Not Quite Human

Fandom: Gaston Lagaffe/ Lovecraftian mythos

Pairing(s): none

Summary: Prunelle had a vague suspicion there was something off about Gaston. It didn't make sense, but he had a growing suspicion he wasn't quite human.

Rating: Well, it's Lovecraftian. Some creepiness and gore is to be expected, yes? More on the humorous side, though.

Word Count: 2861

Prunelle knew it made no sense.

And yet he couldn't shake the feeling there was something off about Gaston.

In the beginning, he had simply written it off as peculiarity. The young man was just a lazy human being, like so many, with some personality quirks.

But over time, evidence just kept piling up.

His seeming disconnect with reality (which in itself wasn't weird, but he didn't seem insane, as such), the mystery of how he never got fired and how he always managed to ruin Prunelle's best laid plans; such as his attempts of getting Mr. Mesmaeker to sign the contract.

What originally gave Prunelle the (obviously foolish) idea that he wasn't exactly human was his connection with animals and the natural world in general. Animals generally liked Prunelle. Well, like was probably a wrong word. Rather, seagulls very rarely seemed to attack him on the street.

And yet this seagull listened only to Gaston, as did his cat.

And of course no human should have been able to build something like the gaffophone.

He was an enigma, yes. But Prunelle didn't feel like devoting all that much energy to trying to solve it. He had a job to do, after all.

It was just too bad Gaston had a way of interfering with his job.

Prunelle walked to the office, returning from the meeting he had held with the human resources department.

And found the office empty.

"Hello?"

No answer.

"Lebrac? Jef? Sonia?"

He cringed. "Gaston?"

He listened, focusing. He could hear something coming from the archives...

Which of course probably meant it was all Gaston's fault.

He spotted Lebrac coming out of the archives. "It's wonderful, Prunelle! You have to try it!"

"What? What is he up to?"

"It's really weird, I have no idea how he did it. It's a trick of some kind." Lebrac smiled. "You have to see it yourself."

"It took me two hours to get out!" Sonia informed them.

So, it was a trap of some kind? But people were smiling? Apparently it wasn't a creature of some kind eating people, at least.

The archives turned out to be arranged into a labyrinth.

And he was charging money from people. To get lost? Prunelle didn't get it.

He stepped into the labyrinth and strolled to where Gaston was sitting, in the middle of the thing.

"Lagaffe!"

"Mmhuh?"

"What is this!?" He realized something. "And how did you build this? It's-" He stopped, trying to find the right word for it. "All wrong." Non-euclidean kind of wrong, to be exact.

It was no human architecture, that was for sure. There was no way this all fit in the archives room.

He smiled. "I was just improvising."

Prunelle hesitated. "Was this something you picked up on your little trip to New England?"

Gaston seemed surprised. "No."

"Are you still in contact with... Those people?" He would have rather not thought of those 'friends' of Gaston, but he couldn't just avoid everything unpleasant.

"Yes. Do you want to see what they sent me?"

Prunelle nodded with trepidation.

Gaston pulled a small greenish statue from somewhere. "It's something my friends from Innsmouth found, I told you about them, right? And our little campaign for the preservation of marine wildlife? Aanywaay, I think it's pretty. I showed it to Miss Jeanne and she ran away screaming something about thousands of goats or something, so I guess she doesn't appreciate art."

Prunelle hesitated. "You- you think that's pretty?"

"Yeah."

"I-it's not that I disagree, as such, but don't you think it has maybe bit too many heads for one creature? Some of which appear not to be actually attached to the rest of the figure?"

"Yeah, it's really cool. I can't figure out how they did it. Some kind of optical illusion, obviously. I want to try replicating it."

"Please don't. Also, aren't you disturbed by..." Prunelle poked the part of the figure. "That?"

"Well, it's not the best depiction of a duck I've ever seen, but not really disturbing."

Prunelle could only stare.

And not for the first time, he wondered about Gaston's influence on the people around him.

And whether Fantasio's screaming warnings of unknown things wearing human form when he was dragged away had been about Gaston after all...

Prunelle made a mental note to visit him in the insane asylum some time soon and maybe try finding out what he knew.

Once he had time.

"So... You drew this?"

Lebrac nodded.

Prunelle hesitated. "I seem to recall your assignment was to draw the cover page."

The artist nodded. "That's it."

"It's... A new style. Didn't I ask you to draw an illustration for the moon-adventure?"

"Yes."

"A bit more tentacles than I expected." He gave Lebrac a look. "Have you slept well lately?"

"Not really. I keep having all these weird dreams, Prunelle. Of sleeping things, and sunken cities, and creeping darkness beyond eons... But it inspires me!"

