kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"CalledByCthulhu.0"

words

F&C :: 20041030 :: http://www.stwa.net/scrawl/viewtopic.php?t=16777&highlight=kaolin

Called by Cthulhu -----------------

One-eyed Abraham shivered in the cold, rain trickling down the tree he leaned against; he felt the bark pulsing against his flesh, his muscles knotted. A pain seared from the right across his forehead, causing his good eye to swell and shut. His breathing was shallow and quick, staccato gasps punctuated with bouts of forgotten wonderment. Everything.

Everything.

Butterflies spasmed in his head and maggots swirled in his belly. Abdomen tightening, he pivoted to his left; a warmth flushed through his skin and out his mouth onto the ground beside him. He tasted--rancid--thoughts, losing thoughts, losing self. His stomach lay on the ground beside him. No--the contents of his stomach. On the ground beside him. Things he had chewed, masticated, things things that had once lived in some form or another; things he had killed and broken into base components. His bile--the body a wondrous, frightening--life, death--cosmos, existence; his bile was stuff his body had ingested then turned against the world outside of it, kept stored safely inside. Safely inside to attack the next wave of sustenance he consumed. Sustenance, keeping the cells fed.

He had to keep the cells fed.

He shivered, spasmed, and spat, spat the bile from his mouth to be with its own on the ground next to him. Bile--he was hungry. His diaphragm ached, his belly rumbled, he was hungry. When had he last eaten?

He didn't want to touch it.

Through the tears and streaks he gazed at it but could not discern figure from ground, but the bile was darker, a different sort of wet. It steamed slightly, he could see the steam and it made his stomach twirl in displeasure.

Something lower in his gut began to stir and he froze in embarrassed horror. Delirium. Oh god, it wasn't going to wait--he rolled onto his side and pulled at his trousers frantically clenching his anus tight against the warm onrushing--he pulled harder and felt something rip and hoped it wasn't the pants--hoped it wasn't himself.

A beast of gas and slime belted from out his bowels; he looked around, precariously close to rolling back into the mess he'd just expelled. Leaves. He wanted leaves to wipe his ass with. Then he could put on his pants.

A wolf's cry split the night, split his skull, split his mind again into babbles and all he could be was the sound of the wolf.

The wolf.

His breathing slowed and deepened. Deepened. His eye opened and he smelled the ozone, he smelled life and he smelled decay. He smelled the animal remains of his bile and excrement. The cold of his flesh, the shivers, goose bumps enveloped him, grew, accentuated, sharpened to one moment of pain, angels dancing on the head of a pin on every inch of his body--and he was warm. The shivers stopped; the singularity was whole. He was transformed. He was whole. He was well.

Slowly, his bad eye opened; depth came to him, one picture becoming two becoming reality, a reality that melded with the sensations swimming through his olfactory bulb and tickling associations he couldn't begin to name.

The many-eyed one, the horror. That's why he was here. He was ready, now. Twenty years it had been. Twenty years with this curse.

Twenty fucking years.

He howled into the night as if to warn his prey. A deep sniff of the air told him nothing he didn't know. He expected that. The old one would be deep in his lair, not touching the world. The world was immaterial to such as them. They were real; we were not.

But that didn't matter to Abraham.

That didn't matter.

His thick pads felt the ground beneath him, rolling, pulsing; life, his life, all the Earth's life. He had that tonight, with the eye blinded, his curse freed, his mind clear. He looked at it, then--the great eye, cataracts and all, and howled deep into it; Abraham chuckled with fear and hope--he could warn all he liked and the great eye would not know he was coming. It was coated in a swirl of black and red, blinded by the very Earth. Howl exhaled, he ripped off the constraints of his clothes and padded deeper into the forest, his muscles knowing exactly where to go. He'd been there once, twenty years ago, and many times since then--or he'd been looking since then. Always recessed somewhere in his animal brain he'd known where it was, but with the animal unleashed he ceased to exist.

Exist--

Exist.

Touched by the fucking moon. Lunatic. Unable to be. Unable to admit. To anyone. Anything. Physically and mentally, experientially unable. Like science was truly the golden rule and not just some approximation of reality. Serendipity if nothing else always stepped in to prevent the revelation of his truth. Serendipity. Chaos. Slowly worked against him. The more he strove, the worse it was. He'd lose control, lose existence, even when the eye was slit. In dreams, he'd see what was happening but be unable to act or react. He'd come to further and further in the wilderness--and with that, he began to understand, to push harder; that's how he'd first found the caves again. That was where the true reality was. The binding and unbinding. Science--he was a plaything. But tonight he would bite back.

