Dead Easy

by Mark William Simmons

  This would be different from either process: we couldn't wound it and I had no idea what kind of chakras an ET had if any. Instead, I was going to retune into its broadcast frequency and follow that signal back to the station . . .

  As I lay back in the chair and attempted to calm my heart and order my thoughts I tried not to dwell on the one thing I had lied about.

  I was still afraid.

  We are conditioned to distrust, shun, fear, even loath the Other. Allegiances—governmental, cultural, tribal, familial—all rely on making scapegoats of those not like us. We may be better than them or they may be worse than us. We may demonize them, hold them in contempt, or have very little regard for them, at all. It's become a ritualized, almost unconscious process at every level of our indoctrinated existence.

  But somewhere back in our atavistic past, out simian ancestors learned to fear the Other on a much more primal and practical level than the political/cultural whims for which it is practiced today. Somewhere in our gibbering hindbrains, we still know in our deepest nightmares, that something very Other lurks in the dark place, in the shadow, and does not wish us well.

  As I began to feel the heaviness of heart settle over me, I murmured to Samm: "Don't distract me. Don't let anyone disturb me. And don't pay too much attention if I start to babble . . ."

  There it was now.

  That creepy sense of foreboding.

  That prickling at the back of the neck and the base of the spine.

  An oppression of the spirit.

  Fear.

  The great shadow.

  I shivered and opened myself to it.

  The last time I had opened myself to the malevolent frequency of Cthulhu's dreams I had caught only a glimpse, an eye blink really, of what horrors ran through the cesspool of this alien mind. Now I was wading in, seeking its currents, finding its flow, and moving toward its source.

  Analogies are precarious things. The concept that something is "like" another is illusionary at best and inconsistent in the main. Water analogies are frequently utilized because its fluidity is adaptable to so many possible manifestations. In truth, however, there was little I could liken the experience to.

  I quickly lost my standard points of reference as a welter of shadow images began to bombard me, all fantastical. With great effort I could sort some of them into general categories. There were those incomprehensible things, possibly relating to memories of those places this creature had visited or from whence it came. And then those vistas that seemed to correspond with this planet's surface in a Precambrian Age. Glimpses of cities of incomprehensible architecture and impossible geometries, battles with creatures that seemed as unlikely as a child's scribblings on colored paper with glue and glitter and colored macaroni. Colors that belonged to spectrums that even my inhuman eyes had never perceived dimensions that my mind could not process . . .

  And then, finally, horrors that my mind could not digest.

  It was not the strangeness and incomprehensibility of form or function that brought the terror that pushed my mind to the brink of sanity. These past two years had given me a strong stomach—even a predilection for strange forms and aspects. No, it was the wanton cruelty, the savage glee that nestled in this thing's desires to inflict pain and disfigurement upon a world where it had been held captive for untold eons.

  It would be beyond all human comprehension to imagine the horrific constraints of a twilight imprisonment lasting for millions of years. Human prisoners share the fellowship of cellmates and socialize over meals and at various times in the exercise yard and on work details. Even the "lifers" know there will be an end to their sentence someday.

  But for these travelers between the stars something went wrong before the dinosaurs evolved. They came, they saw, they conquered. When it was time to go, they locked up the last of their cities, strapped themselves into their trans-dimensional sarcophagi, set the stasis controls, and waited to wake up at their next destination.

  But something went wrong. The trans-dimensional jump-window opened. And closed again. Certain craft launched. At least one, in particular, did not. Sabotage? Malfunction? Whatever the root cause, whatever prevented Dread Cthulhu from leaving this primitive colony also bound him and other in their deathless sleep for eons, holding them in the prison of suspended animation for uncountable realignments of the stars.

  Hearts stopped, lungs stilled, limbs held fast, yet their minds raced, raved, struggled to escape and, in the process, went quite mad.

