Written in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Howard Phillip Lovecraft's "The Call Of Cthulhu".
Just half past seven in the morning, and it was already warm enough to make me sweat as I carefully climbed down the stairs from my flat to the Avenue of Leng.
I had to be careful for two reasons. The first was the non-Euclidean geometry of the stairs, which made it easy to fall and break an ankle or two. After almost two years I still hadn’t grown used to it. The other? The other was the hangover from the two bottles of Old Peculiar I’d drunk last night.
There wasn’t much to do on R’lyeh at night except get drunk, was there? And not much except Old Peculiar to get drunk on.
My shoggoth, Dreamquest, crawled out of his pit under the stairs and burbled happily at me. I scratched him on the upper surface as I took a deep breath of the fresh air and immediately regretted it.
The fresh air of R’lyeh is not exactly the same as the fresh air of anywhere else on earth. After almost two years I still kept forgetting that.
“Tekeli-li?” Dreamquest inquired hopefully, nudging me with a protoplasmic tentacle.
“Oh, all right.” I could walk, but then Dreamquest would just follow at my heels all the way anyway, and if I ordered him back he’d sulk at me the rest of the day. “Make a seat.”
“Tekeli-li,” he said happily, and flattened and hardened a saddle on his back for me. I climbed on to it and he immediately began rolling down Leng, so quickly that I almost fell arse over tits backwards and only rescued myself with a frantic grab at the edge of the saddle.
“Slow down,” I hissed. “What’s the hurry, anyway? Is it shoggoth mating season already?”
Dreamquest made a snorting sound which could mean anything, but did slow down. We navigated the stairs leading down from Leng to Klarkash-Ton and turned left towards the City of R’lyeh, where the luxury residences were.
To our left, occluding half the sky, Great Cthulhu squatted, huge as a mountain and almost as immobile. He had never acknowledged my existence, not once in the almost two years I’d been here. His tentacles swung back and forth slightly, and his wings made a faint rustling as they rubbed together on his back, but otherwise he might as well have been a statue. High above his gigantic head, a mass of tiny dots swirled, for all the world like seagulls looking for scraps to eat, but they weren’t seagulls, they were Night-Gaunts, and they weren’t looking for scraps to eat. Their job was to wake Cthulhu up by tickling him with their tails whenever he began nodding off, because if he ever fell asleep again, R’lyeh would just dive right back beneath the sea. Cthulhu was always nodding off, so they had to do this several times a day.
Great Cthulhu, they call him. Great at what, I’d like to know. Sleeping, maybe? I wish I could be great like that.
“Go left,” I told Dreamquest, as we arrived at the core of the City of Rlyeh, accompanying my instruction with a thump on his flank with my left heel. On the right were the Cyclopean towers of the financial district. There Outer Gods, Great Old Ones, and sundry Eldritch Abominations would be starting the day about now, settling down at their computers to go about subverting, exploiting, and running the world economy as usual. I sighed. I would never be welcome in those circles, and I didn’t really want to be.
On the left, the luxury residences were another matter altogether. I was not only welcome there, visiting their occupants comprised the major portion of my job. Keeping them happy was part of the reason I was here on R’lyeh.
Not for much longer, I reminded myself. My two years were almost at an end.
Last night I’d been informed that Shub-Niggurath was back in town, so this was the obligatory courtesy call. At least that was what it was on the surface, but my real reason was to find out why she was visiting from her home in the Woods. It was probably nothing important, but my brief was always to keep an eye on the movements of the Outer Gods and the rest, and pass on the information back home.
So far, in two years minus two weeks, I had discovered not one thing that had been even worth reporting. Not one solitary thing.
An Elder Thing squatting on a platform and reading something from a scroll-tablet it held in its tentacles gave me a glare from one of its eyes as we passed. Or maybe it was glaring at Dreamquest. The Elder Things had never really reconciled themselves to the fact that the shoggoths had efficiently, brutally, and permanently emancipated themselves from slavery and now did whatever they pleased, such as, for example, playing steed to a mere human woman who could jolly well have walked anyway if she’d wanted to.
I ostentatiously turned my head away from the barrel shaped creature so that it wouldn’t have reason to feel that I was insulting it by glaring at it. Elder Things were touchy and aggressive at the best of times, and I didn’t trust my diplomatic immunity meaning anything to it. In any case, we were almost at the immense residential building which included the flat Shub-Niggurath occupied when she was here. I tapped Dreamquest on the back. “Stop here and wait for me.”
I passed a pair of Mi-Go in the entrance hall. They had the usual brain canisters with them and stared at me.
“Human,” one buzzed.
“Human,” the other replied. “You, human.”
Oh, hell, I thought, not again. “Yes?”
“You want to go into space, human?” the first Mi-Go tapped its canister suggestively. “You want to see the universe?”
“We have such wonders to show you,” the other one buzzed.
“No, thank you,” I said. I might be bored and my life might be pointless enough that I was pickling myself in Old Peculiar every night, but I’d be damned it I was so desperate as to hand my brain over to the Mi-Go. “Why don’t you try your luck at the United Nations? Plenty of people there who could get along perfectly well without their brains, right?”
“We already tried,” the first Mi-Go replied. “They already have no brains.”
“Well, there you are, then.” The human-standard lift I’d summoned finally arrived. A Deep One blinked at me from inside and squeezed past, his batrachian features impossible to read for any clue of what was going on inside his head. I considered warning him about the Mi-Go but decided it was unnecessary. It wasn’t as though Deep Ones were interested in space anyway.
Shub-Niggurath met me at her door. As always, I wondered how she managed to squeeze herself in through it, since it was only about twice the size of a human-standard door. “Ah, Ambassador,” she said, “do come in. I’m so glad to see you.”
“Greetings, Your Fecundity,” I said. I’d long ago stopped explaining that I didn’t have the status of ambassador. She doubtless knew it perfectly well. “The pleasure is all mine.”
She laughed at that. “I highly doubt that. So, you heard I was back and decided to pop in?”
“You’re right, oh Black Goat Of The Woods With A Thousand Young.” I tried and failed to suppress a grin. Shub-Niggurath was far and away the most cheerful of the lot of Them. It was a pity how rarely she visited R’lyeh, otherwise my job might have been a bit more entertaining. “It isn’t your usual quarterly visit, so I was curious.”
“Of course you were.” Shub-Niggurath was not exactly black, but a colour that was less unlike black than it was any other. She didn’t look much like a goat, either, but she looked less unlike a goat than she did anything else. She turned on her lower tentacles and slithered back into the recesses of her flat, beckoning me to follow. I did, stepping cautiously, the bizarre lines and not-quite angles of the architecture always difficult to make sense of.
I felt a sniff at my elbow and a great cold rubbery nose thrust itself into my hand. Daisy, Shub-Niggurath’s Hound of Tindalos, was always happy to see me. I scratched her head and she whined in pleasure, walking by my side, her long barbed tail swishing.
