The Sad Demise of H. Hattlefield

Apologies to H.P. Lovecraft, whose masterful writings served as the inspiration for this terrifying tale of macabre erotic horror...

I. The Dreadful Machine

The pen trembles as I write this with a shaking hand, an infinite sense of overwhelming dread stealing over my very bones as I await the inevitable end to stumble forth from the dead shadows to claim my unworthy soul. My hideous fate has been sealed as was the fate of Herbert Hattlefield, amateur man of science; sealed the moment he switched on his unspeakable machine. The memories are beyond my ability to describe them, and I am plagued by dreams nightly, dreams of abhorrent slimy things sluggishly creeping through tepid filth in the dark.

What's this? A noise from outside the window, a peculiar scratching from the inky black darkness of this never-ending night. A shuffling of something, possibly only the trees caught in a whisper of cool air. Possibly something else... I may not have much time...

As I have already stated, our particular troubles began with the machine. It was a monstrous mechanical entity, a robotic Frankenstein pieced together with coils and wires rather than natural flesh and blood. The contraption appeared nonsensical at best, a dubious collection of metal spheres, blinking bulbs, connecting keyboards of hieroglyphic keys with shapes I could not discern as belonging to any language known to man; and bundles upon bundles of electrical cords snaking out of consoles and computing monitors like Medusian tentacles. Connected to all with stringing wires and overloaded plugs was a metal platform centered within this mechanical mayhem of unrecognizable wickets and doohickies.

Herbert incessantly babbled on as he introduced me to his bastard robotic child spawned by some imaginative abyss within his unfathomable mind. He flicked switches, pulled levers, mashed uncountable buttons and typed instructions on the unreadable keyboards. Through it all, a chill of suspicion and unbelief clouded my churning consciousness.

"The dreams, dear Wilcox. It was the dreams that allowed me to put it all together. They were my guides on this path of discovery and unearthly achievement," Herbert told me with eyes gleaming with what I now believed to be madness. His face was pale, his complexion sickly, the skin pulled taut over his skull like a gray canvas painted with the dull colours of a life isolated for days within his lonely laboratory.

"The books," I tried to convinced him, hopefully appealing to whatever slivers of sanity remained behind his animalistic eyes. "The books you inherited from your sick and unstable uncle is what has invaded your mind and tortured your nights with these dreams!"

The books of which I spoke were an ancient tome brimming with the lunatic ravings of a mad Arabian monk called Abdul Alhazred, his blasphemous words a revolting poison to all those who read them; and the other was the journal of Herbert's own insane uncle, a man who had shortened his pitiful life by leaping headfirst from his bedroom window to the stony street below only after passing his complete and utter madness to paper to be inherited by his favored nephew and last living relative.

"You cynical fool! Where is your faith, man? Do you not realize what I have created with mine own two hands? Do you not understand this will take us to the heralded OTHER SIDE? Oh, how your knees will tremble when you stand face-to-face with your GOD!" Herbert raved, his eyes growing despicable with the fire of his lunatic passion. He clenched my shoulders with a superhuman strength that was beyond him, and I helplessly met his wild gaze with my own quivering expression of fear. After a lingering moment, he must have finally recognized how nervous and concerned I had become for his failing health and sanity, and he patted me in his old friendly way, a look of sense returning to his eyes and veiling the madness that must still lurk there.

"Forgive me, old friend. Soon enough you shall relate to my excitement and claim it as your own. However, first you must assist me. It is for this reason that I have called you to my side this night as I cannot both work the machine and test it on myself," he uttered, his gaze traveling to the metal platform at the center of his daemonical device. My sense of dread heightened as I began to understand what he meant to do.

"Test on yourself!" I cried with an alarmed amount of disdain. Herbert held my gaze steady with a pair of stony eyes, his hands still clutching my shoulders in an inescapable grip, and he allowed a decadent smile to crease his thin and cracked lips.

"No worries, Wilcox. I assumed you were of the opinion that my invention would not work in any case, considering it is nothing but the impetuous trapping of some peculiar dream caused by my deceased uncle's writings," he replied, logically enough. In some faculty of my nervous brain, I knew he had something of a point though the unhappy situation at hand still had me uneased and terribly unnerved. Herbert decided to try a different route to soothe my sensibilities and convince me of his evident sanity.

