Riley remained silent and morose for a long time as the sun set through the shop windows. Neil prattled on about “the last time” something like this had happened, something about an ox-head and a squirming primordial mass called Brr’tth’ythya. I hardly listened to him, my attention fixed on Riley’s perfect face. He seemed cut out of stone, distracted, upset even. I was worried too, worried about Vik in the clutches of that succubus, but Riley didn’t need to know that. Why was he still so upset, anyway? We had defeated the monster, the monster inside him. The major crisis had been averted.
Hadn’t it?
Neil took a long drag on his tie-dyed blue pipe. “I gotta tell you, I never get these cultists,” he said. “It seems like whenever something pops up that they don’t understand or can’t explain, their first impulse is to worship it. What is that? I will never understand you mortals.” His eyes shone golden like the Egyptian desert. “Gotta admire that girl’s tenacity, though, I’ll tell you that.”
“Indeed,” said Riley. It was the first word he’d spoken in almost an hour.
“Are you okay, Riley?” I asked, moving closer to him. He didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge me.
Neil leaned forward, examining him. “I’ve got some of the old ‘Chaotic Abomination’ in the back if you need to, eh, calm your nerves.” He winked at Riley, and then looked at me. “I’d actually be kind of curious what it might do to you. I’ve never tested it on humans, per se, but there was this one time about a hundred years ago, I knew this Serbian scientist guy, and there was this old pulp fiction writer he liked to screw with, huge racist that guy, so one day he says to me—”
“I think that’s enough for today, Neil,” said Riley, standing up. “I think, for Andromeda, that is enough in general.”
For some reason his words were like ice-water coursing through my veins. What did he mean by that? Doubly worrisome was the fact that Neil seemed to catch his meaning. “Ha, I figured that might be the case.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about it, my little cream puff,” said Neil, standing up and ruffling my hair. “It’s not your fault you’re in way over your head.”
“Neil—” Riley warned.
“I’m just saying,” Neil continued, bowing apologetically to my Great One, “you’re the one being deliberately vague, I’m just being the adult here and reminding her not to worry her pretty little head about it.”
“Worry my pretty little head about what?” I asked, staving off tears. “What’s he talking about, Riley? You resisted the call. You said there was nothing they could do now. They can’t wake up Azerath.”
“Azathoth,” corrected Neil. “And no, they can’t. We think. We surmise.” He started chortling. “I don’t actually know. Honestly, I’m just the errand boy. Or at least I was up until—”
“We must depart,” said Riley. His gaze was now on me. Cold. Hungry, even. But for what? His eyes were so deep, so verdant, I couldn’t read him.
Where was the softness I’d seen in him earlier? The soul who had responded so readily, so openly, when I had told him those three terrifying, deadly words:
I love you.
I swallowed. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
“Alright,” Neil said. “But you tell me if you need any of the old ‘Abomination,’ if you catch my drift. Calm the old nerves. Her too, I’m curious to see.” He gestured to me. “You know. Chemical reactions and such.”
Riley didn’t speak another word to him, instead he only grabbed my arm coldly, firmly, and dragged me out of the shop back to his black BMW. “Get in the car,” he said.
I obeyed. It was the last thing he said for the entire ride.
I was consumed with worry, confusion. I had been overwhelmed during the cultist ritual, but of one thing I was sure: that I loved him, that I had said it out loud, and that he reciprocated. I knew he did. I felt it. It was as though my connection to him—our synchronicity—gave me special insight into the greater machinations of the universe, a sixth sense that no human had ever felt before or would again, because no human had a connection like I did with a Great One.
The thought chilled me; as I watched the trees go by in darkness, I started to wonder, perhaps no human had ever had such a connection with a Great One, because no human could.
But no, that couldn’t be the case. Not after all this. Not after everything we had been through together. Not after him taking human form, rising from the deep to find me, to confront me, the only living human that could stop his dark destiny. Not after finding out today that, as the human of prophecy, I would stop him in the most unexpected of ways: I was born to make him feel love.
That was my power.
That was my life’s purpose.
When Riley pulled up to my house’s driveway, he finally broke the silence. “Get out,” he said.
I obeyed.
The air seemed cooler as I stepped out of the Beamer, the autumn chill finally descending upon our small New England town. It felt so calm, so familiar, so normal that I could almost forget that I stood in the presence of the Great Priest.
“My time with you has been pleasant,” he said. His voice was strained. “But I must depart.”
I looked at him. I knew something was terribly wrong. “When will I see you again?”
His face grew hard. “I cannot say.”