“That dog would love nothing better than to take you home with her to play with,” Shub-Niggurath said, squatting carefully down on her throne and motioning me to my usual human-sized seat. “Something to drink? Mead from the Woods, perhaps?”
“No, thank you, Your Fecundity,” I shuddered. The hangover was still pounding in my head. “I’ve a bit of a headache.”
“Too much Old Peculiar?” Shub-Niggurath snorted and shook her head. Her stubby crystalline horns caught the light and refracted rainbows that drove spikes through my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut until the throbbing eased. “I did tell you to cut down on it, if you remember.”
“Yes, well…it’s not as though it’s going to be much longer, is it?”
“You aren’t planning to extend your stay, then?” Shub-Niggurath sighed. “It’s a pity. You’re by far the best of the humans that have been sent here. The previous one…” she shuddered, her tentacles undulating. “He was scared of Daisy, can you imagine? Scared of Daisy!”
I glanced at the gigantic hell-dog sitting on the floor at the corner of the room, her glowing red eyes half-closed, her spike-tongue licking her lips lazily. Her barbed tail thumped the floor when she heard herself mentioned. She yawned, displaying teeth like spikes that could drive through metal. “I can’t think why.”
“And the one before that….” Shub-Niggurath made the noise that in her passed for a dismissive snort and reached for her shisha pipe. A burbling noise filled the room along with clouds of aromatic smoke. “Never mind. So, what’s been going on here while I was away?”
“Nothing much that I was privy to.” I filled her in on the gossip I’d picked up. “I’m sure there’s more, but none of it was in my hearing.”
“Of course.” Shub-Niggurath puffed at her shisha. “How much longer do you have?”
“Two weeks.” Two weeks till the ship turned up and took me off by helicopter, depositing my replacement instead. I wondered briefly how he or she would get on, and shrugged mentally. It wasn’t my business. My problems would be waiting for me when I was back in the regular world. “So I was glad of this chance to see you again. I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
“Yes, well, I came back to visit my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” I did not know that any of Shub-Niggurath’s Thousand Young were on R’lyeh. “What’s your daughter doing here?”
“She’s transferred here last month from Miskatonic University. She wanted to study here at Innsmouth.” Innsmouth, of course, was the great University of R’lyeh, but only the best of the best ever managed to get admission to it. I was impressed. Even the daughter of an Outer Goddess would get no special consideration there. “I came to see how she was doing.”
“That’s very nice of you. Very parental. I wish my parents had been that considerate, and I’m their only child.” I shifted, preparing to get up. “I should be going. It was nice to meet you, Your Fecundity.”
“Don’t leave just yet.” Shub-Niggurath held up a tentacle. “If you can just wait a moment or two, I’ll introduce you.” I heard the sound of a door opening behind me. “Ah, here she is. Shubby, my dear, here’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Rising from my chair, I turned, already preparing my mind for whatever monstrosity might be about to inflict itself on my eyes. And then I stopped, my mouth falling open. I may have gasped.
A girl was standing there, smiling. She was of medium height, slim and poised, her dark hair falling in waves across her shoulders. Her brown eyes gleamed with suppressed mirth in her oval face as she held out her hand for me to shake. “Hi.”
“Uh,” I swallowed, or maybe “Guh.” I hadn’t seen another human in almost two years, let alone another woman, but even under other circumstances I’d have been as gobsmacked at her as I was at this moment. She radiated beauty in a way I could never have imagined. A monstrosity? She looked like Miss Universe, if Miss Universe had a brain. “Hello,” I managed at last.
“I’m Shub-Kadath, but you can call me Shubby.” Her hand was warm, her grip on mine firm. “Everyone does. And you are….?”
“This is Mariama Acheampong,” Shub-Niggurath said for me. “She’s the human representative here on R’lyeh.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of you.” Shub-Kadath grinned, and her grin was like a blow right to my heart. “You’re the one everyone says is the best human they’ve met.”
“Who said so?” I asked.
“Oh, everybody. You should keep up with the gossip about you.” Daisy reared up on her hind legs to lick Shub-Kadath’s face, and she laughed. “This dog, I swear…”
“Down, Daisy,” Shub-Niggurath ordered, and the Hound Of Tindalos subsided reluctantly. “She’s really too old for this,” Shub-Niggurath said severely. “Two hundred years old and she acts as though she’s a puppy of ninety.”
“Uh…” I used the opportunity to try and get myself under control, “I’m so glad to have met you, Shub-Kadath, but I really ought to be going.”
“Shubby, please.” She glanced at her mother over my shoulder and back at me again. “Do you have some important work to get to or something?”
I mentally considered my important work. First item: trying to get rid of enough of my hangover to manage to swallow a bite of breakfast. Second, perhaps wandering around R’lyeh trying to look busy just so I didn’t have to sit locked up in my flat with only Dreamquest for company while composing my daily message for Head Office. All as usual, nothing to report. After that: collecting my daily food ration from the Deep Ones down by the docks; fish, edible seaweed, and maybe a packet of molluscs or two. Which I would cook into a barely edible mess and then force down for a late lunch or early supper before reaching for my trusty bottles of Old Peculiar.
It sounded captivating.
“Um well…”
“No? Good, then, I’ll take you around a bit. I’m just starving for conversation.”
“But…you have classes, don’t you? At Innsmouth Univ?”
“Oh,” she waved. “They were cancelled for the day. I’m freeeeeeeee!”
“You’d better do as she wants,” Shub-Niggurath told me, in between puffs of shisha. “She’s not going to settle for anything else once she’s made up her mind.”
“That’s right. I’m not going to settle for anything else. Come on, Mariama.” She gripped my hand. Electric sparks seemed to flow from her body into mine. “Let’s go!”
I swallowed, tried to get my racing heart under a semblance of control, and went.
We were sitting by a window overlooking the sea. Beneath us was the stony shore, along which little creatures resembling crabs scuttled. Dreamquest slithered along the pebbles, licking up any that came his way. His contented “Tekeli-li” floated up to us.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t have any idea about R’lyeh cuisine. You choose whatever you’d like, and get me some of that as well.”
“All right.” Shubby signalled to a Deep One waiter and spoke to him briefly. “I chose something that you’ll probably survive without any ill effects. No transdimensional grub or anything like that.”
“Er, thanks.” She was sitting right across the table from me, her fingers all but touching mine. I looked around the restaurant to avoid having to look at her. If one ignored the non-Euclidean angles it looked like any other restaurant anywhere on earth. “I’ve never been in here before.”
“You haven’t? Well, then I get to be the first to take you.” She sat back as the Deep One set down a wooden platter of something smoking and sizzling between us, carved it with a long knife, and slid portions on each of our plates. “And I get to watch you have R’lyeh food for the first time.”
I took a cautious bite. It tasted like meat, but not quite. “What is it?”
