Love's Unending Abyss

Love’s Unending Abyss

I couldn’t sleep. That’s all it takes sometimes. A pinprick so small can cause mountain shattering earthquakes. Suddenly, my eyes are open, and I don’t even know what to.

I’ve always considered myself an intelligent man; one who doesn’t bend or break easily. I certainly know the ins and outs of holding a picket sign. Yes, I was there on Wall Street. I thought they had a cause worth fighting for, even if they couldn’t figure out what that was. I’ve always been frustrated by working so hard and receiving so little in return. They can’t call me lazy – like so many of them like to do – because I work sixty five hour work weeks. I’m rambling though… none of this really matters. The organization that gloats and clings to their dollar bills and pushes those smaller than them down; their need to create this Orwellian nightmarish dystopia is for naught. Something so much darker and so very much more sinister – at least how our vain attempts at comprehension would see it – looms on the horizon. I bore witness to its birth; that clawing tooth and nail to fight its way into our perception. Immediately I knew its name: Villain.

I tend to enter my home late, a hard day’s sweat marking me like a branding iron. I would always be tired, but not ever tired enough that I couldn’t turn the evening into a miniature night cap by lumbering over to the fridge for a Dark Ale. The message on my answering machine played the same old message: one involving my mother wondering when I’d be coming back home to visit. Usually that’s where the messages would end. Though sometimes – and on this particular night – I would receive the call from my old pal from back home, Massachusetts. He’d talk to me as if he were there in the room, telling me of all his accomplishments at the prestigious University he attended and worked for. They were crazy accomplishments that I certainly could not understand; that of bending the laws of man and opening parallel doors. I could barely pronounce the name of his school; let alone what he was talking about. Miskataki something? No, still can’t. In the end it was just him trying to find that last untapped well of pride for him to exercise. I imagine the people back home were tapped enough.

T.V. goes on next, but I never watch it. My eyes begin to drift and my mind opens its arms to the Sand Man as soon as my body touches the recliner. A loud jerk or boom on the T.V. later and it’s off with me heading to bed. I’m a fairly heavy sleeper, so on a normal night there’s never a problem.

This night was far from normal. I don’t remember what it was that woke me – or even if I was ever asleep in the first place. It was definitely the smell that got me back out of bed. Like nothing I had ever experienced, to even use a combination of different smells would not do it justice. It was a smell so intense that it invoked memories that had never happened; Memories of choking children and swarming hornets. Everything about it struck disturbing chords within me. I moved to the kitchen, not able to help myself from pushing morbid images from my mind; of kicking the heads in of dogs or medieval guillotines at mass executions of the innocent. As I stumbled to the living room, the stench worsened; smells of nails on a chalkboard and aborted fetus’ crying out for the heads of their mothers permeated the room. I wanted to silence it. I needed to find the bane of this wretched feeling the smell invoked inside me. I could taste its smell, I could hear it. Feel it. It enveloped me in a cruel embrace that I could not shake free.

As I moved toward my bathroom, the smell/sound/feeling got worse. Each step like centuries of torture unfolding as I walk down the hall, my hands clasped to my head. The moment I touched my hand to the door and twisted, everything came to a grinding halt, and I could hear a different sound. This wasn’t the foulest of sounds and smells I had heard before, no, this was the sound of… splashing?

The room was empty. Two unwashed towels on the towel rack, a dirty sink, an unused bar of soap with one stray hair clung to it, and whatever lived behind the shower curtains: a fetid black silhouette laying down, moving about as if squirming for freedom. As I slowly drew the curtains, I saw her: The woman of my dreams. Everything I’ve ever wanted lay naked in front of me. Beautiful green eyes trapped in a heart shaped head. Brown hair draped down in magnificent curled locks framing her mannequin perfect breasts. I could at once see our beautiful future together; the kids, the car, the white picket fence. We would enjoy every sexual encounter we had. Our fights would be cute, and the make-up would make us stronger than before. Everything would be perfect.

It didn’t even matter when I pulled the curtains further to find that her lower half was an undulating mess of eyes and teeth; pulsating between red and blue tentacles that expanded and contracted like a second breath existed within her. I had resigned myself that she was my love, and that we would live in harmony together forever. I revised my life on the spot that we may not have children – if it wasn’t possible – but we would compensate by an even stronger bond.

It was a feeling of bliss that spanned four seconds and an eternity. The moment her mouth opened the bliss was gone forever, replaced by abject horror. The sound emanating from her vocal cords – if they even were that; I have trouble remembering if it came from her or that thing attached to her – was one and the same as the stench from earlier. It wasn’t a smell at all! At this range it was far worse. A low bass hummed and echoed into my very being, changing me. The pictures of Hornets and dead babies in my mind were gone and surprisingly missed, replaced by new images – those of fluctuating shapes pulling apart. With each shriek the inconstant shapes would jerk apart further, lifting the veil to expose my fragile mind to things not meant to be seen. I slammed my fists into my head, trying to exit out the sound that had clawed its way into my brain and replaced it with dread. I tried to gaze upon this creature’s upper beauty to find some form of solace in this mess, but the bile in my head was too excruciating. That hum got louder and louder until words began to be discerned through the chaos. The first word I could understand was that of “Oorn” and I immediately knew of her birth history and of cults trying hopelessly to bring this one into our realm as it slumbers – The gap that closed my mind stretched. When a shriek of “R’yleh” came forth I knew of adversaries and weakness and the troubles that come from two beings so at odds that we could never fathom its significance – the gap had widened further. Then “Azathoth” was muttered as if it were an afterthought; my mind which had been so closed off to the horrors of reality was shattered. I stumbled to the ground, broken. Every fiber of my being was torn apart. For her this was a simple communication, but for me this was the end of my ability to comprehend the world around me the same. There was no turning back from this new understanding. I had resigned myself to this fate, it was no complicated matter. It was an Us vs. them thing. It was very simple indeed.

I mustered up what drive I had inside and lunged out the bathroom door – hands still punching their way into my head. I got to the closet next the front of my apartment. Looking at the door – I knew I couldn’t stretch that galaxy wide gap between my hand and the door handle. I decided it didn’t matter anyway. This problem needed to end. I opened the closet and grabbed my weapon of choice from the tool box. Armed now, I took the hammer back with me to the bathroom. That… thing was still there, shrieking its damned shriek. I raised the hammer and released all the fury within me. The moment metal clanged to flesh, the horror under her lunged out at me, thirteen times the size it had been before. Every eye it bared was fixated on me with a hate that burned bright. I was able to get a second strike before it had overtaken me. Her face was a black and red form of mayhem. Blood pooled down into the tub, turning the clear water into a soft salmon hue. I was lucky I could feel its strength waning. I wrestled my way free to release a final slog on the beautiful creature’s head. Its last wail conjured no images in my mind. It was a death cry; a last gasp of air. The tendrils slumped off me and dropped down back into the pink bathwater for their final rest. I emerged victoriously beaten. It had done its damage. I knew of everything the moment it opened its beautiful mouth.

I now know of the Shoggath and R'lyeh and of all the old ones that lay deep down. Her mouth had opened and spoke to me of the Mi Go, and of Nyarlathotep. I know of the horrors that have existed far longer than humankind and that they have no feelings toward us. I know of my old pal and that his pride and accomplishments are that of opening doors not meant to be opened. I know that humankind stands on the precipice of a hollow that goes further down than we had ever thought could go. It’s all clear to me now. We should have been careful. We’ve already opened the doorway. Now that it’s open, however, it’s time to prepare.