The Rubaiyat of Abdul Alhazred (plus a comic!)

First things first: During an MSPaint creepypasta thread I caught on /x/ ages ago, some ridiculously awesome person redid my Strangers story, and I kinda love them for it:

Secondly, I do intend to write more frequently, I've just been disconnected from the internets for a while now. In fact, I sat down this evening intending to write a short story - and then I somehow wound up writing a Ruba'i about the Cthulhu Mythos instead. Despite the fact that I haven't written poetry since high school assignments, and though I liked the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, I still had to google the rhyme scheme. Nonetheless, a ruba'i about Miskatonic University is a thing that exists now.

The Rubaiyat of Abdul Alhazred

New England's image is nothing but a lie,
Oh, there is pastoral beauty, and blue sky.
But the people are ignorant, lost, and damned,
And New England is where men go to die.

I was a professor, tenured, in New York City,
Until I fell under the eye of an ethics committee.
For what? For nothing, a minor indiscretion.
A student's bright red lips that smiled so pretty.

A bag of money convinced my paramour not to sue,
But could not seal her lips, which meant I was through.
I could have resigned in disgrace, and how I wish I had,
Instead I sought a transfer, and found Miskatonic U.

They called it a school, but after NYU it seemed a farm,
Though more dismal than rural, to my faint alarm.
My new assistant, Edward Whately, found my distress,
Quite amusing. "Professor, I swear here you'll find no harm."

This he told me, and then he laughed and he grinned,
And I felt peculiarly that somehow, he knew how I had sinned,
To be exiled to this school on the ass of nowhere,
He remarked that proper ears hear much in the wind.

Speaking of the wind, you wouldn't believe how it would howl,
In the dead of night, and it would stir up scents so foul,
That even when my dark dreams were not upon me,
I hardly slept, and my face wore a constant scowl.

My mood was not improved by teaching class,
My students were ill-bred, and not one could surpass,
The dumbest that I had taught before I came to Arkham.
And fortunately, not one looked a decent piece of ass

I'd let my lust lead me to trouble once, and would not twice.
Even the worst gambler knows it's time to put up the dice,
When his luck has guttered out and led him to ruin,
With a sigh and few regrets, he hides from his vice.

My students were sub-par, as I believe I have said,
But I exaggerated, for Whately was a wonder instead.
It took a month to notice, and I only discovered it,
When he handed in a report on the life and death of Alhazred.

A mad Arab prophet? For a time I thought I was being put upon.
Told Whately to pull the other one, the one with bells on,
But he showed me his research on the priest of dead gods,
And also, he said, Miskatonic holds the last known Necronomicon!

I searched the library, and eventually I uncovered the book
In an underground storage closet, tucked where nobody would look.
Unless, of course, they were driven, or at least as bored as I was,
As I touched it's cover I felt queasy and I shook.

My Latin was shaky, but still much better than most
Opened to a random page, it spoke of a host,
Of a hundred hundred men, sacrificed on a mound,
To keep separate a dead, dreaming being and its wandering ghost.

Every page was a wonder, a revelation, and a fright,
And before I could tear away my eyes, it was the end of the night.
Entering the basement unaided, I knew, was grounds for dismissal,
But as I tried to leave, I found my hands clenched the book tight.

I could not or would not leave the book where it lay,
And in a fit of madness, I stole it, I'm ashamed to say.
For just a second, it reminded me of my prior mistake,
But I shook the thought off, and carried the Necronomicon away.

A day passed, then a week, and then another one,
And I finally accepted that I'd been witnessed by none.
In fact, the book's disappearance was never mentioned at all,
So there wasn't a single hint of the trouble I'd begun.

Other than the book itself, which haunted my days,
As my nightmares have always turned my nights into a haze,
Of violence and terror and weakness and woe.
Soon not a teacher or student would meet my bleary gaze.

But aside from a little paranoia, terror, and the odd spasm,
The book was more Bible than horror and phantasm.
Not in the sense that I worshiped it, don't misunderstand,
It just had the same overwhelming scope, like staring into an endless chasm.

The book spoke of warring factions beyond the stars,
Between beings born in the wounds and the scars,
Left in our reality as it collided with another,
A universe much stranger, more tenebrous than ours.

One day I quizzed Whately about the research he'd left out,
In his paper on Alhazred, Al Azif's author devout.
I wasn't very subtle about it, I have to admit
And he knew I'd stolen the book, I have no doubt.

He took me to a place in the woods that he knew well
A craggy hill, where he said a hundred thousand men once fell.
I started at that, and just barely held my tongue,
And he told me stories of a lost one, dead in R'lyeh

I tried to fight it off, but I felt just a smidgen
Of belief in Whately's absurd, lunatic religion.
And I think he sensed it in me, and he gave me such a look -
Like a starving hawk might stare at a pigeon.

We spoke long that day, of topics that would make heads whirl,
And that evening, he insisted that I accompany him to the Pearl,
A local bar, which I had until then disdained,
But we drank long and hard, before I saw the girl.

My lust rose in me, and I hardly bothered to resist,
I abandoned Whately then, and relied on my wits.
To charm the young pretty thing, the beautiful Anne,
Nineteen years old, with innocent eyes and lush tits.

I drank with her, and pretended it was all good,
That no, I hadn't convinced her to drink more than she should.
I offered to take her home, it was a gallant gesture,
And I asked, "why not take a short-cut through the wood?"

It rained under a gibbous moon, as we strayed by the mound,
The cold must have sobered her up as I lay her to the ground.
For she struggled against me, as I took her in the dirt,
And my vice uncoiled in me as my head started to pound.

The haze lifted from me when I heard her neck snap,
And I nearly had a heart attack when Whately began to clap,
As he walked out of the woods with a smile on his face.
"It was easier than I thought it would be, old chap!"

Around me and poor, dead Anne, the ground started to groan
Cracked open, let out fetid air, eldritch light, and an ethereal moan
"You've done it now, you've reconsecrated the altar!
You wouldn't believe how long it took to get blood on that stone!"

I screamed, "Why did you bring me to the mound in the mud?
Why, you fucking bastard, did you immerse me in this flood?"
"Professor," he said, with a carnivorous chuckle,
"I needed someone with a craving for virgin's blood."

"There are rules that bind me, they can never be bent,
For the neverborn can't sacrifice the truly innocent.
I needed a tool, a monster that still remains a man,
And there you were, a rapist that didn't repent!

I merely whispered of Al Azif, and you fell into my plan,
And then I arranged your introduction to sweet little Anne
The rest, all of it, the crime was yours alone.
You played the verses of the song I began!

Now, as we speak, the writhing night stirs
And my foetid cousins taste this blood of hers.
In the deeps of dark space, in the depths of the sea,
For the first time in millenia, an awakening occurs.

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.
So says Al Azif, and soon you shall see it true,
But there's still much to do, so I bid you goodbye.



So, yeah. There it is. Stories that don't involve rhyming to follow soonish.