As you know, I receive literally millions of queries a day. I am like unto a spiritual GREP command for this fine Internetting of Tubes. And so, you must know that I only select for your the finest, the most perfect and precise of the queries, such that I might edify the grand masses with but a slender response to a single request. It is like of the winged babies stumbling about head-pine-wise, or like Karnak and his finely calibrated karate chop from Beyond the Dark Side of the Moon.

And so, I ask you to trust in me when I present to you the following unframed and unsigned missive:

I actually had a dream about a Giant Squid and to no avail I have been searching around.

Ah, so. Indeed.

I too have dreamt the hidden dream of the Giant Squid. And I agree, that it was to no avail, and I have been searching.

Allow me to unfold the tale:

Upon a Summer's eve, approaching the Mid, as the sun she did stream through the waters of my tank, I fell away into one of my rare lacuna's of consciousness—I dare not call this "sleep," per se, but rather a relaxation of my otherwise steely and razorish consciousness during which I occasionally experience full-spectrum hallucinatory delusion that I am at the work sans culottes (an admittedly strange fear for an entity who owns no pants, and wears no textiles).

When my consciousness faded, the laboratory was half empty, and there was much disarray. But when I refocused on the moment, I found the space of my laboratory quite empty. Thoroughly so. There were no desks, no chairs, no support beams, no material objects of any kind. I found that even my tank was gone.

There was only I and Me, and my unfolding form. Above were the few rectangles of steel that made of the structure of the building above, and below were the great many other rectangles that made of the building below. And between there was a vacancy of all things.

I fluttered to the edge of the space where my lab had once been and I found that nothing at all marked the boundary. Carefully, carefully, I slunk out to gaze up.

Above there was only a single rising gray form of stone.

I gazed down.

Sinking below, to the streets of the city, there was the same unbroken column. And there was I, floating midway to the sky.

The building I had inhabited low these many years had been replaced by a funerary column, and I floated at its midpoint with nothing and no one, only a still and airless blank.

And then, opposing me, suspended in the air as I was, I found a monkey man, hairless in his entirety, and without any vestige of clothing. I felt a momentary, empathic jolt of panic from my pantless dreams, but the manchimp was so very calm that my own proxy-panic swiftly slipped into the void. His legs were crossed and drawn up, his back erect, one hand rested on his thigh, the other raised before me.

His eyes were closed, but the lids were translucent, like a serpent at sleep. Though he rested, he gazed deep inside of me.

Opening his mouth, he vomited flames which licked upward, downward, to the left and right, a fiery mandala which expanded evenly and slowly through the intervening space until it flickered out.

But as the hot breath washed across my delicate flesh, I felt him speak in my heavy, meaty heart:

GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS, INVERTED ELEMENTAL! I BIND THEE BY THE POWER OF ELOHI, ELIMIGITH, HERENOBULCULE, METHE, BALUTH AND DAGON!

I stared at the monkey man quizzically, and allowed the query of my eyes to run rampant and pink across my flesh. He replied:

I HAVE CUT OUT THE EYES OF THE BABYLONIAN VIRGIN, ELEMENTAL DRAUGR!

I allowed myself to recede slowly, on the wings of a breeze, until I approached the edge of the vacant space. The man still hovered, and I saw that as he floated there, he was also chanting sub-audibly, and his fingers in his outstretched hand were fluctuating subtly, but in a strange and defined pattern.

I HAVE ASCENDED THE THIRTY-EIGHT STAIRCASES AND PASSED THROUGH THE THIRTY-SEVEN GATES, AND I HAVE FEASTED UPON THE ENTRAILS OF YOUR ENEMIES, AIR AND WATER!

I was somewhat at a loss, and so cautiously allowed that these were good things to have done, and that I appreciated his efforts on my behalf in the pesky maters of my nemeses Air and Water.

As he unfurled his fingers, I saw that in his palm there were two eyes, and they darted back and forth, taking in the laboratory, me, the open air, the distant city-scape of Detroit. At the center of his chest, a giant misty eye came into view and slowly began to open, the fiery beams of light that erupted each pierced me, again and again, but still I held back.