"Uhm. I suppose those tentacles could belong to the monsters the hero fights in the story. The decapitated corpse has to go, though. Although I do like it how the spilled entrails spell 'the crawling chaos was here'."

Prunelle briefly wondered if he was the cause of this. Maybe he had been a bit too hard on his editorial staff? Or perhaps it was...

"Gaston!"

"Mmhuh? Prunelle? If you are going to complain to me about those bloodstains, it wasn't me. I don't know where it came from, but I just know you're going to blame it all on me!"

"No, I'm not. What bloodstains?"

"I don't know."

Blatant lies. Prunelle guessed Gaston had been staying at the office over the weekend. And he knew what stain Gaston was talking about, it had taken hours to get the foyer clean.

But he had no reason to press the issue. Although he really wanted to know what Gaston knew of it.

But there were other, more pressing matters. Such as the object laying on the table.

"Rogntudjuu, what is that?"

Gaston grinned. "Looks real, doesn't it? Don't worry, it's not a real shrunken head, just made of papier-mâché."

"I see. Useful for when you don't have actual shrunken heads at hand." It looked pretty realistic, but Prunelle decided to take his word for it being a fake.

He scanned the mess of a room, trying to find anything else to reprimand him for. And he did.

"Rrrogntudjuu, Gaston! What are you doing with that book?"

"This?" Gaston said. "The nerconom-what-ever-it is?"

"The Necronomicon!"

"As I said."

"And you are using it as a coaster!?"

"Phuh, it's not any worse off for it." He removed the glass of soda. "See? It's not even legible anyway, some scribbles..."

"It's ancient Arabic! Where did you get this?"

"I stumbled upon it somewhere."

"Did you do anything with it?"

"What? Why would I do anything with it?"

Prunelle stared at the man. He really would have wanted to peel open his mind and take a look at how his brain worked.

One of these days he'd probably actually do it.

Somehow Gaston had managed to drag his boss into his alleged car yet again and they were making they way slowly towards the countryside.

"Rogntudju, Gaston, are you sure the tire isn't broken?"

"It was, but I stuffed it with some hey. By the way, what does 'rogntudju' mean?"

"Well, it is..." It occurred to Prunelle this was a good chance to direct the conversation to the matters of Gaston's origins.

"It means something in my native language. It's a long story. Speaking of which, where are you from, exactly?"

"Well, I was born in Etterbeek. Why?"

"Etterbeek? But nothing interesting comes from Etterbeek. You are talking about the town near Brussels, and not Space-Etterbeek or something?"

"There's space-Etterbeek? Ooh, I'd love to visit it."

"Eyes on the road, Lagaffe!"

Unfortunately, even paying attention to the road would not have helped them, when a giant flying shape flew over them.

And with a blinding light, the whole car was dragged upwards.

Prunelle found himself strapped down on a metallic table, restrained by his ankles and wrists.

A human-sized pinkish fungoid creature greeted him with its metallic human voice.

"Answer our questions, and you shall not be harmed, Earthling. Our scanners detected your anti-fungoid weaponized vehicle. Where have you gotten this technology from?"

The Mi-Go. He should have guessed.

And it seemed like Gaston had been doing his experiments again, and adding weird stuff to the fuel of his car.

Well, Prunelle had allowed this farce to go far enough.

"Let me go," he ordered.

The creature wasn't as stupid as it seemed. "What are you?", it communicated through wiggling its antennae and wings.

So Prunelle told it.

His real name, of course, not the name of this Mask, this aspect of them, or any of the names Mi-Go or the humans or any of the number of sentient species had given them.

The sight was rather impressive. Of course a Mi-Go could survive without their head, but even after it exploded it had the presence of mind to claw the rest of its vital organs out.

Which was satisfying, yes, but Prunelle hoped it would have released him first.

Well, nothing to it.

He debated over shifting to another shape, but decided against it.

He had already done that to his vocal chords (human body being completely unable to produce or even hear most of the sounds needed to pronounce their name) and it was such a hassle remembering what way they had been like before. And he'd rather not cause any changes to this Mask he could help. Humans tended to notice details like additional limbs or the lack of ones.

So he simply stopped existing at the table and was in the middle of the room.

And suddenly remembered why he did this rarely while taking on a form like this. Human bodies didn't take well to travelling through the 16th dimension.

After being sick in one of the cylinders, he decided on finding Gaston.

It turned out to be easy enough. All he had to do was to follow the explosions.

This led him to a room that was very similar to the one where he had been taken to, and Gaston who was strapped in a contraption usually reserved for medical scans and procedures.

Also some of the equipment was giving off blueish smoke.

"Oh, Prunelle!" Gaston, who still seemed to have his brain inside of his skull, greeted his boss with a smile. "Could you let me out?"

"Just a moment." Prunelle looked over the scans. But they only told him what he already knew.