  It was their madness, the raving lunacy, which finally gave them the cyclopean strength to escape, to burst forth from their coffin-like life-support chambers and roam about again. Not physically, you understand, for their bodies were still preserved like prehistoric flies trapped in amber. No, at first their consciousness escaped their bodies and traveled the Dreamlands. From there it was possible to enter the real world, sometimes taking on shape and substance for a time before being pulled back into that null space between spaces, that Shadowland from which the Aristotelian realities emerge. From that place they could enter the thoughts of the weak-willed, the feeble-minded, and those as mad as themselves. They could disturb the dreams of the sensitive and the fragile. And they could reach out to those who sought them in turn.

  They leaked.

  But they could not escape their fates.

  And it tore their minds and drove them to greater acts of cruelty and desperation, seeking revenge on a world that held them prisoner beneath the crushing press of fathoms and grinding weight of epochs. The mindless gibbering boredom relieved only by the torment inflicted upon the emergent creatures within their sphere of time or through the anticipation of the Time of the Great Slaughter when Cthulhu and those Great Old Ones like him would finally be free to stride like Colossus of Carnage among these oh-so-deserving sheep!

  Until then they were trapped but for those momentary manifestations, like ectoplasm in the medium's séance room, where for the very briefest of instances, they could touch and be touched.

  This drove them all the more to the extreme paroxysms of gibbering insanity.

  And delusions of godhood.

  Or maybe not so delusional since the mental prowess they had honed over the better part of an eternity had enabled them to manipulate certain aspects of time and space. If they could not totally free themselves, they could yet leak. If they could not destroy the stasis chambers that held their flesh fast, they could yet sink a hundred miles of coastline and drown towns and cities. And if they could not entirely shape their own destinies, they could selectively breed generations of others, adapting them to the deep waters and bending their will to serve dark and terrible ends.

  These Deep Ones were not sufficiently sophisticated to circumvent the alien technology that imprisoned Dread Cthulhu. But they would bring him to the place where others would find him. Others who would eventually bring to bear the best minds and science and technology to bear on solving the riddle that had been discovered among the ruins of New Orleans like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. And Dread Cthulhu could help them because he leaked.

  Soon the bloody harvest would begin!

  The images of carnage, of bloody sacrifices and torments, for the pleasures of inflicting pain and disfigurements upon the helpless and the innocent, was searing and gut wrenching and I fought back twin impulses to scream and retch.

  I do not know how long I had wandered through the labyrinthine thoughts, emotions, and memories of the star creature's mind but I had become careless in the belief that I was too small and insignificant to be noticed in the towering canyons of intellect that had grown into an epic maze over the passage of epochs.

  WHO IS THERE? WHAT IS IN MY HEAD? thundered the ego of the mad star beast.

  I briefly considered giving the Odysseus answer to Polyphemus but I figured Nemo might not appreciate me stealing his shtick. Fortune favors the bold and, besides, ole Tentacle Puss was certifiably insane anyway so: why not?

  "I am God . .
." I said.

  According to a number of theosophical puzzles it is an acceptable answer.

  After a considerable pause the voice took exception. I AM GOD.

  I shook my head, not knowing if it could sense much less see that. "You aren't The God. You aren't even a god. You're just a whacked-out E.T. with delusions of grandeur. I, on the other hand, am God, and I am here to tell you . . ."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ". . . that you have been a very naughty boy!" I scolded.

  That, of course, pissed it off but what was I risking? That it would destroy me and my world?

  Oh please! That's the problem with every over-the-top Thing-from-the-bottomless-pit-of-Hell: there comes a point where you just can't ratchet it up any higher. And then what?

  After it calmed down, it boomed: I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU!

  "You're not being entirely truthful on that point, Bubba but that's okay. Lots of people don't believe in me. That's what free will is all about."

  YOU ARE NOT A REAL GOD UNLESS YOU COMMAND ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE, ABSOLUTE DEVOTION FROM YOUR CREATION!

  "Huh, somebody's never been a stay-at-home parent. Look, this is the crux, the whole tipping point—of religions, societies, governments, and personal self-actualization. It's no good if you have to force people. Even the leather crowd with their safe-words and their nudge-nudge, wink-wink, smack-smack, knows that. A true God's power is measured in what He gives away, not what He hoards."

  THAT MAKES NO SENSE.

