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Abaddon, Dark Angel of the AbyssAda Milenkovic BrownHis clothing shredded from him as his skin pushed outward and hardened into green and olive mottled chiton. Below the chiton of his abdomen, his legs were fusing together, blood, muscles, cartilage, bone, interweaving and dissolving. His screams were now a chittering. He felt no tongue, for his mouth seemed to have parted into something hard which clicked against itself.
Horror
Too many voices, too many ways.
 Fallon squirmed in the overly comfortable chair. "Am I insane?" The therapist, prim in her spectacles, page boy hair, and pants suit, looked up from her notebook. "Insanity is a term I hate to use. It's meaningless. But you must train yourself to disregard these feelings." "How? I couldn't ignore them when I first had them. How can I possibly ignore them now when they've become overpowering?" It had started when Gwenna left him. Fallon began to dream that he was chasing her down roads, through forests, fields. Getting close but never catching her. Or rather, catching them, for in the dreams she always fled with her new lover, whoever he was. A different lover each time, blond, dark, tall, slight. Each time that Fallon chased them, his rage grew hotter and wilder. His blood coursed with an angry throbbing. Until he thought he would burst from rage, the throbbing hammering a horrible cadence. And then, as he chased Gwenna and her lover through swamp and jungle, he could hear the throbbing in the jungle as well as in his head. And a few dreams later, the throbbing became voices chanting. Soon he could see figures of men and women, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. And then dreams came in which the men and women chanted before a winged statue. Chanted the name familiar to him from the Lovecraftian tomes in his library, "Cthulhu, Cthulhu." In his waking hours he thought of nothing but the dreams. He wished he had wings like the statue. Wings to fly with--surely then he could catch Gwenna and her lover and hurt them, as she had hurt Fallon, until Fallon's rage was spent. In the next dream, it seemed to him that some of the chanters had wings, locust wings of rust and brown. And each time he dreamed and chased past them, he saw more and more wings. Until one night he stopped. He pushed through the crowd to the statue. It was green, jade perhaps, and had something of the shape of a man, but with bat-like wings and claws instead of hands and tentacles for a mouth. "Cthulhu," shouted the mob. "Cthulhu," shouted Fallon, "Grant me wings." The therapist turned a page and poised her pen to scribble. "Tell me what the dreams are like now." "I have wings and I can fly. And now I catch Gwenna when I chase her." Gwenna and her lover. In the next dream, Fallon had his wings and soared after his prey down a two lane road. They sat in a convertible, top down, the lover driving. Fallon caught them easily, and lifted them both out of the moving car. He dashed their heads against a tree beside the road. And awoke. He dreamed the flying dream over and over. He killed Gwenna and the lover in a thousand ways. He woke up and laughed and laughed and laughed and wept. "What happens when you catch Gwenna?" Fallon shrugged. "I wake." As the days passed, Fallon began to spend every spare waking minute remembering the chase, the catching, the killing. He relished the dizzy euphoria afterwards. For a few precious moments, it assuaged his grief and his anger. But then they returned and he went back to replaying the dreams in his head. And Cthulhu. The chanting was still in Fallon's head every time he dreamed, every time he remembered the dreams. In his thoughts, in his head, Fallon heard his own voice chanting. And then he knew Cthulhu was calling him. And the call was no longer of his dreams. It was real, it was irresistible, and it was pulling him southward. Fallon stood up from his window seat to stretch his cramped legs as Flight 918 droned on to Santiago, Chile. A pale, emaciated girl slept in the aisle seat beside him. Fallon guessed her to be around sixteen. She murmured in Spanish in her sleep. And then she spoke the name that Fallon echoed in his head, which he could hear muttered by many of the other passengers, "Cthulhu." Almost all the other passengers muttered. But some, in foreign accents, muttered "Appolyon" or "Abaddon". Then Fallon remembered the old men in the street and knew that Cthulhu was also the Dark Angel that the old men hated. From the seat behind him, Fallon heard a male voice whisper, "Give me power, oh, Old One, give me power over men." Fallon supposed that like himself, the others had felt a craving, a crawling inside them, leading them toward the Ancient One. In Santiago, they were herded onto buses. The drivers seemed to know where to take them. After hours of bumpy winding roads, they disembarked and were directed toward a rocky cliff where thousands of people stood milling about and muttering. Fallon and the girl stood with the others on the cliff's edge over the raging sea. They called in chorus with the rest, "Cthulhu", "Appolyon", "Abaddon". The crowd shouted and waited. Fallon felt an even more visceral yearning to go on, but westward now over the sea. Were they to plummet like stones into the water? It started with a chittering, a cicada drone. The pale girl beside him was among the first. She screamed suddenly. Her arms thrust out and came apart, ligaments and blood vessels bursting forth from her unraveling muscle fibers like a museum's anatomy display, her skin billowing outward like sails. The skin pulsed in rhythm with her screams. It pulsed into wings that decayed from blood red to brown. And