The Daughter of the Night Read online

  'Isn't that a bit boring?' she said. 'I mean, I know I complain about not having had an orgasm, but sex is still pretty exciting. There's the passion, the intimacy, the emotional arousal.'

  'Yes, but that's it, it's all, you know, emotions and stuff. Fish don't do emotions.' Unity looked playful.

  'I bet I could get you to feel some emotions if I tried. Here.' And before Dagon knew what was happening, she had grabbed his head and pushed it deep into the yawning canyon between those globes of horror. Which, Dagon could now confirm, felt as bad as they looked, somehow firm and squashy at the same time, rather like a slightly too old corpse he had once eaten. How had it come to this? He, once the mighty Lord of the Seas, now reduced to mindless administrative work by day and being sexually abused by ugly women by night. Why if this carried on, he'd just bugger off like Hastur. At which point the earthquake broke out again.

  Now, Dagon may be drunk, but he was not dumb, and so, pulling himself away from Unity, who was making growling noises deep in her throat while Nina complained querulously about unseemly behaviour in public, he tried to steady himself with a drink, found he'd run out, and so, as, when it came down to it, alcohol was alcohol, even if it did look like piss, drank the small sherry. Then, slightly recovered, he returned his attention to Unity, who was now: (1) holding out her arms and, with eyes closed, saying,

  'Oh take me, take me, fish boy. You've got what it takes to make me go all the way, I know it,' and (2) screaming,

  'First he assaults us and now she wants him to rape us. It's too much. Help. Help. Is there anyone there who'll help a damsel in distress?' To which the answer was, of course, no. None of the bar regulars were dumb enough to interfere with a Great Old One, even a drunken Great Old One, even a drunken Great Old One who had just been taken advantage of by a human.

  Anyway, Dagon had words of wisdom to impart, but how was he to do so, when the only woman bright enough to understand what he had to say was labouring under the strange apprehension that he was about to spawn with her. Which was ridiculous, for, apart from anything else, they were on dry land. Despairing of the whole thing, he decided to start in on the gin and tonic, but as soon as he picked up the glass some eighteenth sense or psychic connection alerted Unity, who had been rubbing herself in a most abandoned fashion to suddenly stop, open her eyes, and say, in a totally different tone of voice,

  'And hands off my drink, mister.’ She grabbed it and drained it in one go. 'Ah, that's better. And I see you've drunk snot-head's sherry too. Now the poor thing will never get a chance to show how someone without a body can drink in a sophisticated manner. I keep telling her that sophisticated is saying ‘hello’ before you have sex with them, but she thinks it means spending the evening contemplating a glass of pale sherry, and nothing I do can change her mind. I mean, I ask you, what has it come to when Great Cthulhu's daughter's own personal parasite prefers fermented cat pee to sex? She says sex is wrong, you know, and it isn't, is it Uncle Dagon?'

  Well, there was material there for hours of drunken rambling, but Dagon was a man, well, fish thing, with a purpose, which was to understand this:

  'Why do those lumpy bits of yours go mad when I think about my old chum Hastur? Look, it's happening again,' for so it was. Unity was torn: propriety or the desire for an orgasm? Propriety won. She said, as primly as she could,

  'The organs I believe you are referring to are not “lumpy bits” but my breasts, and they are particularly beautiful as breasts go. You should feel privileged that I let you experience them for yourself. Many people would die for a chance to even touch them. For that matter, many have. That was how I kept myself fed when I was at college. So, if you don't mind . . .'

  'Yes, alright, so anyway, what is it about your breasts and my mate Hastur? You see.' She did. She looked down at them with considerable interest and said,

  'Oh that means he must have something to do with me having an orgasm.'

  'What?'

  'My boobs – that's another word for breasts – wobble when I'm getting close to something I want. And don't go saying that's stupid. Father has a tentacle that changes in length depending on how far he is from R'lyeh. Auntie Shubbie's tail changes colour with every child she has and you change shape with the tides. Compared to all that, having boobs that know what I want seems quite sensible. So anyway, tell me all about Hastur.'

