You knew why you got another so soon now. This one required preparation. Planning. Laying out the path before you that would lead you to the best outcome. An investment for a larger return. The more you suffered the better the result.
“I have food.” You said, entering the shed.
“Nummies!” Sally cheered, setting down the rag doll she was playing with.
The shed had been somewhat cleaned, and the bare essentials for these… biotoys had been provided. A few rags tied in shapes that vaguely resembled a person, a plastic ball you found in the yard, a box of sand for them to defecate in, and a pile of old towels to sleep in. You anticipated a refusal, some sort of denial of these meager accommodations from the domestic creature but she happily accepted. Seems life on the streets was worse than your filthy shed.
You set down a bowl of veggie scraps, herbs, and other additives and she began to eat. Piglike. Happy to scarf down whatever was before her, no question as to what was in it. Your lip curled at the sight. That horrible trusting nature again. You hoped the time would come soon to be free of them. Her and her foals. They were a few weeks old at this point, just starting to show some interest in the food in her bowl, peering over the edge of the bowl to see what was inside. You hated what you would have to do to them, but you would be so happy to have your day no longer filled with caring for such banal creatures.
“Where is the… sensitive baby?” What awful words you had to speak.
“Haff… hewe! Haff…” From the pile of old towels an obese purple foal wriggled, fat and excess skin wrapping every inch of the creature. It crawled to you laboriously, straining and panting.
“Mummah, how time 'tiww babbeh bettah?” Sally asked, lifting her head from her food bowl and licking the grease off her lips.
“Oh, not much longer.” You forced a smile at her.
“It jus dat… babbeh gettin biggah buh… Sawwy dunno, jus nu seem wite.” She watched her foal waddle up to you with a concerned look on her face.
“Don’t worry, I got the best food from the doctor.” You showed her a carton, pointing to the words on it as you spoke. “It says right there, Sensitive Baby. It’s making him all better.”
The carton did not say sensitive baby anywhere on it. It said “Total Parenteral Nutrition”, and it was meant for feeding an adult human. Two bottles of the stuff was enough fat and nutrients for a full grown adult for an entire day, and this foal had one every day in the few weeks you’d had him. You convinced Sally that her smallest foal was in danger of being a sensitive baby, something you had read about during your research, and that you needed to feed him special milk to supplement hers to keep him developing alongside his siblings.
The little nugget of fat waited patiently at your feet as you filled up a bottle with the thick off white liquid, giving it a good shake to separate any clumps. He was hefty as you picked him up, and as he drank he looked up at you with loving, if pained, yellow tinged eyes.
A chill ran down your spine. It was time. You resisted the urge to curl your fingers tighter and tighter, to crush the life from the creature and take what you so desperately needed. You let it finish its meal, watching carefully.
Sally finished eating and called her two other healthier babies over to eat. Her food was supplemented as well, with whatever grease and drippings you could get your hands on. Fatty and filling, leading to both her and her other foals being a little on the chunky side. You didn’t care. Didn’t affect what you planned to do.
“Hey, I think it’s time the babies got names.” You set the fat foal down on the workbench with shaking hands. It was time. You could see its health waning, its breath heavy and rasping. It didn’t have much longer. You had made modifications to your workbench in preparation, a few boards nailed over the sides of the bench. A lip that would prevent half-grown artificial creatures from flinging them off the side and ending their experience too soon.
“Weawwy?!” She looked down lovingly at the foals attached to her teats, sucking their fill of nutritious milk. “Babbehs, nu time fo; nummies! Namsie time!”
You picked up the first foal, a dull red foal with a bluish grey mane. “You will be Azathoth.”
“Azzaa… Athaaaa…” The foal babbled, attempting to say the name. You set it on the work bench.
“And you,” you pointed at the yellow unicorn with the dark blue mane, “you will be Hastur.”
“Haaahstuw?” He manages to spit out.
“You will be Nyarlathotep.”
“Nyaaaa… Nyawaw…” the fat creature fumbled over the words.
“Uhm… Mummah…” Sally whined, pawing at your leg. “Dose am… guud namesies buh… am hawd fo’ babbeh tu say…”
“I don’t care.” You lifted the heavy apron over your head. It grew heavier with every sacrifice.
“Oh… uhm… Mabbeh… Mabbeh mummah cum up wif… showtie names?” She asked gently, pleading.
“No.” You looked over the foals, suddenly somewhat fearful. Suddenly unsure. This fills you with… something. A feeling you’re unsure about. One you can’t put a name to. These little ones… they know something. Something the adults don’t. Curious.
Your hand slowly reaches for the ice pick. The foals’ eyes follow your hand, unsure of the sharp implement in it.
“Uhm, otay Mummah. Can babbehs cum back, dey didn’t get aww dey miwkies, an-”
She is cut off by the scream of the red foal as you slam the ice pick through its front hoof, pinning it to the table.
The yellow foal gasps in reply, darting away. You slap the purple foal, rolling it onto its back. You grab the boning knife from its hook on the pegboard and lift it over the squealing creature. Sally screams at your feet, begging you for something, you aren’t listening.
Ignore the distractions. Do what you need to do.
