Party Time at Psi Iota House

My first semester as head of the biology department at Sizemore University was passing smoothly and quite pleasantly. It was a small, secluded campus, sequestered in the scenic hills near Riceville, Tennessee. It was certainly not on the leading edge of scientific advancement, but it provided me with the placid atmosphere I sorely needed. The facilities were adequate; the campus’s original life sciences department had been destroyed in an explosion the year before. A tragic accident in the chemistry lab that so severely injured my predecessor, a professor Leland Dudley, that he was forced to retire. It pained me to benefit from such unfortunate events, but the job was so agreeable to me that I soon forgot my qualms. I was provided with an area in the vocational building that had been an auto repair facility, small, but large enough for the few students I had, outfitted with full lab facilities.

 I was even given an assistant in the form of a graduate student by the name of Eleanor Bradley, a pleasant if somewhat overly political young woman. She was attractive in a tomboyish way, with pleasant green eyes and short, spiky hair, usually dyed black, with perhaps a streak of red or blue, accented by a stud through her pierced upper lip that looked disturbingly like a tick. She was an enormous help to me, and very knowledgeable, although her interests ran to some rather esoteric subjects that I found decidedly unscientific. It was her fascination with the unscientific and my good natured needling that began a chain of events so remarkable, I will be branded a liar or a madman for relating them.
Ellie (as she preferred to be addressed) had been regaling me with her latest obsession: neo-paganism. While we labored over our Petri dishes, she announced her conversion to Wicca, and pointed out her new pentacle pendant resting on the creamy white flesh just below her throat. I t became obvious as I questioned her she had no real knowledge on Wicca or paganism, and had taken it up as an affectation. When I told her as much, she became furious. "You are so narrow-minded!" she exclaimed "you refuse to even consider anything that doesn’t fit into your prosaic worldview!" "I require empirical evidence." I replied "as a scientist so should you." she would hear none of it of course. And we spent the remainder of our time in the lab bickering over the finer points of science vs. reason.
It was about eight in the evening when we’d finished and Ellie announced her intention to go to the library. Since it was after dark, and there had been a rash of missing persons reported in the area, (as you may recall from the news reports around that time) I insisted on accompanying her. "Just as well" she said, "you can keep me from cussing out that librarian, she’s as smug and condescending as you are." "Whatever do you mean?" I asked. "I find Ms. Butler very helpful and pleasant." Ellie narrowed her eyes and glanced at me with annoyance, her mouth puckered as though she‘d bitten into a lemon. "You would." she said. "She’s the worst ever. She suppresses books she disapproves of." I said. "Oh yes, Sizemore has the best collection of occult texts in the southeast, but she keeps them all locked up in a vault, and allows no one to look at them. It’s horrible. I am thinking of writing the dean." "Dean Pederson probably has his plate full enough without fighting it out over some moldy old grimiores" I replied. "Ms. Butler is a reasonable woman, I’m sure she’ll let you look at that old junk." As we mounted the library steps, we were met by Andy Friedkin, Biology major and one of my better students. He was a tall well built lad with a mop of curly red hair. He had made a startling transformation over the summer from skinny "science geek" to a well muscled athletic type, he claimed to owe this metamorphosis to a "strict regimen of diet and exercise" devised by himself and his Psi Iota frat brothers. Psi Iota had been a quiet frat house, inhabited by shy bookish intellectual types. Yet this semester, Psi iota had become Sizemore U‘s "party central" and the frat brothers had all made startling transformations like the one displayed by Andy. "Hi Prof. Hi Ellie." he greeted us enthusiastically, thrusting a colorful flyer into Ellie‘s hands. "We got a great band and everything. If your not busy, c’mon by." "I doubt I’ll make it Andy," I responded, "I’m getting a little old for partying." Andy grinned and handed me a flyer, a garish affair advertising the upcoming party. "You can’t fool me, Professor Hutchins. Everybody knows you’re a swinger." He took off down the steps to the sidewalk. "See you there." he called," and spread the word."