"I have called you my friend in the past, and I have placed infinite trust in your capability as you have with me. I request that you put your undying trust in me now. Nay, for just this once, I BEG you to do so," he implored, endearing himself to my kind and natured heart.

"Indeed, we are friends, and on this basis, I shall assist your endeavor," I said though a disgusting twist of innards shrieked at me to turn down his offer and escape his lunacy before it became my own. However, I knew that I could not desert my friend and held a slim hope that I might save him from himself and the disease caused by his uncle's mad rambling journals.

Hattlefield prepared his machine, describing calculations and mathematical formulas I believed to be impossible. When I spoke as much to my fateful friend, he shook his shaggy head in disappointment and explained his newfound knowledge was not of this world and the ordinary workings of the normal human brain would never be able to grasp them without the help of otherworldly assistance, an assistance Hattlefield claimed to receive from his feverish dreams. I bit my tongue; did my oldest and dearest colleague believe that he ascertained his dreams from some extraterrestrial presence signaling waves to some invisible beacon within Hattlefield's mind? His madness was obviously more complex and complicated than I had first feared.

Completing his lengthy and arduous preparations, Hattlefield stood on the center of the metal platform, a precautionary pistol in one hand and a strange looking remote in the other.

"Flip the orange lever on my count. When I am ready to return to this rudimentary reality, I will signal you with this." He dramatically raised the remote in one steady hand. He appeared to have complete control over his senses and exhibited no signs of the acute nervousness that trembled my own hands both then and now as I recollect those moments for this written warning. "The overhead light will blink red, and the siren will notify you I am requesting transport. Flip the orange lever back, and simply enough, I will return to this very spot as if I never left. Ready? On the count of three, Wilcox..."

As Hattlefield counted, I heard my heartbeat thrumming in my ears like the vestiges of some wild native tribe, and as he reached three, I cursed that dreaded number and flipped the hateful orange lever, a sense of terrifying and horrible sickness pouring over my straining body.

The machine emitted an earsplitting electrical crack, and a blinding blue-white flash of sparks stung my fear-widened eyes. This only lasted for a heart-stopping moment, and when I could see normally, I saw that not a particle of Herbert Hattlefield remained. I too hastily assumed he had been disintegrated by the blast of his accursed dream machine, and I had assisted in his devastating accidental suicide.

Strength evaporated from my jellied muscles, and I sank slowly and hopelessly to the chilly floor, holding my hands to my tear-filled eyes and cursing myself for the essential part I had played in the drama of my friend's horrible self destruction. How long I cried and clung to myself, I do not know, but some time passed before I was broke from the pathetic spell by the shrill ringing squeal of a siren and the red blinking gleam of the overhead lights: the instructed signals for Hattlefield's apparent return from the mysterious "other side."

I leapt to my feet with renewed strength and flung my hand around the orange lever and authoritatively ripped it down with all my anxious might. Once again, the machine roared and flashed, but this time I was more prepared and clenched shut my sensitive eyes and held my throbbing ears with my hands. After a moment, I ventured my eyes open and was graced with the unexpected sight of my celebrated friend who appeared both alive and well.

"Wilcox!" he exclaimed ecstatically as I uncovered my ears. "The sights these eyes have seen! If only you had been there, your heart and soul would be filled with the same joyous glory that now fills mine!"

He carefully stepped from the metal platform towards me, and I regarded him with cautiously thorough eyes, observing that the man's demeanor was now one of wonderfully immense happiness. He undoubtedly believed his machine to be a success.

"What did you see?" I asked him, scarcely able to contain my own excitement. He had obviously gone somewhere and returned unscathed, and my mind became increasingly intoxicated by the infinite possibilities.

"Women, dear Wilcox! Such women as no mortal eye has ever seen. Glorious women with bodies of such unearthly perfection and alien angels of such lustful desire and unbelievable passion, your madly pumping heart nearly bursts at the very sight of them. Their musical ululation sings beyond description and their gorgeous gyrations drug the mind and soul. The women of the GODS, Wilcox! This is what I have seen and more!" he blurted, his bright ecstasy filling the room. I tugged thoughtfully at my short beard, disturbing questions creeping like ants into the pits of my darkest thoughts.