The knife slides through the skin of the blubbery creature cleanly, parting the purple fluff and splitting the soft flesh behind it. You don’t care about its struggling, the thick layer of fat protects you from cutting too deep. You set the knife aside, digging your fingers into the flesh and splitting it open with a wet ripping noise. The intestines burst out as if under pressure, wrapped in globs of fatty tissue. You toss them aside carelessly. It has been so long. So, so long. The foals and their mother took up so much of your time, your wounds have gone uncared for. Under the apron, under your simple clothing long scratches festered, itching incessantly for long weeks without the reprieve of the simmered livers and their broth. This, this would be the liver that would heal you, that would protect you. This liver, fattened like a forcefed goose, would be the one that fixed you. That fixed your damaged flesh, your damaged mind, your damaged spirit.
You reach into the twitching form, feeling for the enlarged organ. Your heart jumps into your chest as you feel it, large and covered in fatty growths. Sweet, succulent fat, ready to enter your body and soothe your pain. You swept around it feeling for connective tissue. Finding none, it seemed to leap into your hand freely, begging to enter your form. You pulled it from the form in it, expecting to witness a beautiful yellow organ.
Instead you held a blackened, rotting mass.
What seemed to be pustules of blessed fat were odd growths painted with greens and purples and oozing a yellow puss that dripped down your hand, the wretched smell raising the bile in your throat. With a trembling hand you set the rotted organ down on the table, its owner watching with pupils focused to pinpricks.
You had failed.
The focus lifts from you, the din of the room re-enters your consciousness.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-”
“NU HUWT NU HUWT NU HUWT-”
“BABBEHS HAB HUWTIES! MUMMAH HEWP!!!”
You clapped your filthy hands over your ears, trying to block out some of the noise. You had never had something go so bad before. So wrong. Was this the end for you? Would the beasts take you, or would your wounds pull you under first? Would the organs of the rest of this family be able to sate you, or would their livers be as tainted by… by what? What filled this creature with a sickness, a taint, a cancer?
You looked down on the failure of your efforts as it twitched once, twice, then fell still. Its eyes stared at the mass on the table, filled with terror even in their lifelessness.
Terror.
It is fear. Fear taints the liver. Your head swims as you look back on your hasty harvest with the clarity of hindsight. You ignored the ritual, spurned forward with your greedy desire, charging into the creatures flesh with no respect for the process that gives you the precious organs you need.
“FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!” You slam your hand down on the cooling corpse, reducing its head to a spray of blood and viscera. “IT’S ALL WRONG.”
You yank red foal up by the neck, the icepick ripping its hoof in half, and roughly throw it onto the floor to it’s mother. It lands with a crunch as you hold your face in your hands.
“BABBEH!” She snatches up the bloody foal and holds it to her chest.
“So much work…” you moan, leaning back heavily on the table. “You’re all ruined…”
“GIB HUGGIES, MUMMAH MAKE BETTAH!” The creature cries, rocking its sobbing young against its chest.
You chuckle to yourself, shaking your head. “It won’t work.”
It looks down on the injured creature for a moment, and then holds it out to you. “Muh-Mummah stawp huwties den? Pwease?”
You considered. “Alright.” You let her set the foal in your hand, looking it over for a moment.
“Mumah make bettah babbeh.” it said, looking hopefully up at you.
You considered for another moment, and then wrung the foal’s neck. “Here.” you tossed its limp corpsed back to its mother. “No more hurties.”
“…Babbeh…?” It whispered, frozen in place, its horror almost comically at odds with its juvenile baby talk.
You started cleaning, throwing the remains of the purple corpse into a plastic bag. Reset. Restart. You had been given a challenge and you had failed. The nightmares would come again, and you would suffer them. As you deserved. More pain and festering wounds that you would push through. As you deserved. Another would come. You would do better.
A small pain startled you, and you saw the yellow foal attempting to dig its tiny horn into your arm. Tears stain its cheeks and splatters of its sibling’s brain matter drip down its side, making strange markings on its yellow pelt. It lifts its head, looking up at you with hate in its tiny eyes, shards of bone resting on either side of its blunted horn, forming… something like a crown.
“Hastur…” You whisper, softly, reverently.
There he stands. The king in yellow, here in your presence. In a diminutive form, yes, but this was what you were meant to take away from this. Knowledge about the nature of your rituals, why you do what you do in the way you do it, and a gift in the form of a vessel of the king.
You reach for the vessel, slowly, and its bravado fades. It cowers under your hands, closing its eyes and waiting for pain that never comes. You lift it gently, looking over its tiny body carefully. The markings are strange, unknown to anything you’ve seen and easily mistaken by the lesser mind as drips of blood and nervous tissue but you see them connect and swirl. You see how they link together, how they interact to form something greater than their parts.
“I see you, my king.” You said, holding it aloft like an offering. You could see it, illuminated by rings of flame and sulfur, his many eyes and many teeth glinting. Yes, yes, this is what you were preparing for! Knowledge unending, a place as a blessed follower of The One Who Sleeps Beneath! You grin, giddy with the knowledge rushing through you.
The creature on the floor started to scream, clutching the limp form of its young. “BABBEEEEEEEEEEEEE-” You cut it off with a firm stomp to the chest, reducing it to a wet wheezing and a splatter of filth on the floor.
You carefully carried the vessel out of the shed. No place for a king. You would clean later, once the vessel had been cleaned and cared for, sheltered and sustained. It shuddered in your arms, and you gently patted its side.
“Be still, my king. I will make your vessel something worthy of your presence.” You carried the foal into your home, preparing yourself to be a part of something bigger. Much, much bigger.
