G
is for the Glop. The Glop has no real name. The Glop has no real form. It can call itself anything it wants and assume any form it wishes. If it has a purpose, no one knows what it is. The Glop is that nameless, shambling, drooling, unnamable, indescribable “thing” that always manages to get hold of the narrator of a horror story just before said narrator can name it or describe it or reveal its purpose. [Author’s Note: Yet have you noticed that the narrators of these stories always seem to have time to write “Gaaaaah!” or “Arrrrrrgh!” or something like that?] If you read a story that ends with a long, jagged pen-scrawl trailing down to the bottom of the page, that’s because the Glop got to the narrator. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the Glop is in cahoots with the Colophon. Many is the character, both in fiction and in real life, who has found him- or herself in the embarrassing position of being Slurped by the Glop before anyone can learn anything about them. Bad horror movies are especially adept at this. Or episodes of the original Star Trek when everyone beams down to a planet’s surface … but there’s that crew member you’ve never seen before, the one whose uniform doesn’t even come close to matching everyone else’s. You know immediately that crew member is Soon to Be Slurped by the Glop. [Author’s Note: They’d really like to get their hands on the Glop. Reality and fiction are one and the same to it, and they’d like to know how it manages to move so easily between realms of perception and still manage to assume physical form. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind hearing that one myself.]
H
is for Hawkline Monster. [Author’s Note: Not the one of which Richard Brautigan wrote.] The sting came back to him; not the same as before, but far more powerful. He dropped to one knee as the pain began to tear his face in half, he felt it, felt the fire burning through his nose as he struggled to his feet and stumbled into the bathroom, hoping that it was all over now, please let it be over, please let this be the last of my punishment, but then he was in front of the mirror and looking at his face as it began swelling around a gash on his forehead and nose, swelling like a goddamn balloon so he looked away, looked down at his hand and saw it pulsating, felt a cold thing crawling between his shoulders, eyes twitching, what the hell is it, but then he heard the flapping, the flapping from outside the house and the sound of shattering glass and the volume of the dozens, hundreds of wings grew louder as he pulled himself around to look in the mirror and see his face split apart like someone tearing a biscuit in half, only there was no steam, just blood, spraying, geysering, very pretty, really, spattering around, and he tried to look behind him and see the birds as they engulfed the rooms of his house, but the pain was killing him because the cold thing shuddered down between his shoulders and began to push through, snapping his shoulder blades as if they were thin pieces of bark, and he screamed, screamed and whirled and slammed himself into the wall trying to stop the pain, trying to stop it from getting out, but he stunned himself for a moment and slid down to the floor, leaving a wide dark smear behind him, howling as the first thing sawed through his back and fluttered to life, he was on his hands and knees now, waiting, trying to breathe, breathe deep, and now, ohgod now the second one was tearing through, making a sound like a plastic bag melting on a fire, pushing through, unfurling, and he could see them now, could see them easily because their span must have been at least fifteen feet, and he threw his head back to laugh, he wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t laugh, couldn’t make any more human sounds, so he screamed, screamed so loud and long that his eyes bulged out and his face turned a dark blue, but then he listened as his scream turned into the wail of an angry bird of prey when his body was jerked back into a standing position, his arms locking bent, his hands clenching, every muscle in his body on fire; writhing, shifting, bones snapping, he shrieked in the tiny cage of the bathroom as his chest puffed out through his shirt and was covered in thick layers of brown feathers, and the birds were all around him now, flying, soaring majestically, and he knew their sounds, understood their sounds that sang forgiveness and release, understood all of it as he watched the flesh of his face drop off his body like peelings from an orange and he tried to move his arms, tried to grab something, then he jerked around from the waist and saw his arms drop off like branches from a burned tree, and he screamed again, louder than before, wishing that the pain would end and just let him die; instead it only forced him to fall against his great wings and, with one last shriek, jerk back as the spasm took hold of him, pushing the corded claws up through his groin. Soon he looked down on the bloodied heap of his human flesh. The sun was shining. The children were waiting. He offered his apologies for having hidden from them for so long. He’d only needed to know the draw of the Earth, the taste of those who bowed to Gravity. He’d almost forgotten that his flesh was a disguise. He rose above the fields of flesh, talons extended. His children followed. Someday they would carry away the souls of all humankind in their claws; punishment for its cowardice in ceasing exploration of the heavens.