"Looks like a good time" said Ellie as she perused the flyer. "We should go." I was not enamored of frat parties. Warm Milwaukee’s Best and monotonous jam bands were not my bag. "Let’s get your wicked little books and worry about that later," I told her. I opened the door to the library with a flourish. "Your arch nemesis waits." Ellie rolled her eyes and stormed in.
Abigail Butler was as skeptical of the occult as I was and had no motivation to humor Ellie as I did. "No you may not check out Die Vermis Mysterius." she curtly replied in a quiet neutral tone when Ellie made her inquiries. "Nor can you check out Cultes des Ghouls or The Apostles of YrrdrGdnol or Revelations of Glakki .all of those volumes off limits, to everyone" Ms. Butler was pushing a cart of books up the aisle of the reference section. She was a tall woman, I’d say nearly six feet, I hadn’t noticed it until she was standing beside me and I noticed our eyes were even, she had steely grey eyes that seemed to always hold a note of disapproval. I hadn’t noticed that before either. She’d always seemed to blend into the background, camouflaged by her thrift store wardrobe, unflattering bun hairstyle, and outdated glasses. I was just noticing the silkiness of her black hair, exotic olive skin tone and full figure when Ellie’s irritated snarl brought me out of my reverie. "How can a librarian in this day and age deny the public access to any book? What about the freedom of imformation? I’ll take this to the dean if I have to." Ms. Butler was unfazed. "You’re welcome to, but I have full authority in this matter. Those books have been the cause of innumerable break-ins, attempted robberies and one person setting himself on fire in the lobby. No, they all stay in the vault, and as soon as I can get Craine at the Miskatonic to take them, off they go to Massachusetts." Ellie threw her hands up. "You’re impossible!" she sputtered. "I can’t…URGGH!" Ellie had turned a toasty shade of red, and her lip twitched in a way that always preceded a stream of nautical profanity. I decided now would be the time for some diplomacy. "Maybe Ms. Butler can suggest some lees volatile research material?" Ellie would not be consoled. "I might have known you’d take her side." she hissed as she stormed off toward the exit. I followed of course, shrugging sheepishly at Ms. Butler on my way out. I caught up to Ellie on the side walk in front of the Library. "Will you stop?" I shouted, grabbing her by the elbow. "Let me go!" she yelled, pulling away from me and returning to her beeline towards the lab. "Wait!" I pleaded. "At least let me walk with you, you know there’s been abductions near the campus." "People have gone missing." she told me in a mocking tone." no one can say for sure they’ve been abducted, maybe they all skipped town. Now fuck off!" there was no reasoning with her when she was like this. She walked briskly down the sidewalk and I tried to follow, but I was stopped by a voice behind me: "Professor Hutchins!" it was Ms. Butler, holding Ellie’s book bag, apparently she forgot it during her tantrum. "Your friend forgot this." she said "I’m sure she’ll want it later." "Thank you, Ms. Butler, I…" before I could continue, there was a shrill scream from down the sidewalk and we both spun around to see Ellie struggling in the grip of two powerful looking men in grey sweat suits and red ski masks. They were trying to force her into a plain white cargo van. I ran towards them as fast as I could. I make no claims of being a formidable fighting man, but eight years in the navy had left me no stranger to violence. I struck the nearest assailant squarely in the side of the head. It felt as though I’d hit a brick wall. Unfazed, the man struck me a back handed blow that sent me reeling into the side of the van with appalling force. Dazed, I looked up to see that Ms. Butler had followed me. Now she had been seized by the mystery attackers and together wit Ellie was being bundled into the van. I struggled to my feet and threw my self bodily onto the last of the men as he clambered into the van after the women. I struck him with such force he was propelled downward into the floorboard, his head made a satisfying thud as it struck. I turned to see four men in the process of subduing the women. One had Ms. Butler’s skirt up above her waist and was struggling to remove her panties. Incensed, I launched myself furiously at him, raining savage blows about his head which seemed to have negligible effect. I raised both fists above my head with the intent of bringing them down on his skull when suddenly there was a blinding flash, and I knew no more.
