Zelda Richards

Doubtlessly, there exists shadowed corners of reality that humanity was never meant to know, domains mercifully occluded by the twin blessings of ignorance and incapacity. Man, that shortsighted and self-deluding ant, charts his meager paths upon the narrow skein of a world he dares to call his own, exulting in each infinitesimal crumb of knowledge like some grand revelation and never once deigning to look skywards at the hungry birds. Yet the true terror, the ineffable horror that lurks at the trembling periphery of all perception, lies not in some distant abysses but in ghastly proximity. It festers there, waits behind a veil so tenuous, so maddeningly fragile, that the errant flicker of a poorly-timed flame might sunder its illusory bulwark, and reveal to the ant that horrifying damnation that would turn even the most stolid rational into little more than a maniacal jester, shrieking and wailing futilely against the enormity of what he had seen.

But I, foolhardy and curious ant that I am, have dared to peer beyond the stars. Would that I could take it all back, but some things can never be scrubbed from the mind.

Now, night after night, when sleep finally claims me, I dream myself here, though what 'here' is is difficult to comprehend and doubly so to describe. Logistics enshrouded, I do not know how I come to find myself within its loathsome confines time and time again, nor why. All I know, or perhaps feel, with certainty is that this place carries in its unhallowed halls a singular and most frightening continuity. Each descent into the revolting corridors bears the marks of past outings. Shoe scuffs and hastily erected landmarks I've made in distant dreams provide me evidence that what I witness is no mere fabrication of the subconscious mind, but a realm that lurks beyond the grasp of waking reason - a place that is neither memory nor madness, yet which bears the continuity of both.

There is no beginning to this nightmare, nor does it unfold in the chaotic manner of ordinary dreams. It does not shift or rearrange itself according to the capricious whims of the sleeping brain. Rather, it is as though I merely arrive, cast down into its vile recesses by some malignant will whose motives I dare not contemplate, my awareness emerging not from the shapeless void of slumber, but into the precise moment in which I had last departed, as though my dreaming self had never ceased its wanderings through this hideous and impossible domain.

If I were forced to, I would liken this realm to a vast and many-chambered temple. There is no outside in this place, no doors, no windows, no sun, only wide swaths of interior hallways and interconnected rooms drenched in an eerily intenebrous darkness. Although I am grateful for this irrational sight, I find myself wishing it better obscured the cyclopean statues that loom on every misaligned wall and disjointed corner, for the 'animals' they seem to depict are none I recognize and do little to inspire comfort. The halls themselves are ancient, dust-caked and worn, but with a peculiar and insidious vibrancy that speaks to still carrying occupants. Of this last, dreaded thing, I have never been more convinced, which is why I scurry quietly through these arcades like a jittery rat.

The deeper I go, the more abhorrent the space becomes to my human perception, the very geometry of it an affront to the faculties which govern my understanding of the world. For what ought to be straight is twisted and what should recede instead looms, passages yawning open at intervals only to alter their angles when I attempt to traverse them, the very walls shifting in ways I can neither anticipate nor comprehend, and though I move with all the caution of one who knows she is hunted, I find that my steps are puppeteered, for what should lead me to concealment instead deposits me within exposed thresholds, and what I believe will take me deeper into the labyrinth instead loops impossibly upon itself, drawing me out where I least expect.

It draws closer to me every night. There is no sound of pursuit, no echo of footfall nor rasp of breath, and yet I know with a certainty beyond logic that something stirs within these corridors, something unwholesome that abides within the impossible angles and watches from the darkened thresholds of doors which ought not to be there, whose forms suggest no earthly construction but rather the architectural blasphemies of some ancient and inhuman mind, and, though I have never seen it, I have felt its presence in the revolting contortions of the space itself. This awareness, I must conclude, arises not from any of my physical senses, but the reflection of its presence as I look inward into myself, my own perceptions merely the footprints of an unwelcome intrusion into my psyche.

Still I descend. Always I descend. Whether by design or compulsion I cannot say, for each pathway shifts and betrays me, each vaulted hall and alien thoroughfare becoming trickery of space and direction. Even attempting to go upwards, I find that my course is ever downwards, downwards toward the unknowable heart of this monstrous domain. And although I feel like a fly buzzing into a trap, some loathsome curiosity compels me onward. I feel as though my presence here is not merely that of prey, but of witness, that something festers in the nadir of this nightmare-realm, waiting, wanting to be observed with an atrocious patience that surpasses time itself.

And then, as I descend into what appears to be the final chamber, a cavernous space filled with strange sigils - slanted rectangles with to grooves on the bottom and one groove on top. A sickening deja vu overtakes me. I've seen these sigils before, but where? I scarcely have time to recollect before I see it! Oh, mad and gibbering gods of the void have mercy on me! I see it!

I do not know when I first perceive the thing in the darkness, for it does not arrive, nor does it emerge, but rather becomes apparent, revealing itself in some manner that is wholly distinct from the crude mechanics of sight and distance, as though it had always been there, merely unnoticed until the instant my perception is allowed to comprehend it. There is no single form I can ascribe to it, for it shifts with an abominable fluidity, its edges rebelling against stability, its mass distending and convulsing between states of being that my mind cannot contain. Yet it is vast, cosmically vast, as though the space which houses it does not exist in the same reality as myself, but rather accommodates something that cannot be enclosed within mere dimensions.

Its flesh, if it can be called such, is protoplasmic, glistening with the sheen of something embryonic, not yet formed and yet eternally old, the suggestion of limbs and appendages emerging and dissolving at random intervals, some terminating in chitinous protrusions, others suctioned and tentacular. The grotesque undulations direct by no anatomy which should rightly function. Its shape is not a shape. It is something that transcends shape, something that existed before the universe had language to describe form. But before I can turn to run in terror from the abomination, it speaks to me.

The sound, if indeed it can be called sound, is not perceived by the ears, nor is it carried through the air, but rather presses itself upon the mind, an utterance that transcends language yet conveys meaning, something older than the speech of man, older than the world itself, an arrangement of syllables that should not be understood, yet which infiltrate my cognition with a purpose.

"Hi, is this Domino's?" it reverberates through my skull. "I'd like to place an order for delivery, please. Address is the 21103 Tghrath’khal street on the southside of R'lyeh. Now, what I want on the pizza is pinea-"

"Noooooooo!" I wail, jolting upright. "We don't serve your kind here!"

But I'm no longer in the labyrinth. I'm cozy in my bed in my nightie in my room, safe but screaming at the top of my lungs and covered in cold sweat with tears in my eyes. Next to me is the blanket-covered lump that is my partner. The lump who - let me check the time - probably doesn't appreciate waking up to the sound of me yelling vaguely racist-sounding remarks at 2:14 a.m. in the middle of the night. But what can I say to excuse myself? 'Oh, hey, I think my dreams are actually real and teleporting my consciousness to an ancient entity who is trying to place a pizza order'? I'll end up in a nuthouse! It's better if I pretend it was just a normal nightmare, even if I'm still visibly shaking from the shock.

"Sorry babe. Didn't mean to wake you up. It was just another nightmare." I explain, lightly nudging my partner with my foot under the covers. "N-not a racist one either or anything, despite what I- err, screamed. Look, you just had to be there. It made sense in context. So, uhh... You know what? Maybe I should go sleep on the couch. Yeah. Do... Do you want me to go sleep on the couch?"

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