Cthulhurotica (15 page)

He kept talking about faces in the water. Jesus.

Goddammit, why did I go to sleep? Why didn’t I stay awake and watch him?

I’m probably going to burn this fucking diary when I get home – well, my parts at least. But I need something to do or I’ll go crazy. I’m washed up on this rock, Jason disappeared overboard (or into thin air, I guess) three days ago, and there’s still no rescue.

Weird, but that’s not a complaint. I don’t want one. Not after I let him down like that.

Ran around the edge of the island today –the thing is small as hell, and nothing in any direction.

Fuck, why can’t I cry?

-Vic

3.

I’d say it’s like "Lost", but I never watched that show. More like "Castaway", since I’m alone. When I start talking to a damn volleyball, I guess I’ll know I have issues. More issues. Whatever.

Finally rigged up a tent. They say when you’re stranded on a desert island you need shelter – but this isn’t much of a desert. There are streams all over this sandy fucking rock, and half a forest in the middle. Probably should have paid more attention to that Bear Grylls guy, but I’d drop dead before I ate bug guts. Anyhow, there’s some of the boat left, and there’s astronaut food.

People don’t stay lost for long in this day and age, do they? Goddamn shame.

-Vic

4.

You grow up on the ocean and you start to take it for granted. But now I stand here in the dark at night – I mean, I have the flashlight and the emergency candles, but the bugs are the size of seagulls – and look out at it and it’s so fucking black. It’s hot and sticky and nothing like paradise, and I sit here and shiver just staring at it. Thinking of how it swallowed him up.

If it wanted him, really wanted him, I couldn’t have stopped it. But I could have at least died trying, you know?

It’s been over a week since we left St. Augustine. I can’t be that far from civilization. Just a matter of time til I have to go back and explain myself. Go on with life.

Tomorrow I guess I’ll explore. Maybe the trees are nicer than the water, around here.

-Vic

5.

Fuck, that was weird.

It’s so quiet once you get past the tree line. I don’t know if it’s the loneliness or what, but it’s intense. Tropical trees so green they’re almost black. And there are no birds, no nothing. Just this pure, perfect silence, like before god got bored enough to create animals. Not even any of those big ass mosquitoes in there.

Heavy is the word. I was wandering around with my shoulders slumped, you know?

It’s the worst right around the middle of the island, where there’s a sort of jutting rock – volcanic, too, most of it is shiny like obsidian, but too dirty to be really impressive. And there’s vines and shit growing all over it, like strangling it. Maybe it’s because the sun hardly came out today, but it was just dark over there.

Or maybe I’m imagining shit because of what I found.

It was a man. Well, sort of – probably about my age, somewhere between 20 and 25. He was just sitting there with his back to the rock, his legs out in front of him, staring straight ahead. I nearly fucking choked on my heart when I saw him there. I just froze. I stood there for maybe 10 minutes just watching, but he never even blinked.

I wanted to come back here to the beach. I mean, the air got so heavy I could hardly breathe, but the thing is, even if I did leave, he’d still be there.

I didn’t even notice that he was looking kind of gray until I got within five feet. He was dark – not like Polynesian, but maybe Greek or Italian – and he should have been olive-skinned. But it wasn’t even gray, sort of a waterlogged blue undertone. He wore kind of raggedy old school trousers and nothing else, he had curly dark hair, and these big black eyes that stared straight ahead.

He was beautiful, too. I’ve never seen a guy, except on TV, that I could honestly call
beautiful
, and he is – was. No, he still is, even dead, he’s beautiful, whoever the fuck he is. Like something out of a Classicist’s wet dream.

I don’t know, there was just something about him. I forgot everything else and just hit my knees and started bawling like a baby. I mean choking sobbing, head in hands, can’t stand on my own two feet bawling. I couldn’t even see, but I felt like something was watching me – not the dead guy, something from the trees or that big goddamn rock – just waiting for -

Something. Whatever. It just made me cry harder.

It wasn’t about this random dead guy – I know that. I’m just saying that’s what did it, finally. I don’t know how long I was there, but it was almost dark when I could finally open my eyes and see. Had a huge headache too. God, I hate crying.

I had to lean close to him to close his eyes. I tried to hold my breath, but some perverse urge made me take a sniff. Just seaweed and salt. When I sat back something fell out of his hand- – this little ivory carving of a boy wearing a laurel wreath.

Weird that he reminded me of something classical and he had that on him.

I shouldn’t have taken it, but I couldn’t help it. Maybe I’ll take it back tomorrow. I should probably try and bury the guy or – something.

Jesus, how the fuck did he even get there?

-Vic

6.

Goddammit, I can’t believe I actually wanted to cry. Should have saved the pain for when I get out of here, because it’s kind of inconvenient right now. I mean, I’ve had nightmares. But these were like fever nightmares, vivid and – they hurt my skin.

It wasn’t Jason. It was the dead guy. I remember every second, and it was like I woke up, and he was just standing there at the edge of the tree line, staring at me. And he had this smile on his face, like he had a secret. Like we had a secret.

Shit, I don’t know. Supposed to take more than a week before you lose your damn mind, but I guess I can be forgiven since I’m cohabiting with a corpse.

Yeah, I better bury him. Or give him to the ocean. It’s dark again today, and the clouds are looking steely. Bet it’s going to storm.

-Vic

Fuck, where the fuck did he go? I fucking left him right there by the rock, I didn’t move him, and he’s fucking
gone
. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Thank Christ Jason always kept a store of rum on the boat. I hate the shit, but tonight, fuck it.

7.

It’s raining, but not storming. I could swear to god the ocean’s fucking with me now. Can’t stop thinking about that rock, either.