I
is for Ichthyocentaur. Lycophron, Claudian, a Byzantine grammarian named Tzetzes, and Jorge Luis Borges are among the few who have written of the Ichthyocentaur, a creature of terrible wonder and beauty; human to the waist, with the tail of a dolphin and forelegs of a powerful battle-horse, the Ichthyocentaur is a creature capable of parthenogenesis. It is one of the most reverent myths to them. [Author’s Note: The monsters who dictate this to me.] They argue constantly over whose writings come the closest to capturing the mystery of this most wondrous and imposing creature—the majority side with Tzetzes—but none doubt its existence. They have composed hymns, created sculptures, fashioned complex mythologies and tall tales around it. There exists only one Ichthyocentaur, and they are determined to find it, to protect it, and to beg it to create another like itself that its race may multiply through the seas of the world. Even monsters dream of beauty. Even they embrace myth. [Author’s Note: You would not believe some of their myths; please trust me on that one.] They foster imagination within themselves and others of their ilk. This is what should make them holy.
J
is for Joyce Carol Oates. She is their favorite author, bar none. She is their Goddess. She and her stories are the music and words of their Heart-Song-of-Being. She knows their suffering, understands their loneliness, articulates everything within them that they haven’t the emotional vocabulary to express. They can recite all of her works from memory. [Author’s Note: I listened as a trio of them did not so much recite as perform “Dear Husband,” Rape: A Love Story, and the contents of Sourland in its entirety. I would be lying if I claimed not to have been moved.] When at last they finally erase most of humanity from the face of the planet, she will be among the few who will spared. They do not call her by her name—to speak her name is a punishable act, for they see themselves as not yet worthy to speak her name; instead, they whisper “Scheherazade” and genuflect.
K
is for The Ken Doll. For some reason he scares the living shit out of them.
L
is for Loup-Garou. [Author’s Note: See earlier note under D.]
M
is for Mclnnsmouth’s. [Author’s Note: One of mine. Still mixing truth with lies and lies with truth.] Driving back from the twice-annual residency program at the university where we both teach, fellow writer Tim Waggoner and I were surprised by a sudden and somewhat brutal snowstorm. We drove slowly. A couple of hours passed. When at last we emerged from the worst of it, both us had to go to the bathroom, we were about to pass out from hunger (it had been over nine hours since our previous meal), and the gas tank was nearing empty. I checked the printed directions as well as the folded maps, and Tim checked the GPS; according to all sources, there wasn’t an exit for another thirty miles. We weren’t going to make it. But then I spotted, dimly, in the distance, something that could only have been the famous arches of gold. There was much rejoicing, for wherever one finds the arches, one find restrooms and gas stations. So happy are we to see this that we
both promptly forget there isn’t supposed to be an exit here. We turn off at the end of the exit ramp and see there is only one structure, a few hundred yards to our left: the ever-familiar arches of gold, but attached to a gas station. We head toward it, tears of relief in our eyes, singing Neil Young’s “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” far too loudly and excruciatingly off-key. We park, go in, hit the restrooms, order our … I hesitate to use the word “food,” so in this case allow me to rephrase: We gave our orders, paid, received what we ordered, found a place to sit, and began eating. There was also a gift shop inside this structure, along with private