"Why did you leave such women if they were truly so beautiful? If they are as you describe them, I would have been tempted to stay. Were you not?"

Hattlefield placed his odd remote on top of a whirring monitor, clapped my shoulder with one hardy hand and flashed me a wide and toothy crocodile grin.

"Good questions all, Wilcox. Let us investigate them over a warm supper."

I could not help but notice that Hattlefield still gripped his pistol in his other hand, and I mentally questioned what he had seen to make him grip it so unconsciously tight.

II. A Dinner Conversation

Supper consisted of a large plate of steaming green vegetables and a bloody slab of particularly tender flank steak, all of it delicious and hastily drawn up by Hattlefield's personal cook, a large and loudly ignorant bull of a woman with a mouth that habitually gaped open in both speech and silence like a yawning chasm. She peered over at Herbert, carefully gauging his surprisingly jovial disposition. She caught my eye and nodded approvingly; apparently she was of the misguided and sadly incorrect notion that I had something to do with Hattlefield's regained sense of sanity and good nature. I allowed her the pleasant bliss of ignorance by not informing her of the truth of the matter, probably doing a favor for us both. She refilled our glasses and popped her chubby, roundish lump of a head now and again through the kitchen door to check on our status in randomly lengthy increments, but I was thankful she mostly left us to ourselves.

Though the food was rich and delightfully flavored, I barely touched it. I became absorbed by Hattlefield's incredible speech. I have tried to remember it as accurately as possible, almost word for exact word, not too difficult of a task considering that I hung with bated breath on every last one of them.

"I found myself in a chilly dark and dank atmosphere, a thick and sluggish fog obscuring the ground and glowing with a strange green luminescence. Around me I observed a variety of towering pyramids similar in appearance to those of the Aztecs, and odd pointed temples stretching beyond sight into the sky, all matters of geometry represented in the designs of the loomingly abhorrent architecture and more... a sense of wrong angles and impossible shapes, unearthly structures beyond the realms of man."

Hattlefield paused to wet his throat with a sip of chilled wine before continuing with his shiveringly disturbing discourse.

"This seemingly ancient and unholy city filled me with a sense of rotting decay. Slimy black ichor dripped from walls of stone, covering it all with some repugnant disease; the antiquated buildings invaded by an odorous terrible ooze. Beneath some of this slime, I could barely discern some peculiar hieroglyphics, sculpted terrors of all manner of blasphemous beings and creatures of untold galaxies. I knew then that I had discovered the lost and dead crypts of the Old Ones, and an immense excitement coupled with stark terror surged over my helpless and vulnerable soul. I fell to my knees, whether to curse them or to pray, I cannot know, so overwhelmed was I by an interfering cosmic confusion of the monstrosities around me."

"Yet you did not signal to return then," I remarked through the silence that permeated the air after Hattlefield's last line. He nodded slowly and deliberately, his lips a thin gray line as he tightened them, remembering events which I did not ever wish to experience in my darkest nightmares.

"I came close, Wilcox. Closer than I allow myself to believe. Just as my finger touched the return button is when I heard them, and my hope was restored for I knew nothing evil could issue such a heavenly soulful sound. Their chanting called me forth as the sirens beckoned Odysseus's crew to death, only these achingly beautiful creatures promised only LIFE with their glorious song. Yet they spoke in no tongue of this world, and the meaning of their chant is presently beyond me."

Hattlefield paused and a faraway, starry expression clouded his eyes as he reminisced about his godlike angels. After a moment, he came back to his conscious self and regained the last spoken thread of his amazing tale.