I slowly became aware again I could not move or see, but I felt a cold wet clamminess against my face. There was a dull rhythmic thumping, and the smell of antiseptic. Slowly I began to make out distorted voices. They sounded as though I heard them from inside the shell of some preternatural mollusk. They were unintelligible at first but as I regained my faculties, I could make them out: the first voice was deep, gravelly. But with a strange hint of underlying hysteria "…what do you mean, they can’t be found? Did you not secure her in the cellar." the second voice I recognized, and it sickened me to have done so. It was Andy Friedkin. "Yes. Well, Brad and Chet, they…they wanted to have some fun with Butler so they were gonna take her up to one of the dorm rooms, and, you know.." "Yes, I know." said the first voice. "I know that you and those rutting cretins have let that woman escape. And she will soon bring the authorities here! And I am so close! So close to freeing myself from this wretched condition! And you fools have ruined it all!" "No. no." Andy’s voice was desperate and pleading. "Brad and Chet, I can’t find them either. The must have took her somewhere else. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere." there was a pause, and the first voice started again calmer. "They’d better. I have given you and your pathetic friends more than you would have ever known. Power. Strength, enhanced intellects. You were the dregs of humanity before I lifted you up to a condition more exalted than you could have dreamed. And you repay me with ineptitude. You were foolish enough not only to abduct a faculty member, but two! And on a brightly lit sidewalk on campus, less than a mile from here!" "But, you demand we bring you so many, so many, "Andy was beginning to sound dazed "People are getting suspicious, afraid to go out, we were lucky. Lucky to get these three. Our luck is running out, running out. Could you, could you move the operation elsewhere?" "Elsewhere?" The voice demanded. "Elsewhere? My equipment can’t be moved now! Just a few more experiments and I’ll be ready, at long last." there was a long pause, the dull thumping continued, and there was another sound, a muffled moaning, mixed with a sort of mewling sound. I thought of an animal shelter, but no. "Take the girl and prep her for the procedure. Lock Professor Hutchins in a container, but I want to speak to him when he recovers, he’s a scientist. He may… understand." I then found myself hoisted like a sack of flour on Andy’s shoulders. He was carrying me effortlessly. Andy Friedken, who had only last year, had been a skinny myopic weakling, but now. I managed to free my tongue from the torpor I was in enough to speak. "Andy, please listen." I slurred. "I don’t know what you’ve gotten into, but this isn’t you, you were a good student. A kind young man. You…you’re a scientist for God’s sake. You have to stop this." "You don’t understand, Professor Hutchins." his voice was distant, dazed. He seemed to talk to himself as much as me. "I was a nobody. Weak. Ugly. He made me strong. He made me be all the things I admired and could never have. And now, I owe him. I owe him. I owe him and I have to pay…I have to pay in full." who do you have to pay, Andy? Who?" Andy was silent, and then spoke suddenly as though he just realized he was asked a question. "Who? Oh, Professor Dudley, Professor Leland Dudley. He runs things at Psi Iota now; yes… it’s his lab you see. He keeps his lab here in the basement." he chuckled then as if he were telling a clever joke. "He watches over us. Watches, watches, watch. All he does is fucking watch us." I felt myself sat down on the floor again the strange mewling was louder, the antiseptic smell stronger. "Andy." I pleaded, "Look, lock me up do whatever, but leave hear, go to the police, get help whatever Dudley’s done to you. I cant’ believe it would make you abet kidnapping, rape or worse." "No no Prof. "he whispered "it’s too late for me too late, I’m so sorry. It’s too late for you too. He wants you to help him. And you will. One way or the other, you will. I heard the clang of metal. I knew a door had been shut on my and Andy was walking away. "Andy!" I shrieked "Andy, goddamn you Andy! No!" but he was gone.