pay-showers, and an unmarked room where patrons had to knock in a specific rhythm in order to be let in. “Is it just me,” I ask Tim, “or do a lot of the people coming in here look like they might be related to everyone who works here?” Tim begins watching. “They all look like Children of the Damned,” he responds, referring to the novel and film versions, where the alien children are all pale, with white hair and unsettling eyes. We laugh, continue eating. Then Tim’s eyes stare ahead, lock onto something, and grow a bit wider. I ask, “What is it?” He nods in the direction of the entryway behind us. I turn to look. At least a dozen more people have come in. The place is beginning to fill up. It’s nearly 11:30 P.M. on a Sunday, and it appears that where we are is the Place to Be. The dozen who have just entered look almost exactly like everyone else; same pale skin, same white hair, same unnerving eyes, the color of which I don’t know that I’ve ever seen in Nature. But now we notice that many of them sport some kind of deformity, each one growing more grotesque than the one before as even more continue coming in through the entryway. “Do you smell fish?” Tim asks me. I nod, adding, “And something that’s like an open sewer?” He nods his head. We decide to get the hell out of there while the getting’s good. The area is very crowded, and we have to excuse ourselves as we maneuver through, sometimes bumping shoulders, sometimes stepping on a spongy foot, always smiling, always apologizing, always careful to not look up into the face for fear of seeing gills on the neck. We still have to get gas. Tim calmly drives the car toward the pumps. Both of our faces are slabs of granite. We can’t let them know we know. From outside the car, we look calm and collected and engaged in rapid-fire conversation. Inside the car, we’re both saying wearesobonedwearesobonedwearesobonedshitpissfuckfuckfuck. We get out of the car once we reach the concrete fueling isle. Tim pumps the gas; I wash the windshield so I can keep an eye on the doors of the structure. Inside, the employees and patrons have all lined the windows and are standing very still, frozen specters on the deck of an ice-bound ship, staring at us. “We have enough gas,” I say. Tim looks over at the window. “Yes, yes, I think it’s safe to say I agree with you on this one, we definitely have enough gas.” He replaces the nozzle and doesn’t bother waiting for his credit card receipt. We jump in the car and peel out of there, the car fishtailing when we hit a patch of ice, but we manage to get out of there and back on the highway. In the years since then, whenever we speak of that night, we refer to it as “the McInnsmouth’s Incident.” [Author’s Note: Referring, of course, to the famous novella by H. P. Lovecraft, which neither Tim nor I can bring ourselves to read again. See earlier note under E.] As far as either of us knows, that unmarked exit is still there, and still leads to the same place. Not that we’re in any hurry to test that theory, mind you. The smell of fresh fish still gives both of us bad dreams. Sushi is right out.
N
is for Nazareth, the Scottish metal band. Specifically, for their album Hair of the Dog, which They Who Are Dictating This to Me love. Even more specifically, it is for two songs from that album: “Hair of the Dog” and “Beggars’ Day,” both of which they play almost constantly [Author’s Note: Constantly. Constantly, God help me—and would someone please explain to me what the fuck that “heartbreaker/salt-shaker” line is supposed to be about? I mean, I’m all for rock lyrics that experiment with the boundaries of metaphor, but heartbreaker/salt-shaker? Really?]—that is, when not singing praises to the Goddess who is their favorite writer. [See earlier note under J.] [Additional Note: I think my ears have actually begun to bleed.]
