Have any of you read H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu myths? If so, then you might appreciate what follows. If not, then will be totally baffled. Either way, this is sort of silly, but I couldn't resist slipping Lovecraft's character into my novel. Have you ever had one of those moments, when a character pops up unbidden and takes over a scene, demands your attention, refuses to let your story go free from his tentacled grasp until he has his say? That's what happened here....

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Suddenly Peter bleated an exclamation and slammed the Cargo Bike’s break, scraping the pavement and spraying sparks the air with sparks. They came to rest beneath a broken stone pillar.
“Problem?” Soren asked, struggling to his feet and looking out into the darkened ruins. Peter pointed towards a massive barrier that stood across the road, its wet surface shimmering in the bike’s headlight. Unlike the other structures in the area, it was not made of stone, though it had the same green-white corpse shade as a moss-covered ruin. It was run through with strange creases, from which dripped a thick green oil.
“I don’t remember this….” Peter said. “It was never here before….”
“Children of the mud, I am always here.” A drooling, bubbling voice echoed through the gloom. Peter, Soren, and Philo look at each other, wide-eyed.
“The Machinesmith?” Soren asked.
“Might be.” Peter whispered. “Get back in the cargo container, we’ll have to find a way around this… thing.”
As Peter spoke, the mass that lay before them seemed to pulsate and jiggle ever so slightly. Peter gulped and stepped back towards the bike.
“The Machinesmith told me of your coming.” The voice thundered, thick and watery. “Be it known, Mud Children, that there is no way around. There has never been a way around.”
“That wall looks like its breathing.” Soren whispered, backing towards the cargo container with Philo clinging to his right hand. Peter nodded, his normally glacial expression beginning to crack. Heaving up and away from the ground, the unfathomable bulk that blocked their path began slowly to turn, its creased and folded skin dragging along the road beneath it.
Philo screamed like a soul in hell. Globulous orange eyes appeared in the air above them, glowing not with rage or with hate, but with an expression unknown in the world of men. The eyes, cloudy and serene, hung in a gelatinous face of pale green, manlike and yet infinitely larger, with oily ridges on the top of its skull. Beneath the eyes, there was a bump that resembled nose, but where the mouth might have been there extended a beard of tentacle-like fingers, each moving as though alive and guided by a sentience of its own. The shadowy form of wings spread out behind the entity’s corpulent bulk, and long, rubbery arms stretched forth onto the road, their tentacle-fingers groping towards the trio’s boots.
“Jesus Christ!” Peter shrieked, then looking embarrassed, crossed himself and added: “That’s the first time I’ve used the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Lord?” The thing spoke, its tentacles rippling with each word. “I know of no Lord, save One.”                    
“What…. are you?” Soren called out in the general direction of the pulsing mass.
“The Elder One.” Came the voice. “Throughout the Aeons, I have been known by many names, both plural and singular. Anunaki. Nephilim. Dread Cthulhu. The Menace from the Sky. I am all of these and I am none of these. I am the dreamer and I am the dream; I am time and I am the consumer of time; I am the question and I am the answer; I am….”                                                                                                                                                                                                  
“We get the point.” Peter interrupted. The thing pulsated and its orange eyes burned down upon him.  
“Child of the Mud.” It said. “There is no point.”
“Peter!” Philo hissed between his teeth. “Be nice to it! We don’t know what it is.”
“I know very well what it is.” Peter whispered. “Though I never thought I would have to see it with my own eyes.”
“What you know is but a small morsel, peon.” The thing boomed.
“I’ve heard of Corporation experiments going wrong, but this takes the cake.” Soren whispered. “Is it… is it something that they created?”
“Created?” The thing gurgled in a voice that sounded like laughter and sent its tentacles streaming straight and stiff from its lips. “Created? Don’t you see, child, that I am uncreated? Created things have their allotted end. To me, there is no end, either of time or of purpose. But of me it is written: That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange æons, even death may die.”
“So you are… immortal?” Soren nearly choked on the word. His quick hands leapt to his belt, searching for his reclamation pistol, and with some horror he realized that it was gone. He felt bare without it, exposed to the will of this inhuman thing.
“Immortal?” The thing said in another mocking tone. “Up above, you humans still struggle after immortality, not knowing what it is that you seek. An endless self-consumption, the fate of the serpent devouring its tail – that is the curse of longevity. No, I have had Aeons to contemplate such things, and I have come to understand that true immortality is not quantitative, but qualitative. The meaning of life is the moment; beside the moment, there is no other meaning, for beside the moment there exists nothing else. The moment is where the spread of eternal possibilities intersects present experience. In each moment is the sweet romance, the hot lust of eternality and immediate experience.”
