Sanity Claws

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I seem to be on a poetry roll here, kids.

When I was 14, Citadel Miniatures put out a small run of a novelty pewter miniature named Sanity Claws: a tentacled menacing monstrosity for the festive season. And now Norm Sherman of the Drabblecast, whom I do not hesitate to call a genius and an Elder God, has written a Lovecraftian poem on the same theme (in all likelihood quite independently of that 1986 pewter giggle-shudder item). Hear Norm perform the poem on the Drabblecast's Christmas Special!

'Twas the Night

By Norm Sherman

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the edifice
Not a creature was stirring, neither mouse nor St. Nicolas
The stockings were hung by the aperture gaping
Where smoke, in its wisdom, had ere been escaping

Downstairs my uncle was strapped down in bed
While visions of ichor danced round in his head
His nightmares of late had been growing much stronger
And sense dared not trespass his mind any longer

Once a learned professor at Brown University
My great-uncle had often, in secret, conversed with me
In his study at night, over manuscripts moldering
With a pipe at his lips, always lambent and smoldering

All that research of his, into cults esoteric
Strange symbols and glyphs and arcane numerics
Of that Dutch survey crew and their frenzied report
Of a vast arctic city filled with sunken-faced dwarves

And that journal recovered from one 'Ensign Lamar'
Which references "He that rides beasts through the stars"
Gloaming and heaving with corpulent dread
Bloated, batrachian and covered in red

And there's the relic in my uncle's display
A four-sided top carved of wood, or some clay
With symbols engraved into each of its sides
That surely must tell of coming end time

I was pondering this manifold doom that would smite us
When out from my window shone a miasmal brightness
How the pale gibbous moon shone down on his back
Which bulged with the throngs of some hideous sack

With some alien ululations in a primordial tongue
He froze me in place, and unable to run
I was forced to be witness to things vile and foul
So unspeakably horrid I can scarce speak them now

He summoned his steeds by their blasphemous names
And with his gangrenous grasp he pulled down on their reins
Then suddenly upwards that noxious horde flew
That red-bellied nightmare rising up from my view

Cacodemoniacal laughter I heard from my roof
And the lumbering clomps of thick octopoid hooves
Then repugnant and hoary, his stench filled the air
While he writhed down my chimney as I watched from the stairs

He spoke not a sound as then off from his back
He heaved up that thick throbbing cyst of a sack
And from it a stench came so charnel and dense
That I nearly passed out when he drew from it thence:

An Amazon Kindle, and a few pairs of nice socks
A sweater, a tie, and Call of Duty: Black Ops
Law and Order Season V on Blueray DVD
And an espresso machine (hope he kept that receipt)

Then all at once swung round this tenebrous being
And with dark ancient eyes of unfathomable seeing
Their biliferous blackness spanning eons extinct
Revealing my own maddening fate, with a wink

Then into that monolith of chimney he lurched
With the gelatinous frenzy of invertebrate birth
Ripping free to the roof he launched into the night
With a vow to return when the stars are just right

Miniature by Bob Naismith, painted and photographed by Steve of the Bleaseworld gaming blog.

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This is for everyone who didn't get what they wanted for Christmas. Haha, brilliant, indeed! I'm saving it for an annual read.

Yes!!! Yes!!!! (drowns in my own saliva)

For a longer piece of Ctulhu reading, try the "Laundry" books by Charles Stross (everything related to CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN).
Or the book "Evil Guest" (cthonian monster vs mortal Military Industrial Complex monsters, a bit like The Bodyguard/A Fistful of Dollars).

By Birger Johansson (not verified) on 01 Jan 2011 #permalink

I'm sure Tim Burton was given a set of those figurines at some point.