I was alone with the mewling and the antiseptic. Painfully I forced my eyes open. Bright fluorescents burned into my brain as I slowly opened my eyes and looked around me. God help me. Every day until I die I will wish I’d been blinded by the blow that knocked me out. To have been spared the sight of what was in that room I’d have torn my own eyes out with my bare hands. Eyes. Even now to see that word written on this page brings bitter bile to my throat. I was in a brightly lit room, in a small six by six metal cage like dogs are kept in. similar cages were staked all around me, it seemed like a dozen or more, each held one occupant. They were all nude human figures. Male, female, young, elderly. All shared one characteristic. They were all hideously deformed, facially, about the eyes. The eyes were distorted, rearranged haphazardly bout the face, not surgically, but a though they’d been smeared to their new position, some had one eye, some three or more, some had two or three melding into one hideously lobed mockery of the ocular organ. All these pitiful individual moaned and ululated incoherently. And I knew instinctively they were all irretrievably mad. I curled up in a fetal position on the floor of my little cage. I vomited. I wept. I screamed and tore at my hair and beard like some biblical martyr.
"Professor Hutchins." It was the voice I heard talking to Andy it was just outside my cage I turned to look. There was a man there, medium height, average build. He wore a grey suit. A nice gray suit and a purple sack over his head a nice suit I thought, why would a lunatic responsible for this were such a nice suit and a purple felt sack over his head? I began to chuckle at the thought. "Professor Hutchins." He repeated "I need you to calm down. I am Professor Leland Dudley, I used to have your position, and then I had an accident. I sought...Treatment for my eyes. I lost my eyes you see. I had to heal them. You understand my work. I needed eyes to continue my work" I grinned like a madman. "Of course Prof. Dudley, I understand all this is perfectly understandable. You did this didn’t you? Some how you developed a process that does this to people. Perfectly reasonable professor Dudley. You sick fuck! I Screamed and threw myself vainly at him, I clawed at the cage. Like an animal. "I expect better from a scientist Professor Hutchins." he said unmoving in the face of my futile onslaught "are you not curious about my research?" I collapsed in a heap on the floor. "Yes, yes" I croaked "tell me about your damned research." "Funny you should call it that Hutchins, some would say what I have done worthy of damnation, but this is not some metaphysical claptrap, Hutchins. Its science, science from another world" he began to pace, with hands clasped behind his back, pontificating "I was desperate; I searched hi and low for anything to help me regain my vision. Well, not to beat around the bush, this search led me to esoteric sources. The Pnakotic Manuscripts, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, De Vermis Mysteriis. The Book of Azathoth and Revelations of Glaaki. The latter put me in contact with the entity known as Y'golonac who in turn enabled me to contact The Fungi from Yuggoth, transuranian beings you may know as the Mi-go of Himalayan myth. In return for certain assurances and assistance from me, they provided me with the knowledge and equipment needed to accomplish what you see here." "What I see here." I began mastering myself as best I could under the circumstances. "Is the deliberate torture and mutilation of human beings!" "Please, Hutchins," he said condescendingly "those are research subjects, worthless cretins that will not be missed. All men are not created equal Hutchins, you know this. Ones such as ourselves must be exalted above the rabble. Science must not be hindered by ephemeral concepts of morality. But don’t trouble yourself unduly. Once my process is perfected, I will restore them. No permanent harm will be done."
A sickening thought crept into my head. Then I asked him the question, knowing the answer full well. "How did you conduct this alleged research, if you can’t see?" Dudley’s head slumped forward. Hi shoulders fell. In a cold, soulless voice he answered. "Oh I can see Hutchins. My first subject was myself. I can see better than any man who ever lived" he stood quietly for several moments. The mewling from his "subjects" began to become more agitated. Then, in one motion, turned toward me and ripped the bag from his head. It was a horror beyond horror. That such deformities could be visited on a creature and it still live was an abomination to all existence. Professor Leland Dudley’s head was a bloated, fungoid mass from the nose up, striated and honeycombed like a morel mushroom. Arranged randomly about this mass were eyes. A multitude of eyes, rolling and blinking independently of one another. Dear god, if Dudley were not a madman before he did this to himself then surely he was now. "Horrific, is it not" he said. "You see, the Mi-go who assisted me in this process had no conception of what is acceptable human appearance. Or that I might not find it preferable to have only two eyes. But I have built on their knowledge. Soon I will restore myself, just a few more experiments and I will perfect the process…restore myself…restore them. You must help me Hutchins!" I should have humored him. I knew he was mad and would kill me or work his process on me if I refused him. But I could not. I have done things in my life I am not proud of. I have been weak and cowardly. I have been petty and cruel. I am not a brave man by any means, but then in there, in that cage surrounded by horror that liquefied my bowels and blasted my sanity beyond recovery. I gave him the only answer I could make my self give. "Fuck you, Dudley. I’ll cut my own throat before I take part in this blasphemy." he nodded. I gagged as he made that simple motion, it showed me too well the texture the flesh of his cranium had taken. A handful of the eyes focused on me, they were different colors. "Your upset, Hutchins, understandably so. You rest here for awhile, we’ll talk more lately" he left me then. Shutting off the lights as he left. I was alone in the dark with those piteous, mewling creatures that had been people.