then he felt his own arms rip open. His fingers tore away from each other, fissures opening next to tendons all the way through his hands into his arms. The pain! The fear! So intense, that he vomited blood and bile. He felt his screams but could not hear them over the racking wails of the multitude. In agony, scores of people leaped off the cliffs. Others writhed on the ground and screamed all the louder beating their unfurling unholy wings and tails against the rocks. Tails? He looked down. His clothing shredded from him as his skin pushed outward and hardened into green and olive mottled chiton. Below the chiton of his abdomen, his legs were fusing together, blood, muscles, cartilage, bone, interweaving and dissolving. His screams were now a chittering. He felt no tongue, for his mouth seemed to have parted into something hard which clicked against itself. He stared at the others. They had fanglike insect manibles below human cheeks and eyes. Their hair flailed above their heads, gorgon like, a diabolical halo. Human locusts, they hovered above the rocks, even the ones that had writhed on the ground now rising into the air. Their legs were gone, replaced by a segmented tail, a cream-colored maggot that curled in and whipped out, ending in a claw-like barb that dripped a fluorescent green fluid. The thing that had been Fallon still felt pain, but less enough to leave his mind room to yearn for release. The call echoed again from across the waters. Would following bring release? It must! For what choice was there now? A droning as of aircraft reverberated among the insectoid horde as it lifted into the sky and out over the water. Darting, darting, hours upon hours under dark clouds, over dark waves. Stingers hammering at each other, bouncing ineffectually off their fellow's chiton, yet stingers furling again and again—for the longing to sting, to kill, was the greatest pain, and Fallon chittered madly in frustration. Traveling ever to the voiceless call. In a place landless on all sides as far as he could see, the water roiled away, ichor exploded upward like green lava and fell back on stones rising, stones jagged, stones hanging in all earthly directions, stones pointing into unearthly dimensions that hurt his eyes to look upon. A tumultuous buzz rang out from all the insectoids, as a stone pedestal rose from the blood dark sea. As it reared up high, ruined stone buildings covered in hideous green fluid rose up to surround it. Strange words in a strange language were inscribed on the pedestal: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Fallon remembered the meaning: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming." How could they awaken Cthulhu? The insectoids swarmed down the pedestal, into the ancient buildings, down broken stairways into fetid passageways that led below into a volcano of ichor, down, down, down swimming through ichor until they could see no where else to go. What place was this? Was this the Abyss over which the Dark Angel reigned? The insectoids opened their mouths in silent screams. Images of unspeakable deathless pain invaded what vestige of mind was still left in Fallon, blotting out thought, will, any emotion but rage and the overwhelming desire to inflict pain. The Fallon thing gibbered and gnashed its fangs. It felt a pull to rise upwards, into the mass of chittering insectoid cloud which flew upwards again out of the Abyss, up the volcano's shaft through the dead city into the dark sky of R'lyeh above Cthulhu's pedestal. As the Fallon thing flew it saw the locust cloud begin to coalesce on the pedestal into a swarming shape of giant wings and crouching limbs with giant talons, a face overhung by ten horn-like tentacles splaying from seven bulging nodules. And the knowledge shook the Fallon thing as it hovered. Cthulhu is awake! For we are Cthulhu! And the horror seared it and the pain drove it, and it took its place on a crook of claw on the Ancient One's foot as the horde droned the dark Master's name. The swarm perched, waiting, waiting until it had tightened wing to wing, and Cthulhu-Abaddon was fully formed. Then they, nay, he leaped into the sky, wings spreading, and flew eastward. Longing ever longing to kill, the insectoid mass twined stingers in unholy linkage. Would the pain never cease? Cthulhu-Abaddon flew over water, over mountains, over plains to Rio de Janiero by the sea. Over the mountain top where the hundred foot statue on the mountain top, Cristo Redentor, with arms outstretched, guarded the city. As the Dark Master passed over, the Fallon thing saw the very tip of the claw before it knock the statue down, and the Redeemer shattered into shards of stone against the mountain and bled down upon Rio de Janeiro. And the Dark Angel hovered over the pedestal on the mountain, but he did not alight upon it, for it was too small to hold him. The locusts squirmed and crawled one over another, for Cthulhu-Abadddon laughed. And the locusts felt a call go out again, a call not to them, but to the Enemy, that the Dark Angel's rage be spent upon him. Then Cthulhu-Abaddon flew over Rio, beating his wings as the mortals ran through the streets. And he parted into a stinging cloud. With its fellow insectoids, the Fallon thing chased screaming mortals and bit and stung them over and over. Till their screams were vomit, and their bodies fell, and red blood spurted, mingling with the glowing green fountains of poison. And they moaned and whimpered madness, for the agony would not stop. Yet it also would not let them die. Cthulhu-Abaddon roamed the earth, seeking out his Enemy and slaking his thirst for human suffering. In the cities of the world, those not in thrall to the dark