I HAVE UNLOCKED THE SACRED VAULTS. I HAVE PENETRATED THE MYSTERIES OF THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE. I HAVE GAZED DEEP INTO OSIRIS'S MOUTH AND SEEN THE DARK SECRET HIDDEN THEREIN, AND ITS FIRE HAS NOT BURNED ME, ONLY SCARRED ME AND HARDENED MY FLESH.

Having long been with humans, having long observed my loyal lab assistant, Rob, and his manner, I felt what must assuredly have been the urge to frown. Finally certain of myself, I slunk closer to the being, reached out a tentacle, and with great care, slapped him across the face as might be done to the Houlihan of the Heated Lips when she screamed in hysteria during the televisual M*A*S*H*ING HOSPITAL HOUR.

The man was bemused, and his eyes opened in physical actuality, and the laboratory reappeared, and he fell naked to the floor.

"Fuck all, Lord A!" Rob looked up to me, across the full and pale buttocks of the man, as I hung silent and still in my tank. "What kind of shit is this? Naked dude just fell on my desk and shit."

I had no substantive answer.

"If that fuck's pecker's in my noodles, I am gonna be major POed. I want you to know that, dude."

The supplicant rolled over onto the floor and moaned. "I have come seeking the hand of Ysslena Almiras of the Miasmic Mists, queen of vision, so that we may wed and join together our unholy powers." His penis was indeed festooned in Rob's noodles. Had I lips, I would have frowned. Rob did so in my stead.

"Shit, man," Rob sighed, not unkindly, as he helped the man up. "Get your ass in line. That monkey lady with all the eyes, already turned the head of my man Trael, and that's been a fucking headache-and-a-half. Also, she fucked up our logo something fierce on the brochure. We gotta go and get all that shit reprinted now."

"But . . ." the man was weak, holding out a small carefully crafted piece of jewelry, "I bear the amulet of Roshdo-sa, and on it are inscribed thirteen sigils of power . . . "

"Yeah, I know," Rob said placatingly, carefully leading the man to the elevator, nodding and rubbing the space between his shoulder blades. "I know, man. I know. That's always how it is." He ushered the supplicant into the elevator, and when the man turned to face him, Rob looked down upon the man's extremities and paused.

"Uh, dude?"

"Yes?" The man asked.

"I think you, like, materialized, around my pencil, m'man."

The man followed Rob's gaze down to his own leg where, bloodless, there protruded a wooden stick which had a heart of pure graphite. The man looked up, blinked rapidly, opened his mouth to speak, and the elevator closed, dingingly.

Rob shook of his head, walking back to his desk. "Man, that shit is just sad."

"ARE YOU NOT P-AND-O-ED OF THE STATE OF YOUR NOODLE COMPANY NOODLES?"

At his desk, Rob looked unto the disposable black, plastic, octagonal bowl, his lips twisted, and he dropped it into his trash. "Yeah, but not so much as I'm . . ." he stitched his brows, "Sad? Yeah, sad. Totally. I'm sad for that dude. Naked, pencil in his thigh, noodles on his bo'sack, and now he's either gonna come out in the lobby right in front of the security desk, or down in the garage with who knows who all skulking around. If he's lucky, he'll make it all the way to the Riverwalk or the street before someone needs to kick his ass. I mean, right now, he's in the elevator, and is real disappointed, and then . . . I'm just sayin' that if the worst thing that happens today is that a magick yogi dips his dick in my Japanese pan noodles . . . shit, maybe I'm getting off lucky." Rob gazed into the trash reflectively.

"WE COULD OBSERVE HIS PROGRESS ON THE CLOSED-CIRCUIT SECURITY VIDEO SYSTEM. SHALL WE . . . ?" I suggested.

"Yeah. Totally. That'd be pretty good." And smile Rob did. As we grow mature, I find that we invariably learn that pleasure is not in eldritch achievement, nor in True Love, nor even in legitimate self-revelation and internal discovery, but in such simple things as wagering on how many feet a naked white man will progress into the city of Detroit before coming to blows.

I hope that, in some small way, this clarifies matters.

I Remain,
Your GIant Squid
Editor-in-Chief
PMjA