
Cthulhu smokes a cigarette as he attempts to overcome writer’s block
After waking from an eternity of sleep in his sunken city of R’lyeh, Cthulhu finds himself restless and bored. The propitious hour to destroy civilization has yet to arrive because the necessary galactic alignment won’t occur until December 12, 2012. In order to pass the time, Cthulhu decides to write his memoirs. He has been alive for untold eons, and his story began to evolve long ago on a dark and stormy night at the foot of the Mountains of Madness.
Cthulhu reminisces about his long existence as he winds his way through the complex cosmology that governs the arcane hierarchy of greater and lesser gods that have played influential roles in his life over the years. More than anything, Cthulhu cherishes his memory of the defining moment in his life that occurred when he was named the high priest to the Great Old Ones, powerful beings from other star systems that have long been worshipped by primitive humans on Earth.
Cthulhu has only vague recollections of his childhood on a distant planet in the twenty-third nebula, but recalls with fondness the arrival of his star-spawn who built R’lyeh in the immeasurable depths beneath an Antarctic ice shelf. At present, Cthulhu is completing a chapter containing a dramatic portrayal of the unsuccessful Shoggoth Rebellion which was temporarily put down by the Elder Things, who were subsequently weakened by the last ice age and were ultimately exterminated by these former slaves.
Cultists who are aware of Cthulhu’s literary undertaking are excited about the potential resolution to the longstanding question as to whether the Great Old Ones were cast out and imprisoned under the sea for their use of black magic, or as others argue, they are merely hibernating in consonance with an immutable cosmic cycle, and will be revived at the auspicious moment when the planets are again in correct alignment.
Up to now, Cthulhu has thus refrained from commenting on what the future holds for humanity when that fateful moment arrives and humankind’s brief reign on the planet comes to an abrupt and violent end at the hands of the original inhabitants who are returning to claim it as their own, as some suggest has been prophesized in the Necronomicon.
Predictably, he has titled his memoirs “Cthulhu Fhtagn,” an expression in his native ancient tongue that is generally accepted to translate as “”Cthulhu Waits Dreaming.”
Illustration by Kim Harris
Story by Don Rudisuhle
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