I sat there for what seemed and eternity, then another voice spoke in the darkness, a lilting razor keen whisper that was at once musical and monstrous. "Well well. I enjoyed that little yarn, didn’t you, Professor Hutchins?" Two glowing points appeared in front of me, at the door to my cage, more damned eyes, I thought, at least there are only two. There was a snapping sound and I heard the door opening. I was seized by may jacket and dragged to my feet. "Get it together Hutchins" the voice whispered, close in my hear, I could feel it’s breath on me. It had a strange smell like sassafras and honeysuckle and copper. "I’m going to need you to help me rescue you and your little friend Ellie." "Ellie? Where is she? And Ms. Butler?" "Shhh!" the voice was feminine, I cannot now tell you what was unnatural about the voice, only that it was. "Ms. Butler is just fine," the voice assured me, "but sweet Ellie and yourself are still in a pickle." there was a giggle then, girlish and bone chilling. A vice-like grip closed above my right elbow and I was led through the dark, the door opened before me and I saw a well lit laboratory in the next room. Whoever was speaking firmly pushed me forward into that lab. My stomach churned and my heart sank when I saw what was there. Ellie was naked and strapped down to an operating table. Several IV’s had been put in her, administering a number of unknown substances suspended above in bottles The color was drained from her flesh, and she breathed slowly and raggedly. Trays of instruments surrounded the table. Many were recognizable surgical tools but others where strange and unfathomable. "I need you to unhook her from all that mess." For the first time, I turned to look at the speaker behind me. By this point I should have been numb to the bizarre. But yet another nightmare vision from a Hieronymus Bosch painting stood before me. It was a tall, shapely woman covered in what appeared to be a red chitinous exoskeleleton. A mask or headdress that concealed her features, four strangely shaped antennae jutted out through the unkempt mane of black hair spilling around her shoulders. Her eyes were covered by yellow lenses, the source of the glow in the darkened cage room. Only her mouth and chin were visible. As she smiled at me I saw her mouth and teeth were stained red as with some chemical dye like dental disclosing tablets. "I'm quite well rounded," she told me, "but I’ve never picked up much medical knowledge, get all those tubes and needles out of her, and we’ll get out of there." I gestured toward the room with the cages. "What about them?" her smile faded and her voice grew grim. "There’s nothing to be done for them. Best we can do is to punish those responsible for doing that to them. Which I intend to do directly. Now please, Professor Hutchins, get busy feeing that girl."
