His last words cut me even deeper; it was as though he meant them specifically for me. “Riley…”

“That they are even aware of my existence is mere runoff of my own greatness, that my dreams enter theirs. As they have with you, you pitiful, trivial creature.”

I gasped, what tiny bits of unshattered heart I’d retained left me to scatter far across the universe. I was gone, hollow, screaming. Tortured.

Was this what it was to be driven mad by Great Cthulhu?

“Riley,” I gulped. “Please… you don’t mean this… I… I love you.”

“You cannot comprehend me, paltry, diminutive one,” he growled. “Therefore, you cannot love me. And that is why I cannot go out with you.”

“I can, and I do!” I cried. I fell to my knees, hands clasped before me, tears streaming in rivers down my face. “Please, just give me a chance! I can be worthy of you!”

“You are human. You, as with all the others, would be only driven mad by my true form. You cannot be with me because what I truly am would destroy your mind. I have always known this.”

“Then why toy with me?” I sobbed. “Why all the games? The trip to New York? Phantom in Box Five? Swimming through the depths together? What about all you said to me about… about seeing Earth, seeing all of humanity as insignificant, but now knowing that even tiny things could be beautiful? You said… you said I had changed you! You said I meant something to you! That I was the reason that you didn’t want to see the Earth destroyed anymore! That you have… a reason… a reason to…” I broke down.

“What has been weeks to you, diminutive being, were less than seconds to me,” Riley said quietly. “To me, the time was nothing. As you are nothing.”

“But… but what about the Pumpkin Ball?”

He turned from me. I thought for a moment I saw a tear slide down his cheek. “I… I cannot take you to the Pumpkin Ball.”

I felt as though the hollow place in my chest where my heart used to be filled with acid. All I knew was pain.

“Soon, again, I will sleep, dead and dreaming until the stars once more are in perfect alignment, wherein I will awaken to fulfill my true duty.” He stood up straight, his gaze to the cosmos. “My true duty. I cannot be your boyfriend, insignificant mortal.”

“Then go ahead and do it now!” I wept. “Go ahead and kill me. Destroy the world. My life is nothing without you, do you hear me? It began with you, and it will end with you!”

“You have fulfilled your purpose, my Lilliputian child,” he said. “You have fulfilled the prophecy, thereby postponing Azathoth’s awakening. Now is not the time. I cannot do it now.”