Post by Orome on Jun 12, 2008 23:36:44 GMT -5
Into The Darkness
By Chad Fulford
I would just like to make it known that it was not I who spoke the awful words that brought forth our current situation. Thorton was, and now the man is naught but food for worms and unnamed crawling things in the deep places of the earth.
Of course, it is deserved, carried off and swallowed by the very darkness that he was responsible for unleashing. That takes away some of my blame doesn’t it? Dear Lord, doesn’t it? So, my friends forgive me. Forgive me for what I helped release, this apocalypse of darkness, ash, and worse. Samantha, sick, and half-crazed when last I looked into your eyes, can you forgive me? If you still exist in some plane away from this diseased landscape, can you forgive me for what I did? I defiled you, at your own insistence. You said you wanted me to, didn’t you? Samantha, didn’t you?
No one is left to judge me for what I have done. The world is nothing but wasteland now, and soon we few who remain will disappear into the waiting darkness and the screams will fade into nothing. I helped in this genocide, so did Thorton, but it was him who started it. He convinced us it should be done, so that lessens my fault right? Doesn’t it?
My name, according to the little piece of paper hanging on my wall, is Jared Armstrong. I was a literary scholar at Lakehead University, and had a rather good life as a professor of literature. I was well respected by my friends and colleagues, and enjoyed a healthy social life. I also had a fascination with the strange and occult.
It was this latter hobby that led me to the others. We gathered every Wednesday, in my neat little office, surrounded by tomes of strange myths, and fiction by obscure and deranged authors. We drank cheap wine, and read poetry. We also read Lovecraft.
Thorton wasn’t from the school, but he had heard of our little group from his son, who took a class with me. Whereas we all enjoyed the strange tales, he actually believed in them, and would spend entire evenings trying to prove to us the reality of the Cthulhu mythos. He called it his Yog-Sothothery Theory.
I was in my office, marking some horrendous papers from a first year class when he came to me with his idea. He could prove to us the reality of it all, if we just gave him a chance. I laughed at him, but he looked nearly frantic. The following Wednesday, we gathered and let him give his presentation. I never should have laughed.
We started out with the usual bad jokes, and too much wine, and soon I forgot what he had wanted to show us. I haven’t had a drop of booze since. If I had been sober I might have stopped it. Maybe. Thorton came in with a stained and dogged eared book in his hands. They were shaking too. Was he anxious then? Or scared? Looking back I wonder if he knew what would happen.
I had finished my glass of wine and stepped behind my desk to pour another when Thorton began reading. “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.” Those were the words I heard. They were familiar, yet strange, spoken in such a way as I had never heard them before, and I felt a pull in my gut as the world spun before me.
Waking behind the broken remains of my desk I saw the equivalent of a war zone. I thought perhaps a sudden tornado had hit, but as I pushed off the splintered wood, putting my fingers into the strange warmth I knew to be blood, even in darkness, I knew better. I began crawling in the blackness looking for my colleagues. That was when I found her. Samantha.
I felt my stomach in my throat as found her hand. It was cold, but she squeezed back as the emergency lights flickered into life. Her once elegant form, and her long legs I had spent so many afternoons watching from across the room had now become a twisted mass of blood and blackness. Long tendril like things emerged from her torso, crawling along the floor, growing longer, thicker, their slick forms licking at the remains of the unidentifiable mass of blood and hair beside her. I tried to look away, swallowing hard, but she squeezed my hand and I looked into her eyes and I saw....
I left the room, not thinking of what I had just done. She asked me to. She pleaded. Right?
Now, it’s been a month, and I sit here, hiding in the basement of this little house. Waiting for the shadows to come. I wonder if I could have stopped it. All I had to do was believe Thorton. Too late now. Too late for Samantha and too late for the whole damn world. I see her eyes every night, telling me to do it.
I watch the darkness now, people running from it. They never make it. Never. Every night I see more of them. Half-crazed, inhuman things with sickening twisted bodies. But their eyes. They always look like hers. I never should have laughed.
Please forgive me. Please.