I started to work removing the restraints and pulling out the iv’s from Ellie‘s body. She was warm to the touch glistening with sweat; I shuddered to think what she had been injected with. Partly to distract myself, I began to chat with my bizarre rescuer. "Want to tell me your story?" I asked. "Don’t think me ungrateful, but I can’t help thinking your as much of a lunatic as Dudley. That’s some kind of costume you’re wearing isn’t it, like one of those vigilantes that are running around in New York and LA." She walked up casually beside me and picked up a grotesquely phallic object with a wicked hook projection from one end from off one of the instrument trays. "Do you know what this is Hutchins?" she asked. "No you don’t. Because this comes from Yuggoth. Your boy Dudley has been fooling around with fungoid monsters from a planet out past Pluto." the statement was patently ridiculous, but I was near unhinged from my experiences up to that point, so I was in no condition to argue. "That’s lovely" I told her. "But you avoided my question, who are you? Insect Girl? Lobster Lady?" She smiled at this, and I giggled like a fool. I noticed how crazy I was beginning to sound. She leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially. "You wan the truth? Would you like to know my secret identity that I hide from everyone, even my closest friends?" "Oh yes please" I replied. She looked around as if to be sure no one heard. "My name is Abraxiavasha of Khemi, former priestess of Ahuramahzda. I was born in what you now call Egypt some eleven thousand years ago. I ate the roots of a plant from the aforementioned Yuggoth and gained unending life, the strength of the ages, and the glory of invincablity," I snorted, and began laughing uncontrollably this "Abraxiavasha" joined me laughing heartily, I caught my breath long enough to tell her, "that’s bullshit." at which point we laughed even more manically. When our laughter died she told me, "Bullshit eh? I tell you what, if you don’t want any more bullshit answers stop asking me fool questions and get your little girlfriend off of that table" I chortled and removed the last of the electrodes attached to Ellie. "Done and done" I said, "Now it’s time for you to finish rescuing us, Abracadabra." "Abraxiavasha." she corrected me. "I have been called the name of that which spawned me...the Blood Lotus."

I helped Ellie to her feet. She was groggy and incoherent, but beginning to come out of it. Blood Lotus (how ridiculous the name must seem to the casual reader.) handed me a reeking lab coat, stained by several unnamable fluids. "Put this on her so you can stop leering and concentrate on getting out of here. Oh, and when this is all over, you might mention that amazing modern invention to her, you know, the razor?" I hastily put the coat on Ellie and guided her along as we followed Blood Lotus up a flight of stairs. When we reached the door at the top, she turned to me and whispered. "When we get through this door, those frat boys will try to stop us. I’ll go first and you follow behind. Let me do the fighting, Dudley’s done things to them and your no match for them. I’ll take them out and you follow when I tell you to and stop when I tell you to. Okay?" "I nodded. She opened the door and stepped out into the next room.
It was a living room of sorts with typical frat house furnishings, pool table, futons etcetera. There were six of the frat brothers lounging there in their matching grey sweat suits with the Greek letters Psi and Iota printed on them. They leapt to their feet calling out in surprise and confusion. By then Blood Lotus was upon them. I’ve seen fights in my life, this was not one. For all their unnatural strength, the Psi Iotas could not harm her. Fists, knives and a ball bat all shattered and broke when they struck her. She showed no pain or any indication she was troubled at all by their attacks. From time to time one of her fists would lash out, quick and straight, and a frat brother would fall with a twisted limb or a ruined face. All six were subdued in the manner and we moved into the next room an empty kitchen. We opened the next door and entered the main hall of the frat house, and I saw the source of the dull thumping from earlier. Andy’s party was in full swing. The hall was filled with partiers and the remaining Psi Iotas. The obligatory jam band was on stage playing a no doubt extended, meandering version of the Doobie Brother’s Jesus is Just All right. No one heeded us. They were all too drunk or stoned to react to our appearance. Even the six-foot tall insect woman leading the way. Andy was there, and he noticed us. He began yelling to the Psi Iotas and gesturing at us, and in seconds he was leading a group of them through the crowd in our direction. I stood in the kitchen door way, supporting Ellie. And Blood lotus began shoving aside partiers. Smiling eerily as Andy and his followers approached. Twenty or more of the augmented Psi Iotas ran toward us no doubt expecting to pack us quickly away into the kitchen. The leading member of the assailants was seized by the neck and crotch by Blood lotus. She lifted him above her head and hurled him into his fellows, bowling many of them over. Andy was screaming. "Get her, get her dammit!" what followed was generally a repeat of what happened earlier. They tried at one point to overcome her with their sheer numbers. But she brushed them aside. The partiers and the band remained oblivious at first. But when the blood began to spatter and the screams of agony began to be heard over the Leslie cabinets and mandolin solo. Panic ensued and a mad rush to escape the building began.
