All Comments on 'Marnahthul'

Oh wow, this is sooooo amazing, like really amazing!!!!

5 stars.

This has happened to me so many times. The thing to remember is there are true Eldritch Abominations and then there things that can be dealt with using a flame thrower.

I really like how this story was ended. This is one of those stories that at least some people are not going to get but make this site the great place that it is.

I could see this playing out on Tales From the Crypt. Perfect build up and a great ending that is both horrifying and amusing in that "old horror anthology" kind of way. (They are some of the best stories in my opinion.) My one complaint would be a missed opportunity to really build out the atmosphere of the room at the end. Didn't hinder the story at all but it would've been a nice punch of tension to have Mr. Schmidt have to push past a dripping doorway or a curtain of silky strings before getting to the light switch and seeing the creature with his wife.

I’m under the impression that this story was heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft, isn’t that so? The description of the sex monster also reminds me of the “ungeheueren Ungeziefer” (“horrible vermin” in Wyllie’s translation) of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”

That’s all fine, very fine indeed, but already in the second paragraph there’s a jarring element: the husband’s “reading glasses.” Mr. Schmidt, we are told, is “slightly older” than his wife, having married her eight years ago after spending two years in college with her before then. Let’s say Mr. Schmidt was already pursuing a master’s degree when he met his future wife in college: allowing for four years of bachelor studies that would probably make him 32-34 years old at the time the present story takes place. A thirtyish guy needing “reading glasses” is still rather unusual, which is why the author finds herself in the position that she needs to explain this unusualness if she does not want to pointlessly irritate the reader.

Though reading on, one could easily get the impression from the portrayal of their routine life that the married couple described in the present story is not in their thirties, but rather in their sixties, and not merely married for eight, but rather for forty years. (Maybe they weren’t students in college at all, but rather professors?!) Though wouldn’t it have been the author’s obligation to prevent such unnecessary confusion from arising in the first place?

Aside from that I found the middle of the present story rather underwhelming—especially from an erotic standpoint. The reader is repeatedly told that the husband wakes in the middle of the night to his wife having—apparently—orgasmic dreams, reassures her upon waking that everything’s alright, then goes back to sleep and finds his wife with a “beautiful glow on her cheeks” the next morning—again and again and again. This repetition becomes tiresome rather quickly, especially since apart from the perfunctory descriptions of the wife’s nightly restlessness almost nothing genuinely erotic happens all this time. (Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt really are sexagenarians sans sex life?) Naturally one starts to wonder for what reason this Mr. Schmidt is staying so passive throughout the story?

And this does not really change up until the end when he at last leaves his bed upon waking beside his squirming wife to take a leak. What follows is a quite gripping and horrific scene, though marred—at least to my mind—by a failure of logic: where did the monster copulating (?) with his wife suddenly materialize from? It may be that my ignorance of Lovecraftian lore is to blame for asking this question, but taken on its own the present story contains absolutely no explanation for the sudden materialization of the monster; there was not a single clue given beforehand, e.g., a trail of slime found in the house (or something similarly suspect), that any kind of materialization could ever happen. As it is the ending is certainly surprising and hair-raising, but not particularly logical, alas.

The writing style, I’d say, is the story’s strongest facet though: tight and controlled as it is throughout.

–AJ