  Dagon considered,

  'Well, there isn't much to tell. He was one of us Great Old Ones. He did fire; great if you wanted a barbecue. And then one day he just . . . left. I'd always assumed he got bored, or got a bad feeling. Probably the bad feeling, seeing as how that was about the time the stars turned bad. So nobody's seen him for, oh, millions of years. I still miss him, though. Hastur and I had a great thing going, with our own fried fish shop. We called it The Hasty Dog. That's dog as in short for me, and Hasty as short for Hastur, you see, which . . .'

  'Yes, I see,' said Unity. 'And would you mind not saying his name quite so often? The boob wobble is quite pleasant when it happens every now and then, but nine times in ten minutes is a bit too much of a good thing.'

  'Sorry.'

  'So where did – he – go then?'

  'I really have no idea. None of us did. He just came to our little get-togethers less and less often and then one day poof he was gone. No more Hastur.'

  'Uncle Dagon!'

  'Oh, sorry. But if you want to know more,'

  'Oh, I do, I do, if it means I can finally have an orgasm after all these years.'

  'And what about me?' suddenly burst in Nina. 'What do I get out of this? You'll get your filthy, disgusting, horrible, sinful, Godless orgasm, but when am I going to find my true love? It's not fair. For all I know my true love could have been one of those men you did dirty things with, but you dumped them all before I could find out. I hate you, I hate you, I . . .'

  'Oh shut up,' said Unity. Then, to Dagon, 'You were saying?'

  'Yes, if you want to know more, go talk to the Elder Races. One of them's bound to know something.'

  Unity picked up her bag, made to leave and said,

  'Well, good-bye, Uncle Dagon, that's been very helpful. In fact, so helpful, I'll let you . . . oh all right, if you don't want to, you don't, but you don't know what you're missing. People, tell me that I'm a really great lay, which is nice, because at least it means one person gets a good time out of making love with me. Though as I said before, it is kind of fun, it's just not – special. Where was I?'

  'Saying good-bye.'

  'Oh yes, well I shall go to the Elder races, and even if I have to make love with each and every one of them, I shall find Hastur. Oh fuck.'

  Chapter 3: Unity Goes Walkabout

  (i) Getting There

  'Now,' said Unity, as she waited for the transportation invocation to take effect and send her from Great Cthuhlu's home planet of Cthonia, things having gone a bit more slowly than she would have liked due to the fact that the first three potential sacrificial victims had been ruled by the Adept-in-Charge to be imperfect, as a result of which Unity had lost her temper and hit him so hard he had to have a nice lie down, meaning that a spare Adept-in-Charge had to be found, and so on and so forth, meaning that this was turning out to be one of those trips from hell, especially as the only things in the duty-free shop that she might have been interested in, i.e. vibrators, were all, much to Nina's relief, as she hated to admit, even to herself, that she did find the distant hints of sensation she experienced when Unity was pleasuring herself really far too pleasant to be sinful, last season's models. And so, here she was, apparently having a conversation with herself. But before the sentimental reader sees this as the sign of a rapprochement between Unity and her hanger on, a thawing of their cold war, closer examination showed that in fact Unity was talking to her breasts. She continued, 'You've made it very clear that I need to find Hast . . .' vibrations set in in earnest . . . 'Oh bugger, the Unnameable one . . . ' they doubled in intensity, becoming so noticeable that the Adept-with-the-big-big-K
nife was distracted and accidentally slit the throat of the very new Adept-in-Charge, meaning that they had to start all over again. But Unity didn't care. All she wanted was to be able to go through life without feeling as if her chest was a cross between San Francisco and Kyoto. 'Oh well, him.' The breasts were still, well, apart from their, Unity thought, rather attractive rise and fall in time with what would have been her breaths had it, in fact, been necessary for her to breathe, which it wasn't, but, as already mentioned, she liked the effect, and it had become very clear to her very early in her life, back in the days when she was still sufficiently human, in biology at least, that she still had to breathe occasionally, that everybody else (apart from Nina) liked it a lot, so the effect had carried on without the cause. There are some advantages to being the daughter of a not-quite-quasi-god after all.