“You cannot say?” I demanded. “After all we’ve been through? After Phantom?”
Riley took a deep breath, and his cool green eyes found my mud grey ones. His eyes were like a knife in my heart. “Please tell me what’s going on,” I whimpered.
He stayed silent, and looked forward.
“I… you’ve opened my eyes so much,” I said. “There is so much more of the universe that I understand now. Because… because of you.”
“And so much you will never understand.” I caught a sneer as he said it, and it pierced my heart like an arrow.
I put my hand to my chest, as though holding it would keep my heart from spilling out all over the place. “What… what are you saying?”
His lips spread into a thin line. He stayed silent. I started to get irritated.
“Tell me what’s going on!” I demanded. “If there’s something wrong with me, or if there’s some other woman in the picture, I have a right to know!”
“I am merely stating facts, little tiny one,” he said. He turned to face me, seeming to strain with the effort. “Facts that I have, until now, kept to myself for your own protection: You are less than an ant, far less than insignificant. You are but a figment of a dream, nothing more.”
My lip quivered. “I don’t care!” I spat, surprising myself. “It doesn’t change anything! It doesn’t change the nature of existence! It doesn’t change the fact that I love you!”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said, averting his eyes from me coolly. “It doesn’t change your understanding of love. But through all of this, I have been reminded of one thing. You are temporal. You are but a speck, a passing fancy. We may have stopped one insignificant human’s plan, but it does not stop the inevitable; one day, Azathoth will wake, and Azathoth’s dream will end. And with it, all of this. The ocean, the land, the sky, the sea, the stars, all of creation. And most of all, so will you.”
I shook my head furiously, refusing to believe him. “But you said—”
“I said a great many things, puny one!” Riley bellowed, turning the full glare of his eyes back on me. Somehow, he seemed to me hundreds of feet tall, despite retaining his human form and size. I cowered before his might. “All of them,” he continued, “in the service of a greater purpose.”
I could feel my heart shattering. Did I still even have a heart? It felt broken, obliterated, evaporated, gone with the sanity of so many minds destroyed by the Great Cthulhu. And yet the thought of his callous disregard for the human mind, his power, only comforted me. No, I still wanted him. I still loved him, and I didn’t believe him.
“I don’t believe you!” I cried. “Why resist your call, then? Why resist your greater purpose, to summon your… your brethren or fellow doomsdayers or whatever? Why resist your call if you didn’t have some reason to stop the apocalypse?” My voice became small, meek, like the voice of a mouse. “You said the reason was me.”
“The reason, as I have stated before, is because I am The Towering Death and the Bringer of Doom. For epochs have I walked among the stars, devouring souls and destroying galaxies. Countless are the souls of those driven mad by the greatness of my true form, countless are the worshippers I have devoured to provide me with only the barest iota of nourishment. I am the Great Priest, and your ilk is naught but minor sustenance before me. Human souls are but snacks that feed the furnace of my burning rage. I am not, I repeat, not in the service of those who worship me, for those who worship me are beneath my notice, as it should be.”
His last words cut me even deeper; it was as though he meant them specifically for me. “Riley…”
“That they are even aware of my existence is mere runoff of my own greatness, that my dreams enter theirs. As they have with you, you pitiful, trivial creature.”
I gasped, what tiny bits of unshattered heart I’d retained left me to scatter far across the universe. I was gone, hollow, screaming. Tortured.
Was this what it was to be driven mad by Great Cthulhu?
“Riley,” I gulped. “Please… you don’t mean this… I… I love you.”
“You cannot comprehend me, paltry, diminutive one,” he growled. “Therefore, you cannot love me. And that is why I cannot go out with you.”
“I can, and I do!” I cried. I fell to my knees, hands clasped before me, tears streaming in rivers down my face. “Please, just give me a chance! I can be worthy of you!”
“You are human. You, as with all the others, would be only driven mad by my true form. You cannot be with me because what I truly am would destroy your mind. I have always known this.”
“Then why toy with me?” I sobbed. “Why all the games? The trip to New York? Phantom in Box Five? Swimming through the depths together? What about all you said to me about… about seeing Earth, seeing all of humanity as insignificant, but now knowing that even tiny things could be beautiful? You said… you said I had changed you! You said I meant something to you! That I was the reason that you didn’t want to see the Earth destroyed anymore! That you have… a reason… a reason to…” I broke down.
“What has been weeks to you, diminutive being, were less than seconds to me,” Riley said quietly. “To me, the time was nothing. As you are nothing.”
“But… but what about the Pumpkin Ball?”