“It’s made from Fungi From Yuggoth. Good, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t half bad.” I chewed another mouthful. “Shubby…” I hesitated.
“Go ahead,” She sent me an amused look across the table. “Ask me and get it over with. You know you’re dying to.”
“Ask what?”
“Why I, a daughter of an Outer Goddess, look so human. That’s what you want to ask, isn’t it?” She laughed. “Your face shouts it is. Well…you know I have nine hundred and ninety nine brothers and sisters. Actually, it’s probably a lot more by now, since Mum just can’t stop spreading her tentacles for any male of any species who comes along.” She giggled. “Ooh, I shocked you! Anyway, we come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and no two of us look alike. It was inevitable that one of her children would be with a human. So, I’m mostly human.”
“Mostly?”
“Oh, there are a couple of teeny-tiny differences.” She waved a hand. “I have two hearts, one on each side, an extra vertebra in my lower spine, and a couple of other small things. Nothing to get excited about. But it allowed me to attend human schools and then go to Miskatonic Univ, and now…”
“And now?” I prompted.
Was she blushing? “Never you mind. It’s not important.”
“Why did you transfer from Miskatonic?”
“The programme here is a lot better. I’m studying transdimensionics with Professor YogSothoth. Not a chance of doing that at Miskatonic. The discipline doesn’t even exist outside Innsmouth Univ. Also…” she looked down at her hands. “I had a bad breakup there. I mean, really bad. It was with a classmate, and I needed to get away.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Whoever it was didn’t deserve you. I’m sure he realises it now.”
“That’s not what she said,” she replied. My heart jumped at the pronoun. She?!? “She said I didn’t deserve her, that she couldn’t be with a…miscegenation…like me. That was after I’d told her who my mother was, thinking that it would bring us closer.”
“The bitch.” Instinctively I reached across the table and laid my hand over hers, only to try to snatch it away, but she put her other hand over mine, holding it in place. “Oh, sorry.”
“No, you’re right, she was a bitch. And I was an idiot for not seeing it.” She gave me a watery smile. “Now, tell me about you.”
“What about me? I thought you knew everything about me already.”
“You know what rumours are like.” She leaned towards me across the table, the smoke from the sizzling Fungi From Yuggoth neatly framing her face. “Come on, now, from the horse’s mouth. How did you end up here?”
I sighed. “If you really want to know…” I told her of my childhood growing up in Accra, the only daughter of a couple with no parental instincts who, I’d always thought, had only had me as a duty to society. I told her of discovering I was gay, and leaving Ghana for England when I got the chance because the Ghanaian parliament made a law declaring homosexuality illegal. And in England I discovered that nobody was particularly eager to have me there, either.
“I’m a child of the modern economy, then,” I concluded. “As it turned out, there aren’t any jobs for people with degrees in anthropology. I was washing dishes in a restaurant during the day, waitressing at another in the evenings, and seriously considering becoming a camgirl at night.” I took another bite of the food. “And my romantic life, of course, was one disaster after another. I can’t blame the lasses, though. I can’t blame them for needing time with me I couldn’t give them because I was too busy earning a living most of the time and too exhausted the rest of the time for lovemaking. So when I saw an advert for this post I jumped at it. No experience necessary, no questions asked.”
“And? Do you regret it?”
I shrugged. “I knew when I took the job that I got it only because no other applicant was available, that there was never exactly a queue of candidates. Nobody wants to do this work. Nobody renews their two-year contract. So I knew what I was getting into, wasn’t I?”
“And you have two weeks left, Mum said.”
“Yeah. I don’t mean to say it was bad. I mean, for two years I’ve had a place to stay without needing to pay rent, I didn’t have a worry about where my next meal was coming from, and, and, there’s at least some money accumulating in my bank account from my salary so I should be all right for a few months while looking for a job.” I tilted my head at a faint Tekeli-li from outside the window and smiled a little. “And for company I have Dreamquest.”
“I was wondering about him. How did you ever adopt a shoggoth? They don’t really form associations with other species. Too many bad memories from their days of being slaves.”
“I think he adopted me.” I remembered the day, a week after I’d arrived on R’lyeh, when I’d opened my door only to find this Thing on the doorstep, which I hadn’t even realised at first was alive. Then he’d opened fifteen or twenty eyes, extended a protoplasmic tentacle, poked me in the knee, said Tekeli-li, and moved into the pit under the stairs. “And after that he’s always acted as though I were his charge, to keep safe and protected.”
“You must be really special, then.”
“Hah. He just needed company.”
“And he didn’t look for it among other shoggoths. What does that tell you?” Shubby popped the last of the Fungi From Yuggoth into her mouth. “What are you going to do with him when you leave?”
“I don’t know. I can’t take him with me, obviously. All I can do is hope my replacement treats him properly.”
“That’s about as likely as my sprouting wings like a Mi-Go and flying through space. Mariama…” Shubby hesitated. “I can see you didn’t really have a good couple of years here, but….you have two weeks left….and I can keep you company and make these two weeks happier for you? If you like?”
Oh, I would like that very much, you don’t know how much, I thought. But… “But you have classes,” I pointed out.
“Classes don’t take all day, and old YogSothoth is really quite reasonable with schedules and times as long as I’m up to date with my studies. So, let me take you around R’lyeh and show you the things you haven’t seen in these last two years. Would you like that?”
“Oh yes,” I said this time, and my mind screamed, oh yes yes yes.
“Want to come in for a religious service?” Shubby asked.
We’d known each other for four days now. Every morning after my usual rounds meeting this and that Eldritch Abomination, making sure that they knew that humans were still in residence and therefore weren’t planning a sneak nuclear attack or anything of the sort, I’d walk back home. Then I’d actually have a proper bath and dress well, so that I could be fit to be seen for her. I then would eat something approaching a proper breakfast, and afterwards would go over – Dreamquest following me, of course – to Ulthar Square (with all the bizarre cat statues) and wait for her to meet me after her classes were over. Then we’d wander here and there, and she’d show me things and places I’d never thought existed. It was a pity that I’d never seen any of this before.
I was even feeling better, and it wasn’t at the thought that I only had ten days left. I hadn’t had a hangover in days. The lack of a headache had meant that I could pay more attention to what I was seeing and experiencing.
“How do you know all this?” I asked her once. “Didn’t you arrive here just a month ago?”
“Oh, I grew up on R’lyeh, before I left to study in the human world.” Shubby laughed. “Mum thought I’d become too human otherwise, forget where I came from.”
“You obviously didn’t, so good for her.” I’d looked around at the chamber we were in at the moment, full of carvings of rugose and squamous beasts. “This is rather impressive.”
“There’s a lot more, you’ll see.”
“Shubby,” I’d asked, on an impulse, the question I’d been asking myself for two years, “why exactly are you all here?”
She’d frowned. “You mean on R’lyeh?”
