The city, whose name time has forgotten, was built at the edge of a vast gulf, upon an island of land surrounded by a huge expanse of acrid waters. The streets were wide and clean, but utterly without trees or flowers; the air was full of sulphurous vapours and the whole atmosphere stank terribly of brimstone, which was so dense that it sometimes obscured the sky from sight.
This ichor-soaked domain was the abode of the woman who called herself the Mother of the World in some frightful language no human tongue has ever been able to pronounce. She lived on a high hill, which was crowned with a temple of black basalt; all around this hill were cultivated fields and pastures whose poisoned crop could not be harvested by the living as even their stench is deadly. The streets and houses were deserted, except for the living and dying forms which the Mother had left in her wake.
I knocked with trepidation at the great door of the desecrated cathedral which she had made the dwelling-place of her earthly personage—most of her being was moored in a distant dimension of timeless space, as I understood it. It was night at that house of horrors, but a dim light came through a crack of the door, obscured by flickering shadows.
"Who is there?" said a deep, unearthly voice.
"A traveller, most noble lady," I replied. "Ma'am... Mother? Is this... your home?"
There was no answer. The only sound was the faint hiss of sulphuric vapour which wafted out under the black temple's wooden door.
"Lady?" I whispered. "Worldmother? Ma'am?"
Suddenly a harsh, inhuman scream rang through the night; and I thought I heard a terrible shuffling noise on the other side of the door. It opened, revealing a towering creature of ghastly aspect, clothed in tattered garments of green velvet, and wearing a mask of white porcelain flanked by thousands of dark tendrils.
"Who are you?" shrieked the apparition. "What do you want here in my abode?"
Her writhing tentacles twitched in the moonlight, and her eyes, of which there were more than could be counted, blazed with a dull red glow. A monstrous body seemed to be crouching behind her, and it took me time to reconcile that this monstrous shape was indeed also part of her; her figure contorted, occasionally intersecting, vanishing, and re-intersecting at odd angles with reality in a most grotesque fashion, as if conspiring to drive the spirit of poor Euclid mad.
"A traveller," I answered in a whisper. "Uh, hi. George. Is the name... My name. Ma'am Mother."
"Do you come to worship me?" she asked in a deep, sonorous voice.
"Um... I suppose. In a manner of speaking." I was not certain how best to explain what I wanted without sounding sacrilegious. "I'm actually, uh, not one of those occult types that, um... you know. Crazy cult people."
She laughed in shrill, skittering tones.
"You have spoken truly," she admitted. "Your words are like those of a sane man. Not many retain their wits having gazed upon my countenance. Most perish in terror. And yet, you speak to me in sanity, with a most casual affect, and address me as a woman. What manner of man are you?"
"Just an ordinary fellow," I replied, a trifle uncomfortably. "Um... It's a bit of an odd thing, you see... Please hear me out, and don't be mad if it's not to your liking, I don't mean to be disrespectful."
"Mad?" she repeated. "Mad is but a word used by the feebleminded to describe the state of their own minds when they fail to grasp a truth which they cannot comprehend. A truth, such as myself. Now state your request. Your name?"
"I'm George... George Ashwood. I'm a reporter from New York. But, that's, uh, not really the business I'm here on, ma'am... Mother."
"And you seek a boon?"
"Well, you see... I've always wanted to have sex with an ancient maddening eldritch goddess from beyond time and space," I confessed.
The words lingered in the stale midnight air.
For the first time in her deathless aeons, the creature had been stunned into silence by a mortal.