The thing’s amorphous fingers slightered across the floor and reached out towards Soren’s ankles. For a moment, he thought he saw a frustrated longing well up in the creature’s flaming eyes, as though the thing were looking back into countless Aeons of futility.
“Great.” Soren remarked under his breath. “A philosophical blob. Peter, I don’t know what the hell we’ve stumbled across, but I’d just as soon forget we ever saw it.”
“Good idea.” Peter whispered back. “Get back in the bike; we’ll have to turn around and find another route.”
“Try.” The thing chortled, green bubbles rising from its tentacled lips. “Try to turn around, to go back. Time will not cater to you, Child of the Mud.”
Peter lowered his head, a lump in his throat.
“You know just what I mean.” The thing hissed. “Yes. I have watched you for many years, Mud Child. I have watched you struggle against the rockslide of time. You want her back, don’t you? No. That is not it. You want to go back – back to her, back to a time and a place that have faded away.”
“That’s not true.” Peter snarled, ramming his fist into the cargo bike’s handlebar. The headlight shuddered and flickered across the beast’s pulsating head.
“Oh, but you know it is.” The thing burbled. “There is no hiding it from Dread Cthulhu. The Elder Ones look down upon your plight and laugh, oh offspring of the dust. For this reason, you shall fail in all you do: you lose the past to time’s uncaring hand, and then you sacrifice your present and your future in vain attempts to reclaim your vanished past. And even when you set your eyes on the future, already it has become your past. The future, you see, is a lie. It is merely a past waiting to happen. Yes, oh filth of the Earth, your future is slain upon the altar of Time, and so Time shall be your God: a merciless and uncaring god who shall slay your past with one hand and tempt you with the promise of a future with the other. Therein lies the enigma, for man struggles against death, not realizing that death is the dissolution of Time.”
The thing rumbled from the depths of its shapeless stomach, spewing green bubbles into the air. Soren revulsed at the sight and Philo shrank back against him, clinging to his waist and burying his eyes in Soren’s overcoat. In the corner of his eye, Soren saw Peter standing, shuddering with anger, before the mass of green flesh. Suddenly it became clear that this was a contest between two wills that had long been at war; it was to Peter alone that the thing spoke, ignoring Soren and Philo as being only peripheral objects.                                                                                          
“Ah.” The thing seemed to sigh, its tentacles falling limp around its face. “Are you going to get angry, mud child? Are you going to attack me, like an animal? Are you yet so primitive as to be driven by adreneline, by hormones, by blood and bile and muck of the body. It was that animalistic rage, unchecked and unctrolled, that killed her, wasn’t it?”                                                                                          
“Shut… up.” Peter breathed between his teeth.
“You sound so much like her now. Is this another attempt to call her back from the past? She was so angry, wasn’t she? Nothing could hold her back, that day when she stormed off with a gun in her hand… not even you.”
Peter shook with rage, his reddened eyes pouring firey tears onto the pavement.
“I swear to God… I’ll kill you.” He hissed.
“Good.” The creature gurgled. “Become like her, oh man. Become a filthy animal like her - vicious, untamed, full of rage - so that the The Elder Ones may laugh and spit upon you… even as they spit upon her.”                
Soren covered Philo’s ears from the stream of profanity that followed.
“Shut the $@#& up!” Peter screamed. “Shut the @#%$ up and go back to hell, you son of a bitch!”
“Hell is remembrance.” The thing said. “As you have well proven.”
With a bubbling laugh, the thing waved its wings high above their heads, blowing a gust of filthy air over them. Peter staggered back, his face twisted in rage, as the creature rose from the ground. Slowly, the thing began to tread through the air, its immense bulk dragging over their heads and dripping dank oil over them. With each flap, its wings struck the ceiling, bringing down a rain of dust.
“Where the @#*$ do you think you’re going?” Peter screamed.
“Back to Time Immemorial, to join the Elder Ones in their laughter.” It gurgled. “For I have already broken you.”
“Don’t leave….!” Peter shouted, but the thing had already begun to float away from them, like a bloated green zepplin treading through the endless night.
“No need to fear, oh man.” It burbled back at him. “I will always be beside you, tormenting you… in your memories.”
There was a flash of green flame and a stench of brimstone, and the thing vanished into the air. Peter fell forward onto the cargo bike, his hands quaking against the handlebars.          
“What was that all about?” Soren asked.
“It was a long overdue visit.” Peter grumbled. “And he won. Damn him.”
“You… know that thing?”
“Everyone knows that so-called thing.” Peter said, pulling himself back onto the cargo bike’s seat. “Its in our hearts, our minds, our souls. But some of us are better at fending him off than others….”  