I deserve it. I fucking deserve all of it. I hope they never find me, and I end up dead against that rock, just like that bastard.

That bastard. It was him again last night, another fever dream. This time there was music, nothing I could recognize – slow and deliberate at first, and in some crazy mode. Maybe that shit Jason liked, that Schoenberg with the crazy scale. I don’t know where it was coming from, but you never do in a dream, do you? It was just freaky as hell, is all I knew.

And him. He came close this time, real close. As in I woke up with his face over mine – in the dream, I mean. He wasn’t gray-blue anymore either, just a kind of moonlight-washed olive color. I would’ve screamed, but Jesus, he’s so beautiful, and he just smiles at me like that, and those eyes are so black it makes me feel like the ocean’s trying to swallow me.

He said something, too. I don’t know what it was, but his lips moved, all pink and swollen like he’d been eating or kissing for a long time. He said something and breathed on me all salty and -

Rain on my face. I woke up and rolled back under the tarp.

I can still hear that music, especially when I look at that little ivory guy I found on him. I mean, I can’t really hear it, I know that. But I keep humming snatches of it, just 5 or 6 notes at a time, and it’s making me crazy.

Crazier. Whatever.

I fucking deserve it.

-Vic

8.

I can’t remember anything Schoenberg did but
Verklärte Nacht
. And that’s not the really weird one. Still, I wish I had an iPod so I could listen to something else. It’s worse today.

It was louder in the dream last night, is why. I remember long strings of it now, even though I can’t really hum them, and that’s what’s driving me bat shit.

He kissed me. I woke up the same way – woke up in the dream, or not, I don’t even know – and he was there smiling down at me. I smiled back. Why do you do the shit you do in dreams? If I saw him now I’d scream, but no, I smiled at the bastard. And he leaned down and put his mouth against mine, wriggled close to me. He was cold, but not dead cold, just like he’d come out of the ocean up north, where the Atlantic’s mean and brown.

All that skin against mine, and his lips were as good as they looked. Soft and they just gave in, opened up and he’s warm on the inside. Funny taste, like seaweed and salt – makes me think of miso soup now, how screwed up is that? But at the time it was just so good, and I put my hands in his hair to pull him closer –

It was wet. I remember every detail, cold water curls between my fingers. His tongue was wet too, but that’s the warm part, and he licked the back of my teeth, toyed with me. His hands too, all over me, and the way he pressed down, put his thigh between mine, angled his hips so I could feel him getting hard.

Then the taste overpowered me, and his tongue seemed to melt into thick, slimy strands – it jammed in the back of my throat, choking.

I don’t know why I didn’t fight. I just tangled my hands up in his hair and tried to suck him down inside me.

He made this sound – it makes me shiver thinking of it. He groaned into me, but he was saying something. I heard it in my head:
Come with me
.

Lightning woke me up.

I either need to jerk off more, or throw myself into the ocean and get it over with.

I have to go back. Make sure he’s really not there. I can’t stay away anyhow. I only managed yesterday because of the storm.

Better leave him this ivory figure. Letting Jason die was bad enough – I don’t need to steal from the dead.

-Vic

He wasn’t there. I left the figure, though.

Can’t stop humming that music. Can’t stop hearing it. Feeling his tongue turning into something else inside me.

Can’t even jerk off. Fuck.

The ocean smells like electric death after a storm.

9.

No one’s coming to rescue me. No one knows where I am, because this place isn’t real. It’s just one big dream, and whether I’m awake or asleep doesn’t matter.

He came again, and he was angry, I could see it in his eyes. They burn like black charcoal, and he glares like a madman. It broke my heart to look at him like that, so when he handed the little ivory boy back to me, I took it.

That calmed him down; he smiled again, he kissed me, but when I tried to pull him closer, he pulled away. Those words, that sound again. In my head like:
Come with me
.

There was a glow through the trees – I never noticed it at night before. We walked in silence, and soon I saw that the glow, a lot like a lightning bug’s, but huge, was coming from the giant obsidian rock. Nothing, nothing ever felt so heavy as that place did in the night – felt like my spine gave under the weight, the vertebrae scraping against each other, squashing nerves, shaking me. And yes, something watches there. Something old, like ocean old, and with eyes much bigger and blacker than his.

He took my hand and led me inside – I didn’t notice before, I don’t know how. There’s a cave.

Words aren’t enough. It goes down and down, all lit by that same eerie glow, and the walls are covered in elaborate friezes. Acanthus leaves and emperor’s thrones and horses and pomp and parades – the repeated figure of the heartbreakingly beautiful boy with the laurel wreath at the center of all of it. The center of the universe. There’s writing too, strange symbols – maybe like the words he says sometimes.

Down and down, it felt like hours, the music getting louder and more excited in my head the whole time.

And then we came to the water. He started down the steps into it and the music stopped; the place was silent, deader than the woods above, even, low-ceilinged, filled with black water. Still.

I wanted to vomit, but you never do in a dream.

He stepped in until the water was up to his thighs. He looked at me over his shoulder. Smiled.

It looked more like oil than water, like a million black oceans from a million ancient worlds all poured into one cave. Whatever was on the other side, or underneath, or wherever he expected me to go, made my knees weak.

He went down until it covered his belly, then looked back again.

I took another step backward, but that was all I could do. The strange creeping terror ran through my veins like ice.

This was worse than death. This was nothing.

The Temple
.

I shuddered.

He stepped out of the water dripping and took my hands, looked right through me. He put one hand on either side of my face – the water was crystal clear running off him, pattering against my shirt, the obsidian ground. He kissed me.