  So, satisfied that she now had a way of referring to the person who she was desperately trying not to think too hard about, she continued,

  'So you've been very helpful and all that, but now I know that I need to find . . . him . . . do you think you could stop doing your thing every time he's mentioned? 'Cos, though I like it every now and then, I'm going to have to talk a lot about the guy, and it gets a bit wearing after about the seventh go in less than a quarter of an hour. So could we make a deal?'

  'Listen to yourself,' said a clearly disgusted Nina. 'Talking to those awful things. It's bad enough the way you flaunt them all the time, but now you're acting as if they're intelligent. Mad as well as bad.'

  'Oh, but they are,' said Unity seriously. 'Didn't you know that they're conscious in their own right? It's been my theory for a long time that I was mean to be triple breasted, so I could truly be the über-woman, but one of them got depressed and committed suicide and you’re its discarnate spirit. Anyway, if they're not living things, why do I dip them in milk every night?'

  'I always assumed it was one of your disgusting cosmetic practices. For all I know you could be deluded enough to think it makes them look nicer.'

  'Well it does, but not in the way you think. It's because if I didn't they'd wither and die and no-one would want me ever again.'

  'Rubbish. I know perfectly well what b..b..bosoms are for, and it isn't your vulgar display and fondling. It's participating in the miracle of motherhood by giving suck to your tiny offspring. Oh when are you going to settle down and become a true womanly woman, devoting your life to your family?'

  'Fuck off, Nina.' Nina made an inarticulate sound of horror and disgust. 'For your information, ordinary women, those stupid enough to get shackled instead of living their womanhood to the full like me, may have breasts that give suck. Mine just suck. And no stupid puns if you don't mind. Mind you, it's always puzzled me that it's milk that they drink. You'd have thought it would be blood, wouldn't you? I mean, it's more appropriate, and it'd mean I wouldn't have to tie down Auntie Shubbie every few days and milk her, which would be a great relief. To her, probably, as well. Where was I?'

  'Heaven knows.'

  'Oh yes, that's it.' Unity went back to her usual pursuit of ignoring Nina and returned her attention to those organs that, if she was right, were in some strange way, Nina's siblings. 'So, girls, how about it? Do you agree that I now know so thoroughly about, er, that Great Old One, that there's no point you reminding me any more, so it would be better if you devoted yourself to looking out for the next stage in the puzzle? I mean, I'm sure there's more to it than finding H..h..him. That is, unless he has an absolutely enormous dong. Nina, do you think I've never had an orgasm because I've never known anyone sufficiently well endowed?'

  'Far be it from me to comment on your depraved habits, and really, how you expect me to know I have no idea, but may I remind you that you once coupled with a blue whale, and its, er, whalehood must have been at least five metres long.'

  'Hmm. You're probably right. It was a lousy lay. And the blubber tasted nasty too. So it must mean that h..h..he who must not be named is the key, but I need to know where to put it.'

  'Knowing you,' sniffed Nina, 'I should think it's fairly obvious. Where you put all the long, pointy objects you come across. I don't complain, but if you're going to live a life of turpitude, you might at least try to make it natural turpitude, the way the Lord intended.'

  'Nina, I am a woman whose dainty mouth can engulf every monster in Azathoth’s universe, who has sentient breasts and a disembodied voice that follows her everywhere she goes. In what way exactly could anything about me be natural?' And answer came there none. Nina maintained a martyred silence. Unity was used to that, it was a well known trope that, when bested in argument, Nina would try to put herself onto a higher plane and make out that she was not answering not because of something so mundane as the fact that she hadn't a clue what to say without making herself look, even by her standards, foolish, but rather because she could no longer bring herself to soil herself with this conversation. Which didn't bother Unity a bit. The less she had to talk to her sort-of sister the better, as far as she was concerned. Her breasts were far better company, first because they didn't answer back, second because they looked nice, and third because they felt nice. So, trying one more time, she said, 'So, what do you think girls: you let me know when I'm getting warm on stage two, but leave me on my own when it comes to looking for Hastur. Oh shit.' But the expected earthquake didn't happen. The organs in question just hung there, looking as gorgeous as ever, rising and falling gently with her not-breath. So it seemed that a deal had been made.