--Last edited by CallofZion on 2006-07-13 21:39:36 --

Quote :

“The Elder One.” Came the voice. “Throughout the Aeons, I have been known by many names, both plural and singular. Anunaki. Nephilim. Dread Cthulhu. The Menace from the Sky. I am all of these and I am none of these. I am the dreamer and I am the dream; I am time and I am the consumer of time; I am the question and I am the answer; I am….”                                                                                                                                                                                                   “We get the point.” Peter interrupted. The thing pulsated and its orange eyes burned down upon him.   “Child of the Mud.” It said. “There is no point.”

heh!    ... i don't know Lovecraft ... tho i did a quick study on the net ... but anyway, i liked this section ....

Here is one of my favorite pics of Lovecraft's Cthulhu:


Both my sister and I are big fans of the Cthulhu Mythos. We even have stuffed Cthulhu dolls, if you can believe that there is such a thing! Mine usually sits on top of my monitor, but he's in storage right now because I'm moving soon.

heh!  

is your sister a "literary/artiste type"?

did you have those dolls in your childhoods?

LOL, late childhood, I suppose. I think I was around 13 when I got mine. I won it in an online contest, actually, put out by a company called Toy Vault. They used to make a very nice line of toys based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," most of which I still have. If I ever have kids, though, I will be sure to leave Cthulhu in their crib. Isn't he so cute and cuddly?



Here's the full product line:
http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html

I have the big one near the top, and she has the black and silver one and the smaller green one:


 

--Last edited by CallofZion on 2006-07-18 21:08:24 --

... ok, so .... u abit weird, we're used to that , LOL!

btw .... "@#*$" ???? ... i think you just need to put the swear words in.  Or not. Or make up some futuristic variations if they really make you too queasy ....

.... then again, "wut the phukk do i kno? ....    

LOL, yeah, the characters are a bit too cartoony. I originally had "shut the fuck up," but then I thought it better to simply put in characters and let the reader fill in the blanks. I know it may seem a bit bizzare, but this story has a strong spiritual message somewhere in it, and I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to have heavy profanity in the mix.
   At any rate, this Peter guy is going through some strong emotions here. He's being mocked by the Universe, so to speak, and he's telling the Universe to "shut the fuck up" and let him be. Personally, I think telling the Universe to "fuck off" is one of the bravest things we can do sometimes.  

--Last edited by CallofZion on 2006-07-18 22:33:50 --

I read the story Call of Zion.  It's different than what I am used to.  I like SOME science fiction fantasy, but aliens I have trouble with.  Once I got into it I see how it becomes an inner-world struggle.  I so love the whole thing about time - your future is just the past waiting to happen.  The only thing we have is NOW.  I think it's an interesting exploration of omnipotence, immortality and the trap that we, as humans, catch ourselves in wanting those things.  We get caught like flies in a web.  I am looking forward to reading more.

Haha, yeah, Cthulhu is the only "alien" in the story, actually. Like I said, He entered unbidden. I turned a corner in a dark tunnel beneath New Rome, and... bam!... there he was, singing ColdPlay's "Speed of Sound." (Ok, THAT part I omitted). The rest of "Beyond the Land" is just dystopic science fiction, like "1984" or "Brave New World."

Hey... when are you going to post more MEELA stuff? This forum has become kind of sleepy lately.  

did you see the 2nd excerpt she posted on that thread? ... maybe you missed it, cuz you didn't comment .. must've discouraged her

... or were you just waiting for more?

Aw, I didn't mean to discourage anyone! The last time I checked, I just read her reply to my questions at the bottom of the thread and did not see the post above it. I just went back and read it; the one about Navi. I love it; the mysterious light-bearer, the one with secrets whom others would probably disregard. Its very powerful.

Hey, the other day I visited a Sikh Gudwara (place of worship) in my community. It reminded me a lot of Ki Meela, lol.

I miss going to Sikh Temples.  I really like the big ornate ones they have in Vancouver and Richmond here in British Columbia.  Some of them have a lot of priests who are from India, but are more educated and can translate.  The music and the singing is incredible.  I actually got a translation for the Aardas..the communal prayer.. and was blown away.  Sikhism's scrïptures are so reverent and loving in their praises to God.  Joyous in life in the presence of God.  I don't want to miss that in Ki Meela.  

But, as humans who live within our religions, ways and cultures - we are not perfect in our understanding of who God is and what happens to bring forth a purpose that has been denied and thwarted by the world.  There are so many dreams and people who are crushed.  Broken.  And that's why when something does shine through, it's a miracle.