Angel set their surroundings on fire in hopes of warding off the biting stinging agony of the locust-people. The Fallon thing raged and rejoiced. Until in one city it recognized a broken street sign here, a half-toppled building there. The smoldering remains of what had been Fallon's house—and Gwenna's. It pulled away from the locust horde and sought its prey, for hours and days, up and down the burning city's streets. It followed after the masses fleeing into the rural areas, abandoned ruins of houses, decaying corpses of cattle. It hovered by a stand of bushes and smelled a familar scent. It drove itself in the midst of the leaves and found Gwenna cowering, her lover's spawn clinging to her chest and mewling its fright. She ran out carrying the spawn in her arms. It was a curly haired boy-child. The Fallon thing raged at the thought of her lover's flesh creating it in her. She crouched down and covered the child with her body. She looked toward the Fallon thing. It waited to see the loathing and fear in her eyes that Fallon had seen so often in his dreams. Gweena looked shocked. "Fallon! Oh no, not you. Please no, not you." She began to weep. It wasn't loathing, it wasn't fear. It was grief. Grief! For him! Though he hovered poised to fill her with the poisoned agony of hell. She wept, and closing her eyes, buried her head in the child's hair. The child turned and looked at him with Gwenna's eyes. And then he knew the dreams were wrong. Gwenna. He couldn't hurt Gwenna. But the ichor inside Fallon screamed for blood. Stop me. Save me. His fangs gnashing toward her face, Fallon tried to turn away, tried to look at anything but Gwenna and the child. A white speck grew on the horizon. As Fallon watched it, it became a rider on a white horse. And the locusts gathered over Fallon and squirmed in glee into the shape of their Master, for the Enemy of Cthulhu-Abaddon approached. Pulled again into the Dark One's claw, Fallon pursed his mandibles and tried to curl his stinger inward and kept his eyes on the horse and rider to keep from looking at Gwenna and the child below him. The horse pulled up near mother and child and the Rider dismounted. A man with shoulder length hair, a shirt of worn flannel, and torn jeans, the Rider moved between Gwenna and the claw. Fallon tried again with all his strength to resist the urge to sting. Other insectoids from the claw flew out to attack. Fallon flew also but to beat at Gwenna with his wings, pushing her and the child away from the other insectoids. The Man held out his arms and beckoned to the human locusts. Six attacked him from every side and above and below, so that he was covered with them. Gwenna and the child stumbled away and cowered behind charred bits of a wall from a house long burned. Fallon did not follow them, for the urge in him now was for the Man. And Cthulhu exploded into a locust whirlwind that descended upon their foe. And as they pulled and tore at the Enemy's flesh, the flesh stretched out and the Man grew ever larger, so that more and more insectoids found a place to torment him. The insectoids stung greedily, jabbing and chittering until the Man, groaning, fell to his knees and then on his face. He writhed on the ground for some time, until the stingers and teeth of the locusts flittering against his body pulled him to his feet and stretched out his arms like the Cristo Redentor of Rio de Janeiro. As the locusts bit and stung, blood came from his wounds. At first it trickled then it flowed in streams, torrents, drowning the insectoids as they attacked him. It crackled like red fire. Chiton, stingers, ichor, steamed in the fire, singed, destroyed. Fallon hovered and tried to keep back, but the urge to sting was too strong. Many of the others had completely disappeared, their chiton boiled away by the singeing blood. A few did not completely disappear, for when the chiton was gone, Fallon could see something that was like a small spark, as if a firefly had left its glow behind. When a spark appeared, the Man would lean over it and breath on it, stoking it like a flame, and the spark would glow brighter. The other locusts paid no heed but attacked the Man from all sides. Fallon could hold out no more. He dived forward and stung the Man on the arm. The blood poured out onto Fallon. He stung anew, in suicidal agony, his pain too deep to keep him from his task. The blood boiled, boiling away his chiton, and stinger, and wings. The blood burned, how it burned! Chiton melting against flesh, and then both eaten away. Gwenna rose up, pressed the weeping child to her breast, and ran off. Soon Cthulhu-Abaddon was but a last line of insectoids snaking toward the giant Man's heel. Then the blood covered them and they were no more. The Man shrunk down again to human size. He looked at Fallon. "This one also has a spark." He breathed upon him. "Npakh rukha." And Fallon received the Rukha, the warm breath from deep within, the vital fog which turns chaotic filth to malleable clay. He feared it would quench the spark whose faint light reflected weakly across the Man's cheek. But instead there was courage and a glow that illuminated ever brighter. The pull was gone, the pain was gone, the cries were stilled. Silence—and for the first time, peace. Peace. And now confusion. It had been so long since Fallon had the will to choose. What should he do know? Where should he go? "Whatever you want," the Man held out his hand first toward the city and then toward the rolling plains, "Wherever you wish." Fallon hovered unsure for many minutes and then descended into the outstretched hand. Copyright 2009, Ada Milenkovic Brown. All rights reserved.
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