Cthulhu’s Nephew: Part One of Four

“What the fuck?” Her expression shifted from bored, to confused, to disgusted, and finally to horror as she yanked the slithering member from between her thighs. She grasped the wiggling object, her fingers slipping against mucus and flesh. It’s desperate attempt to burrow back into the dark pink. It keeps throbbing and twitching as she lifts it up like a trophy or a wilting sword. Dim lampshade light glistens off its smooth peach contour. One end emits a white web of unborn pearl.

“What the fuck is this!” She yells shaking the deflating object spraying white silk about the room. It coats the mirror, the wall, the tabletop. Blood drains from her face. Her eyes roll white. Her head hits the ground and her grip lets go of the object. It bounces like a rubber ball or silly putty.

He lifts her half naked body onto the motel’s tacky green and red Aztec design quilt tucked tight under the mattress. There is not a wrinkle on the comforter. One red plastic high heel teeters on her left foot. Her gnarled hair is put together in the style a twelve year old might try to do pretending to play dress up, knotted in one big rag that can’t be undone. He picks up his withering body part, places it where he wants it to be, and backs up out of the ceiling light to wait. Taking a seat at the small round table, he watches. Mentally he notes the cold smooth surface of the chair. It is firm and uncomfortable.

Her fake pink leather purse rests next to the phone on the table. The phone is the same generic olive and white phone used by motels­hotels since the 1950’s, that near extinct design that never seems to go out of style. “Retro” they’ll call it in the future. Under the receiver are the instructions on how to dial out, press 9, preceded by 1 and the number you want to reach. Wait for the dial tone. As if no one has their own personal four hundred dollar pocket computers used as marketing sponges and tracking devices recording the user’s desires, habits, and secrets. Leaving these retro objects more for interior design than practicality. Their only function is to reach the front desk. He sees the multitude of human DNA and bacteria festering on the receiver. These phones drunkenly yelled into at 2am for pizza delivery, and drooled into at 5am for wake up calls. They are a rainforest of infestation.

A pack of cigarettes sticks out the top of her purse. Like the crane of an arcade toy machine he pulls the cigarettes out. There are five remaining. One of them is flipped upside down. The yellow filter is the only color inside the tin paper. He pulls it out and locates the complimentary pack of matches in the ashtray. He has seen this done hundreds of times, in movies, on T.V., in public. Though, he has never tried it himself.

The match smokes a little before igniting. The sudden burst of sulfur and bright light startles him. Watching the orange­blue flame climb down the thin brown cardboard stem it begins to sting his fingertips. They crackle a little bit, fingerprints and fingernails blackening. He tosses it in the ashtray and lights another with the same mesmerizing effect. Halfway through the pack of matches he decides to use one to try lighting the cigarette resting in his lips. He often wondered why it is so appealing of an activity for human beings to do.

The smoke burns deep in his lungs with the first inhale. He begins a hurl of gut wrenching coughs. They turn into gag motions and a sickly hacking sound from some unknown depths of his throat. It is inhuman. Smoke burns in his eyes. He jabs the cigarette into the ashtray.

“What is this horrible thing?” He rubs his eyes with thick meaty palms and long knotty fingers. “These humans, they kill themselves.”

Patiently his eyes graze over the contours of her bruised and fragile body. Thin blue veins under shallow white skin pulse as he listens to the sound of her heartbeat and lungs breathing. They thunder together in a pattern of valve and wheezing.

“You have smoked too many of these my dear.” He crushes the pack and drops them in the trash next to the large square picture box.

He crosses his legs and taps his foot in the air. He is still naked. The light overhead digs hard angles of shadow across his face. An accentuated oversize chin hooks out from the darkness curving back in like the tail of a crescent moon. Deep sockets hide tiny eyes driven into a large concrete forehead of wrinkle and eyebrow. A squared up nose sits glued on to a face that never needs to be seen in daylight. Bloated cheeks puff out over the otherwise emotionless shaven scarred face. Well­groomed and attended brown hair slicks back and over to his left ear. The comb­ over lines remain like deep incisions in an otherwise rippling sea of a cheap toupee.

Her eyes beneath the lids start moving. They must be struggling to remember which part is dream and which part is real. They blink, pupils adjusting to low atmospheric light. Small camera lenses focusing, peering out with the sole purpose of gather information to relay to the central cortex mainframe of the brain and report the body’s current critical situation. But, it wasn’t her eyes that registered the stimulation first. Though, they were the first to express her emotional condition: delirium, horror, disgust, because when she came to, it was still inside her, wiggling.

“What the fuck?” She began screaming and yelling. “What the fuck is this!” Yanking the loose end out from between her legs again. She threw it across the room where it hit the wall decorating a purple floral wallpaper with more white webbing. It hit with a solid smack, bouncing once on the carpet, and rolling over where it finally stopped twitching. The silk had cocooned the thing like a caterpillar.

He stood up, still naked and casually went to pick it up. Her eyes staring at the blank area of his crotch where a gaping hole hung open white and pink with tendrils of loose flesh. A mouth where there shouldn’t be a mouth. He picked it up with his left hand and turned to face her holding the thing like a cob of corn.

“This is my penis.” He said approaching her with the white­sheathed phallic object dripping in thin white fibers shimmering silver in the light. Some of them stuck to the carpet and stretched out like a nightmare of chewing gum. “It’s a gift to you.” He set it on her bare knee. “I won’t be able to grow another for full cycle now.”

“Y....your... your... what?” She flicks it off as fast as possible and scurries as far away as she can before hitting the headboard. In the process she finally messes up the neat made comforter.

“My penis.”

“Your what?”

“My penis.”

“Your what?”

“My sex organ.”

“Your penis broke off...? Inside of me?”

“Well, it sort of detaches.”

“Detaches?”

“Yes, it’s a more effective method.”

“Method?”

“For mating.”

“Right, no? Mating? What?”

“My penis is used for mating.”

“What? Mating? We just fucked!”

“Yes, and I enjoyed all the fine moments and gestures of the courtship ritual. I had no idea your species required such intricate protocol before insemination. It seems so redundant and predictable. I mean, the end result is to produce genetically crossed specimens and DNA of your species, am I not right? Why not skip to the point, as they say? Cut the chase? Or is that cut the cheese? I don’t know. All the strange saying the creatures of your planet have.”

“We did skip to the fucking point! I’m a hooker. There is no fucking chase. No fucking courtships. No fucking rituals. You bend me over and stick your... your... your I don’t know, that things, your dick in me. That’s the point. That’s when it broke the off. Plain and fucking simple. What the fuck? Your dick fell off! What the fuck!”

“It’s supposed to do that.” He said with a contemptuous look. “I told you. It’s for mating purposes.”

“Mating purposes? What the fuck is wrong with you?” She tried wiping the oozing moisture from between her thighs on the bed sheets. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“If you will remain calm, I will explain,” he said sitting down at the small table across the room. Gently he picked up the motionless member and placed it between the ashtray and the telephone. Silk continued to coat the organ in a cocoon.

“I’m a Cthulhuian.”

“A what?”

“A Cthulhuian."

Original Artwork via Dim Media
Story inspiration H.P. Lovecraft