H.P. Lovecraft Ties His Shoes
I was taking my first steps out into the world, having just met with my phrenologist to discuss a course of corrections to strengthen my mental organs, when I realized something was amiss. The cobbled bricks on which I once tread so comfortably seemed to buck and roll beneath me. What seismic designs conspired, I wondered, to scrub an ordinary walk of all its familiarity and replace it instead with this vertiginous daze? I felt compelled to look down. And though my better nature protested, not knowing what horrors awaited underfoot, curiosity as much as fear drove my chin earthward.
Like all men, I have always relied on strong cord to hold together the shambling scraps of hide that protect my naive feet from the sucking morass of rain-soaked mud, its earthy pits and peaks grasping hungrily for want of a foot. Until this day that cord had been a staunch ally, keeping said morass at bay. But now, eyes fixed downward, I was confronted with a terrible truth that I could no longer deny: my shoestring had loosened. Where once riveted walls of brain-cured cowflesh had united to constrain the grim folds of my stocking-clad ankle, now its long-hidden tufts slipped out between leather cleft and tongue to waft and wiggle horribly in plain view. The sight made me dizzy; I could feel thin traces of madness creeping at the corners of my mind. I needed to act while I still could.
I bent over, knee lodged in the sucking mud, and seized the laces. Try as I might to make sense of the tangle, it defied all understanding. There were too many loops, too many ends, all straining between hooks and eyes in obscure shapes impossible to describe. Surely these were knots not meant for man to know. With trembling hands I wrapped and pulled at the laces, gaining slack with which to thread, and the eldritch shapes guided my hand.
As I pulled the lace through clenching gaps, it turned, turned, and further bewildering my jittering eyes it turned still more. My mind turned with it, squirming and twisting like the lace itself, as if the string's knotting were an instruction directed by some otherworldly mind, remaking the creases of my brain according to its inscrutable and alien design. I could not help but stare and twist, now mumbling syllables of an inhuman tongue as I grasped and convulsed, fumbling helplessly, completely at the mercy of I knew not what. I felt lost beyond all hope.
But then the laugh of a nearby unwitting child jolted me from my dizzying visions: I felt my bile retreat, my jaw unclenched. In that lucid moment I mustered all that remained of my humanity, fixing in mind the binding-shape I once knew and trusted, and yanked the lace into place, cinching and knotting, at last securing again the thin, dead barrier that separated my vulnerable flesh from the starving, gaping maw of the rain-spattered earth.
Narrow though it was, my escape had been assured. I exhaled heavily and surveyed the damage. I bore no visible wounds--any doctor would have pronounced me hale and well, if a little pale--but not even the finest stethoscope nor magnifying lens could reveal the the damage to my fragile psyche. I felt my own loose ends coiling, weaving, entrapping me from within. I had seen too much, felt too much. I knew I would be forever changed, but I took solace in knowing the binding was restored. Finally I could rest, damaged but safe, and return to my ordinary life.
Or so I thought. As I stood to dust myself off, by chance my gaze fell on my other foot. There I saw a lingering wrongness still greater, still uncorrected. I swallowed soundlessly, my breaths coming quick and shallow, until finally something snapped within my breast. Helpless at last, I surrendered to the inevitable siren call of the void, my mouth hanging open in an unnatural yawn as a strange calm overtook me.
My shoe, and my self, were completely undone.