There was no escape for the frat boys. One by one they fell. Smashed. Broken. Crippled. Choking on their broken teeth or fighting to force breath into collapsed lungs. Then only Andy remained. He held a small automatic pistol, leveled at Blood lotus’s chest. She stood motionless. Her hands clotted with blood and tissue. Smiling. "Andy, please," I begged. "Put that down, it’s over. This has to be over." "It was over for me along time ago." he replied, and fired eight shots into Blood Lotus. She remained still long enough for Andy to realize his bullets had no effect, then grabbed him and slammed him to the floor. Then she started hitting him, and with each blow his face became less recognizable. I ran to them, shouting. "Stop! For God’s sake please stop hitting him!" Blood Lotus paused and turned to me, cocking her head to one side. "For God’s sake, Hutchins? Since when do you believe in God?" "Just… just don’t kill him" I pleaded. She let him fall limp to the floor. "C’mon." she said. "We have to find Dudley." Dudley found us it turned out. We heard Ellie scream and turned to see Dudley dragging her back into the kitchen. His massive fungoid head trembling gelatinously. We waded through the broken bodies of the Psi Iotas and the sea of half empty beer cans and followed. I could hear sirens in the distance. The police were on the way.
Dudley took Ellie down the steps to the lab. We confronted him there. He stood before the door to the cage room holding the instrument from Yuggoth to her neck. The hook-like blade resting on her jugular. Blood Lotus sighed, as thought with disappointment. "Really, Professor Dudley, are you going to humiliate yourself and me with the clichéd hostage situation?" "Damn you!" he hissed. His myriad eyes rolling insanely "you meddling whore! Who are you to interfere in my salvation, my glorious triumph?"
I tried one last time to reason with the man. "Professor, your ordeal has caused you to become unhinged. These experiments this procedure. It’s obscene. It has to stop. "No! No!" he protested, becoming shrill and maniacal "not obscene! My work was a success! A brilliant, glorious Success!" "Enough!" said Blood Lotus. "Let that girl go and I might not beat you to death. Let her go now" "kill me?" he replied. "Death holds no terror for me! Look at me! A loathsome festering monstrosity. A beast with a thousand eyes! Do you know what this is like? So see as I do? I see all things all things at once. I don’t control these eyes! I cannot close them! They are not mine! Others look at our world through these eyes, and through them I look at theirs! Y’Golonac was no fool. He tricked me. Tricked me and now he laughs at my folly!" As he continued his mad tirade he began to gesticulate wildly, and for a split second moved that evil blade from Ellie’s neck. She suddenly snapped her head back, smashing the back of her skull into Dudley’s misshapen face. As if I were an outside observer, I saw myself lunge forward seizing the arm that wielded that hideous blade. Ellie freed herself from Dudley as I struggled with him, and Blood Lotus dashed into the cage room. I grappled with Professor Dudley. We careened about the lab locked in a grim embrace, sparks showered the room as we smashed the equipment, noxious fumes filled the air as we knocked over shelves filled with chemicals and compounds unknown to mainstream science. My fear and anger had given me strength, but Dudley had the same hideous strength he’s bestowed on the Psi Iotas. Eventually he overcame me and pinned me to the operating table. The alien blade descended inexorably toward my throat. My vision was filled with that foul obloid that passed for his head, his countless eyes fixed on me, glazed with unassailable madness. "You could have helped me, Hutchins. You could have shared in my glory. Now you can do nothing but die, die like the dog you are." I resigned myself to death at that point. I was not afraid of it; it would release me from the obscene horror of this place. My only regret was that I’d failed Ellie. Ellie.