He turned from me. I thought for a moment I saw a tear slide down his cheek. “I… I cannot take you to the Pumpkin Ball.”
I felt as though the hollow place in my chest where my heart used to be filled with acid. All I knew was pain.
“Soon, again, I will sleep, dead and dreaming until the stars once more are in perfect alignment, wherein I will awaken to fulfill my true duty.” He stood up straight, his gaze to the cosmos. “My true duty. I cannot be your boyfriend, insignificant mortal.”
“Then go ahead and do it now!” I wept. “Go ahead and kill me. Destroy the world. My life is nothing without you, do you hear me? It began with you, and it will end with you!”
“You have fulfilled your purpose, my Lilliputian child,” he said. “You have fulfilled the prophecy, thereby postponing Azathoth’s awakening. Now is not the time. I cannot do it now.”
I grabbed his grey FUBU t-shirt. “Then devour me!” I begged. “I can’t live now, not without you! You can’t possibly just leave now, leave me in this pain! Devour me so my life will at least serve some purpose to you!”
“Pain!” he snapped, jerking away from me, making me fall. “Speak not to me of pain, infinitesimal mortal. You are too trifling to understand the immensity of all the word can imply. You know nothing of pain, do you understand? Nothing!”
“That’s not true!” I yelled, sprawled out on the driveway, the agony burrowing through my veins preventing me from even getting to my knees. “If you have a shred of mercy in you, drive me mad like you have so many others! Consume my sanity! Or just go ahead and devour me whole! Whatever it is you do! But don’t leave me!”
“I must, itty-bitty one. I must return to the city of R’lyeh. I must sleep. The time is not yet right, but soon it will be, and all will end. And you with it. I cannot waste any more time here, nor is it fair of me to pain you or endanger you any more than I have. I…” He turned from me again. “I am sorry.”
“Please, drive me mad, kill me,” I pleaded. “Anything, I beg of you, just don’t leave me!”
I was crying openly, heaving onto the driveway, my fingers grasping at the strings of his Ray Ban shoes. “You can’t leave me…”
“I can, and I must,” he said. “I cannot expect your four-dimensional, microscopic mind to comprehend it.”
My mind. I hated it. Deep down I knew he was right, though. I was nothing next to him. But that understanding didn’t fill the gaping void that now resided in my chest, the place where my heart used to be…
“I would have you do me one favor,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
With great effort, I pulled myself to my knees on the pavement, looking up at him, my face wet with tears. His was stoic, cold, like the deepest part of the ocean.
“I would ask you… that you not do anything heedless or foolhardy,” he said. “I would ask that you not endanger yourself, in ways such as exposing yourself to those cultists, or standing in traffic, or hurling your tiny body from a high place with intent to harm it.” He squatted down before me. Even in his human form, he made me feel insignificant. Limited. “Can you do this for me, inconsequential mortal? Can you promise me this?”
I pressed my hand to my chest, to the gaping abyss. I tried to speak, but only sobs came out. “Please,” I whimpered. “Just kill me. My life is nothing without you. Drive me mad. Let me be your sustenance. Eat my soul. You’re… you’re tearing me apart!”
I could see the hunger in his eyes. He wanted to do it. I hoped he would. “I don’t think you would find that experience enjoyable,” he said.
“I don’t care!” I sobbed. “I don’t want to live… Just eat my soul, Great One. Eat my soul!”
“Pah! Your puny soul wouldn’t satisfy me. If I feasted on you, I would have to devour dozens more to even come close to feeling sated! Would you want all of those lives on your conscience?”
“I don’t care! I love you!”
Riley stepped back. “You are too insignificant a being on which to expend the effort. And if you value your planet, perhaps you might consider staying alive for the sake of your loved ones.”
Love? Love had betrayed me. I was unworthy of love. I could do nothing but sob.
Riley sighed deeply, expelling air into the night. “And consider that in order for the prophecy to remain fulfilled, this world may yet need you alive, unharmed.” He stood back up. “Do me the one favor I have asked, infinitesimal child. Simply keep yourself from harm. Consume not of the Tylenol in excess, nor look for trouble in bars frequented by bikers or gang members, nor leap from any bridges. You may yet be needed.” He stepped into the car, leaving me prostrate on the cement. He closed the door. “For… the prophecy.”
I heard the powerful engine turn. Watched as the car pulled smoothly out of the driveway. I waited, flat on the concrete, waited for him to stop the car. Waited for him to take it all back, to say it was all an elaborate lie. A test of my loyalty, perhaps.
But deep down, I knew it wasn’t true. There was only one truth.
I was not worthy of him.
I was now forever alone.