“No, on this planet. It’s such a meaningless out of the way place. Surely there are other places in the universe you’d be more comfortable in? Places you wouldn’t have to share with us useless quarrelsome humans?”
She snorted. “You’re not all useless and quarrelsome. I mean, just look at you. As for why we’re here, well, it’s probably better if you don’t need to find out.”
And now she was asking me to a religious service at the Temple of Dagon?
“I didn’t know you were religious,” I said.
“I’m not, but the Deep Ones are, and they worship Dagon. Nobody else does, so I just think it’s a friendly gesture to keep them company sometimes. We don’t have to stay long.”
I felt a rush of warmth at her regard for the Deep Ones. Almost nobody else, human or otherwise, ever gave them a thought. “All right then.”
I motioned for Dreamquest to wait. We passed through the carved portal of Great Dagon, his fish-face frowning, his webbed hands clutching a fish in one hand and a squid in the other. The door opened into a gigantic hall crowded with Deep Ones, on the opposite wall of which was a huge carving of an elongated and familiar face.
“Isn’t that…” I began.
“Shhh,” Shubby whispered. “The opening prayer is about to begin.”
A Deep One priest wearing a crown and in a tattered yellow robe hopped blasphemously up a ramp to a dais under the carving and opened a book. His voice was a barely understandable croak.
“Our Father in Arkham, Harold be thy Name…”
“His name was Howard,” I whispered in Shubby’s ear.
“I know,” she whispered back. “They just want his name to be Harold, not Howard. Didn’t you hear?”
“Why?”
“Why not? Now listen to the service.”
“…and give us today our daily fish
And deliver us from evil women.”
The last line was repeated by all the Deep Ones so that it rang up into the tenebrous corners of the Temple. “What evil women?” I asked.
“I’ve no idea. I think it was just an obsession old Harold had. Maybe he had dreams of witches in his house or something.”
“Howard. His name was Howard.”
“Howard, Harold. What’s the difference?”
“Maybe his name’s actually changing.” The Deep Ones were all bent over, their batrachian countenances bowed over their hands. “What’s this now?”
“They’re all in the main prayer. It’ll go on for an hour. Come on, let’s go.”
That night she invited herself to my flat. “Cosy,” she said, looking around.
It wasn’t. It was a mess. I told her so.
“Oh, pish.” She threw herself down in my chair and picked up a book. “A real paper book! I haven’t seen one since before Miskatonic.”
“No paper books in Miskatonic?”
“No, only computers and ancient parchments. You can’t imagine how sick I am of scrolls.” She flipped through a few pages. “You like erotic fiction, then?”
I felt my face grow warm. “It’s just something to keep my mind occupied.”
“Your mind and other parts of you, I’ll bet.” She grinned at me and read aloud from the book. “Mabel stood up from the bath and stretched languorously before stepping out and reaching for her towel. Water dripped from her hair and trickled down the slopes of her breasts, gathering on her nipples before falling, drop by perfect drop, to splash into the water around her pretty red-lacquered toes. Her body was still tingling from the orgasms she’d just given herself with the shower extension, but her mind was already wandering to the beautiful blonde in the flat upstairs. I wonder what Sheila’s doing tonight, she thought. I should invite her in for a drink and see if I can make it into something more.”
“Oh, for Hastur’s sake,” I groaned. “It sounds ridiculous when you hear it read aloud.”
“But fun, isn’t it? What happened with Sheila? Did Mabel succeed in seducing her?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t read that far.”
“So, let’s read it together. With something to drink, naturally.”
I groaned. “I only have Old Peculiar.”
“Yuck. Fortunately I came prepared.” She reached into the bag she’d worn slung over her side and pulled out a heavy glass bottle. “Mead from the Woods! Mum made it herself, with honey from Insects of Shaggai.”
I got glasses and we sipped at the heavy amber liquid. It tasted like sweet fire. “Never had this before either,” I mumbled.
“But good, isn’t it?” Shubby held up the book. “Let’s see what happens to Mabel and Sheila….oo, la la!”
We took turns drinking and reading the book aloud, falling over each other in helpless laughter at the stupid bits. At some point I realised that she was lying with her head in my lap, while I was reading to her. My free hand automatically strayed to her head and my fingers sifted through her hair. She sighed and nuzzled my hand with her cheek.
“Don’t stop,” she said.
The mead was beginning to go to my head so I didn’t stop. Not until I suddenly discovered something soft and comical filling my palm and snatched my hand away as though it was on fire.
“Hey,” Shubby complained, “why did you do that?”
“Sorry,” I said. The mead suddenly disappeared from my brain, leaving me stone cold sober. What on earth was I doing? She was an Older God’s daughter, for heaven’s sake! “Sorry,” I repeated desperately. I’d have jumped up but she was lying in my lap. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“What? No, I meant why you took your hand away from my tit.” She grabbed my wrist and put it back on her breast. “I was enjoying it.”
I licked my lips and put the book down. My brain could no longer process reading. “Shubby?”
She moved her torso in a circular motion, rotating her breast against my palm. Through the material of her clothes I thought I could feel her nipple stiffening. My own were so erect that they were uncomfortable against my bra. “Mm?”
“Shubby…you really want this, don’t you? It’s not just the mead making us do this?”
“Of course I want it, you idiot.” She raised her head from my lap. “Stop worrying and kiss me.”
I bent my head and my lips found hers. I’d meant it to be only a brief brush, so that if she had second thoughts we could laugh it off, but her arm snaked around my neck, her hand clamped down on the back of my head, and pulled my mouth down to hers.
I opened my mouth to gasp, in surprise, and her tongue slipped in and its tip pressed on mine. I felt the shock of it through my body down to the tips of my toes.
Her fingers tangled in my twists as she kissed me hard, her hot breath mingling with mine. My eyes closed as her tongue flicked against my lips, tracing their outlines. I could feel myself begin to lubricate helplessly as she moved against me.
An endless moment later I found myself, somehow, on my back on the sofa, with her lying on me. I’d no idea how we’d managed to change positions. Her breasts rotated against mine as she ground herself slowly on me. Her mouth left mine so that her tongue could trace the angle of my jaw. I groaned and trembled as the hot moist tip found the exact spot that never failed to make me go weak in the knees.
“Mariama?” she whispered.
I managed to make my mouth form words. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to make love to you now.” She raised herself on her elbows to look down at me. “Unless, of course, you don’t want me to.”
“Oh…” I clutched at her desperately. It was incredible how much I suddenly needed her, in every molecule of my body. “Yes…yes, of course I want you to. Oh, yes.”
“Come on,” she said. “Get up and let me undress you. Ever since Mum introduced us, I’ve been dying to see your body.”
Silently, I took the hand she held out and let her pull me to my feet. Her hands went around my neck and she pulled my face to hers for one more kiss before they dropped to the hem of my bright yellow T-shirt and pulled it up my torso. I raised my arms to allow her to pull it off me. My bra, which had become unhooked at some point without either of us noticing, fell to the floor a moment later.
