We are the Shoggoths

        A dream? Perhaps a nightmare. What strange bewildering vision did come to me in my time of rest. Where visions of beauty and oft childish wanders abound was instead a play acted out in a language beyond man’s reaches. We entered unseen, a spectator not unlike a ghost observing all that transpired. A room not unlike a lab, filled with glowing dials and large machines separated from a seemingly empty room by a thick window.

 

    Three creatures stood there observing the empty room, such strange alien things they were. They had bodies reminiscent of insects, a skinny abdomen shaped like that of a sausage fly. A tiny pair of wings; clearly vestigial as they neither moved nor were capable of even rudimentary flight on the frame of these things. Six pairs of skinny segmented legs all connected to a plate like structure near the abdominal front of the abdomen. Two toe skinny feet with a third to where a heel would be. They sported neither claws nor nails of any kind, just these rounded skinny toes. A nearly ninety degree turn on a wasp like waist, literally so it would seem, was the thorax. The semi cone shaped thorax sported a pair of limbs in a recognizable place for arms, save for being so ridiculously skinny. One dares not call what they had a wrist, no palm of a hand, only six skinny fingers of sorts. Three above and three below, long and wire like with bristled knuckles, if they could be likened to as such, the fingers looked to bend in many directions. A semi thick neck supported a round insect like head. Two large rounded green eyes with a ring of compound eyes at their base. No antenna, despite appearances they were insects, rather alien creatures. They had complex mouths, many chewing parts both thick and thin. The sounds these complex mouths made where chattering, chit chit chit, clicks, and strange screeches for which there are no letters adequate enough to describe.

 

    With their dexterous appendages they manipulated the many dials, all the while making their strange alien sounds. It was clear to my invisible eyes that it was some sort of experiment, silver spiral cones came from the walls, floor, and ceiling of the empty room, concentrating what looked like darkness and liquid blue fire into a single point. When it was done there was a sphere of darkness there, clearly a sphere yet so dark it looked like a hole. The alien creatures made what could best be guessed at as excited sounds. The orb simply floated there as they begun some other experiments. Panels and devices hidden in the room for whatever reasons they had for using this room were opened and used. A tube with a fan like device blowing air, the orb did not move, however the air did not seem to continue past it. This caused the creatures to make noises and draw symbols of sheets of what must have been their equivalent of paper. Next came fire, much more visual, as the fire spiraled and was drawn into the orb. They turned other dials, that made fast moving lines on screens but nothing in the room, my best guess was perhaps radiation, radiowaves, and other such things. For all of this in my dreaming mind the term, “black hole” kept coming up. Perhaps these aliens had created with their odd spiral cones and weird energy a weak singularity, a rip between dimension.

 

    It is here that the vision sped up, or rather moved forward in time. I knew it was simply the next day. The aliens were looking into the room making confused sounds, at least that was my interpretation of them. The window was warped, bent inward, the walls strained. The panels deformed. My mind was given a tour through tunnels and tubes that were damaged, some collapsed; before being privy to a schematic on a X-ray like sheet one of the aliens was holding. Comparing to the mundane I’d call them air ducts, those connecting the room that housed the orb warped as though squeezed under immense pressure. It is now that something drew my ethereal attention. The orb was not there, but something else was, something dark and moving about, that seemed to be alarming the aliens as they backed away and pointed at the room. It looked as best I could describe like a fetus. Its general shape at least with its lobbed head, chubby body trailing into a tiny tail, and little cute paddle arms with stubby fingers. Two large blue slanted orbs for eyes, that were somehow adorable. It bobbed about the room making cooing sounds. Their alarm was clear as it opened a cavernous mouth and sucked in. The room shook as all the air was drawn into its mouth creating a vacuum that strained the walls. It was clear the cause of the damage now, this thing had been sucking air in, the pressure outside pushing in on the window and air ducts.