Gaston was completely human.

"Why is some of the equipment smoking? Did you touch anything?"

"Not much! So? Aren't you going to let me out?"

Prunelle glanced at the imprisoned human. There was a moment that he thought of just leaving Gaston there.

But he had a way of always avoiding death.

There had been that time Prunelle had just shipped him to New England in the hopes it would solve two of his problems; Gaston, and the cults overseas sending him whiny letters on how finding human sacrifices was hard.

This seemingly brilliant plan had somehow resulted in Gaston converting the whole cult into pacifist animal-rights lobbyists, before returning to Belgium because he missed his job and pets. (And didn't speak the language.)

And less said about Prunelle's attempt to feed him to a shoggoth the better...

It was probably just best keep him close, and make attempts of keeping him busy.

Even if it was slightly worrying how he had gotten used to him.

So, after an emergency-landing, the two figures walked from the wreckage.

It would have probably made more sense to let Gaston go after he had managed to land the ship succesfully, in hindsight...

"My car!" Gaston exclaimed.

"It seems it has finally had its last journey." Prunelle remarked.

"Phuh, I'm sure it can be fixed. But..."

"I can probably arrange it to be delivered to your place later." Well, he'd have to arrange the wreckage to be removed anyway. So he could get the wrecked car to Gaston. After all, it might have been problematic, but he had a feeling that if Gaston had to replace it he would just get a new car that would malfunction and cause trouble in completely new ways.

"By the way, didn't I tell you not to add weird stuff in your fuel?" At least it hadn't attracted any flying polyps this time. Getting rid of them had been such a pain.

"And they could have dropped us off where they picked us up," Gaston complained. "Where are we?"

"Near Carnac." It and it's rows of menhirs had been the closest extraterrestial waypoint he had been able to find and target for the emergency landing.

Luckily for him, Gaston didn't question how he knew this. It would have been difficult to pinpoint their location in the dark.

"So, I guess we are walking?" Prunelle sighed. "To the nearest train station at least..."

"As far as practical jokes go, this was pretty great, wasn't it? Although, of course the costumes could have been better."

He couldn't possibly be that dense? Prunelle decided to try something. "Gaston, I don't think I ever told you my real name. Would you like to hear it?"

"Mmhuh? Sure."

So he told him.

To his surprise, nothing exploded.

Gaston scratched his ear. "Niiaarat-hop-hep? Is that Finnish or something? I get why you don't use it, but how is 'Prunelle' even short for that?"

"You're feeling fine? No internal hemorrhaging? Sanity loss? Ruptured eardrums?"

"Mmhuh?"

"Forget what I said."

Gaston definitely was a human.

A human being who could just shrug off things that would destroy the sanity of any other member of his species.

Not even Carter had been this unaffected.

"Say, Prunelle... Do you believe there really is life on other planets?"

"Who knows. Do you?"

"Well, world is full of all kinds of interesting things, isn't it?" Gaston gestured towards the starry night sky. " Just look around you, enjoy the moment a bit. You're just always running around, trying to be in more than one place at a time. There are all kinds of wonders out there."

Prunelle didn't know what to think. Here he had just been sure he had the young man figured out, and then he'd say something like that which suggested he was far more aware of the world around him than most humans...

Maybe, since keeping him out of all this hadn't worked, and getting rid of him hadn't worked, the best choice of action would be to take him to the center of ultimate chaos and make him sign the Book of Azathoth and bind Gaston to him and their master?

But...

He hated to admit it. (Because it was such an idiotic idea.)

But for a moment there he had been worried what would happen to the Book if Gaston ever even got close to it. Never mind that it was in no way an actual book, but rather a distilled idea of a book, he had nevertheless had a very vivid image in his mind's eye of Gaston accidentally setting it on fire, or spilling coffee on it, or somehow losing it...

No, all that was just a stupid little idea.

Still, no harm in just keeping up the status quo, right?

A/N: Why it is always the chessmaster supervillains who people always speculate are avatars of Nyarlathotep? It's more depicted (by Lovecraft) as a messenger or a being who manages the cults of other beings (and the gods of the dream-lands), although I seem to be alone in my interpretation of Nyarly as a grumpy middle-manager of the Lovecraftian horrors.

And a creature that's a messenger would gravitate towards fields like journalism (alongside science) in their human avatars. And assuming they're trying to keep their activities hidden, a magazine aimed at children would be a great cover. Make sure there's just enough truth in the stuff the magazine publishes that no-one will believe the people who stumble upon your activities, because, hey, that sounds a whole lot like that comic or adventure story in that kid's thing...

Also, disclaimer: I know both Franquin and Herge were born in Etterbeek, but while very interesting people, neither one was an inhuman eldrich horror. (As far as we know.)