“Mariama,” she breathed. “Oh Azathoth…”
“What?”
“Your boobs…they’re like polished ebony.” She reached out to touch my nipple. “I can’t believe you’re this beautiful.”
I felt my cheeks heat up and resisted the impulse to cover myself with my arms. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“It isn’t flattery if it’s true.” Her finger made little circles on my right nipple. I felt the touch like an electric shock streaking through my body down every nerve. “Just look at how stiff they are.”
I knew how stiff they were without looking. They felt as though they’d launch themselves right off my breasts like little rockets at any moment. I reached out to start undressing her.
“No, let me strip you first.” Her hands slid down my flanks and fumbled at the waist of my denim trousers. She had a little trouble with the button – even I had problems with that button, it was a little too large for the hole – but managed it eventually, and the trousers slipped down my legs to my ankles. I pulled my feet free, leaving me only in my sopping wet knickers. She looked me up and down, her eyes wide.
“Shubby…” I whispered. “Please…”
“Please, what?” Her fingers slipped under the waistband of my knickers and caressed my skin. “What do you want me to do, Mariama?”
“You know what I want you to do.” I wriggled, trying to get out of the knickers, the sodden fabric clinging to my parts. “If you don’t take these off they’ll be stuck on me like glue.”
“We can’t have that, can we?” She leant forwards and kissed me as her hands pulled the knickers down, slowly, each millimetre of its journey sending shockwaves through my being, until I stood before her as naked as the moment I was born.
“Oh, Azathoth, Mariama,” she repeated. Her eyes travelled over me, from my twists down to my toes. “It’s a crime, you hiding your body from me so long.”
“You…never asked to see it before,” I whispered. “If you’d only said…”
“You’d have shown me?” She smiled and arched an eyebrow.
“In an instant. In a millisecond. I’ve wanted you since I saw you.”
“Then,” she said, throwing her arms around me and pressing herself to me, “take me. What are you waiting for?”
“You…you’re still dressed, for one thing.” I fumbled at her blouse, my arousal making me clumsy. A button popped off and fell on the floor. “Oh – I’m so sorry.”
“It’s just a button,” she laughed. “Here, let me do it.” She pushed my hands away gently and began undressing herself. Her blouse melted away, and then her skirt. Her shoes had already been shed at the door. Her black lace- trimmed bra followed, leaving her only in knickers – knickers so wet that they were all but transparent. I couldn’t look away.
She laughed as she saw where I was staring. “Now it’s my turn to ask me to take them off before I turn to glue.”
I knelt, slowly, almost reverently, before her and pulled the knickers down. Her vulva came into view, bare and puffy, her inner lips pouting out between her outer labia. My nostrils filled with the aroma of her arousal. “You shave?” I whispered, my eyes fixated on her cleft.
“No…” She lifted her feet, one after another, so I could take the knickers off completely. The light reflected off her wetness. “It’s one of the other two differences I mentioned. I don’t have any pubic hair, or any other body hair for that matter.”
“What’s the other difference?” I breathed.
“You’ll find out,” she sighed, pushing her hips forward. “Oh, you’ll find out.”
I barely heard her. Almost of its own accord, my head leant forward, and my mouth found her slit. My tongue lapped at her saltiness.
She cried out and convulsed against me so hard I was almost knocked back on my heels. Her hands found my head and pressed it against her pubic mound. My tongue slipped up her cleft and found the nub of her clitoris, already emerged from its little hood. She ground herself against me and cried out again as her entire body shook and shuddered.
Her pleasure was so intense that her entire body seemed to be consumed by it. Her hands were clamped on the back of my head, but even then she was convulsing so hard that I had to hold her in place with my hands on her bottom. She thrust and gyrated against me. I could feel her abdominal muscles clench against my forehead as she came and came.
“What was that?” I asked, when she finally went limp and slid to the floor before me. “What happened?”
Her hair was all over her face. She pushed it back and sighed. “Azathoth, I knew it would be good, but not this good…that was my other difference, Mariama. I come at the slightest touch and I come hard.”
I looked at her, really looked at her. Her face, neck, and upper chest were flushed red. Her breasts rose and fell as she gasped in air, sweat beading their slopes. Her vagina trickled moisture through their puffy lips as she sprawled on her back on the carpet. She was the most captivating thing I had ever seen.
Crawling on hands and knees, I settled between her thighs and spread her labia apart with the fingers of my left hand. Her clit, bright pink and engorged, seemed almost to pulse in rhythm to the beat of her hearts. When I put the tip of my right forefinger on it she squirmed and moaned.
“Go in,” she whimpered. “I want to feel you inside me.”
Her hips rose off the carpet as I worked one finger and then another inside her. Her vagina clamped on me, and her hips rotated as I turned my hand over, palm uppermost, seeking her G-spot. If I had any doubts that she had one those disappeared a moment later when she put her feet on my back, thrust her hips up hard against my hand, and shuddered and cried out again as she came again, and then again.
“No more,” she whispered eventually. I’d long since lost count of how many orgasms she’d had. “No more, or you’ll kill me.”
I chuckled. “Death by sexual exhaustion. It sounds like a good way to go.”
“Does it?” She eyed me archly and sat up. “Get on the sofa and spread your legs. We’re going to find out.”
I sat back on the sofa and a moment later she was between my thighs. Her nipples tickled the skin around my groin as she kissed my navel, her tongue-tip dipping into it for a moment, and then lower, over my pubic mound and the tight short curls of my pubic hair. And then her lips closed around my clit at the exact same moment her finger slipped inside my vagina.
I think I half-fainted with the force of the sensation. I threw back my head, gasped, and clutched frantically at the sofa cushions. Her tongue rolled around my clit as her finger rolled inside my vagina, and then as second finger joined it, my vision greyed out. I squeezed my eyes shut and surrendered myself to her.
The first orgasm hit, blazing like liquid fire from my vagina to the furthest parts of my body, and even before it ended I could feel the second one approaching. They merged one into another until they became one single climax which exploded in a final spasm that made me buck and thrash and finally fall to the floor in pure ecstasy.
“Well,” I whispered, when I could see and speak again, “I’m still alive, and so are you.”
She smiled, her face so close to mine that our breaths mingled. We lay tangled on the carpet side by side, our breasts touching, her fingers still buried inside me. “That is not death which can naked lie; and with such a lover even death will die,” she said.
“That’s not what the quote is,” I protested.
“It is now,” she said, and reluctantly removed her fingers from inside me. “I hate to do this, but I need to go home. I’ve got an extra-early class tomorrow and if I stay here any longer we’ll be having sex all night until we drop from exhaustion.”
I sighed. “But we’ll be doing this again?” I could feel the desperation in my voice. “Shubby?”
“Of course we’ll be doing this again, you silly nit. Do you have the slightest doubt about it?”
