Today I have a guest post from the head of the Cthulhu Detective Squad, Billy Lovecraft, who has written Billy Lovecraft Saves the World, a new MG paranormal horror story. The last thing Billy Lovecraft’s parents sent him before the crash was a photo of something on the wing of their plane. Now he’s stuck with a horrible and heart-breaking mystery: What was that awful creature, and why were his parents targeted? It’s up to Billy to gather a team of like-minded kids and lead them through a dark new reality where the monsters are real, not everyone is who they seem to be, and an ancient alien wants to devour the world.
When Dealing With Monsters Who Are Real Jerks
As you can imagine, being twelve and trying to lead the Cthulhu Detective Squad in its mission to save the world from being chewed up by aliens and cults ain’t easy. I mean, there’s the normal stuff, like the attitudes and emotions and egos of the team. But that’s, y’know, whatever. That’s human. Tough but not insane.
Usually.
No, the issues that come up for me are the ones where I need to be “diplomatic” and all that crap. It’s not one of my strong suits.
But I need to be “diplomatic” when dealing with humans who think I’m some kinda threat. Or when I’m dealing with certain non-human entities.
I’ll give you a quick example.
There are creatures called the Great Race of Yith. When they inhabited Earth eons ago, they lived in bodies that were sorta cone-shaped. They had four wriggling appendages—one ended in a sphere (their head), two ended in claws, and the fourth has little things like horns or trumpets on the end. But that’s almost irrelevant, because these suckers hop from species to species and time to time through mind transfer. That’s how smart and advanced they are.
I mean… Man. Whoa.
I hear they’ve transferred their minds into the Coleopterous race—a race of beetles who take over the Earth after mankind goes bye-bye.
Aaannnyway.
I was in Australia’s Great Sandy Desert, hunting for the Lost City of Pnakotus, which happens to be where the Yithians housed their library. I found the city, eventually, but I also found a member of the Great Race (after dealing with a bunch of cultists). Yithians are scary as poop in person, by the way.
So this Yithian, get this, he said I—apparently a representative of humanity—owed the Great Race tribute. This thing was being a jerk. And I wanted to just fry it with one of our Tesla Cannons. But Medusa told me I needed to negotiate.
So, fine.
I asked the Yithian what it wanted.
It said it wanted California. The reasoning being that California would be a more acceptable location for the Yithian library.
Since I was in no position to say, “Hey, yeah, sure, take California,” I asked if we could offer up a time-share in Miami or something instead.
The Yithian wasn’t interested. But it told me it might consider a mind-transfer with a human of impeccable intellect and standing as a reasonable substitute.
This made me pretty uncomfortable. Granted, it was a much better deal than handing one of America’s largest and most-populated states over. But I was still condemning someone. A human. And the Cthulhu Detective Squad has strict regulations on gambling with people’s lives… Unless they’re jerks, of course.
We’re very anti-jerk.
Eventually, we were able to hash out a deal that suited all of us.
Next time Gwyneth Paltrow does something weird and stupid? You know why.
If you’re worried that someone you know may have had their mind transferred, get in touch with the Cthulhu Detective Squad. We can help.
Reach us at cthulhudetectivesquad@gmail.com or https://twitter.com/BillyLovecraft.
Don’t worry. We’re professionals.