Tomorrow I will go into the darkness.
By Chad Fulford
I would just like to make it known that it was not I who spoke the awful words that brought forth our current situation. Thorton was, and now the man is naught but food for worms and unnamed crawling things in the deep places of the earth.
Of course, it is deserved, carried off and swallowed by the very darkness that he was responsible for unleashing. That takes away some of my blame doesn’t it? Dear Lord, doesn’t it? So, my friends forgive me. Forgive me for what I helped release, this apocalypse of darkness, ash, and worse. Samantha, sick, and half-crazed when last I looked into your eyes, can you forgive me? If you still exist in some plane away from this diseased landscape, can you forgive me for what I did? I defiled you, at your own insistence. You said you wanted me to, didn’t you? Samantha, didn’t you?
No one is left to judge me for what I have done. The world is nothing but wasteland now, and soon we few who remain will disappear into the waiting darkness and the screams will fade into nothing. I helped in this genocide, so did Thorton, but it was him who started it. He convinced us it should be done, so that lessens my fault right? Doesn’t it?
My name, according to the little piece of paper hanging on my wall, is Jared Armstrong. I was a literary scholar at Lakehead University, and had a rather good life as a professor of literature. I was well respected by my friends and colleagues, and enjoyed a healthy social life. I also had a fascination with the strange and occult.
It was this latter hobby that led me to the others. We gathered every Wednesday, in my neat little office, surrounded by tomes of strange myths, and fiction by obscure and deranged authors. We drank cheap wine, and read poetry. We also read Lovecraft.
Thorton wasn’t from the school, but he had heard of our little group from his son, who took a class with me. Whereas we all enjoyed the strange tales, he actually believed in them, and would spend entire evenings trying to prove to us the reality of the Cthulhu mythos. He called it his Yog-Sothothery Theory.
I was in my office, marking some horrendous papers from a first year class when he came to me with his idea. He could prove to us the reality of it all, if we just gave him a chance. I laughed at him, but he looked nearly frantic. The following Wednesday, we gathered and let him give his presentation. I never should have laughed.
We started out with the usual bad jokes, and too much wine, and soon I forgot what he had wanted to show us. I haven’t had a drop of booze since. If I had been sober I might have stopped it. Maybe. Thorton came in with a stained and dogged eared book in his hands. They were shaking too. Was he anxious then? Or scared? Looking back I wonder if he knew what would happen.
I had finished my glass of wine and stepped behind my desk to pour another when Thorton began reading. “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.” Those were the words I heard. They were familiar, yet strange, spoken in such a way as I had never heard them before, and I felt a pull in my gut as the world spun before me.
Waking behind the broken remains of my desk I saw the equivalent of a war zone. I thought perhaps a sudden tornado had hit, but as I pushed off the splintered wood, putting my fingers into the strange warmth I knew to be blood, even in darkness, I knew better. I began crawling in the blackness looking for my colleagues. That was when I found her. Samantha.
I felt my stomach in my throat as found her hand. It was cold, but she squeezed back as the emergency lights flickered into life. Her once elegant form, and her long legs I had spent so many afternoons watching from across the room had now become a twisted mass of blood and blackness. Long tendril like things emerged from her torso, crawling along the floor, growing longer, thicker, their slick forms licking at the remains of the unidentifiable mass of blood and hair beside her. I tried to look away, swallowing hard, but she squeezed my hand and I looked into her eyes and I saw....
I left the room, not thinking of what I had just done. She asked me to. She pleaded. Right?
Now, it’s been a month, and I sit here, hiding in the basement of this little house. Waiting for the shadows to come. I wonder if I could have stopped it. All I had to do was believe Thorton. Too late now. Too late for Samantha and too late for the whole damn world. I see her eyes every night, telling me to do it.
I watch the darkness now, people running from it. They never make it. Never. Every night I see more of them. Half-crazed, inhuman things with sickening twisted bodies. But their eyes. They always look like hers. I never should have laughed.
Please forgive me. Please.
Tomorrow I will go into the darkness.
