Blood Lite

I walked a few blocks to the nearest mailbox and dropped the envelope through the slot. I felt good about the story. I think this one had a really good chance of being accepted for publication. But then again, maybe I'm just crazy to believe that.

This one was special, though. This one was my last. This was the equivalent of a last drag of a cigarette on New Year's Eve, before quitting cold turkey for the New Year. I needed help, and with the wonderful information I found on a special Internet forum site, "Ignoring the Dark Places and Others," I found presumed salvation from my problem ... from my addiction.

I walked through the city . . . and it was just a city, I told myself. It was not an unca

Just a city —it's just friggin' Janesville, Wisconsin, for Pete's sake!

After a few blocks, I found the old brick building I was looking for. The unremarkable structure was of standard Euclidian architectural practices. Its entrance was shad­owed, a grim entrance to an unknowable ... stop it! I can­not think like that. It is ruining my life.

The door was open and I entered the building. My heels clicked on polished floor tiles of squamous decor. A small light escaped from the only open interior doorway at the end of the long, dank hall. I slowly approached. I argued with myself.

Should I? Should I not?

I decided I truly needed self-control back in my life.

My problem . . . my addiction . . . had cost me too much already, in terms of jobs, friends, and romantic relation­ships.

I had reached bottom. I needed help.

I came to the door and peered into the room. A single uncovered bulb, like a cyclopean eye, hung from the ceil­ing. There was a circle of a dozen folding chairs. Sitting in each one was a man, some younger and some older than me, but all had the same look about them: baggy eyes behind ill-fitting spectacles, unruly hair, and all about thirty pounds overweight.

"Is this your first time here?" the man at the front of the room asked me.

I did not see him at first glance. He was at a podium, and obviously had been talking to the congregation of men who all looked a little too much like ... me.

"Yes," I finally answered. "I need help. I can't control myself."

"Welcome, friend. I'm Tom," he said as he shook my hand. "I have just finished telling my story. Please, tell us yours. We all have this addiction. But with group support, we can overcome it."

I stood behind the podium and Tom sat down nearby.

After swallowing hard, I finally uttered, "Hi, my name is Chris, and I write Eldritch Pastiche from Beyond the Shadows of Horror."

"Hi, Chris," everyone said in unison.

"It started when I was in middle school. That is when I first discovered H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos. After reading his stories, I was addicted."

"Sounds right," someone in the audience muttered, followed by acknowledging nods.

"I mean, I had to read everything—everything—that made even the briefest of references to Cthulhu, YogSothoth, Azathoth, and Nyarlathotep."

"How come everyone forgets Ithaqua," someone in the circle mumbled. "We live in the cold waste of Wiscon­sin, for crying out loud, yet everyone forgets Ithaqua the Wind-Walker."

"You hush, Artie," Tom admonished. As Tom spoke, I noticed one figure was sitting in the back of the room, outside the circle of chairs. The figure blended with the corner shadows so perfectly that he was almost imperceptible.

"Please continue, Chris," Tom said. "I hunted down every author—Derleth, Lumley, Campbell, Leiber, Smith, Howard, Ligotti—I read every story, every book, and every back issue of Weird Tales I could locate. I even found authors outside of the 'normal' realm of Mythos writers. I mean, I even finished Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum just for its single Mythos refer­ence."

"If you finished Foucault's Pendulum, you must really have a problem, Chris," Tom said.

"But I did not stop at authors, oh no," I continued. "I played every adventure of every role-playing game based on the Mythos. I played every video game and every col­lectable card game. I even played LARP."

There was a collective gasp of shock.

In that dark corner, I heard a faint chuckle.

"But then, at some point, I realized I had consumed everything—books, games, even DVDs. I had to have more. Then it hit me. I had to create the next generation of Mythos literature."

Again, a round of acknowledging nods. This group really did understand my problem, and it felt nice to know that I was neither alone nor mad, finally.

"That is when I wrote my first Eldritch Pastiche from Beyond the Shadows of Horror story. It was a quick tale, less than a thousand words. I called it 'The Beast from Beyond Terror.' It was about a necromancer who sum­moned an Elder Beast that was more powerful than he, so it ate him immediately."

More nods. "Yes, textbook predisposition," a man in the audience muttered with ivory-tower arrogance. He had white hair and apelike features.

Did I hear another chuckle from that veiled figure in the corner?

"I wrote nearly two stories a week, in those early days," I said. "I remember my titles clearly: 'The Thing Beyond Horror,' 'The Monstrosity from Nega-Time,' 'The Colors from Beyond the Shadows,' 'The Eldritch Witch Elders,' and 'The Madness at the Center of Eternity'"

"Oh, I like that one," a chubby middle-aged man whis­pered. He received a collective scorn.

"Of course, I had to mention every Elder God in every story," I said. "I had to mention awesome Cthulhu; the gatekeeper Yog-Sothoth; Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young; the blind idiot-god Azathoth, who lives at the center of the uni­verse; and Hastur, the Unspeakable."

"And Ithaqua."

"The tomes. I had to mention the tomes in every story, as well: the dreaded Necronomicon by the Abdul Alhazred was always mentioned first, of course, followed by De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludvig Pri