Cthulhu's Reign

Nat didn’t like that he had had the same thought as this kid-fucker.

“You’re a fucking pedophile?” Nat felt his stomach heave.

“I never liked fucking them; anyway age has taken care of that. Besides, I don’t really like brown boys as much as blonde ones. Do you know why the Rising happened?”

“?Chingada!”

“Remember all of those talking heads on TV? When the stars are right, they said, they know nothing. The great Priest Cthulhu took a little nap, and a great deal of what is hidden by matter slept. We are the alarm clock. The shock. We figure out things, and as our tiny brains correlate the contents of our minds, their shock, their agony at glimpsing the true cosmos sends out a nice jolt. There are so many things waiting to Waken still; roses in your garden wanting to sing weird songs, pebbles wanting to shoot forth stony blossoms. Human time is done.”

Nat wanted to hurt him. He would check on Stephanie, and he would tell some of the others first.

“Why did you want the book?” asked Nat. “I know it is about bad things, but why now?”

“The collector of these little texts was special to Cthulhu. His moment of endarkenment actually impressed It. This little Liber Damnatus is dear.”

“You work for It.”

“I have always worked for It. Most humans do, and those that don’t serve as well. Hasn’t your good doctor explained the Octopus to you? Humans’ shock, their horror, and, for a rare few, their ecstasy works for It. At this point all we can do that is meaningful in the world is to increase the aesthetic value of this blue marble of a planet for a Will older and better than our own. Humanity is its last decade will finally have a purpose.”

Nat took the hollowed shell of the Bible and smashed it as hard as he could against Father Murphy’s cheek. He knocked the priest off the bench onto the grass. Murphy just laughed. Nat stomped on his chest.

“Beautiful.” Father Murphy gasped, “Just beautiful. Oh Loathly Lord freed from the Angles of the Water Abyss I am but a shard of black rainbow to adorn the world to which you awaken. Gurdjiatn Cthulhu gurdjiatn ekd szed mem-zem zmegnka!”

“Fuck you, asshole!” Nat left him. He needed to see Stephanie now.

“Look, my son, I am turning the other cheek.” Father Murphy rolled over. “I have made my garden beautiful for You. By the green star of Xoth I adore Thee, Domine.”

* * *

About twenty people knelt in the church. Stephanie was a couple of rows from the front. Candles flickered around the Virgin, and the noontime sunlight came through the stained glass, but the church seemed dark.

“Calabaza, are you OK? Stephanie, we need to go.”

She didn’t move from her prayer. No one moved. He ran to her, neglecting to genuflect as he passed the altar, even though the light burned signifying His presence. As he came up to her, her face confused him. She had the naughtiest smile ever, and her eyes were crossed. Then he realized that something slick and shiny was coating her face. He touched her. He flinched. She was cold and sticky. A little sob died in his throat. All of them. They had faces of idiocy or leering lust. Some fixative had been sprayed over their faces. Someone had fixed their hands into obscene gestures. Miss Abelard was chewing on a crucifix; Joel Sanchez was whacking off.

He fell on his knees next to Stephanie. His weight knocked her little rigid body sideways. She would be a praying fool forever. He looked up at Christ. How could you let this happen?

Murphy had sawn Christ’s ivory colored head off. He had replaced with an ivory-colored flying octopus. The image that the whole world had watched on television and feared. The image that had been in the dark spiral tower of their DNA. The part of Nat that was holding his world together, had its last moment. Nat felt the world stop. He heard a snap inside his head and his psyche dissolved into shock. He actually felt no amazement when the little flying octopus relaxed its grip on Christ’s body and began flying so slowly, ever so slowly on its stubby wings toward Nat. Nat’s last coherent thought was that it couldn’t move that slowly and stay in the air. He was trying to scream.

He heard Father Murphy entering the church continuing the strange chant he had begun outside. He saw the green banner Father Murphy carried with the strange yellow design, and felt the tentacles as they surrounded his head. He almost laughed because they felt like something familiar — IcyHot muscle rub. He felt them slip over his open eyes and push their way into his nose. He felt one wriggle through his mouth and crush his larynx.

After that, there was no more linear thinking. What had been Natividad Moreno was now another art object. A tiny part of the Remaking of the world.

(For Robert Price)

HER ACRES OF PASTORAL PLAYGROUND Mike Allen

Lynda chews her peas. Her husband watches, his wary gaze fixed on the beauty mark beneath her left eye, no bigger than a felt-tip stipple, a fetching accent to the delicate sweep of her cheekbone.

When Delmar first placed her plate in front of her, that mark wasn’t there.

“Your pork chop okay?” he asks. “Not too dry?”

She nods, mutters “It’s fine” through a mouthful. The muscles at her temples flex as she chews, drawing his attention to the lovely streaks of gray that flare above her ears, so exotic, so witchy — the angle of her head projects in his mind just so and a sleepy flutter of lust stirs deep within him. And a flutter of alarm, too, though why that is, he doesn’t understand.

Then the black spot on her face moves. It’s larger now, no longer a beauty mark, a lumpy mole with a thick black hair sprouting from its center. The hair twitches again, like a bug’s antenna.

A whippoorwill starts its saw-motion song outside as a warm breeze stirs the kitchen curtains. Through the window Delmar notes two of the Appaloosa grazing in the pasture closest to the barn. Despite the brooding, overcast sky, sunlight washes the farm in soft watercolor hues.

Lynda picks up her ear of corn, peers out the window just as a faint spatter of rain belies the filtered sunlight.

“The Devil’s beating his wife,” she says. “Meaghan would love this. I hope she’s better soon.”

“She will be,” Delmar replies. He says it automatically, like it’s a programmed response, a catechism. The growth on the side of his wife’s face thickens into an articulated tentacle, long as a tablespoon, and like one of those, it flares and bulges at its end. The growth waves up and down as if it’s sniffing the air. Lynda brings the cob to her mouth, paying no attention to her new deformity.

Delmar goes to the stove, where he has set a wooden-handled butcher knife so that the top half of its blade rests on a red hot coil. He picks up the knife. “Honey, I’m sorry, but I need you to hold still a second.”

What he does next he does with the impassive face of the parent who must every day hold his daughter with cystic fibrosis upside down and beat her to make sure she can breathe another day. Lynda holds still, closes her eyes, seems to shut down, almost. When he finishes, there’s a raw circle on her cheek, like a cross- section of severed sausage, bloodless; and in seconds it’s stretched over with new skin, pink and healthy. She starts again as if nothing has happened, picks up her ear of corn and starts to gnaw.

The black thing squirming in Delmar’s hands screams when he drops it in the pot, but he has the lid over it before it can crawl out. Before it can speak. He knows he can’t let it speak. Why he knows this, he can’t really say, it’s as if someone is whispering in his ear, whispering frantically, don’t let it, don’t let it, don’t let it, but there’s no one else in the room, just him and Lynda.

Outside, the rain-sound stops, and the landscape brightens, though the clouds stay gray as ever.

“Sweetie,” calls Lynda, “could you bring me the butter?”

“You bet,” he says, keeping the pot lid pressed down hard. “In a minute. Just a minute.” He eyes her sidelong. “Just don’t forget who loves you.”

She smiles widely over the decimated contents of her plate. “I haven’t. Ever.”

After lunch, he trudges out to the vegetable garden, not a trouble on his mind. Though there’s no break in the clouds, the light that so kindly warms his land makes its gentle presence known on his face. Most of his farm is given over to pastureland — he likes to joke to Lynda that he’s renting from the horses — but he keeps a half-acre