The shadow of a drooling god

   When Francisco opened his eyes, he saw a red sky, like something directly taken from a painting of the Apocalypse. He was nude and alone, laying in a ground made of millions of tiny round stones. Slowly, he stood up and looked around. There were no mountains or other geological formations, only that same ground, extending to, apparently, the infinite.

   No... there was something. A tower. A lonely tower in the horizon, shaped like a human arm, with its hand opened, like if it was ready to catch something that could fall from the blood-colored sky. It was very, very far away, and yet its shadow was reaching Francisco.

   He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even remember what was he doing there, or how had he ended in that place. So, without any other better thing to do, Francisco started to walk towards the tower, following the hand-shaped shadow...

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   It was raining. How appropriate. Francisco always felt better whenever it was raining, because it completed the image. It was a cliche: if there was a homeless in the picture, it had to rain. It was mandatory.

   Of course, Francisco hadn’t always been homeless. Not so long ago, he had had a family, a house, dreams... not a job, but he was hoping to get one soon. However, Destiny had other plans. Yes, the Fate... At the beginning, Francisco had blamed it for all his bad luck, because it was the easiest thing to do. Then, as the days passed, he started to blame the others. The government, the society... It was their fault. The crisis, and all those things. Later, he decided to blame himself. He hadn’t studied hard enough, he hadn’t bothered to search for a job. Instead, he had foolishly tried to live of his dreams of becoming a famous writer, without having a back-up plan.

   And, finally, Francisco decided that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It had happened what it had to happen, just that. He wasn’t made for the world, he wasn’t made for society. He was an outcast, darkness and loneliness had been their destiny all along.

   Destiny, again...

   That rainy night, under a stone bridge, Francisco was waiting for death. He wasn’t searching for it, in fact, he still wanted to live. After all, one cannot get rid of his survival instincts so easily. However, he wasn’t going to escape from the Reaper, either.

   At that moment, he found it. No, not death, but another thing. Half-buried in the mud of the river, right in front of him, there was a strange, perfectly round stone, no bigger than a nut. Moved by a strange curiosity, Francisco picked it. While he was observing it, its surface opened, and a small yellow eye looked directly at him. Francisco dropped the stone, and the eye closed.

   After a few seconds, he picked it again. For some reason, when he was holding that in his fingers, death didn’t look so bad. But he thought that was a terrible feeling.

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   For how many days had Francisco been walking? Maybe none, maybe too many to be counted. Time seemed to not exist in that place, the sky was always red, there was neither day nor night, and Francisco didn’t get hungry, or sleepy.

   The tower was still a distant image in the horizon. He hadn’t reached it yet, even though he was sinking into his ominous shadow more and more.

   So, he kept walking, as the memories kept returning to his mind...

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   Unlike other homeless, Francisco didn’t beg, he didn’t want charity. In fact, to avoid receiving cents from the bystanders, he usually spent all his time on the outsides of the city. Alone and in darkness, as that was his destiny.

   However, sometimes, like that afternoon, he liked to walk a bit through the city. He always chose streets with few people, so he wouldn’t clash with anyone, although that usually never happened, since everyone avoided him, due to his shredded and dirty clothes.

   He walked in front of a TV store. In one of the televisions displayed on the other side of the glass, they were broadcasting an episode of the third season of My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic. Francisco used to watch that show, when he had a home. He watched it on the Internet, in original version, since he didn’t like the Spanish dub. However, he had also blamed it for his current misery. That cartoon, those colourful ponies had been an inspiration for him. He had wanted to write something like that, something happy, something moving, something... beautiful. But Francisco only knew to create ugly things. Scary, hideous things. After all, H.P Lovecraft was his favourite writer.

   However, he had tried to do it, as hard as he had could. Sadly, he couldn’t created anything, his fingers used to paralyze over the keyboard, before the white and empty screen. And so, he didn’t publish anything, and when he tried to do something else, it was too late. Francisco couldn’t help but think that, if he had continued with the hideous things he liked, he would have accomplished his dream. It was the fault of those ponies.

   But he had also dismissed those thoughts, he wasn’t able to hate that show. It was so innocent, it had made so many people happy... It had changed the world in a way Francisco would never had been capable of. He couldn’t hate it. Even in darkness and loneliness, he still loved those colourful ponies.

   And, besides, his situation wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was his destiny...

   Francisco introduced his hands on his pockets. In one of them, there was the mysterious stone. He had kept it, but he didn’t know why.

   Then, he saw the fire. He watched as the firemen entered in the building to rescue everyone, but, apparently, there was one person they couldn’t reach.

   While still touching that stone in his pocket, Francisco started to think. He thought of keep walking, there was nothing he could do there. One person was going to die, and that was sad, but there were people dying everywhere, every time, why bother?

