You can read minds but it's too noisy in the city. You move to the mountains to learn what silence was. Then you heard something deep beneath the ground. [WP]

So I'm in the tent, ok? Listen, cause this is important. I'm in the tent, and I'm trying to get away from it all. The noises in the city, it's enough to drive a man insane. A man that can read minds, like me, that is. It's crazy. You walk down the streets and it's like. I hate my job. I cheat on my husband. I wanna die and nothing is beautiful and everything hurts. I secretly like Maroon 5. All the time all the time every day. It's overwhelming. So I'm in the tent. Ok? I packed a lunch and went hiking, to run away from people's thoughts. I pinch my balls through my pocket during meetings when I'm bored. I secretly love my best friend Lisa. I secretly hate my best friend Molly. I once killed a dog just for fun. I can suck my own dick. And I do it. A lot. Too much, too much, too much. So I'm in the tent, and all is quiet. All was quiet, until this: "Oh yeah... Oh yeah, right there. Right there, giant squid. Yes, give it to me. Yes, spongy and moist and slippery with so many tentacles. Oh my sweet squid." I hear this very clearly from underground. I could bore you will the details of the ground shaking under me and the sky turning black and all that crap and how I peed my pants and cried my eyes out before I finally calmed down. But let's cut to the chase: It was Cthulhu under the ground, masturbating. And I caught him. So, peeing and black sky and ground shaking later, we're sitting side by side by the edge of the mountain, and he's telling me all about the Ancients and life before men. I'm telling him life's not that good, here on Earth. "Well, no shit", he replies. "You guys abandoned the real Gods. The ancients." The sun is setting behind the small, two story buildings of the city, and the light shreds through the branches of the nearby trees and paint patterns on the ground beneath our feet. A chilly wind brushes past us, here and there. "What have you been up to? Besides the masturbation, I mean", I ask, taking a sip of my Gatorade. "Not much. The world's gotten pretty boring, these days. Don't feel much need to destroy things. Truth is", Cthulhu looks at me, and he looks tired. "I'm kind of depressed." "Why?" "I don't know... I don't feel that powerful anymore. People don't believe in me. They got bigger fish to fry, you know? Nobody's got time to be scared of a big octopus that rises from the ground." "Come on, don't say that", I reply. "Look, you made me pee my pants." "Yeah, whatever", Cthulhu dismisses me with a wave of one of his tentacles. We kept talking, and he kept telling me about how people made up their own fears, when the Ancients were not enough. How people created monsters inside of them and of others, and found weapons in medication and drugs and therapy to run away from problems that didn't even exist in the first place. He tells me life was simpler in his days, when evil was a big tentacle monster rising from the Earth, and the rest was good. He tells me that life was better with less blurred lines, before us humans decided to make everything in shades of gray. He tells me, by the way, that he absolutely ADORES fifty shades of grey, and he tells me Jamie Dornan is not his Grey. He tells me he's going back to the ground, now, as the sun is setting, and the wind getting colder. And so it's what he did, you know? What I'm trying to tell you is the story of the afternoon I shared a beer with Cthulhu, and he told me about his issues and I told him about mine, and it was fun. What I'm trying to tell you is that there are bigger problems in this world. Is that Cthulhu being depressed puts life in perspective. That maybe we should worry less about what other people think (like I do) and start worrying more about making our own path. Or maybe I'm trying to tell you that, in a world with gigantic monsters lurking beneath the surface, we need not worry with the little things in life. Maybe Cthulhu means death, and how it makes everything else insignificant. How we decided to stop worrying about death, and make up fantasy problems to occupy our brain, and now death is lonely. Maybe Cthulhu is our own selves, and how we burry them deep in the ground so no one sees it, because we are afraid we might scare everyone else away. Maybe I should have asked my cousin what the fuck was in that cake before I ate it this morning, before the hike.

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