The caves. He had to get to the caves.

Six hours with the peyote. Maybe eight. But the earth's cloak would only last an hour or two. The peyote split his mind, rambled his being so that the old one's taint could not suppress him. He needed the reality-bending, the twisting and rending; the shivers and bubbles and whorls of thought, being, mind, existence.

Abraham breathed deeply as he loped, stretching his pace out further. His joints stretched and lubricated, warming, burning pleasure in the motion. This is what it is, this is what it was. The disconnect, but he was in it, he could run it.

He smelled water and veered to connect with it; trickling water, drip drip dripped into the depths of the cave. It didn't take him to the maw; the creek had hidden paths, unknowns, but it was there--it was closer, it would lead him until the animal was surer.

His eyes crossed and speckled and folded back. Both eyes. He could see--really see. He was running. His tongue lolled out and back and he reveled in the cold air streaming over it, the flavor of the air, the flavor of his sweat, his stink; physical reality. He was running. Twigs rolled gently under his feet in slow motion; darkness grew. Stars outshone the old one's eye, but even they succumbed to the blanket of the forest.

Abraham could smell the trees.

He could smell the cave.

It was old.

Air did not escape the cave. The cave was dead; it was death. But its very essence leaked into its surroundings.

He broke from the stream; hard, sure, true--the ground, his breath, his muscles, his running, tonight. His blood--tonight, he would spill his own blood to be free of the curse. He would gnaw his leg off if he had to. If only it was just his leg. But tonight he would be free.

Free.

Then it was there--the rocks extruded from the ground; the sliver of an entrance that had beckoned to him in his carefree days of youth. Beckoned. Why had the old one called to him? Or had it been just his own curiosity? But then how had he found it? He knew serendipity's wiles were many. To blame it on just chance was to blame the master of the world, the sunderer. Then what?

Two rough triangles split over hard-pack, a crack in the earth that seemed only a hollow if not even just a shadow. Trees did not grow there but gnarled roots twined petrified through parched ground. The air was still--no; the breeze was slight. Into the crack.

He smelled the life being sucked away.

The hole was almost too small--he didn't know how he'd gotten in before, but it had seemed small then, too. Perhaps it was always just the size it needed to be. Did it need him tonight? Did it know?

It couldn't know!

But that supposed that the old one knew at all. No, it wasn't knowledge. It was the very fabric of reality. It was. That was all. And so he squeezed through the crack in the ground, and fell--

One.

Two.

The ground slammed up against him, uneven and sharp; he felt an ankle give and bit his cry. It would heal. It would heal now. He stood on three legs and ground his teeth, then slammed the ankle into the ground with the wait of his good legs.

The crunch, the grinding, the shiver, the tremor, the wave of energy traveling up his bone and dissipating through his skeletal structure--nails on chalk-board. He could feel the ankle swelling, lifeblood rushing to seal things where they belonged, to knit and bind.

One breath.

Two breaths.

His breathing was shallower here, as if the cave was sucking the breath out of him. He had to force his diaphragm down to pull the oxygen into his system, into his blood, into his leg, his ankle--and the cave gently caressed it out.

But he could deal.

The ankle was healing.

And then it was healed.

He stepped gingerly forward, testing it; he looked back at it but could see nothing. It would be slow moving.

Last time he'd had a flashlight. This time he thought his eyes would see him through. He remembered some faint glow--but maybe that glow was only human-visible?

No, he just had to go further--it was there; he couldn't see from here to there but at what he thought, he thought he remembered, he remembered it was just a bend in the tunnel and then the glow would fill out; and the ground--he didn't remember walking there so it must have been easy. He would walk slowly, not putting to much weight on his front paws. It would be fine.

He didn't remember the glow being so close. Something else had happened--but if there were a hole before him, he would feel the draft sucking into it. Now, the draft just led him forwards. He stepped carefully.

Memories trickled back, memories and dreams--mostly nightmares. He was walking and the strange glow, moonlight--yes, moonlight trapped deep in the Earth, began to fill his vision. Here, then, it could see.

Maybe it could.

But would it care?

Abraham's heart pelted its confines, a sharp pain above his wishbone. He forced breath in, and fought to exhale slowly.

Had it been so hard twenty years ago?

He didn't see how it could have been.

But he'd been less conscious, then, less aware. Excited, and excitement cleared away fear; fear was alertness, consciousness.

He'd been young, then.

Naive.

Foolish.

Just a pup.

No--A boy, then a wolf. He'd never been a pup. He was old the day he first became a wolf. He had been old, since. He'd lived a wolf's full life, and still lived on.

