MYLAKHRION THE IMMORTAL by Brian Lumley

This is the story of a sorcerer’s, Teh Atht, search for immortality. He is the descendent of one of the most powerful sorcerer’s of all time, Mylakhrion. Teh Atht is plagued with a question. Why did Mylakhrion not discover the secret to immortality?

Teh Atht’s question takes him into the mountains where he performs the necessary rites to summon his ancestor and put the screws to his ghost.

Mylakhrion answers the question of immortality with a story of madness and obsession that ended with the slumbering Cthulhu; Cthulhu being the only true immortal known to exist, to have escaped the cold vastness of space and time.

The trouble is that once you have stood in audience of the Great Lord Cthulhu, you are changed forever. You can’t escape he who rules the lands of dreams.

Teh Atht soon learns that he has been playing with fire. Mylakhrion has discovered the secret of immortality, the immortality that is available to the week flesh of humanity. The secret is possession. Mylakhrion’s ghost must inhabit the body of a relative, and what relative better to possess than that of sorcerer.

Teh Atht believes he has escapes Mylakhrion’s plan. But has he? That is the question the reader is left to ponder as the story closes.

A good read. Check it out!

Lumley, Brian. “Mylakhrion the Immortal.” The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land, Volume 1. New York: TOR, 1991. p. 162 - 172

SUCKER by Neil Asher

If you have five minutes, you have time to enjoy Sucker, the short story that Neil Asher posted on his blog The Skinner on April 28, 2008, as gift to his loyal fans.

You’re wasting your time reading my little review when you could be reading his story. However, you must like what I have to say. So…

Sucker is the story of guy, a fat guy that does not like to be called fat, especially by his wife. We enter into their marriage on the day when he has decided that he has had enough. He puts a mashed potato filled fork into her eye. He then retrieves his favorite knife and begins to prepare her for the meat locker. I guess the saying would go: if you can’t live with her, eat her.

Then the door rings. Nice! Enter the Tyson Vacuum salesman. He had an appointment to meet with the wife and demonstrate the awesome power of its suction. He will not take no for an answer, he must demonstrate. He had an appointment after all.

I’m not going to ruin the rest. You will have to read it for you self. You can read it by clicking here: Sucker.

What I like about Asher’s short fiction is that he has the amazing ability to stay completely immersed in the scene, the moment, and show the action with very little summary or none at all. I have something to learn from that.

Enjoy!

Asher, Neil. Sucker. The Skinner

THE SOURCES OF THE NILE by Rick Hautala

You know what I like about the Minneapolis Central Library? I like that it is only two blocks from where I work and that after a long day of customers and whatever else, I can relax my way through the stacks looking for the orange spine label: “Short Stories.” I never go home empty handed.

This time I brought home several good looking short story collections, including Bedbugs. The cover caught my eye, old school black and white pencil, bugs and icky things, and a big raven out the window (referencing everyone’s favorite poem by Poe).

I flipped though the book and it is filled with these types of pictures in front of every story. I love pictures. It made me feel like a kid again with one of those haunted-I’m-not-going-to-sleep-tonight books.

The first story that jumped out at me was “The Sources of the Nile” because it was only five pagers and I was tired, wanted sleep, and had a big crazy day a head of me. It was great. It was more than great, it was exquisite. In five pages, Hautala established character, plot, and gave up some crazy details that made me squirm and put the book down and exclaim, “Wow! Hang on! What just happened?”

Not to spoil it (well, I’m going to spoil it), but this story is about a guy, a private Dick. He has been hired to spy on her husband and discover the truth, is he cheating? Well of course he is. We join the story at the point where the Dick is revealing his pictures to the wife.

The wife begins to cry! The Dick gets turned on, not because she is Kate Beckinsale hot, but because she is crying. See, he loves tears. He loves to taste, lick, and suck on women’s eyeballs, consuming their tears; yup, consuming their tears, and he sucks so hard that her eye pops out into his mouth.

It just gets better from there. You need to check out Hautala’s short stories. They are crazy good.

Hautala, Rick. “The Sources of the Nile.” Bedbugs. Abingdon: Cemetery Dance Publications, 1999. p 131-136

BLANKENSHIP & DAWES IN THE ISLAND OF IGNOMINY by Jens Rushing

This is the story of two English gentlemen on a cruse. The cruse liner sinks and they find themselves stranded on an island. On this island they encounter strange spider like beings with human heads.

Wow, really, spiders with human heads. Okay, so the spider things with human heads believe that humanity is vile and corrupt. The source of human evil is the human body, hungers and lusts. They believe that they have found perfection. This perfection is the preservation of the human mind through severing the head from the evil body and transplanting it onto one of these spider bodies. Okay, it sounds weird, but the way that they explain it, perhaps not.