   But he also remembered his dreams of becoming a writer to change the world. Avoiding one death was also a way of changing the world. He was not a writer, he had nothing, and he probably was going to die soon. But he still could...

   “Dammit.”

   Francisco ran inside the building. Somehow, he managed to rescue that person, but his body was left burned and severely damaged. He hadn’t eaten anything for the past days, he was too weak to survive. The firemen couldn’t do anything for him, neither could the paramedics.

   And so, Francisco died. The last thing he saw was that perfectly round stone, which had dropped from his pocket. Its yellow eye had opened, and it was looking at him...

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   Finally, once his memories were fully restored, Francisco reached the tower. His body had changed in the process, he wasn’t human anymore. He didn’t have legs or arms, he was just a shapeless blob, crawling under that big shadow. Only one eye left in his deformed head, and no mouth he could speak or scream with. Before him, it was the tower, that immense hand of stone.

   A hole opened in the red sky, and a gigantic creature descended trough it. The entity landed in the hand, accommodating his multiple tentacles between the five fingers. It was a blob, just like Francisco, but gray. It had several eyes, and several mouths which were drooling a colourless goo, which ran down the tower like tears.

   That vision awoke new memories in Francisco. He remembered the things he used to read, he remembered Lovecraft... and he remembered the blind, idiot sultan of demons, bubbling in the center of the Universe...

   “Azathoth?”, he thought, or at least he wanted to think, but his words sounded in the air, despite the absence of mouth.

   “If you want,” answered the creature.

   That voice made him tremble. The words hadn’t come from the drooling mouths, instead, they seemed to have been spoken by reality itself.

   “What are you?” Francisco asked.

   “I am a god,” said the entity.

   “G- God?” Francisco asked again.

   “If you want,” repeated the creature.

   “What am I doing here? I... I think I died...”

   “Indeed.”

   “Then... is this Heaven, or Hell? Or just an hallucination caused by my dying brain?”

   “This place is real, I assure you. If it is Hell or Heaven, you have to decide that. You came here because you answered to my call, and you paid the price.”

   “What are you talking about?”

   “Take a closer look at the tower.”

   Francisco did, and discovered that the tower, as well as the rest of the landscape, was made by those perfectly round stones with yellow eyes. How could he have not noticed it earlier?

   “What are they?” he asked.

   “Keys,” explained the drooling god. “Keys to this dimension, keys to power. Keys to Heaven, or Hell. I send them to the world, I have been sending them for millennia. Every human being receives one, but usually they forget about them, and the keys disappear from their lives and memories.”

   “Why do they forget about them?”

   “Because the price required to activate the keys is, for many, high. Too high. The price is no other than rejecting the humanity of oneself. In order to acquire the power, Heaven or Hell, they have to cut themselves from their world. But humans love humans, and they cannot even conceive those actions. But you did.”

   “Did you mean, my sacrifice? I did it only because I thought it was the right thing to do, not because...”

   “You did it because you did not care anymore. You hated your world, you accepted that you had no place in it, and you welcomed death. Your last act of heroism was remarkable, but secondary. You rejected what you were, and the final proof of that is your actual shape. While you were walking towards this tower, you unconsciously abandoned your human form.”

   Francisco looked at herself, physically and mentally. At first he denied it but, eventually, he recognized that the drooling god was right. He hated his world, he hated himself. He just had wanted to go doing something heroic.

   “What do I do now?” he asked.

   “Whatever you want.”

   The answer caught Francisco offguard. He had read enough lovecraftian literature to know that making deals with abominations from beyond reality used to backfire, there had to be some kind of trick in all that.

   “Why do you do this?, Francisco inquired. “Why do you want to.. reward me this way?”

   “Because I am a god. An incomplete, drooling god. I want to be happy. Now you are  part of me, your essence is connected to mine in the depths of your heart. If you enjoy your existence, so will I. Be happy, do whatever you want.”  

   Whatever you want...

   “I want...” said Francisco. His shapeless carcass raised, looking directly at the god and his tower. “I want to go to that colourful world. And I want a new body.”

   “So be it. Which body should I give you?”

   Francisco opened his eye, widely:

   “All of them. I will be your Nyarlathotep.”

***

   Pinkie Pie opened her eyes. She wasn’t sweating, she hadn’t had a nightmare. However, she felt an uncanny sensation.

   Carefully, to not disturb Gummy's dream, she walked to the window and looked at the starry sky. The moon was full and shiny. It was an incredibly beautiful night... yet the pink pony had the disturbing feeling that something big was about to come to her life. Maybe, to the lives of everypony.

   But her Pinkie Sense couldn't tell if it was something good... or something bad.  

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