“What are you going to do once you finish with your degree here?” I asked.
It was a week later. We’d spent most evenings in my flat, making love until we couldn’t any more, and spending every other spare moment we could manage in each other’s company.
I’d asked her what Shub-Niggurath thought of this; I wasn’t naïve enough to think for a moment that she didn’t know her daughter and the human representative weren’t having an affair.
“Mum approves,” Shubby had replied with a laugh. “She thinks that if I were not having sex, there would be something wrong with me. And she told me you’d needed to get laid for far too long anyway. Two years without, probably longer. Nobody deserves that kind of punishment, she said, especially not a woman as pretty and nice as you.”
“Oh yeah? When did she drop those pearls of wisdom?”
“The first day, before she even introduced me to you.” Shubby had laughed at the expression on my face. “Yes, Mum was totally setting us up together. Don’t worry for a moment about her.”
“It’s not she I’m worried about,” I’d muttered, “it’s myself.”
“Why?”
“Do you really need to ask?” I’d pointed at the horizon. “I only have a few days left here, and I’m already pining for you, though I’m with you right now.”
“Mariama…” She’d reached up to touch my cheek. “You’re crying.”
“Sorry,” I’d said, furious with myself as I’d scrubbed my eyes. “Damned tears. I hate them.”
“Maybe…” Shubby had said, and then shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing. Forget it. I couldn’t ask that of you.”
This evening, we were walking along the shores of Lake Carcosa. The sun, sinking in the west, reflected itself so closely on the water that it looked as though two suns were setting. It was a place I’d long loved to visit in the evenings, and today it was twice as satisfying to have Shubby by my side. For a moment I could almost forget that it was one of the last times I would ever see this. “What will you do when you finish with your degree here?”
“I’ll need practical experience and research material for my PhD,” she replied.
“What does that mean? What’s practical research in transdimensionics?”
She smiled a little. “It’ll involve a lot of travel around other cosmoses, a lot of hard work, and I’ll bet a lot of wishing I’d taken something easier, like economics. And…” she sighed, “it’ll be a long, lone grind.”
“I…” I wish I could go with you, I wanted to say, but of course that was impossible. “Forget it.” The sun had finally set and the stars had already begun pricking the sky with points of light. I looked up at them to remind myself how bright and clear they were hear, without all the light pollution of human cities, and noticed something strange. “What’s that?”
“What?”
I pointed. “That bright patch up there, the one that’s moving. See it?”
We looked at it for a minute or two. “It isn’t a star,” she said, “or a plane, or a satellite.”
“No,” I agreed. It was a strange colour, too, something that flickered changed by the instant, so you could never tell exactly what it was supposed to be. It rose and dipped and spiralled and came nearer and nearer.
“What are you ladies looking at?” I’d already clocked the smooth voice before I turned. It was a tall thin man in an ancient Egyptian headdress. “You seem engrossed.”
“There’s something strange in the sky, Great Nyarlathotep,” I murmured. He was so black that in the semi-darkness I could see no features at all; he made my merely Ghanaian skin look almost pale in comparison. “Do you have any idea what it might be?”
I felt, rather than saw him, stiffen. The very air around him seemed to freeze.
“It’s…it’s a Colour Out Of Space.”
“What?” I glanced at him, confused, but the next instant Shubby grabbed my arm so tightly that I hissed in pain.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Young lady, I’m an Outer God. I do not say things unless I am sure.” He stared up at the dark sky with his featureless face. “It’s definitely planning to make earthfall. Hell!”
I looked up at the thing. It still just looked like a harmless fuzzy spot to me. Then I looked at Shubby. “What’s a Colour Out Of Space?”
She sucked in a breath. “I’ve only heard of them. They poison whatever they touch. If this lands somewhere, the world will never get rid of it. It’s like a…cosmic infection.”
“What do we do about it?” I asked.
We both looked at Nyarlathotep for an answer. Instead all we found was cause for alarm, because he was looking anything but decisive. “Look…” he said. “I’ll just have to go and make some…consultations.” With one last look up at the sky, he hurried away.
“He doesn’t know what to do,” I said.
“That’s obvious.” Shubby let go of my arm at last. I resisted the urge to massage it; she definitely hadn’t meant to hurt me and I didn’t want to embarrass and distress her, though it seemed such a small thing at this moment. Dreamquest, picking up on our worry, pressed against my side. I patted his surface and he muttered a faint Tekeli-li.
Others had either spotted the Colour for themselves, or Nyarlathotep had passed the word, because the streets around the Lake were suddenly filling up. Not just Deep Ones, either; I noticed the great bulk of Chaugnar Faugn, his vampire trunk swinging and his ropy arms dragging along at the knuckles, and, beside him, the flickering ball of fire that was Cthugua. Even the barrel shapes of Elder Things crawled along on their basal tentacles beside the Outer Gods that they had once fought, their five eyes staring upwards. Only the Mi-Go weren’t in evidence; they were probably gathering their cargo of brains in cans before abandoning ship and leaving for their Yuggoth home. Mi-Go weren’t interested in taking chances.
“It’s coming lower,” Shubby said.
“So it is.” It was low enough now that I could make out its approximate shape, like a sphere that had been squashed until it was almost a disc. “Is it going to land here, do you think?”
“Not a chance. It knows that we’re here. It’s just taking a good look so it can gauge what kind of opposition it’ll face when it comes to ground somewhere. After all it knows that we’re the most powerful set of beings on this planet.”
I didn’t say anything. To me the Colour still looked like a fairly harmless fuzzy flattened sphere of constantly shifting shades, but I’d begun picking up the collective alarm of everyone around me. The tiny hairs at the back of my neck were standing on end. What, I thought suddenly, if it chose to come down on Accra? My parents were still there, and even though we hadn’t spoken in years, I still didn’t want any harm to…
The air trembled.
Something began blocking out the stars.
I looked up, and gasped.
From his throne where he’d sat unmoving ever since R’lyeh had climbed from the waves, Great Cthulhu was rising.
He rose as a mountain rises, as a black sun that blots out light. He took one titanic step forward, and another. His wings – which had looked so small when tucked back against his back – unfolded, great membranous pinions that seemed to span the horizon. They flapped once, flapped twice, and up into the air he sprang.
The Colour Out Of Space saw him far too late. It made a frantic attempt to dodge, but Cthulhu reached out one gigantic webbed hand, and enveloped it in his fist. A moment later he drew back his arm, swung like discus thrower, and flung the Colour upwards. For an instant it was still visible against the black depths of the sky; a flattened sphere, then a fuzzy patch, after that a tiny dot of light, and then it was gone.
“He threw it out,” I whispered, my voice muted with awe. “He threw it out of the world. Right out of the world.”
“Yes…”
“Did you know he would do it?”
Shubby laughed without humour. “I didn’t know he could do it. I don’t think anyone knew, except Cthulhu himself.”
