Second Coming
Second Coming by spitkitten first appeared in issue Issue 93 in 2021.
Creator's Notes
I’ll start off by slapping on a content warning for body horror in a sexual (and dare I say romantic?) context, and a brief instance of animal death (NOT in a sexual or romantic context). Also, as our illustrious Editor put it, Bugs But Not Too Many Bugs. If that’s not for you, tread carefully! If it is, happy Halloween! (There’s every possibility that you’ll actually read the dang thing and be like “okay normie”. But the intent is there, so caveat lector.)
This is maybe less the “colour out of space” side of the Lovecraft theme and more the…”it’s the turn of the century and some characters mention university” side, but I hope it still manages to provide some eldritch thrills! Hopefully you don’t need to know anything about any of these to enjoy my story, but I’d be remiss not to shout out to E. F. Benson, M. R. James, and E. M. Forster, pretty much in that order. I probably owe something to a bunch of other dead guys with the Initial Initial Lastname formula (gone full S. P. Itkitten for this one, I guess) but those are the big three. If there are any James fans reading this, then the basic concept for Leo was like ‘what if a James protagonist learned to chill out and have fun?’: I restrained myself from actually saying that he works at King’s College, but … he totally works at King’s College. If there are any Forster fans reading this, then Chrissy was partly informed by a very Forsterian kind of Unpromising Youth. If there are any E. F. Benson fans reading this, then please make yourself known because I want to be best friends immediately. Thanks, gents: you were all a million times better at writing than me, but I had a go. More recent influences include The Wicker Man and its folk horror brethren, Dario Argento’s Phenomena and that one bit in the film version of Annihilation — you’ll know the bit I mean. All good clean halloween fun!
Confession: I did have a wobbly moment where I was like “is it obvious that this is a period piece, or will people just think these guys are weird and British?” Hence the mention of a telegram right up top haha. I wasn’t alive at the beginning of the 20th century so apologies for any obvious foul-ups in that arena: usually I’d be like “Neither were you, dear reader, so it doesn’t matter” but the veil is thinnest at this time of year … Ghosts, @ me if I’m wrong about anything — except for the deeply unlikely amount of time Chrissy spends in his undershirt because that is ~ artistic license ~. He’s an athlete! As for everything else… I did a year of Anglo-Saxon at uni so I know precisely as little as it’s possible to know while still technically knowing anything. Apologies to any scholars if the one place I dare to get specific, the pronunciation, is totally off base but, hey, Chrissy knows even less about it than me. In case anybody’s interested, the reason a doctoral student could struggle to read the inscription is because it’s not Old English but Gaulish, which is even older and as far as I know we genuinely still can’t really read. Leo doesn’t get into it because he’s scared of being boring; I don’t get into it because I’m scared of being boring — and of my old lecturers somehow knowing I’m out here getting things wrong and tracking me down with intent to kill.
Anyway, huge thanks to everybody who helped me along the way with this one, and to everybody who gives it a read! It was super fun (kind of a dream come true, actually) to write so if people enjoy it I’ll be over the moon <3
Oh, and which Cole Porter song? Period accurate answer: Let’s Misbehave makes the most sense for a vague 1929ish setting. Stupid, not-necessarily-canonical joke answer: You’re the Top. Thematically appropriate answer: I’ve Got You Under My Skin :)
External Links
This story is also available on Archive of Our Own (AO3).