What impresses me most about Rushing’s writing is his ability to write with in a genre and turn it on its head making it his own. In this example, Rushing is using the Victorian travel log. It reminds me a little of the Heart of Darkness, discovering strange and new tribes.

At any rate, Pantechnicon, Issue 6 is free to down load as a PDF. So, if you have a few minutes and would like something weird, strange, and entertaining, check out this story (and Rushing’s website: http://www.jensrushing.com/).

Rushing, Jens. Blankenship & Dawes in The Island of Ignominy. Pantechnicon, Issue 6 p 21 - 47

THE OUTSIDER by H. P. Lovecraft

This is a tale of mystery and alien strangeness. The narrator is a sad creature barely human who has been raised in complete seclusion. He does not know his keepers, but his every need, other than society, is looked after with great care. He has access to a large and very old library of strange moldy texts.

He knows nothing of himself other than he is unhappy. He does not even know where he was born. He spends his days wandering the castle until he happens upon a stone portal with alien carvings. He goes though and makes this way up a ghastly and terrible stair case ending in a trap door. And even though he climbed darkness loomed.

What drives this character to keep going into the unknown is mystery. He has seen signs, warnings that what is coming will destroy any remaining sanity he has left. Yet, he trudges on through the darkness and into a room filled with some abject horror. He even reaches out to touch one of it gruesome paws before he turns and runs for his life.

The Outsider is for those of us who have dreamed that those who raised us are mysterious and incompressible. When we finally forced to face our parents, truly understand who they are and what they are about, we are faced with a shockingly realization that we may never understand them. We can only see monsters and wonder how they came to care so deeply for us. This new horrifying knowledge can either undo us as it has The Outsider’s narrator, or we can face it head on.

References to: Hadoth by the Nile, the catacombs of Nephren-Ka, tombs of Neb, feasts of Nitokris

Mythos Rating: 5 out of 10 tentacles

Lovecraft, H. P., “The Outsider.” The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York: Del Rey, 1982. p. 37 - 41

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH by Edgar Allan Poe

With all the new stories being written and published everyday, I sometimes for get the power of Poe. Poe, for me, is the foundation of American Macabre. He paved the way for literary hero H.P. Lovecraft and many others.

His story The Masque of the Red Death (which you can read online) is one of his finest works that, in my opinion, inspired Robert W. Chambers to create the stories of the King in Yellow who Mythos fans know as Hastur originally credited by Ambrose Bierce.

The Masque of the Red Death is in my mind a great political story. It is the story of Prince Prospero’s decadence and naïveté that the concerns of the people are not the concerns of the state (a lesson that political leaders seem to have to learn over and over again ignoring history).

Prince Prospero thought that he could pack up a thousand of his closet friends, courtiers, and entertainers, taken them into seclusion, and wait out the “Red Death,” which had killed over half of the population of his kingdom. You know ho the story goes, Prince Prospero is wrong and pays for it with his life.

The lesson in this dark tale is that walling your self off and hiding from the concerns of the world will not work. Action could have been taken. Prince Prospero could have done what was right, fought the good fight, and help his people. Problems just don’t go away by ignoring them; in fact, those ignored problems tend to sprawl out of control when left unchecked.

As a writer, I want so badly to be able to say things like this in my fiction without saying them. It is a skill that I am still working on. Poe does not come out and say, “You will be sorry,” instead he shows it though drama.

Wow, I’m just too heavy handed. I want to know that when some one reads my work that the message is clear. I don’t have a lot of patience to write the magnificent descriptions that Poe has in this story of each of the partitioned rooms. This is my failing as a writer. I love to read these descriptions, but I don’t like to write them. I would rather focus on dialogue, which is absent in this story. What the hell is wrong with me? The mantra is Show Don't Tell, Show Don't Tell.

Anyway, The Masque of the Red Death is a classic that any writer should read. It is a tightly packed death march of doom. Read it on line: http://poestories.com/text.php?file=masque

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Masque of the Red Death.” Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems. Castle Books: New Jersey, 2001. p 251 - 255

THE HOUSE BEYOND YOUR SKY by Benjamin Rosenbaum

I’m sure that I’m not smart enough to fully understand this one. I might need some help. If you’ve read this story and would like to chime in, please leave comments.

Here is my take. The main character is named Matthias. Matthias has the qualities of a god, or creator. There is mention of a bookshelf with several universes shelved in a row. The one that Matthias is looking through and concerned with in this story contains a young girl and her stuffed bear.

