The End Times Explorer

The Alchemist

Cthulhu had it all. Tentacles on his face. Lobster-claw appendages, the body of an enormous plucked chicken, an extra eye— of course, and an unpronounceable name: C-T-H— wha-at...? I mean, where do you even go with that? Grotesque and unworkable. You could see how he might get stuck living in his ex-wife’s basement. Cthulhu’s a preposterous animal that sits atop a pedestal, that lumbers through an opened doorway, that slogs after an escaping ship, and is last seen reforming his putrid body amid the ocean waves. But rest assured, H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous creation— unleashed on the world in the winter of 1928, in Weird Tales, ‘The Unique Magazine’— is no slouch!* He’s here for the End Times! Ours—! All he needs to do is wait. For the water to recede, for the land to rise, for the door to the above to be opened just a crack, for his hashed-together body to finally emerge and make perfect, horrifying sense to one and to all—!

* Cthulhu’s one hell of a swimmer. Sure, he comes apart on the bow of The Alert, later ripped off in Jaws 4: The Revenge, starring Michael Caine— but he’s back on his isle in no time, back in his bunker. Back in his man cave. Up on his post again. Licking his wounds, or doing whatever— getting his body back. He ain’t no instigator. He’s got all the time in the world—

Meanwhile, he’s been calling. Our dreams have been infiltrated. Our days filled with odd twitches. We’re being driven to distraction— to acting out in episodes of ‘outre mental illness’ and ‘group folly’. This ‘thing’ which seems ‘instinct’ and ‘malignancy’ maddens us as it drones in our heads at night with that wet, hollow call— “C-T-H-U-L-H-U...!” We awake in cold sweats and repeat to troubled loved ones: “C-t-h-u…”

“What are you even saying—?”

“Who are you talking to? What are you saying—?” I’m lathering myself in the basement shower stall. “What’s that supposed to mean—?” That’s just lazy dialogue! I give a snigger. “What’s that smell—?” More distinct but still pretty base. That’s what passes for The Voice of Reason these days. How’d she ever get that job? The ‘rational mind’ prevails, I guess. It must— it’s what keeps this family going. It’s gotten us this far, with our great big, drooping forebrains. The prosaic steers the minivan. Nowadays, The Voice From Above The Vault is just as likely to be saying, “Remember to bring up some orange juice—!”

Might as well shampoo. I borrowed the bottle— I’ve got more hair than she does and the stuff costs. I’m very generous.

Cthulhu is that dread ‘piecing together of separated things’ that always comes knocking at The End. His scrappy body stands in for all those other Beasts of the Apocalypse we grew uncomfortable with— shameless chimeras, sewn-together abominations we felt a need to separate ourselves from, a need to start taking apart with our probing, scientific minds.* He is is that ‘deadly light’ said to emanate in every last End Times— that will arise naturally at the meeting place of the many armies that is called Armageddon.

I condition as well— since I snagged the set.

Cthulhu’s august return is foretold in Lovecraft’s opening salvo. I’ve made extensive use of it— haven’t I? I meant to. Like some New Age Osiris, like some slime mold in the forest, his body is meant to come together again, to be reassembled. Cthulhu will reconstitute himself in nature’s original laboratory, the ocean, in the centrifuge of its generative waves.

I’m standing back from the shower, just letting it hit—

see Linnaeus. Say hello.

“Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come— but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.” -Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu.

“Who knows the end—?” What an ending! Not only does Lovecraft foresee The End, he implicates his reader. I wish I could do that. Or anything. Provide some warning. Reveal a secret. Stop myself mid-thought. Insert myself in the machinations of my own doomsday device—

“Maybe it’s what you’re reading—” I can hear reverberating.

She’s poking around— how else can I describe it? She’s all the way to the edge of her comfort zone— just passed the dryer.

“What’s that smell—?”

“I don’t know, it came in with you.”

“We all know you’re the piss artist around here.” She’s at my workbench now, looking into open containers, near my stack of books. She’s wearing a work shirt, could even be one of mine, from when I positioned myself that way. There’s something unnerving about this latest foray. It’s too aggressive! She scans my reams of paper like some Russian bitch on an anti-intellectual pogrom.

“I want this harassment to stop! I want you out of my hair—!” She passes by the coffee tin containing any number of her intimate objects and goes to pick up a book.

“Maybe it’s what you’re read—”

“I’m reading Jonathan Livingstone Seagull—!” I’m in there like a jack-rabbit, snatching that book away, drawing it well behind me, backing away dementedly. She’s suitably bamboozled by my accomplishment. “Ha-ha! Ha—!” I laugh at her astonishment.

I slink over to my mattress and push the slender volume of Lovecraft safely back under the blankets. I smooth over my bedroll, making sure to tuck in the corners responsibly, as I repeat the narrator of Cthulhu’s last words under my breath— “See that it meets no other eye.…”

“Found Among the Papers of the Late...” Cthulhu is prefaced, so introductorily hostile, so absent-mindedly lethal, already so very chortle-worthy—

“That’s how it opens? Wow, I thought it was about a seagull—?” I hear what sounds like a seagull, but it may be the ex.

‘The Call of Cthulhu’ has at its core a simple inversion of protagonist and reader— doesn’t everything? Of the one and the many; the common denominator in this case being one particularly awful. Cthulhu is a mathematical anomaly, like Pi, meant to multiply inside you, in a cascade towards infinity. Cthulhu is Lovecraft’s poison bon-bon to humanity, his booby-trapped gift-box to end all gift-boxes. His flaming turd left on the global doorstep. Like most doomsday devices it contains a self-incriminating feature— it shall come to pass from our desire to know. Thus has evil always been unleashed on the world— from the garden-variety to Los Alamos. By our need to know, and our insistence on going on anyway, despite our ignorance. Cthulhu is the surprise that comes from winding the crank. The bite that comes from our next blind convolution. For our next spoken word. He answers for all our presumption of mastery, for our apparent subjugation of nature, and our self-congratulatory evolution beyond the Unknown. Cthulhu comes from a troubled subconscious— which Lovecraft was happy enough to plumb— but denied himself ever having. In fact the only thing authentic in this blasphemy is the malice of its intent.

“No more books—!”

“You’re revoking my library card now—?”

“Someone’s been egging you on.” She’s perusing my thump-worn Dictionary of Biology— second-hand, revised, expanded. “This is so old. We all know you haven’t had an original thought in years. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Initially? Your thoughts not being your own or something— reiterating stuff you picked up somewhere, from an unpublished thesis, or something—? You’ve latched onto somebody! Who? I want to know who I’m living with—! You’ve let one in, haven’t you—?”

“What? You think I’m possessed—?”

“A cat—” She’s sniffling, all prickly. “Have you let a cat in—?”

“Maybe you did! With all them boxes!” There’s a bunch lining the wall in back of the stairs— they appeared one day when I was lured out to cash a tiny residual cheque.

“They’re for your books!”

“That’s not helpful—! Appearance and access, that’s what I need! That’s how you build an archive— you can see it, and get at it.” She’s skimming her eyes over my mess.

“If there were some order to it—?”

“Then what? You’d shut up—?”

“I need you to stop hoarding the basement! Those books better be going in the freezer—!” To prevent bed bugs. What a world—! Hoarders, anorexics, converters of all kinds. “Some of them look new—! How can you even afford them? Are you stealing them? When do you even go out? Do you sneak away at night? Is that what you’re doing—?”

“Yes—!! I put on a pink leotard, and I go out and spy in people’s windows. My kink is to wait until they fall asleep, then sneak in and pry away their midnight readings. I bring them home for closer inspection. I remove their bookmark, and replace it...