Opossum

The strangest thing about the situation, Andrew reflected, probably wasn't the geometry. Though that itself was certainly noteworthy; any cubical room where it's possible to roll a ball from the floor to the ceiling without crossing any of the walls has something going wrong. It wasn't the bicycle, either. Azathoth knew, he'd seen stranger modes of transportation around the city. Spheroid wheels that squished too much for comfort were really quite commonplace.
Even the sight of Great Cthulhu, still dreaming-dead, sleepwalking around the city — well, that was less ordinary, but it did happen. At least that meant that some of the wilder, more obnoxiously shrieking squamous things would cower quietly in corners instead of howling Andrew’s ears off as he passed.
No, the strange thing about the procession careening down the impossible streets of R'lyeh was the fact that Cthulhu wasn't sleepwalking, He was sleepriding.
On the bicycle.
Pursued by, of all things, an opossum.
Andrew stopped dead in the middle of the street, his feet planted squarely on the green decaying cobblestone, to let the sight sink in.
Cthulhu. On a bicycle. The Elder's ponderous bulk, easily bigger than most of the buildings, completely dwarfed the tiny human contraption beneath Him. He looked, if the Great Cthulhu could ever be described as such, completely ludicrous.
His great bony legs pistoned, cranking the grotesquely slender pedals. Judging by the possum's mad scramble, He was actually making very good time, probably rolling along at a good ten miles per qar'hrlg. His sheer size drowned out the speed, though: something that big couldn't look fast until it was outracing a flying Mi-go.
Andrew stopped. Squinted. Something about the sleeping god wasn't right.
As hard as it is to read expression from a writhing mass of tentacles, Andrew had had some little experience with that face. It never changed — not when He lay in His crypt, not when He stood and opened dead blank eyes to sleepwalk, not (they said) when He would wake to reshape the world for His Elders' coming.
Now, though… the eyes were still dead, the tentacles still slowly creeping, the skin still mucous and sickly shining. But unless Andrew was completely mistaken, the taut batrachian skin of Cthulu's face was actually a little bit crinkled around the mouth and eyes.
His Great Old One was afraid.
Of an opossum!?!?!?
A pang of worry intruded briefly on the observer's shock. If something can shake Cthulhu, any denizen of R'lyeh has cause for concern. But the twinge faded as quickly as it came. Even gods have their nightmares, it seems. And not every dream has any meaning.
Humans dream of showing up naked to work, Nightgaunts of being eaten alive by a thousand singing jeweled caterpillars. Andrew himself had an awful recurring nightmare involving the ancient depths of icy space and a rotten ham sandwich (extra mustard), which, despite its farcical plot, never failed to wake him screaming. If Cthulhu's dead dreaming involved being forced to flee small mammals while trapped on a bicycle, who was he to judge?
He'd much rather get out of the road, sit back, and enjoy the show.
Category:Historical Archive
Category:Lovecraftian
Category:Gods
Category:Animals