“So that’s why he’s called Great Cthulhu,” I said, realising.
“Everyone’s great in some way.” Shubby drew a long trembling sigh. “Remember how you asked me why we’re here? We’re here to keep this world safe.”
“But why?” I asked, as Cthulhu flapped down to his throne. “Why us?”
“Someone has to.” Shubby twined her arm around mine. “Clearly your species can’t do it, so we have to.”
“But we don’t deserve it,” I said. “We don’t deserve you doing this for us.”
The crowd had begun to disperse. Shubby watched them melt away before she spoke again. “Your species produced you,” she said. “That’s reason enough for me.”
Later that night, I wrote out a full report of what had occurred, both what I’d seen and what I’d been told, and sent it to head office. It was the most consequential thing I’d ever sent them, probably the most consequential thing anyone had ever sent them since the establishment of the human mission on R’lyeh, and I expected a quick response, probably asking for more details and almost certainly messages to be passed on to various Outer Gods.
I never got so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a reply.
“Nothing.” I reached out and scratched Daisy on the head. She whuffed and wagged her tail. “Everything’s fine.”
“Come off it,” Shubby snorted. “I’m not deaf and blind. Something’s eating you inside.”
We were in her room in Shub-Niggurath’s flat. I’d been there before, and been suitably impressed with the high vaulted ceilings, the hidden blue lighting, the huge indigo bed set into the floor, on which Shubby had immediately insisted we have sex. “It needs inaugurating,” she’d said.
“You haven’t done it with anyone on it before?”
“There haven’t exactly been eligible women on R’lyeh, you nit. Especially not nubile young wenches eager to have their way with me, like you.”
I’d laughed then. I didn’t feel like laughing now.
“Well?” she persisted. “If you’re going to keep looking as though your heart is being torn apart by red hot pincers, shouldn’t I know why?”
For a moment I wanted to tell her it was PMS. It wouldn’t be a lie – I get really bad PMS – but it wouldn’t be the truth, either, and she’d see right through it.
“It’s…I’ve to start packing tonight,” I said. “The helicopter’s due day after tomorrow, bright and early in the morning.”
“And…?”
I swallowed the bitter feeling in my throat down and told myself I’d keep it down this time, this time I would keep the bastard where it belonged. “It’s just everything,” I said. “I’ve been wasting my time here, all these two years. Nobody cares a thing about what I’ve been doing here or what’s going on with me.”
“By nobody, I assume you aren’t including us.”
“Us?”
“Mum…Daisy…your shoggoth…and I. You aren’t including us, are you? Because we very much care about you. Even Mum does, and she’s got thousands of things to care about.”
“No, of course I’m not including you! I’m talking about this whole stupid situation; the people who sent me here and then don’t even care to read my messages, let along act on anything I tell them. I might as well not be here at all as far as they’re concerned.”
Shubby stared at me. “That’s their loss then, but I still don’t see why you’re feeling so down. It’s not as though you thought you were going to achieve anything here when you came, right?”
“I didn’t….then.” I stood up. “I should go, I need to pack.”
“Mariama…” She reached out to touch my hand.
“No, Shubby, not tonight, all right? My heart’s breaking badly enough already.”
“It’s not that…I was thinking of something.” She ran a finger down my cheek. “Listen, Mariama…”
“Shubby. I need to go. I need to be alone.” I clambered to my feet. “I’ll talk to you later, all right?”
“All right, I’ll keep it to myself.” She sighed. “For now, anyway.”
“Good night, Shubby.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I trudged out of her room, only to run, all but literally, into the Black Goat herself.
“Ambassador,” she said. “How nice to see you.”
I summoned a brittle smile for her. “You know I’m not an ambassador, Your Fecundity.”
“No,” she agreed. “You’re intelligent, observant, and at least try to do your job. Unlike the ambassadors I’ve met, who are either just in sinecures or actively attempting to sabotage their host nations.” She shifted on her tentacles, her crystal horns glittering in the light, but this time they didn’t send shafts of hangover-pain through my head. I realised this, remembered that I hadn’t needed to drink myself to insensibility on Old Peculiar since the day I’d met Shubby, and added that to the pain sloshing around inside me. “So,” she added, “you’re leaving us when? Tomorrow?”
“The day after.” She knew perfectly well it was the day after. I wondered what she really wanted. “Your Fecundity, it was a great pleasure to make your acquaintance. I just wanted to tell you that. You’re just….interesting, and warm, and funny. Not like…” I stopped, appalled.
“Not like my reputation, were you going to say?” Shub-Niggurath chuckled. “Reputations are one thing, reality another. I’m sure you know that. So…tell me.” One of her rugose upper tentacles reached out and touched my arm. “Tell me something, Mariama. Are you going to miss this place?”
“I…” The bitter lump rose into my throat again. “For all these days I’d have said no, of course not. Now, now, well…anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go and pack.”
“Well, if you must, you must.” Shub-Niggurath gave me a look. After two years I had finally begun to think I could interpret Outer Gods’ looks, but this one baffled me. It was almost as though she was thinking…something…that she didn’t want to talk about just then, but might later. “Where’s Shubby?”
“In her room, with Daisy.” I smiled weakly, raised a hand in farewell, and walked out into the night.
I didn’t expect that I’d ever see Shub-Niggurath again.
The shadows were falling thickly around me as I walked for one last time along Lake Carcosa. The sun had already set and the stars were reflecting off the water. No Colour tonight, and Great Cthulhu nodded on his throne, as though he’d never left it. I looked up at him. “I’ll miss you,” I whispered.
Dreamquest rubbed against my side, inviting me to ride him. “Not tonight,” I said. “Tonight I want to walk. I want to walk all night until I drop from exhaustion, seeing everything I knew one last time. The packing can wait till tomorrow.”
I did, and my memories crawled along with me, or perched on my shoulder. I passed the museum where Chaugnar Faugn made his home, where he crouched, like a monstrous vampiric bipedal elephant; and for the first time I did not think of how creepy he’d always seemed. Instead I remembered how courteous he’d always been to me whenever I’d forced myself to visit him. I saw the glowing torch atop a Cyclopean tower that was Cthugua’s dwelling, and I remembered that he was the only Outer God I’d never dared to approach for fear of being burned or – at least – singed. I saw, far in the distance, the tall black shape of Nyarlathotep stalking the streets, Deep Ones scattering before him like a school of fish at the approach of a shark. And my mind screamed at me, you’ll never see any of this again.
And there was more, so much more, so cruelly more. “Here’s the cavern with the carvings,” I thought, and went in. The moon, huge and just risen, reflected off the sea, and the reflected light washed the ceilings in ripples of silver radiance. And the memory dug its claws into my body and whispered in my ear, “Yes, this is the cavern with the carvings, that she showed you.” And the Temple of Dagon, deserted at this time of evening, with the huge carving of the deity and his monolith. “Remember the service she took you to.” By the time I’d worked my way back to Klarkash-Ton I knew the tears were streaming down my face. Dreamquest stroked my arm with a tentacle, knowing I was desperately sad, not knowing what he could do about it. And he was another memory, too, the memory of the morning I found him waiting for me, how I was at first alarmed and then intrigued and then he’d become as much part of my life as breathing.