O
is for the Only. Places can be monsters as well; even those places that lack mass and substance. The Only—and it is sentient—is one of those places. You will reach a place in your life when it feels like all you’re doing is breathing air and taking up space, and even that hurts so goddamn much it’s all you can do to lift your head off the pillow in the morning. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a successful career, money in the bank, people who love you; it doesn’t matter that, everywhere you look, there’s irrefutable evidence of your life’s worth—a loving wife, kids who worship and respect you, lifelong friends who’ve seen you through thick and thin, even readers who admire your work and flock to conventions in the hopes of getting your signature [Author’s Note: Not really sure if this is one of mine or not, but also realize that, at this point, what does it matter?]—none of it means squat, even though you know it should mean the world, because all you know, all you feel, all you can think about is the gnawing, constant, insatiable ache that’s taken up residence in the area where your heart used to be, and with every breath, every action, every thought and smile and kiss and laugh—things that should make this ache go away—you begin to lose even the most elementary sense of self, and the floodgates are opened wide for a torrent of memories, regrets, sadnesses, and fears that no drugs, no booze, no loving embraces or tender kisses or hands holding your own in the night can protect you from. You become the ache, and despite all your efforts to do something to make it better, eventually the ache circumscribes your entire universe, and it never goes away, and you feel useless, worthless, a black hole, a drain and burden on everyone and everything around you and try as you might you can’t see any way out of it except … The heart makes no sound when it breaks. The mind releases no scream when it collapses. The soul raises no whistling breeze when it abandons you. This is the first step into surrendering so that you may move toward the Only: Population: 1 more than seven minutes ago, thank you kindly. Does anyone know how to get old blood off an antique straight razor? [See earlier note under D, 2nd Author’s Note.]
P
is for Phantoms. At the very start, you’re standing on a beach in Florida, at the very spot where Ponce de León landed in 1513, hoping it was the land of Bimini where he could find the Fountain of Youth; and as you’re standing there, you can see all the way to St. Augustine, overrun with the old and sick who wait in the salt air and sunshine for death to embrace them. You open your mouth to call out—and it doesn’t matter that you don’t know to whom you’re going to call out or what you’re going to say, none of it matters, because now the sea is giving up its dead, and you, you’re pulled into the water. All of you becomes liquid, and you know the sea’s secrets, and having become liquid you watch as off the coast of the Île de la Seine, the Ship of the Dead appears, dropping clumps of viscera and something that might be isinglass, which drift in toward shore; by the banks of the Colorado River near an Anasazi village a decaying boat of cedar and horsehide drifts to land, and from it steps a ragged and bleeding woman who kneels by an undiscovered kiva, wailing a song of loss and misery in Urdu to the god Angwusnasomtaqa, praying that the Crow Mother will return her to her mate in the Netherworld; off Ballachulish in Argyllshire a shipload of drowned crofters materializes, howling in the most dread-filled loneliness; a fisherman in Vancouver sees a mountainous trident emerge from the water, pierce through then uproot an oak before it vanishes below the surface, creating waves so powerful they smash his small boat into splinters but that’s okay, because, you see, he drowns with a happy heart because he’s seen a miracle, which is all he’s ever wanted out of life; in icy hyperborean waters another doomed vessel, captained by a German nobleman named Faulkenburg, races through the night with tongues of fire licking at its masthead; St. Brendan’s Isle appears in the Atlantic—but for only a moment, just long enough for thre
e coelacanths to push off from shore and submerge into the waters; many miles away the SS Cotapaxi, believed to be vanished en route from Charleston to Havana in 1925, drifts out of the sea-mist, its crew, looking through hollow and algae-encrusted sockets where their eyes used to be, smile at one another, happy to be voyaging once again; then a kraken, the same one found by the Bishop of Midros, thunders out of its underwater cave long enough to snare two scuba divers in its mighty claws and drag them, shredded and screaming, back under the waves while the Raifuku Maru—the Japanese freighter that vanished off the coast of Cuba the same year as the Cotapaxi—reappears just long enough for three crew members to throw themselves over the side because they’re all diving for a baggage-claim ticket that’s bobbed to the surface. The Loch Ness Monster sticks its head above the surface, looks around, decides not to take part in this silliness, and submerges once again. As liquid, you catch sight of something remarkable, even to something as remarkable as you are now: In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. [See earlier note under E.] You wonder what other so-called phantoms of myth and old-wives’ tales and legend may actually exist, if monsters are real [Author’s Note: You bet your ass they are. I know a dead cat who can back me up on that.], and what part you, as liquid, as all liquid, will play in this.
Q
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