  "Pay attention Feeler Face: God is busy so you're only getting five minutes of my valuable time. Then I've got to get back to throwing fireballs around the firmament. Here's the Big Celestial Secret: it's about puppetry."

  PUPPETRY?

  "Finger puppets, stick puppets, hand puppets, Muppets, marionettes, ventriloquist's dummies, the General Secretary of the United Nations . . ."

  WHAT DOES A GOD WANT WITH PUPPETS?

  "Exactly! That's why a real God gets out of the way and lets his creation choose. Let's there be consequences to those choices—"

  PUNISHES THE DISOBEDIENT! DESTROYS TRANGRESSORS!

  "Slow down, Gangsta Wrath; it's all about letting people learn from their mistakes. Parents who always fix their kid's mistakes raise monsters. But the biggest mistake of all is taking away people's option to make mistakes in the first place. The more control, the more petty the dictator. The more petty the dictator, the smaller the god.

  I DON'T—THIS—I AM POWERFUL! I HAVE DESTROYED A GREAT CITY AND MANY SMALLER ONES! I HAVE CREATED A NEW COASTLINE AND MOVED THE WATERS OF THE SEA!

  "Can you create a rock too big for you to pick up?

  There was a moment of stunned silence and I silently thanked eight-year-old Scotty Steadman's Saturday morning wiseass debates. Cthulhu was dangerous but deranged. As long as I could keep him off balance just enough to—

  WHAT DID YOU SAY?

  "You want to pretend to be a god? Just answer my question: can you create a rock so big that even you can't lift it?"

  HOW WOULD I DO THAT?

  "Easy, Squidley; God can do anything."

  CREATE A ROCK TOO BIG TO PICK UP? IF GOD CANNOT LIFT IT THEN IT IS A FALLACY TO SAY GOD CAN DO ANYTHING. PICKING UP THE ROCK IS EXCLUSIONARY . . .

  "But a real God—that is I—can pick it up because I am God and, therefore, I can do anything." Yeah, priceless . . .

  WAIT . . . YOU ARE SAYING THAT YOU CAN CREATE A ROCK THAT IS SO BIG THAT YOU, YOURSELF, CANNOT LIFT IT . . . YET . . . YOU CAN LIFT IT—A CLEARCUT PARADOX—BECAUSE ANY OTHER ANSWER WOULD VIOLATE THE DEFINITION OF OMNIPOTENCE?

  "Of course. Because I am God. How about I create a rock too big for you to pick up and you can lift it to show me your omnipotence, too? Oh wait. You're stuck in a box."

  I DESTROYED THE GULF COAST.

  "So what's that supposed to prove? Destroying is easy. It's the provenance of children and idiots and madmen and the untalented. Creation—now that's a lot harder. Creating is performed by the big boys and girls—the talented and the capable and the disciplined and the visionaries and the powerful and the good and the wise. And God. It's the first line in the job description: Creator. How about you? Create anything beneficial lately?"

  I CREATED THE INLAND SEA. IT REACHES NEARLY ONE HUNDRED LEAGUES INLAND.

  "Yeah, about that. Why now? I figure your honor guard has had you in tow for four or five months. Why wait until now to work with Marie Laveau on the storm and speed up the ground subsidence?"

  He didn't respond but I could see the answers all around me: he needed a closer proximity and he hadn't had it until this past week. Oh, he could whisper in feeble minds like Laveau's all he liked but to use the power of his will upon the physical world, he was limited to a much shorter range. Laveau could have done plenty of damage—especially if we hadn't been there to counter her efforts. But the quakes and the tsunamis and the sinking of the coastline couldn't have reached us from the icy depths of R'lyeh. He had to hitch a ride. And who knew how many generations of Deep Ones had been bred toward achieving that particular goal?

  "C?"

  WHAT?

  "I want you to put New Orleans back."

  PUT IT BACK?

  "Put the city and the coast back where they belong."

  MAKE ME.

  I shook my head reprovingly. "Not what God does. Free will. Remember? It's something that you need to do."

  WHY SHOULD I?

  "Tule—may I call you Tule? Why do you think you've been trapped on this little backwater planet for so freaking long?"