I closed my eyes, and awaited the end. But suddenly, I felt Dudley’s weight lifted from me and a horrible cacophony of wailing assailed my ears. Ellie was at my side pulling me to my feet. I looked about me in confusion and saw Professor Dudley being mobbed by a horde of naked figures with hideously distorted features. They piled on him, clawing, tearing, biting, dragging him too the floor. Blood Lotus leaned casually in the doorway to the cage room smiling. , entertained by Dudley’s grim fate. She had released his "subjects" from their cages, and now with some fevered memory of the many eyed monster who had ruined their lives. They took revenge. "No! Unhand me!" Dudley shrieked. "You dare not kill me! Only I can restore you, I! I! I!" his screams were muffled and he was hidden from view as his victims swarmed over him. Their arms raised and lowered some leaned down as if to bite or drink. I began too see blood. And pieces. Ellie shook me back to reality. "Aaron! It’s burning! We have to go!" she half drug me up the steps from the lab as the flames began to leap into the air, licking the ceiling. They burned in unnatural colors that had no analog in any earthly prism. The swarm of figures over Professor Dudley had become slower, redder. I saw Blood Lotus still leaning in that doorway; she clapped her hands like a delighted child. "Mmm. Now that’s some good Justice." she giggled. "A classic ironic fate for such a rotten bastard!" My view was obscured by flame and smoke, and then I recall nothing more until Ellie and I were outside being guided from Psi Iota house by a Deputy.
Ellie and I told them the whole story as it happened. Of course we were not believed. Ms. Butler was found wandering dazed and disheveled in the wooded area behind the house. She was only able to corroborate our story up to the point of the abduction from in front of the library. She claimed to have been knocked out and awoke to find herself abandoned in the woods. The fire that started in the basement bunt unnaturally long and hot and the fire department was unable to extinguish the blaze until Psi Iota house and any evidence it contained was totally destroyed. No bodies were ever found. No otherworldly artifacts nothing. However, two badly decomposed bodies were found in the woods were Ms. Butler had been wandering, but they were decapitated and thus no evidence for the type of deformities we described were to be found Andy and the other Psi Iotas had been removed from the building and hospitalized, several confessed to their involvement in the rash of abductions and implicated others. All were charged and await trial, but now trials seem unlikely as all the Psi Iotas have developed an unusual neuro-muscular cancer heretofore unknown to science. The disease would appear to be aggressive and terminal. Andy has yet to speak or show any evidence of awareness. His doctors have treated his injuries and claim to find no physical reason for his catatonia. Our accounts of the involvement of Blood Lotus, which were corroborated by some of the party attendees and the Psi Iotas who took such horrid beatings from her., were dismissed by the authorities as mass hysteria, no doubt fueled by drug or alcohol consumption. These accounts were simply added to the growing collection of urban myths about a sinister red devil-woman who meted out cruel punishment to transgressors.
Ellie and I put our ordeal behind us and tried to return to work. Ellie showed no physical ill effects from whatever chemicals were introduced into her system. , except for a mild recurring irritation of the skin on her forehead. We assumed that the process had been interrupted in time and she was unscathed. She vowed to eschew any further exposure to the paranormal, and confine herself to scientific pursuits. We found we developed a stronger bond because of our shared trauma, and our friendship blossomed into romance. For several months we enjoyed one another’s company. And eventually decided to cohabitate. On the day we scheduled for Ellie to begin moving into my apartment, I was at my desk grading papers, waiting on her to arrive with the first load of her belonging. I heard her enter, I’d given her a key to my place months ago, I heard her voice behind me. "Well here’s the first of it, mostly clothes and books, I’ll need you to help me with the heavier boxes." "Okay, gimme half a minute" I replied. I didn’t turn around at first; I was intent on finishing the grading, as to have the rest of the day free to help Ellie. "by the way," she said, "I’d like for you to come with me to my folk’s for Christmas this year, I think they might like to meet the man I’m going to marry." I turned around, intending to tell her I’d be delighted to meet her family. But instead I heard myself shriek. "No! Oh for God’s sake! No!" I fell out of my chair onto the carpet. Ellie became furious. "Shit, Aaron! Stop being such a childish idiot. You’ll have to meet my family eventually so you might as well get used to the idea and if you have to act like a buffoon I’m going home. Call me when you feel like being and adult!" she stormed out. I was unable to speak, so I couldn’t tell her it was not the prospect of meeting her family that caused my extreme reaction. It was the third eye that had opened up in the center of her forehead.