"I wandered quickly towards the sound through a winding and serpentine labyrinth of alleys within the dead city, careful not to peer to closely into the silently watching holes and gaping windows of the buildings around me, too focused on the sweet music of feminine song to worry about a horrible claw or hideous tentacle slipping out of the endless tombs to pull me into some dark and hellish abyss. Finally, I stepped out onto a wide courtyard and there before me on a glimmering stone altar danced the women of the gods, their nude bodies glistening with twinkling sweat as they writhed like playful imps around gigantic pillars of blue fire, their delicious chants drumming through my outer epidermis and taking hold of my beating heart. Instantaneously, my manhood hardened in desperate lust and fiery passion and hotly exploded into my trousers without warning, and I knew that I must have one of the women for my own. Only... it was then when I heard one of the creatures behind me, and I pressed my return button in startled fright... something huge and horrifying breathing its tepid breath on the back of my neck... undoubtedly, one of the men."

Hattlefield finished his fantastic story and quietly leaned back into his creaky wooden chair and brought the glass of wine to his lips to quench his thirst and wet his dry and scratchy throat. An uncontrollable shiver of fright teased my spine, and I wondered what he had meant by his last statement. I waited for him to speak more, and when nothing came, I urged him to continue through careful interrogation.

"One of the men?" I asked pointedly.

"Not a man but definitely male. My theory is that the women have been raised for breeding, Wilcox. They are marvels of perfection to the last molecule. What better vestibules for the seed of the Old Ones and their creations? How else shall their spawn cross over to the world of man without human qualities? Crossbreeding with human or at least semi-human women! They are only of this use to the beings of the other side, and I believe if only one of them went missing, she would not be missed," he remarked, and I noticed the insane glitter returning in his eye. The shivers dancing along my chilled spine increased twofold.

"What are you getting at?" I whispered with mounting dread. Hattlefield peered back at me with wild eyes, his face glazed with absolute madness, and I knew that we could never turn back; our fates were forever intertwined to the horrible last.

He stood from the table and cried, "I shall return to the other side and claim one of the women FOR MY OWN!"

III. Woman of the Gods

I thrust down the orange lever of Herbert Hattlefield's repulsive machine for the last time, the annoyingly shrill siren and blinking red glow of the overhead lights signaling his inevitable return, but on this occasion, he did not return alone. After the last flickering sparks had died and the shriek of the alarm had silenced, my eyes adjusted to make out the form of a slight figure held in Hattlefield's clinging arms as if he was shielding it from some horrible unseen presence.

"Wilcox, it worked. I got one! The best of the lot!" Hattlefield cried victoriously and threw his arms open wide to allow me view of the creature he held within his tight embrace, and my eyes flew open in surprised shock.

The creature was beyond words, beyond suitable description, and as I try to relate her now to you, my mind grows numbingly blank and my usually deft fingers turn mute on the page. The English language can do such a being no justice with its clumsy, fumbling words, but one must try if only to give you a sense of the thing.

She held most aspects of a human female with only a few odd exceptions. Her skin was smooth to the touch and silver and achingly lovely. Upon closer inspection, I saw she was not covered in skin at all but a series of miniscule and peculiar scales; they twinkled in the overhead lights with some effervescent kind of reflecting pigment. Her luscious lips and shining eyes and flowing hair were a matching alien green, a kind of neon green; in fact, her tendrils of hair seemed to glow with their own weird inner phosphorescence. Her features were fabulously exquisite, perfect to her last gorgeous atom; no master of the arts had ever or COULD ever conceive of such a beauty with his bumbling paints or sculpting tools. I felt my heart grow huge at the sight of her, filling me with a love I had not believed possible before I had laid my tear-streaked eyes on her breathtaking body.

Then she sang:"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"

The music of her voice stole my breath, and the horror of her words stopped my heart. Whether I was more in love with her or more terrified of her in that instant, I cannot say for certain. Only one sane thought entered my mind then: "She truly is a woman of the gods!"

"My God!" I cried and dropped to my trembling knees and held my sobbing head in my hands. What unearthly consequences had we brought on ourselves by stealing this heavenly creature? My tortured soul did not wish to ever find the horrible answers.

"It means nothing more than hello, you ninny!" Hattlefield sneered at me with a maddening look and pushed me away in grim disgust. His hand still tightly held his revolver, and I smelt the rank burning scent of spent bullets: terrible evidence of its discharge. I crawled away from Hattlefield with stupefying dread, and Hattlefield glared down at the revolver in his white-knuckled hand and realized the origin of my unsettled fear.