This girl’s parents are fighting in the kitchen. The fight escalates into domestic abuse. Matthias can’t take it and has to reach out to her through her bear. The bear speaks. She asks, “Are you God?”

From here the story becomes elusive for me. The reader is taken into Matthias’ world where he is experimenting, trying to create something important. However, it would seem that an elder or parent (the relationship is unclear, perhaps that is just the way it is among godlings) disapproves.

A question is raised, would this girl be better off dead? The other answer is for Matthias to meddle. And it would seem that getting involved has never turned out well for anyone and just disappoints Matthias. To find out what happens to the girl, you will have to read the story.

One of the interesting things about “The House Beyond Your Sky” is that I get the impression that Matthias is just a user of an existing program. Oh, he is a hacker working on network performance and always looking to upgrade, but still an end-user of an existing platform. It brings to mind the many types of SIM-universes that are at our disposal. As end-users we can create and manipulate small words of digital people. We can give those people lives, we can take them away. Is morality involved at all?

Anyway, this is a bizarre find, a good read, a hard read, a mind stretching read, a good story that bring the word art to mind.

Rosenbaum, Benjamin. “The House Beyond Your Sky.” Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007. Ed. Rich Horton. New York: Cosmos, 2007. p. 367 - 383

IN THE COURT OF THE DRAGON by Robert W. Chambers

The power of one’s own imagination can be crippling to the mind. Sometimes you are your own worst enemy. In this case, the narrator interpreted a look; a look that he felt contained a level of malevolence; a look from a church organist.

The majority of this story is spent tracking the organist and then running from the organist. It never becomes clear what set the organist off, made him pick on the narrator, but it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that the narrator is obsessed. He has to know why he feels that the organist is up to something evil that only he can see and hear in the music. The narrator feels that it is his duty to help his congregation by reveling and purging this evil.

Then the narrator looses track of the organist only to then be stalked by him all the way home to The Court of the Dragon, which disappointingly is just a court yard with a dragon archway. Perhaps the archway is evil, but its presence is played up in any significant way, the archway just is. The read might think that the archway is evil, I mean, it is locked and keeps our narrator from escaping the organist. Still, it is not animated and it is not described in much detail.

I never read a story that contained an evil organist, but why not an organist? The haunting sounds on those large pipes can seem very evil. And for this reason, I like the story. However, the ending device of waking up and having the story basically start over is a tired one. I wonder how fresh this device was when this story was first published about 1895?

Chambers, Robert W. “In the Court of the Dragon.” The Yellow Sign and Other Stories: The Complete Weird Tales of Robert W. Chambers. Ed. S.T. Joshi. Chaosium, Inc. 2004 p. 47 - 53

A STUDY IN EMERALD by Neil Gaiman

This is change in pace from all the cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk as of late. This story presumably takes place in 1881.

What I like about Mythos stories is that you can always tell the good ones from the bad ones. The good ones are all written from the first person witness. The reader gets to tag along on an adventure into the strange and demented.

In Gaiman’s addition to the ever growing Mythos, the Old Ones are among us. As in some of Shakespeare’s plays, a comedy troop tells the truth that can not be uttered: “… the Old Ones whose coming was foretold, returning to us from R’lyeth, and from dim Carcosa, and from the great plains of Leng…” had returned years ago and had taken up place of power and influence.

In this story, the Old Ones are the establishment. One has been killed and a very Sherlock Homes and Watson like duo seek out the murderer though precise tracking of clues. However, this Homes, meeting his Professor James Moriarty, is out eluded. The murderer leaves a letter that explains how he was able to out deduct our detective.

Again, I wish I had written this story. The language feels authentic and appropriate for Lovecraftian fan fiction. It has a quick pass and engaging plot. It also has a new twist, Old Ones as world leaders and peace keepers (there is no war under their rule) that brings needed fire back to the subject matter.

Well done!

Gaiman, Neil. “A Study in Emerald.” Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. p. 1 – 25

ABDUCTED SOULS by Robert Reed

I’ve really enjoyed reading The Cuckoo’s Boys. Each of the stories has had something that I will want to use later when revising my thesis. However, the one that stuck out for was the story “Abducted Souls,” which is an excellent addition to the genre of alien abduction. The story is more about belief than aliens, but that is what makes it takes this story from common to great.

“Abducted Souls” is the story of Cole Glock, a young man early in his college career. Cole is covered in small scars. See, when Cole was young, the classic abduction story, he went missing from his room. All the windows were locked and unbroken, the door to house were locked, no one saw him leave, but Cole went missing and then was found a few days later. Cole remembered nothing.