The darkness opened to the moon shining on a reservoir of water--birth, life, existence. But it couldn't be the moon--the moon was hidden, covered by the earth. The eye was hidden.

There was no source to the light. It was ambient, below the ledge he stood on. It just was, tickling the surface of the water into waves. Waves that circled endlessly around the cavern.

There--there was the dripping, the drip, drip, drip. Days he'd been unable to move and all that had been was the drip, drip, drip. That's where the old one was. Or where he would find the old one, as the old one was all and everywhere, but could only be approached at certain points of intersection. So went the lore that had by chance been found by him, and so it must be.

Abraham looked for a way down; how had he gotten down before? Had he?

His nightmares didn't say.

He remembered a dark and twisting passageway. He remembered falling.

Falling into a dark and twisting passageway, stumbling, scraped and bruised, bloody and achy. But that had just been the beginning.

The beginning.

Abraham turned from the light and closed his eyes, sniffing for the slightest asymmetry in the breeze.

He didn't sense a thing.

He walked forwards, away from the light, leaning slightly against the wall.

He was hedging against falling through a sudden hole, but still it took him by surprise. An abrupt lack of support--

He collapsed to his stomach, breathing heavily. He hadn't fallen. He wouldn't fall. The floor was solid--that was part of the rules that this reality played by, the floor would remain solid. It was only the unknown that was to be feared. The unknowable avoided, but that's where he was going. Straight into the monster's den.

The rock walls exuded sinister intent. A shiver shocked its way through Abraham's forelegs and snapped his mouth shut. His jaw throbbed. He edged cautiously forward, testing the void. It was a drop, but it wasn't sudden. He breathed slowly and stepped forward, one paw at a time, testing the ground, putting absolutely no weight on the testing paw, falling backwards every time his paw connected with the ground.

Nerve-wracking. Alive. Safe.

The darkness closed in; water dripping echoed more and more deeply.

In his mind, he was falling again. Free fall with rough blunt objects pounding his young body senseless; concussion spinning his mind as gravity spun his body. Voices--there'd been voices when he was falling. He'd been screaming, and they'd echoed; mocking? Almost. Inverted. It had been his voice, echoing as it was sucked away, inverted. His head, banshees.

Step after step.

It had taken him forever to fall. Climbing out, he'd been able to see. He'd been able to see? He'd found his flashlight. It had survived the fall better than he had. It was only a couple hundred feet, he remembered. A couple hundred feet, an eternity with adrenaline. An eternity of uncertainty, not knowing if that next bump would finish him off, or if it would send him into true free fall with nothing but limestone deposits to welcome him to the never-after.

Step after step.

Would life really have been so different, or was the curse more part of his nature? Free will? Pandora's box, best left unopened. Best shut before fire burns the whole world--but with fire at least there are ashes to be reborn from, the rising phoenix. Ashes to ashes. Nothing comes after nothing. Nothing partakes of nothing, is used by nothing. It simply isn't.

Step after step.

The air was getting colder--hackles raised to hold a larger layer of air still about his body. Wet--the floor was wet. He could feel his feet making a film of mud with the water and the dirt he had run through. He forced himself to step even more cautiously, not knowing what slip would disable him too long to finish the ritual. Who knew? Maybe down here, the deeper he went, maybe his abilities would fade like so much dream-stuff. He was walking into dream-stuff. It made as much sense as anything, and that, that was when you had to be the most cautious.

Step after step.

Lights began to dance in his eyes--they moved faster than he could track them; he tossed his head side to side to make them stay still but the flew just as fast as he could shake his head. Fairies? Will'o'wisps? Demons--his imagination bringing them to life. His eyes were playing tricks on him--he had to believe that or his no-longer-hungry bowels would be removed by the click-clacking of razored teeth. No, that would be no good at all. His eyes. His eyes were sparking off because of the complete darkness; they were excited, overfull with the urge to fire. That was all.

Step after step.

The slope began to even out; the dripping was loud here--he could feel every compression on his eardrums. Water dripping into a pool of water. Water into water. Birth and life in the hall of nonexistence. Nonexistence swallowing all.

The floor was flat and cold. His fur had droplets of water condensing to it, considerably reducing his ability to stay warm. Shaking out would make the water fall down his fur and run along his skin--but the muscle termor would warm him some. He really wanted to be warm. Cold. It was so cold.

His eyes focused on the steam coming from his mouth and he realized he could see again. Light was pouring in amorphously from above, the same not-moon silvery brightness; with the realization in his mind, his eyes finally reacted to the light, pupils contracting post-haste. Pain shot through his skull, cold ice-picks--he closed his eyes and lay down on the cold ground, covering his muzzle with his paws, the pressure helping push away the pain.