 

    The dark blob fetus creature stopped and began something else, it somehow bit into the panels, biting through the metal easily and absorbing it. It moved in very fast motions across the floor, cute in a way, leaving trails behind it where matter once was. It stopped in the air and convulsed a little. Its body morphed into a shadow that grew into that of a human like form. Human in that it resembled now a woman, I dare say an attractive woman, made of inky black smooth armor in place of skin, claws for fingers, a smooth defined woman’s face like black marble and glowing blue smooth gems for eyes, and odd blades on the sides of the head instead of ears. She sported a long whipping tail, and claws for feet. Yet, nothing was as alien about her as the creatures that made alarming high pitched sounds looking at her. She approaches the window and reached out, causing the aliens to back away. Her claw like fingers melted the material of the glass as easily as a hot knife goes through butter. She stuck her head in the hole. Her mouth opened wide as she moved sideways. The material of the window melting in a blue light streaming like a beautiful ray of light and sparks from her mouth, and being sucked into it. She licked her lips with a long pink tongue and leaped through the opening.

 

   It is here that what must have been guards ran into the room, they had tied to their arms odd rectangular devices, their long fingers curled up on several switches on the devices. They made their chittering sounds at her, she merely cocked her head like a confused dog; an expression easy for me to interpret, not sure the aliens understood it however. They aimed and fired these weapons, yellowish orange bolts of energy struck the woman. She growled and her body changed. The smoothness became ridged, her a guard formed her face. Armor of some strange fashion over her body, and she grew in size. Now stranding easily ten feet tall, she grabbed one of the aliens. She opened her mouth guard without touching it, like mandibles, her mouth inside opened wide revealing beast like teeth. Her long tongue jutted out like a tentacle and wrapped around the alien’s neck. Down came her mouth enveloping its head. Its head popped off with a sickening sound. What dripped forth from the neck was no blood I had ever seen; it resembled melted butter. As I watched her rip apart and eat the alien I felt hungry, it reminded me not of some brutal massacre but of eating lobster, the alien’s somewhat orange and red bodies adding to this idea in my head.

 

   Another jump in time, now she is outside, and impossibly huge, beyond the laws of physics for a human body. She is crawling on all fours through what one could guess is a city. The buildings were white domes with pipes or tubes sticking out of them at odd angles. Domes on domes, and pipes connecting or just sticking out. I watch from a view on high above her shoulders as she whips her tongue out and grabs up the aliens, devouring them. It reminds me one moment of a reptile eating bugs, and the next of a drunk woman pretending to be a lizard as she eats shrimp off the table.  Small grey squishy starfish like creatures twirled through the air like tiny helicopters fleeing the mayhem as alien vehicles arrived. From the shape and purpose these shells on wheels must be their version of tanks, and things resembling helicopters with giant insect wings arrived. They fire shells and explosives at her. She stood up, towering well over the buildings. From this giant’s view above her shoulder it was like looking down at mushroom caps and mole hills, if not simply some strange toys with popcorn shrimp running about between them.

 

   She howled to the sky as more of the insect helicopters fired missiles at her, a greater darkness appeared above her. Tentacle vines like black  roots covered in thorns and red glowing gems hung down, a deep blood red on the event horizon signaled the horror as…humans swarmed out. Men and women, some barely wearing clothes, like fantasy armor, some with demon wings, some with angel wings, some flew without wings, and some simply landed. These people were not human in the traditional sense; some were creating coldness, blizzards from their finger tips, others spat fire, among a cornucopia of powers befitting a comic book they all seemed to shrug off the weapons fired at them, save for some taken back by the tanks and missiles. They too ripped into the aliens, eating their flesh. Some of these people, if I dare call them that, were also eating bits of the walls, poles, and buildings. It looked as though thousands of people, tens of thousands of these super humans in fact, were falling from the sky like rain. I could barely look over the city watching them all. Some had begun to fornicate, an act that looked to frighten the aliens further, it was not clear if they thought these strange beings from the sky were attacking each other or if they understood what was happening. I felt oddly indifferent watching all this, even as I watched people running from buildings carrying what looked like large white maggots with bronze colored heads and carrying them off into the sky. I floated away, deep down knowing the implications of that, yet somehow it didn’t tug at me, perhaps it was because of the insect like nature of the aliens.

 

   As I floated there above the carnage, the woman, this giant armored woman of darkness who started it all turned to me, looked directly at me with those glowing orbs and said, “you were created in our image.”