The doctors found small BB-like spheres, implants, in his body. Implants like those that were showing in up people all over the world. These implants could move and sense danger and if a doctor was lucking enough to pull one from an abductee, it would self destruct. Cole’s scars were from doctors trying to make incisions fast enough to catch the implants.

The magic of this story is in the comparison of Cole’s belief that he is someone special, chosen to carry these alien implants, and the group of Christians on campus who meet for bible study on the weekends and study together throughout the week. Cole’s entire psyche is formed around his belief and doubt that he was abducted as a child. His mother reinforces this though her strange brand of survivors guilt. Doctors tell him and his mother that these objects exist. The rhetoric that Cole had bought into is similar to that of the group of Christians; you are special because the son of God chose to save you.

The third element leading up to the psyche crushing moment at the end of the story is revelation that one of the characters in the story, who also believes in the alien implants, is a schizophrenic who has gone off his medication. Though this character Cole sees first had what it is like to have your core believes shattered. What it can do to a person. How other people treat that person.

More than anything, this story has driven me to wonder what prompted this story. It seems to me, if I can guess that the author’s intent (which is a dangerous business), that Reed was trying to answer this question: What would you do if everything that you believed to be true was false and what you believed to be false was true? If the answer is contained with in these pages, then I would have to assume that it has a lot to do with Cole’s actions after he finds out he has been living a lie. Cole seeks out the one other group of people that he knows believe in something so much that it has helped to formulate their identities, the Christians.

What I really like about this story is Cole’s decision to seek out the Christians at the end. This move seems to call attention to beliefs that these Christians have been spouting though out the story. Ultimately, it begs the question, what would Christians do if they were proved wrong?

Reed, Robert. “Abducted Souls.” The Cuckoo’s Boys. Urbana, IL: Golden Gryphon Press, 2005. p 222 - 253

THE GOOGLEPLEX COMES AND GOES by Del Stone Jr.

What is the Googleplex? Where did the Googleplex come from? These are the questions that take the reader through the story.

This story reads kind of like the Parable of the Blind Men, except that the Elephant is an indescribable object. This object appeared one day in a small town. It crushed a few buildings and killed a few people in the process of appearing. Everyone has an opinion and an idea of how to answer those two questions of What and Where.

The narrator is a woman that has had a unique experience a part of the Googleplex. This experience has left her jaded and more than a little bitter. When she thinks of the Googleplex, she is disappointed and angry at those with theories. She calls them liars. No one really knows what the Googleplex was or where it came from.

However, if anyone would know the answers, it would be her lover. Her lover is frozen. See, she just had to touch a small fragment of the Googleplex that was left behind as it vanished. Just as she touched it with her hand, he grabbed her wrist. It took him.

This is a strange story. I like it. It is full of wonder and pondering. The cranky narrator makes the story.

Stone, Del Jr. “The Googleplex Comes and Goes.” Full Spectrum 4. Ed Lou Aronica, Amy Stout, and Betsy Mitchell. New York: Bantam, 1993. p 99 - 111

NaBloPoMo

DANIEL by Loren Taylor

“Daniel” revitalizes the notion of Literary for me. It is the story of son who calls his father’s credit card company in order to try and convince the person on the other end of the phone to forget that his father ever existed. The underling reason being that his father has a huge credit card debt.

The story is almost completely in conversation. The bit that is not dialogue between the son and the customer service representative is the son’s internal monologue or narration of the phone call. The dialogue is wonderfully written. As a customer service supervisor in a call center, I have a lot of love for this story.

The customer service representative does an excellent job in handling the situation, in the beginning. She listens, asks clarifying questions, and goes beyond helpful. However, she is slowly worn down by the strange circular-logic that the son is using. She comes to identify with his problem and then helps him by ultimately fulfilling his request that the credit card company deign the existence of his father (and thus his father’s debt). She should have either elevated this call to a supervisor after a couple of minutes.

What the son does not know, or does not really care about is the customer service representative. He is focused on only his problem, like most customers with problems. What customers with problems don’t understand is that sometimes, if the customer service representative helps them, it puts the customer service representative’s job at risk. By the end of the story, I had lost all my sympathy for the son and his plight and was now identifying (probably because of my line of work) with the customer service representative.

“Daniel” is an excellent piece of writing. If you can find a copy of rock, paper, scissors, this story makes it completely worth it.

For copies of rock, paper, scissors, try emailing West Egg Literati here.