“What will you do without me?” I asked him. Maybe Shubby could take him, but she’d be busy with her studies. And maybe, likely, he wouldn’t want to be hers anyway.
I felt helpless, worthless, and useless. Professionally I’d achieved absolutely nothing; nobody even bothered to reply to my reports. Personally I’d achieved worse than nothing; I’d broken my own heart, I’d soon break whatever passed for a heart in Dreamquest, and as for Shubby…
I shook my head and took a deep breath. The best I could hope for Shubby is that she’d just treat this as a diversion and get on with her studies. Maybe she’d remember me fondly, in the years to come.
I struggled up Leng, made my way up the non-Euclidean stairs which suddenly seemed to be far more normal than human stairs could ever be, and into my flat. A bottle of Old Peculiar sat on my kitchen shelf. I thought about it for a minute, but then dropped the idea.
Let it be a gift for whoever came after me. He’d need it.
Then, still fully dressed except for my shoes and socks, I threw myself on my bed and cried myself to sleep.
Surely this should have been a day of heavy cloud and weeping skies. Surely it should have been a day when R’lyeh itself might have mourned my leaving. Instead it almost looked as though it was gearing up to celebrate it.
I’d spent all the previous day at home. I’d checked everything I’d accumulated in two years, decided only about a tenth of it was worth taking, and packed that. I’d looked at all the other things, spread out on my bed and the chairs; the formal clothes I’d brought with me but never worn, R’lyeh never having had any truck with formality; the strange shells and bizarrely shaped rocks I’d picked up at the ocean’s edge and arranged on my windowsill and shelves, the books on R’lyeh I’d acquired in London and then stopped reading once I realised the authors had written them completely on imagination fuelled by hearsay. I’d looked at the sea-green robe Shubby had gifted me a week ago, and, after a long mental battle, decided to take it along. That would be the only thing of hers I’d have with me.
The rest of the stuff, I’d leave to Dreamquest. I was sure he’d find some use for it, if only as nesting material.
Then I’d scrubbed and cleaned the flat from top to bottom. Whoever replaced me wouldn’t, at least, be able to criticise the state of the place I’d be leaving for him.
All day I hadn’t seen or heard from Shubby, and I’d been grateful for the total lack of mobile phones on R’lyeh. I didn’t want to hurt myself further by talking to her and remembering the days with her, and the nights. Maybe – I hoped – she was distancing herself because she realised the need for both of us to move on.
In the evening I’d eaten the little food I’d had left in the flat, my only meal of the day, and gone to bed for the last time. Staring up into the darkness, I’d tried to keep my mind away from imagining her beside me; and yet my ears had strained to listen for her breathing, and my hand reached in vain to feel her by my side.
Eventually I’d fallen asleep.
Now it was the last morning, and suddenly I was eager to get it over with, to finish the process of tearing my heart out, and be gone.
I showered for the last time, remembering the first time I’d showered here, how the water had been too hot and then icy until I’d learnt how to manipulate the taps so it was just right. I brushed my teeth, arranged my twists – the twists in which she’d loved tangling her fingers – and dressed; and then suddenly there was nothing more to do.
So, heaving the small bag which was all I was taking with me, I opened my door for the last time.
And stopped where I was on the threshold, gasping with shock.
They were all there on the street, waiting for me.
Chaugnar Faugn, swinging his trunk back and forth before his twined tusks, stood next to Nyarlathotep, the latter a human-shaped piece of night. Shub-Niggurath, balanced on her lower tentacles, crystal horns reflecting the light, lightly patted Daisy, the Hound of Tindalos panting and wagging her tail. The great mass of iridescent bubbles that was YogSothoth flickered in and out of view around a gaggle of Deep Ones, among whom I saw the priest in the crown and tattered yellow robe. And, in front of them all, her left hand lightly resting on Dreamquest’s flank, was she.
“Mariama,” she said. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I managed. “You’re here at this hour? You’ll miss class.”
“No I won’t.” Shubby waved a hand at YogSothoth. “The Professor cancelled classes for today.”
“That was…nice of him. But, still, you didn’t have to do this. You didn’t have to see me off.”
“Oh, we haven’t come to see you off.” Shubby exchanged a glance with her mum. “Will you tell her or should I?”
“Tell me what?” I demanded. “What’s going on? The helicopter will soon be coming and…”
“Oh no it won’t. The helicopter’s not coming.”
“Huh?”
Shubby stepped forward and took my hand. “We’ve been busy all yesterday, Mum and I. We talked to the others here…” she waved a hand around. “We got them to agree. It wasn’t hard.”
“I don’t understand. Agree to what?”
“Can’t you guess?” Shub-Niggurath laughed. “Mariama, you and my daughter are head over heels in love with each other. You don’t want to leave her, and, unless I’m very much mistaken, you’ve fallen in love with R’lyeh as well. Am I wrong?”
I gulped, thoughts chasing each other in circles. “No, Your Fecundity, but…”
“Wait, let me finish. You said yourself that your employers can’t be bothered even to read your messages, so, we thought, they really couldn’t care less who was here, as long as someone was. And I spoke to my colleagues, and they all agreed that they’d prefer that you be that someone. So…”
“So,” Nyarlathotep said, “yesterday I used the emergency hotline that we almost never use, to communicate with your people. We told them that we’d all decided that you’re the best person to be the human representative here…permanently.”
“I…” I whispered. “What does that mean?”
“That means you get to stay here, silly.” Shubby took my other hand. “You can live here as long as you want.”
Her face was wavering in my vision. They were all wavering and blurring, and I dimly realised that it was due to the tears streaming from my eyes. I threw my arms around Shubby and drew her to me.
“I told you I had an idea,” she murmured in my ear. “If you’d only waited to listen to me…”
“I’m an idiot,” I sobbed. “I’m stupid.”
“You’re my stupid.” She hugged me back fiercely. “And since they don’t care about your messages, when I go out to do research, you can come with me. With your anthropology degree you’d be an excellent assistant. If you want, of course.”
“Oh,” I whispered, drawing a deep, wavering breath. “I want. I want that so much.”
Chaugnar Faugn cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but we do need your formal agreement. Mariama Acheampong, do you agree to take up duties as the permanent human representative on R’lyeh?”
The joy I felt bursting out of me momentarily rendered me speechless. I could only nod.
“She does,” Shubby translated, and kissed me passionately, heedless of everyone watching.
“I do,” I whispered, when our lips finally separated. “Oh, I do.”
“Tekeli-li,” Dreamquest said, and reached out a couple of tentacles to caress us happily.