  With that business out of the way, Unity now had nothing to occupy her other than the dubious delight of talking to Nina. She looked over the transportation engineers, but like all cultists they were rather inferior specimens, and, despite her raging lust, she couldn't bring herself to give one of them the opportunity to boast, over a half of shandy shared with his one and only friend, about how he had given her a right seeing to, confident in the knowledge that as she would not go to the sort of bar he frequented, his friend would never discover that she had to spend fifteen minutes drawing diagrams before he understood exactly how it was that one set about taking a woman's dress off. So, as she tended to get rather tetchy when bored, she decided to take it out on someone, and as taking it out on Nina would mean talking to her, she had no alternative but to have a go (strictly, she pointed out to herself, in the non-suggestive sense of the term) at the engineers.

  'Hey, you lot, am I ever going to get to Yuggoth? I mean, I know I'm immortal, but I've got an orgasm with my name on it out there somewhere, and the sooner I meet it the better.' There was a certain amount of nervous shuffling, and then one, whose colleagues considered him a wit, said,

  'I could show you where it is if you like.’ Unity took a quick look down. Steady as a rock. Fortified with this knowledge, she laid into him. Adopting sexy pose number forty-three ('I am so amazingly beautiful, gorgeous, arousing and all round desirable that you should feel lucky I let you look at me, so don't push your luck') she said,

  'Oh yeah, with what? I use men like you to clean the wax from my ears.' Which arcane insult made him shut up and no mistake. In fact, if we may look ahead for a moment, it was the making of him, for he realised that there was more to life than being looked up to by a bunch of losers, applied for a job on Nyarlathotep's personal staff, and was shortly thereafter eaten, fulfilling the dream of all true cultists. But going back to Unity, as she stood there, radiating impatience, pheromones and all kinds of other disturbing things, the shuffling continued until one brave soul said,

  'Er, the thing is, like, er, none of us wants to be Adept-in-Charge after what happened to the last two.' Unity took a deep breath (causing three of the cultists to faint) and, in a voice that the Lurker in the Dark might have heard had he been, for some reason, lurking round this space-port departure lounge, screamed,

  'Are you telling me that I'm having to sit here with nothing to do and no-one to fuck, and don't even try it on or I'll tell Daddy to make sure that no-one eats you ever, ever, ever, and all because
none of you losers is prepared to stick a knife into that quivering wreck?' she pointed at the victim, who, it has to be said, for we must be fair, was quivering with lust and not fear. 'Well,' she said, her face developing a rather nasty smile, the sort of expression one might expect of Great Cthulhu's daughter when she had just decided to do something deliciously evil, which she had, 'I suppose I have no choice but to take matters into my own hands.' Which, the cultists thought, meant that she was going to slaughter the victim herself. But she had other ideas. Reaching for one of the exiguous triangles of fabric that, if one is cavalier with the language, could be said to be covering her bosom, she started to tug at it slowly, oh so slowly, pulling it away to reveal the glory beneath. Some of the cultists started to cry, presumably hoping that by regressing to childhood they might be in with a chance of persuading her to suckle them, and she said, 'And now I'll do the other one, and then I'll take it all off, and by the time I've finished, I'll be naked and you'll all be mad. And not in a good Abdul Alhazred way, but mad like bloody Azathoth.' At which point most of the cultists fainted and, more to the point, the chosen victim expired, meaning that, with a sigh of 'And about bloody time too,' Unity vanished from Cthonia and reappeared light-years away on Yuggoth, home of the Fungi.