There is a creature in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth called a shoggoth. They are one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most horrifying inventions, a formless blob of corrosive goo that constantly has eyes and mouths forming and melting away across its surface. A shoggoth is liquid madness; they’re what the monsters in your nightmares have bad dreams about. They also happen to have been created by aliens who created them as a servitor race (these same aliens may or may not have accidently created all life on earth as a failed experiment). The shoggoths eventually rose up and killed their masters.
Back to Dark Corners of the Earth. One of the levels about midway through the game features a raid on a gold refinery by J. Edgar Hoover and his G-Men, and the player character assists. Located within the bowels of the place lurks the beast from the previous paragraph. It’s all eyes and tendrils and mouths. It’s truly horrific but I defeat it with some deft dodging and lever flipping, thereby electrocuting it. Simple enough.
I exit the room thinking it is no more than the ruined puddle that I left pooling in some container. I’m casually strolling down the hallway out of the area when I hear a noise behind me. I turn around to be greeted by a gelatinous wall of gnashing teeth and swirling eyes filling the corridor behind me. The surprise causes me to fly out of my chair in fright and for my poor character to meet a grisly end.
I make it down the hallway without being devoured on my second try, but I never forgot the time where I didn’t get away. Shoggoths really are just the worst.
