Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear (30 page)

After hundreds of millions of years, there may have been detours on the folded path created by the Race that bypassed Earth, but Cthulhu would still do what He had dreamed of for all those strange and lonely aeons. With His massive brain, He created a herald form in His own likeness and set it to clearing the matter path. When the shortcut through R’lyeh to the herald form’s stopping point was complete, Cthulhu would emerge and bring all His slaves with Him, shoggoth slaves who had mocked him just a hairsbreadth away in the fourth dimension, safe just outside his inescapable loop. Cthulhu would emerge and—

The path was complete
.

For the first time since Pangea was the lone landmass on the planet, Cthulhu burst through the three miles of permanent ice and felt the heat of nuclear fire warm its cold body. Radiation was invigorating to the Old Ones as they traveled through the galaxy. The sentient inhabitants of planet Earth—who he could sense even while trapped in its loop at the bottom of the sea—had given him a welcoming gift. Cthulhu’s green skin blistered and wept pus onto the white-hot tundra, and it was
good
.

With its massive, grossly pustuled arms, Great Cthulhu summoned all His slaves, all the shoggoths in existence and the many more He would create, to burst from the path and spill onto the Earth like lava from a volcano. Cthulhu reared His great, tentacled head back and roared, frightening its slaves forward to cover like a Yuggothian fungus this place that had trapped it for so long.

The shoggoths were gelatinous, foul creatures the size of wooly mammoths. Their translucent, greasy bodies formed and reforming eyes as they shuffled, ran, and rolled across the refreezing ice. They were hungry, so hungry. When they reached the water, they sucked up the dead irradiated creatures of the antipodal sea. They could sense much more death ahead, and their slime trails floated on the waves as they assumed a swimming form, eyes growing where needed to guide them to the next landmass filled with meat.

Awake
was one human concept analogous to what arose in Cthulhu’s mind.

So was
punish
.

From
Is the King of France Bald? and Other Conundra I Have Solved
by Martin Storch:

Why doesn’t a Being like Siegel and Shuster’s Superman just take over the world? Infinitely powerful, only inconvenienced by Kryptonite, and immortal? The character was conceived as fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way” (which always irked me as a boy growing up in Portsmouth, England) and later radio-show incarnations pegged him as never being able to tell a lie, never killing anyone, and tying his humanity to his love for a human woman, Lois Lane.

In other words, they castrated the Man of Steel and put his bollocks in Lois Lane’s handbag.

He seemed more than happy about being put on a leash and serving mankind instead of ruling it like an eternal Francisco Franco. Infinitely powerful, infinitely good—humans are damned lucky to have such an agreeably omnipotent and omnibenevolent alien on our side, even if he is only “all-knowing” when the comics or film story requires it.

That, however, is not like any situation I’ve experienced, and I’d be willing to wager that you feel the same. To quote another comic book franchise: With infinite power comes infinite responsibility. Superman, being all-good, can live up to that. But he would probably be the only one in the galaxy.

And then there is Cthulhu.

He’s not infinitely powerful—he did, after all, somehow get stuck, dead and dreaming, at the bottom of the ocean along with his city of R'lyeh, and will be “until the stars are right,” whatever that actually means. Additionally, he isn’t all-knowing, as far as how he is described in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. And, my stars, Cthulhu is not even
close
to being “all-good”—he is universally portrayed as an evil pseudo-god, ready to wreak havoc and devour every human alive if he ever rises from his watery tomb.

That, I believe, is a misunderstanding. Cthulhu isn’t “evil” and shoggoth slaves of the Elder Things aren’t any more “evil” than a dog that has been trained to kill. Shoggoths just roll over you and assimilate you, adding your eyes to the bubbling collection inside their bodies.

Cthulhu can’t actually be considered evil because a Being like Him is
alien
in a way Kal-El is not. Cthulhu doesn’t look like us, He doesn’t think like us, He doesn’t have the ingrained moral codes that define our conceptions of “good” and “evil.” It’s probably a misnomer to refer to the Old One as “He,” since we know nothing of his species’ (if he isn’t a one-off) reproductive details.

Most of all, however—and this is made very clear in Lovecraft’s original “Call of Cthulhu”—a Being of His size and power might create distress or even injury in sensitive or artistic people’s minds, but He will probably remain completely oblivious to the existence of puny creatures like ourselves. Howard Phillips Lovecraft makes it perfectly clear: let the Old One be indifferent instead of “all good” or “all bad”; let him be as “all-powerful” as He likes, just so long as he is not “all knowing.”

Because if He ever does rise and He notices the human race, we are doomed.

Cthulhu Attacks! Book Two: The Faith coming soon

Sean Hoade
scribbles his mad tomes in the wilds of Las Vegas, Nevada, which provides plenty of apocalyptic inspiration. He taught at the University of Alabama for almost 10 years, including groundbreaking for-credit classes on zombies, superheroes, and the Apocalypse, all of which attracted international attention. His seven-part lecture series on zombies in film, literature, and culture receives 90,000 downloads each year from iTunes U. 

All of that said, Sean’s heart is with H.P. Lovecraft and writing among the New Lovecraftians. Novels, short stories, screenplays—he loves to create within the subgenre, and he is a complete glutton when it comes to taking in the works of others. He often brags about having hung out with S.T. Joshi and Wilum Pugmire.

Much like Claude Rains, Sean finds that no one seems to notice him when he’s naked. He has a crush on women with bob cuts who smoke cigars and curse like Lithuanian sailors. He lectures on fiction, contributes to panels, and gives readings at Conventions all over the country, and serves as Assistant Acquisitions Poobah for the online magazine Shoggoth.net.

Sean welcomes you to visit
www.SeanHoade.com
and email him at
[email protected]
.