  BECAUSE MY ENEMIES BOOBYTRAPPED MY STASIS POD AND SABOTOGED THE LAUNCH PORTALS.

  "No. It's because you have some serious karmic issues to work out."

  WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

  "Be honest, Tule; if not with me, then at least with yourself . . ."

  WHAT?

  "Are you happy?"

  WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

  "It's a simple question. Are you happy?"

  AM I HAPPY?

  "While I am omniscient as well as omnipotent, I'd really rather that you answer the question yourself."

  NO ONE EVER ASKED ME IF I WAS HAPPY OR NOT.

  Well, if it was this hard to get a straight answer, small wonder. But I didn't express that sentiment. The point was I had a gigantic insane ego at a tipping point and it was crucial to tip it in just the right direction at just the right moment. The two advantages I had right at the moment were: First, after untold generations of slipping inside other minds and dictating its own agenda, this was the first time someone had walked in on it and had control of the conversation. Second (and perhaps more importantly): I wasn't all quivery, shaky, fearful, or seemingly about to lose my mind. Been there, done that and, as Donald Trump would tell you, the "art of the deal" depends mightily upon projecting the image of absolute confidence and authority. Crazy Eights, here, hadn't had anyone stand up to it/him in about a hundred million years. Despite being all dementedly evil and powerful and evilly demented, he was a con artist's wet dream: lonely, impulsive, unstable, totally unaccustomed to resisting suggestion, and rife with dependency issues.

  I HAVE BEEN STUCK IN A STASIS POD WHILE THE PRECESSION OF THIS PLANET'S AXIAL SPIN HAS CAUSED THE LAUNCH PORTALS TO WOBBLE OUT OF THEIR ALIGNMENT S WITH THE W'NAGF'HUP WORMHOLE. IT TAKES APPROXIMATELY TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND AND EIGHT HUNDRED OF YOUR SOLAR CYCLES TO BRING THE PORTALS AND THE WORMHOLE INTO OPTIMAL ALIGNMENT. EVERY TIME I FAIL TO ACCESS THE LAUNCH WINDOW I MUST WAIT NEARLY TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND YEARS TO TRY AGAIN. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE FAILED? DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE A PRISONER OF YOUR OWN FLESH WITHOUT EVEN THE HOPE OF DEATH'S RELEASE FOR MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF YEARS? SO, TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION: NO. NOT HAPPY. I CAN'T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME I WAS REMOTELY HAPPY. THOUGH THE THOUGHT OF DISEMBOWLING, BEHEADING, AND EVISCERATING HUMANS HELPS TO TAKE MY MIND OFF MY OWN SUFFERING.

  "Transference."

  WHAT?

  "Classic transference. It's a psychological condition. On a subconscious le
vel you try to transfer your pain to others. It may distract you for brief periods of time but you are still stuck with your own suffering—the suffering that stuck you here in the first place."

  WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

  "Tule" was all primed and ready now, a "tool" in the broader sense of the word. I used a barrage of New Age psychobabble about left brain/right brain lateralization, inner child issues, and self-actualization, suggesting that his subconscious had stranded himself here, recognizing that he had a lot of issues to work out before he was ready to return to the larger universe and interactions on a grander scale. I threw in lots of catchphrases like synergy, perspectives, empowerment, dysfunction, holistic, closure, win-win, co-dependency, breakthrough, proactive, meaningful, integration, clear, paradigms, and well-being. I emphasized that, once "he" could learn to love "himself", then the love "he" so desperately wanted from others would no longer be blocked and could flow freely toward.

  Bottom line: it was his inner issues that sabotaged his attempts to access the launch window every twenty-six thousand years. That's what I told him. And that if he wanted his luck to change the next time that temporary launch window rolled around, he would have to change his external reality by altering his internal reality. And how was he to do that he wanted to know. "The secret," I told him, "is to act your way into thinking rather than think your way into acting."

  WHAT DO I DO? WHAT DO I CHANGE?

  "Newton's Law of Reciprocity," I answered. "As long as you are taking lives, your life is taken. It is only when you grant people power over their own lives, will your life start to be your own."