No, We Deliver: A tale of the Cthulhu Mythos

'Twas one esspecially sepulchurous summer afternoon that my grim odyssey into the realms of madness began. Gentle readers, you will surely question my sanity as I divulge to you the things I encountered that terrible bright and sunlit tuesday, and even I have questioned the reality of the adventure, so greatly do I wish that it had only been a fevered dream.    I was comissioned by one "Henry Warren" by wireless to deliver his favored dish of boxed noodles. This was quite standard for my line of buisiness, but there was a certain air about the man and the way he giggled that filled me with a peculiar sense of unease. The address given, "1555 street road", conveyed a subtle yet far greater sense of abnormalcy, not unlike a spaniard who has recently bathed.    I set about my task like any other, bidding farewell to my dismal coworkers and the seething mass that operated our cash machine. My supposed destination lay beyond the outskirts of town, down a dreary little alley I had heard of only in hushed whispers. I stopped briefly to confirm the directions with one of the greater shambling fungi, who bid me good look and continued on its merry way.

It was with a distinct feeling of queasiness that I first happened upon that fabled alley, leaving my car in the lot of an abandoned christian bookstore, its decaying foundations reeking with the stench of a thousand tales best left buried. It was round the curiously stained corner of this ghastly ruin that I was to discover the dinner, but to my shock and horror I found naught but scrap metal and a wandering old-one. She told me that the address I sought had long since been relocated to the opposite side of town.

The journey lasted 15 minutes, but it felt as though hours had passed, creeping by my senses in a desperate effort to escape some terrible fate involving metaphorical pits or something. As I exited my weary vehicle for the second time, the sense of foreboding escalated tenfold. Slinking carefully down this new street, I found not 1555 but 1533, 1534, and so forth. The old one had been mistaken - or senile, perhaps, as great cosmic ancients often are - and sent me far from my true destination. For a moment I feared I may never receive a tip, and my perception of time blurred as I staggered in an abysmal disappointment back to my car. As I neared the battered volkswagen, however, I noted something out the corner of my eye so odd that it at first failed to register, and I daresay it was near enough to touch when I realized, with a startled yelp, that I was in the vicinity of a black man.    As the initial shock wore off, it became gruesomely apparent that the eldritch creature meant no harm. As I had, after all, seen far stranger in my travels (of what, I would rather not divulge) I decided to attempt communication. I cautiously approached it with my situation and a humble request for its guidance.    After what appeared to be an eternity of careful thought, it widened the beastly orifice that passed for a mouth and emitted a morbid cacophany of sound.

"SHAW DAWG, DEY BE SHIZZY BO BOOZLE IN DA BIZAZZLE!"

Having apparently invoked its wrath, I left my watch as a distraction and hastily returned to the safety of my automobile. I was, for the time being, on my own. Pushing the unpleasant experience behind me, I continued my drive down the eerie street in what I uneasily guessed was the right direction, for soon I noted address 1540, and soon after, 1549. It was growing abominably dim when finally I arrived at 1552, and found that I could drive no further, as the crepuscular pavement was in the process of renovation.    I know not how long I walked that tortured road. At some point I was taken by surprise by a terrible looming shape that filled me with an icy, gripping fear and the urge to relax my bladder until the moon shone bright and I saw to my relief that it was only a shoggoth. I spared some change and pressed on.

Finally I arrived at what I believed to be my elusive destination. The decrepit house on 1555 leered hideously in the dark, like an aging chinaman in the presence of adolescent girls. Something, my senses told me, was dreadfully wrong, but the rapid cooling of the noodles took on a sudden and uncanny urgency rivaled only by my rising curiosity in this Henry Warren who lived in so obscure an abode.    I crept up the melancholy stairs and knocked, not entirely without hesitation, upon that hateful door. Time came so a standstill as I awaited a reply, my heart feeling ready to plunge through my abdomen and wriggle its way painfully out my urethra. Finally, the door creaked open, and I was greeted by a man who's sepulchurous tie I dare not recall.

"What the hell do you want???"

"Henry Warren?" I asked.    "Excuse me?" he spat.    "Is this the residence of Henry Warren? I have his lo-mein" I answered.    The man stared me up and down through cold slits, in a bout of deep contemplation and/or indigestion. Finally, he spoke...    ...I reeled. The door slammed shut in my face. Dropping the accursed noodles, I lurched aimlessly back to the cold, dark street like an Irishman on a friday. Overcome with nausea, I stumbled headlong into the sidewalk and blacked out.    I awoke hours later, the man's words circling endlessly in my baffled mind...    "Fool, Warren is dead."    ...Was it true? Could it be possible? WHO had placed the order?! My mind spun like a southerner attempting to read. What twisted man - spirit - THING had seen fit to send me on a journey of such unattainable objectives, wasting a small box of seafood lo-mein and almost my entire afternoon?    Who, or dare I say, what, indeed..........