friends here.” Jack continued. “You're looking like you need a new face, or perhaps a whole suit?"

  "Yeah. I mean a new suit would be great." the pudgy man said, the deterioration around the lips was making it hard for him to pronounce some words. "Ya got somefin fer me?"

  "You just go on in the back and my friend will take care of you. He’s not the smartest, but he does a good job for us. Not the best at conversation either, if you know what I mean.”

  The pudgy man nodded to Jack, totally out of habit. “Yeah,” he replied, knowing that not all his kind were totally sentient.

  “We have a few good choices. We may have to thaw something out for you, if you’re not in too much of a hurry.”

  “Naw, not at all.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’ll find something you like."

  The pudgy man turned toward the open door that led to the back of the store, pausing momentarily. "Well, if you don't mind me bringing this up. Do you have any, well,” he hesitated for a moment. “You know? I'm also kind of hungry. If you know what I mean?"

  Jack also saw that the pudgy man’s body had a certain familiar quivering motion about it, much too fast for the eyes of the humans to discern. He’d seen it before, perhaps a thousand times over the many years. The pudgy man was in a bad way, probably why his body looked as misshapen as he did. That, a human probably would have picked up on.

  Many of those who ran these material way stations didn’t like the junkies who would come seeking help, but taking care of them was part of their job. Jack had always taken a bit of pity on them, even more so with their increasing regularity.

  “Are you getting sick?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” the pudgy man answered as his quivering suddenly became more pronounced.

  “How long’s it been since you had any?”

  “Haven’t had any in a while, not since 1872.”

  “Over a century, that’s a long time to go without. Don’t feel bad. I get guys in here who were hurting worse than you in less than half that time. But you’re in luck. A couple of packages just came in a few nights ago," Jack said trying to be reassuring.

  The pudgy man tried to smile, something he had learned to do by habit in the last several hundred years. The dead skin of his face split from the corner of the mouth right across the cheek, revealing his gelatinous, semi-translucent form underneath. A large, globular green eye formed in the gap, emanating a slight greenish glow. Reflexively, the pudgy man tried to cover it up with his hand before remembering where he was. He was worse off than Jack had initially thought. "Anything fresh?" the pudgy man asked.

  "No, sorry, only frozen. We really can’t keep the fresh stuff around for very long. You know how it is? Human spoils pretty quickly. I got some good frozen ground chuck. You just go on back and my friend will set you up.”

  “Tekeli-li to you my friend.”

  “Tekeli-li to you too,” replied Jack.

  *****

  Jack was at his usual place, standing motionless and alone at the front of the shop. Motionless was how his kind had been for uncounted eons, motionless and mindless since being left by their masters. Alone they sat in the hidden places of the Earth until some of them became sentient. They could feel the weak minds of the humans growing in their numbers as they became the temporary masters of the planet. Drawn to them they were by their thoughts and feelings, mainly those feelings of fear and pain. Over time they learned to infiltrate their societies, quickly learning how to use them for both disguise and drug alike.

  Jack was listening to the weak thoughts of the humans in the distance. Occasionally, there would be a spike of pain from one of them. For Jack, that felt infinitely better than the short-term high of human flesh. Their pain was so much more delectable. If only they would come closer, he wished. But the risks were great to him and those like him.

  It had not been long since he had been able to feel the death agonies of a human close-up, even more satisfying as he himself had inflicted the painful death. He drew it out just long enough to make it worth his while, yet keeping the more valuable parts from becoming damaged and therefore useless.

  The kill had been a transient who had wandered in a few nights before looking for change. Jack’s assistant, who was called Jeff was in the back room preparing the parts for their assigned uses. Skins were prepared, and flesh was packaged for freezing. Jack had done most of the disassembly while the subject was still alive, as had been custom from the time when his kind had been nothing more than mindless slaves. Jeff was competent enough, as long as Jack was able to give him a little telepathic guidance from the next room.

  It was around one in the morning, maybe later when Jack and Jeff heard them coming. First it was their thoughts, then it was the sound of the car. Jeff came out from the back room, having put on a white coat to cover up the various stains on his clothes. His thick, yellow gloves still had various discolorations resulting from the messy work. A few moments later a beat up late 70s Datsun pulled up next to the sidewalk out front. Both Jeff and Jack looked at each other with feelings of apprehension.

  The closed sign was still clearly flashing next to the front door. But that didn't stop the young man from walking straight on in. The bell attached to the door rang. A fresh-looking, round face peered out from under a batch of longish blonde hair. The young man wore raggedy jeans, a dirty tee-shirt and a jean vest. He was obviously very lost. In the passenger seat was a young woman, large blue eyes peeking out from behind dyed black bangs. She seemed to be somewhere between disinterested and annoyed.

  "Sorry buddy, we’re closed,” said Jack.

  "I was just wondering, do you have a phone I could use?” he said while looking straight down into the empty front freezer.

  “I’m sorry, no. Everything here is broken, as you can see,” Jack replied.

  Both Jeff and Jack looked out at the car parked out front and saw a young woman sitting in the passenger seat. The young man hesitated for a moment before noticing the lack of ice cream in the front cooler.

  "Then what are you guys like, doing here?" The young man continued.

  "Oh, we're just here waiting for the repair guy. Our freezer quit on us and we lost all our product," said Jack.

  "Wow, that totally sucks."

  As he was about to turn around and leave Jeff reached out towards him, his right arm growing in length far beyond that of any human appendage. Breaking through his yellow rubber gloves, the hand instantaneously morphed into a gelatinous tendril several feet in length, ending in an inhuman mouth filled with glass-like teeth. With a single swift and powerful bite, it had chomped straight through the young man's sternum, reaching his heart. In rapid succession, it took several more bites before exiting through the back of his denim vest.

  A short but intense wave of p
ain washed over both Jack and Jeff. For a few short seconds the dead man hung suspended in the air only by the force of Jeff's newly formed appendage. Pulling it back, the body fell to the floor. A large pool of blood formed around him and expanded across the while tile floor.

  Jack was taken by total surprise. His initial shock was only interrupted by the bloodcurdling screams of the young woman still sitting in the parked car. Her near constant shrieking was only briefly silenced by each fresh lungful of air. He ran out the door toward the car as she was desperately trying to open the passenger side door, yet much too terrified to be able to open it and escape. Before she could even look up at him, Jack’s arm crashed through the side window and in one quick seamless movement, twisted her head nearly off. Her screaming was instantly cut off.

  Jack pulled the limp girl from the car and threw her over his shoulder. Quickly walking back into the ice cream shop, he pointed at Jeff. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He yelled at him. "You know the procedure! If they’re alone, we take them, but only if I say so! If there's more than one of them, then we let them go! We can't take the risk. How many fucking times do I have to tell you that?" Then he tossed the girl’s rag-doll limp body behind the counter, a few shards of glass from the car window that was caught in her clothing bounced on the tile floor. She landed on her back. Jeff mindlessly looked over at her blue eyes, now staring at nothing.

  Looking down at his arm, Jack saw that he has sustained several long cuts from the car window glass. The black, bubbly ichor underneath began to ooze from the newly formed gaps in his skin-suit. “And look at that! I’ve got that to take care of as well!” he said while holding the damaged arm up for Jeff to see.

  Jeff stood there expressionless, attempting to mumble something through the mouth hole of his skin mask.