24. the many tangled ones

[orderfromchaos]

[Public, video]

[Dillon looks a bit - frazzled. Which is kind of impressive, for someone whose hair is always perfectly neat and whose shirts are constitutionally incapable of holding wrinkles. He has managed to put his on inside-out, though, and his shoulders are sagging, and he has a gelatinous pastel-purple thing with at least four tentacles clinging to the the side of his face. It has no apparent skull but bright white human-like buck teeth, and abyssal black eyes from which no light escapes at all.

It giggles. For a moment there's a flickering, like static - only it's not the comm that's affected. It's like the reality of Dillon's room went momentarily on the fritz. And then it's adorable again. Still.]

...does anybody know how to train a baby eldritch horror?

[He KNOWS one of you gave him this for Christmas. He. Knows. But that's not important right now.]


[Private to the Admiral]

By the way, can I add one more thing to my gift list? Since you've been delivering them kind of staggered.

For the new girl, Tiffany. I'd like to give her a copy of the gospels - just the gospels - with like, really nice leather binding and gilt edges and stuff. I don't think she's had a lot of well-made things. A translation she'd be comfortable with, one of the modern-but-poetic versions. Jerusalem Bible or New KJV, maybe? You decide.

Comments

[withtheoldbreed]

A what?

[orderfromchaos]

I think that's what it is. I don't know. Did you ever read Lovecraft? I have no idea when he was publishing.

[He grabs the squiddle around the fat, cheeks-like part of its head and pulls it off his face with an eerie, tinny squelching noise. It giggles again - with no flicker this time - and twines around his wrist instead.]

[versusnurture]

Um.

Seriously?

[americasdirtiest]

...okay, that shit is definitely not my fault this time.

[If only because Dillon wasn't on his gift list.]

[orderfromchaos]

I mean, I can't read it at all but it kind of - fits the bill.

[orderfromchaos]

Wait, the dinosaur was you?

[versusnurture]

How exactly does it fit the - eldritch horror bill? I mean. Besides the tentacles.

You can't read it at all?

[americasdirtiest]

Not on purpose.

[orderfromchaos]

Nothing. It's like - not even a blank spot. Like a hole in the world.

[It wriggles happily, cheeps !friend! in a wire-thin alvin-the-chipmunk sort of voice, autotune and helium, a saccharine unnatural sound.]

[versusnurture]

. . . It's cute.

[Hesitantly?]

[orderfromchaos]

[He laughs, but not meanly, while the creature starts pulling itself back up the length of his arm.]

Give this place an inch, I guess.

[orderfromchaos]

It kind of is.

[How??!! And yet, obviously. He pats the top, and it jiggles slowly, like a jellyfish under water or something.]

[versusnurture]

Dillon, I think it might. Kind of be my fault.

[americasdirtiest]

And can you do me a favor and tell Hart that's a fucking dinosaur, by the way?

[withtheoldbreed]

No. [Gene's not much for science fiction, but Bucky has probably heard of him.]

Is it dangerous?

[orderfromchaos]

Well, it isn't really. Coelurosauravus is just kind of a mouthful.

[Sorry Mickey, Dillon is a terrible nerd.]

[orderfromchaos]

How?

[Not how could it possibly be your fault, more like how the heck did you pull this off, girl.]

I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for an interdimensional hug buddy who feasts on the substance of reality.

[Speaking of which. He firmly pulls the thing off and puts it on his soon-to-expire Christmas sweater, which is already sort of weirdly dim and translucent, like it's collapsing backward in a direction they can't see. The tentacles go through the edges of the knit a little bit, an impossible overlapping, as the thing wraps itself enthusiastically around the garment.]

[orderfromchaos]

I don't know. Not to me, I think. And it's very - sweet.

But it does some weird stuff.

[versusnurture]

No, I didn't ask for that. I asked for something you couldn't fix.

[Oh god. Oh man, it's really cute.]

[americasdirtiest]

Fuck both of you nerds.

[orderfromchaos]

You want to name the the thing from the lavender lagoon?

[If Mickey takes him up on it, probably it will end up with a terrible name. Whatever, he doesn't care. What's a good name for a thing like this anyway.]

[orderfromchaos]

[The sweater grows more transparent, shriveling away somehow without changing shape, until it is a spindly husk of an impression in the air. The squiddle launches itself up, flying in the squirting motion of jellyfish and cephalopods, twirling whimsically in the air.]

And he found this.

Damn.

[A big, rueful smile.]

Thanks. Probably.

[versusnurture]

Don't be mad. I think it likes you.

How do you tell if an eldritch horror is a boy or a girl?

[punched_hitler]

Are you sure you should try?

[Are you sure you should keep it, is almost what he means.]

[americasdirtiest]

That thing? It looks like a bad hangover, man.