"Between Angels and Insects" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by author Simon Bestwick. It was published in the thematic anthology Tomorrow's Cthulhu by Broken Eye Books in January 2016.[1]
Synopsis[]
When Heald Jones's 12-year-old sone kills himself after an extensive and apparently motiveless campaign of cyber-bullying, he throws himself into his work - designing a nanotechnology which can alter chemical imbalances in the brain - as a coping mechanism. When this fails to have any effect on his emotional state, he decides other means are necessary, despite his program being a resounding success.
Engaging the services of a private detective agency, he tracks down the nine of the bullies; of these, three are in a catatonic state, while five have died by their own hands. The remaining one, a man named Rogers, owns a small waxwork museum in Blackpool which specialises in the entities created by H. P. Lovecraft.
When Jones confronts Rogers, Rogers suffers a psychological breakdown and reveals that the two were both unwitting pawns in a scheme by Cthulhu to bring about the return of the Great Old Ones: Rogers was employed as one of the bullies whose campaign would result in Jones's sons' suicide, an outcome which the Great Old One knew would precipitate Jones's creation of the nanobot system, a technology which is capable of uniting every human brain on the planet into an organism which may be of use to Cthulhu.
Mythos Connections[]
Aside from Cthulhu, other entities which had waxwork depictions on view at the Lovecraftiana Museum included a nightgaunt and Yog-Sothoth. Another exhibit was titled Innsmouth Tableaux, but it is uncertain what this display depicted.
References[]
- ↑ Title: "Between Angels and Insects" at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database