October 31st, 1979
Let me start this funeral by clarifying two things:
1. Liam Turner had gone missing two years prior under completely unknown circumstances;
2. All of Fritz Williams' remaining acquintances — besides Nathan Terblanche — had died one year prior under circumstances derived from the inability of the mind to go beyond the dark age.
With no one to share with his distant scars, scars that showed up despite the many contorted fleshes and broken bones he wore throughout the years, 'the most powerful man in the world' had come to realize that this alleged world of his was infinitesimal.
Such contradiction inevitably brought him back to his own Dante's inferno, where he found out secrets one could interpret as both a maniac laugh from distant elder stars and the healing whispers of the wheels seen in Ezekiel's vision. And he shuddered, because the maddening reign of the illness going by the name of Nathan Terblanche did not call him to visit it again itself. In fact, God's blind spot was the only place he could ever be now — the place where men would die in the light and live in the dark, the abyss that was aware of its sentience and chose to not stare back at anyone.
All that he had in his possession was an antique firearm in the color of copper and a white leather glove — a gift from Terblanche in one of the many get-togethers they participated in in the 1950s — that should not allow him to miss a single shot if things were meant to walk down the route of danger and bloodbath. And while he was anxiously waiting for the elevator he was confined in to arrive at its destination, the same office that intertwined their hearts in a seesaw of arousal and nausea, he pondered what questions he could use to confront the shell of a man — the cloudiness of his earthquaking mind demanded all sorts of answers he wanted to hear before giving birth to the questions they would need to come from, and Fritz wondered if that was not similar to the very nature of Terblanche himself: an effect that could walk away from its cause without regard.
Oh God, but what about his own doings — the people he told to visit Nathan too? How many souls did he launch into the otherworldly landscape of promises that would not be fulfilled, carried away by the disheveled impulsiveness of the worm that gnawed at the flesh of his wandering corpse? He who fights with monsters should always take care lest he thereby become a monster, but Fritz failed to conceive it's not merely 'monstrous' what comes from very, very far away and brings Its image of — hopefully — indecipherable patterns with it.
And then his spine had to keep together all of his body as a shiver ran down through every bit of it and broke that stream of unwanted thoughts, in response to the vast and loathsome presence of an equally unwanted form speaking in a sensitive and redundant tone, in a peculiarly abominable quality of malice and solace combined in the same uttermost pity God vociferated in the ancient days of the great flood…
"Won't you come in, dear Fritz?" It asked — Nathan Terblanche asked — while walking off the elevator and entering the office.
Fritz was sunken by an unimpending sense of doom that drove him even further towards the 'truth' of Nathan Terblanche — or the closest concept something of such liking could hold as a synonym of veracity. He swallowed before taking his steps to that chamber of aeon-long imprisonments melted together and quickly got to his seat to meet the stupefying identity of dread straight into its eyes.
"I read the letter you sent me a week ago quite a few times, but I couldn't understand what it was about yet, Fritz." He smiled. A pause. "I remember I told you back then this century would be ours, and so it happened; you — your company — catalogued more than eight thousand items in a few decades with the help of the Confidential Report, and my enterprise has never been this good since the days of the Apartheid. May I ask why you are here then?"
"I don't think our personal exchanges have been in an equal state, Nathan." Fritz sighed. "And I would like for your influence over the Foundation to decrease. This is my job."
"Am I correct to assume such is because of the day we first met in person and the new project of mine?"
"You are."
Nathan adjusted his posture and cracked one by one of his knuckles. His smile widened.
"We did this together."
"The hell we did! You've been using me!"
"Now now, calm down." Nathan yawned. "Being the friend of a Black man does not erase your past."
Stubborn silence slept throughout the room.
"You see, that's the problem you all have."
"We all?" Fritz asked.
And it replied in an instant, "Humans."
Poor Fritz's soul was then thrown into a pitch-black and hilarious state of torpor as he could not bring himself to move anymore.
"I changed! And I wanted the best for my people!"
"The latter is true. That's why we've swept other people under the rug, isn't it? And that made us grow. The Foundation's all over the world now."
His brain desperately ordered in vain for each of his joints to do something, only to be answered by a mercy plea of such awful hopelessness one should not dare to put on paper, inaugurating the second act of the distorted and blind horrors of the graveyard for sanity that took place many decades ago.
Nathan leaned over to feel Fritz's clothes until he could find and get the firearm he had been carrying, and carefully opened the chamber to remove one of the bullets before pointing the gun at its own head.
"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." It said. "And you see, I seek knowledge since the very moment I felt disgusted by the lopsided poems of life and death.
He spun the gun's barrel. "In the end, I would say I'm a man of simple taste — whenever I see the opportunity to move, I do. And when I move, I grow. So why would I stop? Is it my fault the world is too small for my infinity?"
A smile.
"But if these manners are getting in the way of such precious daydreams as yours, we can solve it in my terms. And I am of the opinion that the only morality in a cruel world is chance." Its finger touched the trigger. "Let's see if mine are good."
It pulled it whilst enamoring Fritz's eyes, and nothing. Then it spun the barrel again and placed the firearm over the desk, letting out a sigh.
He said, "That was close."
"What are you?" These trembling words were the only ones Fritz could mutter.
"Names don't matter when you're given a lot of them," Nathan began, "but if you want a charming one to appear in your books, then you may call me
Nyarlathotep
CrawlingChaosManofaThousandMasksHadalOneScourgeofMankindHeraldoftheVoidLordoftheEndlessNightUnforgottenFaceless
CrawlingChaosManofaThousandMasksHadalOneScourgeofMankindHeraldoftheVoidLordoftheEndlessNightUnforgottenFaceless
Nathan Terblanche." Both of them laughed, and He continued. "It's my name, after all."
Then Nathan's telephone rang, and He picked it up.
"Hello?" He smiled. "Yes, I am the Administrator."