From the dawn of time he came, moving mostly silently down through the centuries, except when he jostled Sean Connery's elbow and got chewed out for spilling his coffee. He had the look of the ancient Pharaohs; tall, lanky, swarthy, and with a terrible case of rickets. I had heard murm'rings of the displays he shewed forth, in the places where things get shewed forth without anyone getting charged with a felony; monstrous secrets projected onto the domed ceilings of the amphitheaters, which pre-empted the weekly amphings and caused wonder and distress amongst the people. It was said he could summon forth demons and angels; that he was descended of the ancient and noble bloodline of Michael Jordan, and could speak with the dead and not get bumped straight to their voicemail. Rumors were whispered in the streets of how he had walked beside the head of Richard Nixon and not been Arrooo'd, nay, not the once; and so it was with great trepidation that I found myself in the street that night. Yes, great trepidation and a coupon for one free Happy Meal if I should chance to buy an adult meal at regular price. The air had become thick with tension of a kind subtle and unspeakable, as usually happens in stories like this one, as if some unknown and dread force lurked just beyond the veil of the knowable cosmos. Also, I had a migraine. And so it was that I found myself drawn along, subtly at first, then not quite as subtly as at first, by the throngs of the curious, the desperate and the I.R.S. auditors to the great colosseum, where it was said the ancient and delightfully aromatic worker of cosmic mysteries would perform his greatest and most terrifying of demonstrations. Also, he was said to do amazing things with wicker. We shambled along, the great tide of humanity, from one dank and fitfully lit street corner to the next. None seemed to know precisely what course our meandering charted, and yet on we moved as if by instinct, as if possessed by a preternatural will not our own, our mass journey plotted by an unseen force like that which must certainly guide lemmings or drunks. At last we came to an embankment or stairs. The light was too dim and the layer of exhausted hikers under my feet too thick to be certain. A sense of evil crept upon the edges of my awareness as we descended and grew steadily more awesome and horrible in the force which it exuded upon us as it drove us forward. I feared then that we had stepped into the domain of the Great Old One Azathoth, or as it might be known to scholars of more recent years, Hillary Rodham Clinton. I turned in fright, then, at the last -- but there was no escape to be made. The rank tides swept on still, into that yawning chasm which lay just off some litter-strewn sidewalk. I felt the walls and low ceiling of the tunnel even as I was swept into its mouth with hundreds, nay, hundreds of thousands of others, that reeking swell of blind bodies shuffling in the dark. At last I turned, and the image which greeted my staring eyes shall forever be etched in ash upon my soul, the name of the formless thing which sat gibbering and swaying upon the misshapen dias under that bare bulb shall drive my lips in soundless whispers unto my shallow pauper's grave. For I have looked upon the mind-shattering face, the ever-changing, monstrous face, of the Messenger and part-time chauffer of the Great Old Ones -- The Jive-Talking Chaos -- Carrot Top!