Taylor, Loren. “Daniel.” rock, paper, scissors. Hamline University: West Egg Literati, 2007

NaBloPoMo

PICKMAN’S MODEM by Lawrence Watt-Evans

This story, in my opinion, is a good example of how to bring the Cthulhu Mythos into the present. The horror is still strange. The point of view is still first person, the terrible story of the first hand witness of someone who dies, goes mad, or experiences something far far worse.

Watt-Evans also expresses how I feel about the Internet, blogs, and computers this weekend. The narrator says, “You can waste hours every day reading and posting messages, if you aren’t careful, and the damn things are addictive; they can take up your entire life if you aren’t careful. The nets will eat you alive if you let them.” I couldn’t say it any better. This addiction is just another way for me to avoid working on my fiction.

As the story progress and the narrator, George, has brief Internet encounters with Pickman, the story spirals into the wonderful Mythos pitfalls that ensnare a large number of characters. Pickman and George get together and investigate strange messages. Pickman’s postings and emails are being rewritten after they are sent and before they reach the intended reader.

Pickman’s modem is made by Miskatonic Data Systems in Arkham, MA, and the serial number reads RILYEH.

It might feel gimmicky, an evil modem, but I like it a lot!

Watt-Evans, Lawrence. “Pickman’s Modem.” Cthulhu 2000. Ed. Jim Turner. New York: Del Ray, 1995. p. 52 - 57

FAMILIAR by China Mieville

Magic is dangerous. Power is dangerous.

What I like about this story is the shift in point of view from the witch to his familiar. This is an odd move. The story opens with the witch performing magic for a client, powerful magic that almost gets out of control. Then the point view switches after the witch discards his familiar.

The familiar, which I will speak about it vague terms (you just have to read the story to get Mieville’s eerie descriptions), begins to learn about itself and its surroundings. As it moves, it adds to itself, growing, becoming stronger and stranger.

Any D&D player worth their salt knows that when you call a familiar, you keep it close, you protect it. The familiar shares a spiritual and physical bond with the wizard, witch, or magic user that dares to call one to their side. This bond strengthens the magic user and the familiar is raised from common to something more.

This story is a strange one, but it reminds me how much I love fantastical and weird fiction. I think that this story proves that Mieville deserves placement among the likes of Ligotti, Derleth, Lovecraft.

Find it! Read it!

Mieville, China. “Familiar.” Looking for Jake. New York: Del Rey, 2005. p. 79 - 96

TV PEOPLE by Haruki Murakami

This one of the best modern allegories that I have read. Most horror and weird fiction is content to shock and boggle the mind. Murakami is not content to just spin a tale of a man's decent into the dark abyss of insanity. There is much more happening in this story just below the surface of the action.

However, the action is well written and moves both the plot and the underling meaning to a fruitful end. It starts out with a long strange introduction to the TV People. The way they look, "...--slightly smaller. About, say 20 or 30%." These TV people begin to haunt the main character and slowly begin to take over his life creeping into every aspect of his life.

It took me a few reads to understand that Murakami is telling the story of Japan's relationship with the introduction of new and foreign technology. This comes across in the reactions that the main character has to the new TV that is place in his living room and how TV people coax him into submission.

Find this story and read it. You won't be sorry. It is one of my all time favorites.

Todd, thank you for showing this one to me.

Murakami, Haruki. "TV People." The Elephant Vanishes. New York: Vintage, 1994. p. 196 - 216

PASTORALIA by George Saunders

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Please send a creative resume and cover letter to Pastoralia along with three professional references and any other supporting documents that you wish to be considered.

Saunders, George. "Pastoralia." Pastoralia. New York: Riverhead Books, 2000. p. 1 - 68

THE LAST FEAST OF HARLEQUIN by Thomas Ligotti

It has been said that Ligotti is the modern master of the weird sub genera and a descendant of the tradition that began with Poe and expanded made popular by Lovecraft, although posthumously. I enthusiastically agree.

With The Last Feast of Harlequin, Ligotti respectfully stays within the boundaries of the Lovecraftian short story tradition. He uses the investigative first person witness point of view to good effect. I don’t think that we are ever given a name, but we are told that he an anthropologist who is obsessed with the historical portrayal of the clowns. This obsession leads him to the town of Mirocaw where they celebrate annually a Fools Feast.

When he arrives in Mirocaw, he is very excited to participate in what he thinks will be jovial tomfoolery. He has brought his makeup and high hopes for the Yule time celebration. However, the festival is not what he expected. The deeper he involves himself in the festivities the more he begins to question his own sanity.

This is a must read for any Mythos fan.

Ligotti, Thomas. “The Last Feast of Harlequin.” The Shadow at the Bottom of the World. New York: Cold Spring Press, 2005. p. 17 - 52