The Iconodule, a Blasphemous Creation

“Bring on the multitudes….to nourish the Artist, stretch their skin upon an easel to give him canvas, crush their bones into a paste that he might mold them. Let them die, and by their miserable deaths become the clay within his hands that he might form…”

– Maxwell Brock, Beat poet

Creating a piece of artwork can be like a particularly difficult birth; more so if the act of creation has resulted in the birth of an iconodule, a foul and hateful entity that lives within a piece of artwork.  Iconodules are born of frustration, despair, and envy, fused with human creativity, imagination, and desire to create: a tempestuously fertile ground. Iconodules have been found in sculpture, in paintings, even in the written word, corrupting first the work they hide within, then their creator, and finally others within their sphere of influence. 

Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures | Leave a comment

The Looking Glass

I wasn’t sure what I expected when we got the proximity alarm, best not to, anyway. Guy was human in appearance, though, so that was promising. Ticking through my scope options, he showed a normal heat signature. Wearing a suit, damned expensive and tailored at that–not what I’ve seen before on someone trying to break into an Above Top Secret facility–one of our places that don’t exist.
It wasn’t Abe, but his was the card the gate had declined. He’d been dark 24 hours, so all his protocols were suspended. Not sure how this asshole got in. Then I noticed the glint of glass in the light. He was holding  some kind of big glass jug. What the hell?
He moved like Abe, kind of, walked a little the same. He passed right around the spot on the asphalt that would trip you if you weren’t careful, had that weird little OCD thing Abe did with his left hand.
Then he deviated course, just a bit, toward the supervisory area. Abe wouldn’t go that way, none of us grunts ever would.
He knelt, set down the glass jug, took off the lid, and removed a pair of sunglasses I hadn’t noticed before. The fucking jar was full of eyeballs–over a dozen–floating in a liquid. The guy in the fancy suit tilted back his head, reached up, and plucked out one of his eyes, just like a god-damned contact lens. He dropped it in the jug, and started fishing out another.
No more of that shit. I fed the eyeball soup two, quick, whisper kisses from my weapon, I think at least one went through the bastard’s hand. The jar exploded and the guy froze. Then I dropped him with a round through the head. Just for good measure, I put another six in him, just ‘cause. Damn, this job is fucked up.

–Cpl. Grant Rice, Facility Security, Location CC-Z-29.
Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures | Leave a comment

The Weaver: a Mi-Go Device

We finally got to what we assumed was the mi-go lab. We were all half nuts by now, just seeing the damn things. Frickin’ wasp, lobster, crab, whatever the hell. Getting electrocuted and half frozen to death by their weaponry didn’t help much either. 
We’d already lost the Professor, and our team Wizard. The rest of us were pretty beat up too. 
Getting in was easy enough. A door just slid open, silently, as we walked up. The thing didn’t look like much at first: a big, black, metal cylinder with some sort of rollers, supported by braces attached to the sides. They had varying amounts of some sort of fabric on them, like rolled carpet. The place smelled bad, like chemicals and ham. 
On top of the thing was a brain in a glass jar, typical. 
The cylinder had metal beds attached all around, covered with glass domes. They looked kind of like escape pods, or cryo-crypts. 
Then I got close to one. Inside, there was a woman, nude, floating in some sort of pink-tinged solution. She had a mask over her face, like a scuba mask. It had a tube, and a bunch of wires running into the cylinder. But that wasn’t the bad part. 
Extending from the cylinder into the tank, was a little mechanical arm, with a tiny tip that could rotate in any direction. 
The arm was running that tip all over her body, damn fast, pulling off her skin in strands, like yarn, which was being drawn into the cylinder. Most of her muscle tissue was exposed, and completely intact. She didn’t react at all, and I think that was the worst part of it. 
I snapped, I know what that feels like. I leveled Suzy up and started firing. One already under the hammer, five more in the chamber. The stuff sure wasn’t glass, at first I didn’t even scratch it. Twelve gauge at point blank range. 
Then, I got some chips, then little cracks. On my last round the thing blew open. The fluid was slick, I fell when it got under my feet. She started convulsing, the mask pulled off, the breathing tube drew out of her throat, a bunch of wires jerked out of her skull, and she landed right on me. 
She was screaming, screaming like I never heard anyone do before, and still thrashing around like hell. I tried to get hold of her, keep her from hurting herself, but the damn pink stuff was so slick, and it got all over me as well. It tasted salty. 
She finally calmed down. Her head drooped onto my shoulder, and my gaze fixed on her dead eyes.

—Charles McPherson, Captain, United States Marine Corps (Ret.), Security and Combat Specialist for the Manchester Foundation.
The Weaver  (Art by Rob Carlos)
Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures | Leave a comment

Plague Matyrs

“Where is Doctor Norris? I heard he didn’t make it.”
“He’s in the refrigerated trailer outside, there wasn’t any more room in the morgue.”
“No one was out there when I checked.”
Just then the alarm went off, and screams could be heard from the COVID-19 isolation ward.
Police were called, but none of them dared enter without protective gear.
A nurse came running out and explained what was going on….
Dr. Norris had returned for his Tuesday 18-hour shift. 

These tragic undead have appeared countless times in history.  In ancient Rome, there are accounts of them appearing during the Antonine Plague; they appeared several times across Europe during the various waves of the Black Plague; they appeared in the Americas and Caribbean during the waves of Yellow Fever; then again during the Spanish Flu pandemic.  Unfortunately, with the rise of COVID-19 in 2020, they are appearing once more.

Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures | Leave a comment

Book Lurkers

Jessica did not look so well so I sent her home early. Our cataloging of the library donations was almost finished and I did not mind staying late. This set of books came from the home of a recently deceased local recluse named August Taylor. Seems his nephew had no interest in keeping his library when sorting out the estate.

It was midnight by the time I had everything recorded and sorted, but when I left, Jessica’s car was still in the parking lot, underneath the light post closest to the front doors. She sat slumped against the driver’s side door. Her skin had gone a sickly gray, and her pale green eyes were glazed over in a yellow film. A sharp wheeze rattled from her throat as she struggled to breath. By the time the ambulance arrived, she was gone. That…thing had already emerged.

Her head cracked open like a brittle egg dropped on the pavement. Something moved amongst the black sludge that drained from the opening. It was a sleek, inky looking thing about the size of a tennis ball. A myriad of tiny eyes glistened in the soft glow of the parking lot light before it rolled or sloshed off into the night.

I had collapsed into hysterics before the paramedics got to the scene, and when they saw Jessica, one of them remarked, “looks like another one. Just like August Taylor.”

Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures | Leave a comment

Parasitic Shoggoths

“Stop or I’ll shoot! Don’t take one step closer!” I called out, leveling my revolver, but it had no effect. As the shambling form came closer it started moving faster, raising its arms and making a choking, chortling noise. When it stepped into the moonlight I could see that it was, it had been, Truman Nalfree, the missing scientist we’d traced here. He had to have been dead for a week maybe, judging by the level of decomposition. I fired three times, hitting twice, both through the torso, but it seemed to have no effect. It was almost on top of me so I took a deep breath, aimed for the head and fired. The creature’s skull exploded, but with much more forces than expected, showering me and my companions in gore. That’s when things got really horrifying….

Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures | Leave a comment

Shoggites

(with thanks to Charlotte Askew for additional input)

Alternate names: Saviour Serum, Elder Bile, Micro-Shoggoths, Nano-Shoggoths  

In appearance this small lifeform is an iridescent liquid with a reddy-brownish-purple tinge, often found in a quantity of certainly no more than a small spoon’s worth, or perhaps if someone were so minded, enough to fill a syringe. It is a miniature, in some examples even microscopic, example of the genetic engineering of the alien race known as the Elder Things and for those few sorry souls who bear the burden of knowing about such things, it would be classified as a tiny sibling to the abhorrent Shoggoth.

Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures | Leave a comment

Shoggoth o’ War

Alternative Names: jellyfish shoggoth, shoggoth of the deep, bane of Davy Jones’ Locker.

The shoggoth o’ war is likely an Elder Thing creation, devised in one of the underwater Elder Thing cities where few can survive. This variety of shoggoth is likely still in the service of the Elder Things as it is a simple thing compared to its other brethren. While the original shoggoth was taking from the body of Ubbo-Sathla, there are rumors that this variety may have more in common with Great Cthulhu, though that is mere speculation and no evidence has been found. The common theory is that these shoggoths were combined with whatever Mythos material was used and prehistoric jellyfish.

Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures, September is for Shoggoths | Leave a comment

Wagey Cage Shoggoths

Statement of Junior Vice President of (REDACTED)

“Looking at our yearly financial trends I am happy to report that currently, our methods of ensuring maximum productivity have hit their targets. The advent of the “downward sloping toilet seat” resulted in a net gain of an additional 6.25% of workers time spent working rather than completing non-work related  tasks. Our share holders were thrilled when we began developing the containment cage which would ensure shorter breaks for workers and maximise hourly productivity. What I have prepared for todays’ presentation is going to revolutionise the workplace and result in levels of productivity that must be seen to be believed. In a secure site, technically in international waters, we have begun to develop a bio mechanical platform that, whilst being considerably slower than standard human workers, requires no rest, no pay and best all has yet to be discovered by the general population. In short, we have found our new “employee of the month.”

Photograph slide show not found/considered destroyed. 

Witnesses describe seeing some horrific black sludge operating in a warehouse, picking, packing and sending orders. They did note the terrifying masses changing shape and form to complete various tasks. The near maddening sight of seeing a operational warehouse fully staffed by the things could have driven the investors mad, however, once they saw the exceeded quotas and expected production values of the site they decided to categorise the work force as a new form of machinery, merely entered into a patent submission as the Worker Centralised System or more colloquially referred to as Wagey Cage Shoggoth.

Continue reading »
Posted in Creatures, Creatures, September is for Shoggoths | Leave a comment

Some Notes on the Biology of the Shoggoths

When the Elder Things arrived on Earth during the Archean Eon, approximately 4.0 to 2.5 billion years ago, the only life on our planet was prokaryotic in nature. These relatively simple bacterial cells lacked organelles. However, the Elder Things used these bacteria cells as raw material for bioengineering. Specifically, this involved a process called endosymbiosis, where various bacterial cells were merged or fused together to make more complex cells called eukaryotes. Thus, many of the organelles in eukaryotic cells, such as flagella, mitochondria, and chloroplasts, were once bacterial cells. DNA and RNA comparisons between living bacteria and the residual genetic material found in these organelles within eukaryotic cells, provide strong evidence for this theory. Animals, plants, fungi and protists are all eukaryotic forms of life and were created by the Elder Things through endosymbiosis.

Continue reading »
Posted in Fiction, September is for Shoggoths | 1 Comment

Copyright 1996 - 2024 Shoggoth.net,