He howled--

and remembered where he was--

and remember that it didn't matter.

Abraham opened his eyes.

He was here, then.

Where he had fallen to.

Where was he to go?

A ledge went around the pool, though there were other pools and cisterns; and still the light seemed to come from nowhere. It simply was. And through some pinhole was the old one, the un-was.

His stomach growled and he realized he was hungry again, that he'd not stopped needing food. His body was cleansed for this, and needed to remain so. But where?

Blood.

Here.

He'd expected there to be something, anything, that he could just cut himself against. He remembered all sorts of cuts and bruises from his fall--but he hadn't really remembered the fall until he re-experienced the surroundings, the context. It was going to be hard to hurt himself.

Abraham felt his eyes well with tears; hope and fear, fear of pain, fear of death, fear of success. He blinked them away and concentrated on the words he had decided to believe in.

One word at a time; he rolled the words through his head, magical words--perspective, context, scale, reality, life, existence, death, love. He hadn't been sure about the love, but now that he was here, now that he was using it, it rolled off his mental tongue liquidly and smart--love was powerful, love of life, existence. It tied in. Love could be made and broken by perspective, and love in turn could rend context, scale, reality, possibly even life and death.

One word at a time. Perspective.

One word at a time, he proceeded to break himself, bashing his head and body against the side of the cavern. Context.

One word at a time. Scale.

To the rhythm.

One word at a time. Reality.

To the rhythm.

Thought slid in whorled loops, gnarled tracks of living oak sliding through the ground of jellied water, eggs, frogs spawning, life and love, death, existence.

From a distance, now, he felt himself still calling, still thinking, still flagellating himself against the wall. From a distance. Now he heard the voices, the banshees, the eaters of thought and life. They were calling out, echoing against the cavern walls, blending kaleidoscopically with the light of the old one's inner eye. Head. Swim. Swim...

He swam through the water, not his body but him, swimming, through the cold silver water, but it was warm, warm and viscous like blood, and he felt a pulsing in the depths.

Down.

Abraham swam down, chanting, swimming, loving, down. Further down until the light--the light was coming from under the water and it was bright, brighter and brighter until it was darkness--the light--the light--

And there was the old one. Simply... was-ing. Being. Creating. And around it, around the old one, life leaked into nonexistence.

Suddenly Abraham realized just how cold cold could be.

One word at a time. Perspective.

Cold.

This--this thing had cursed him. Somehow.

He'd hoped to understand that when face to face, finally, to understand--but there was no understanding. Staring at the unseeable, Abraham slowly understood how little he could possibly comprehend. He thought his life had been madness, sanity torn asunder--but this thing before him belied any such concepts. Context.

Without context there was nothing.

Nothing.

Not even the word.

Not even the thought.

And this thing--this old one, perhaps this sleeping one--how absurd to use such terms. It belittled any attempts at conceptualization. As much as say a rock was living--it wasn't going to talk with you, to interact in any manner you'd consider sentient. It was beyond that. So beyond that--scale, perspective--it was beyond reality, death and life meant nothing, love--he didn't know.

Darkness closed--he could feel it condensing around him; his self was constrained with just the faintest glimmer of his body struggling to continue the ritual abuse. Untellable pressure bore down on him and he felt mental bones snap, their marrow bubble into vapor, the vapor condense into crystal, the crystal saw through his being. He and darkness blended, swirled--and then beauty; incredible, indescribable pain, pain beyond pain, and beauty.

Stars, stars beyond stars, color beyond color; that was what existence was. That was everything he had, he and his, from the perspective of nothing. Every last drop of anything, it was all miracle. And the old one--the old one did not threaten that; the old one, the points of intersection--the old one held it back. It was the glue that kept existence from unexisting.

And it was very old.

And very hungry.

It spent untold energy holding this existence together, protecting it from the true reality of nonexistence. But existence was the energy. And it needed some very small piece of that to feed itself. Some very small living piece of that to feed itself. Some very small sentient piece of that to feed itself.

Looked at in that manner, the old one simply kept existence together as a nutrient ball that it could plumb the depths of from time to time. But that was human thinking. Human--did it know what humans were, really, or was all that Abraham's own conceit? What wasn't conceit with this endeavor?

What wasn't?

Abraham operated within the confines of his understand, his context. And that was all he could do. He professed to no more.

And so he did the only thing he could within the context of his understanding, and gave himself wholly to the maelstrom.