The Home

by Judith Sonnet

“What do you mean . . . ‘our son’?” Eunice smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you, so I fibbed a little.” “Jesus, Eunice, what the fuck are you talking about?” Griffin asked, stepping toward the madwoman. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

She killed my son. Our son. She said it herself. Somehow, we had a son . . . and she brought him here and fed it to this horrible thing. Painless, she said. Our son became a part of . . . of Mr. Friendlyman. Who isn’t a man at all and certainly isn’t friendly.

“When we die, we do not go to Heaven. We do not go to Hell. We simply move.”

He became a parasite to a parasite. But he served his purpose despite his ultimate defiance in the end. Robbie had killed for Mr. Friendlyman, giving him the strength to complete the transformation. To overtake the body he had chosen— Eunice. Who had been worshipping him ever since.

“The ritual worked,” Eunice stated. “I consumed Mr. Friendlyman . . . and every ghost he has ever eaten . . . and every ghost that the worm fed on as well. I am all of them, Orville. All and more. I’m Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath. The Old Ones live through me, by me, with me. I am them and they are me!”

“I . . . am . . . Nyarlathotep . . . THE WALKING PLAGUE.”

All who see him will fall. All who hear his voice will weep and wail. He is the manifestation of destruction, death, and the end of all things on Earth. All of us will be forgotten. All our accomplishments. All the ways we lived. Soon, we’ll be fossils buried too deep for his kind to care to discover.