Dagon

by Fred Chappell

The motto: I SLEPT AND DREAMED THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTY. But the story continued, and on the next pillow her innocence is all torn away: there she stands, gripping a round broom; her hair now is pinned up severely and behind her sits a disheartening barrel churn. I WOKE AND FOUND THAT LIFE WAS DUTY.

He rose and the little fat man stepped out of the alder thicket. His face was like a balloon, red as catsup from wind and sun, and his grimy grin was so fixed it might have been painted. Yellowish whisker stubble was smeared on his chin and neck. He came forward in a sort of rolling slouch, his hands balled, stuffed into the pockets of his overalls. Under the overalls he wore no shirt and the fat on his chest moved with a greasy undulation as he breathed; one nipple was not covered by the bib of the overalls and it shone, obese; it was like the breast of a girl just come to puberty.

Shudder

And through the steamy smell of whatever unimaginable sort of meal was cooking, the real odor of the house came: not sharp but heavy, a heated odor, oily, distinctly bearing in it something fishlike, sweetly bad-smelling; he had the quick impression of dark vegetation of immense luxuriance blooming up and momentarily rotting away; it was the smell of rank incredibly rich semen.

Wow.

There was no one else, but there were momentary impressions of great deserted cities which flashed through his consciousness, gleaming white cities with geometrics so queer and dizzying as to cause nausea. And when the cities remained stationary they were immediately engulfed by a milky-white odorous ocean. This same smelly chalky sea water was attacking him also and he began to dissolve away; he was becoming transparent, he was a mere threadlike wraith, merely a long nerve, excruciatingly alive. Somehow he perceived a voice in the milky substance, talking clearly and with immense resonance. “Iä, iä. Yogg Sothoth. Nephreu. Cthulhu.”

Reptilian. Legless. Truncated scaly wings, flightless, useless. The god Dagon was less than three feet long. Fat and rounded, like the belly of a crocodile. He couldn’t see the mouth hidden away under the body, but he knew it: a wirelike grin like a rattlesnake’s; double rows of venomous needles in the maw. On this side a nictitating eye, but he thought that on the other side there would be no eye, but merely a filmy blind spot, an instrument to peer into the marrow of things. The visible eye gray, almost white. A body grayish-pink like powdery ashes. Chipped and broken scales covered it, tightly overlapped. It breathed and this took a long time. The froglike belly distended, contracted.—The reptilian shape was immobile; there was no way for it to move upon the earth.