Birthday With Cthulhu

It came in the deepest stirrings of my subconscious, a kind of shudder in the recesses of my soul. In a dreamlike state I slept and walked along those dripping, greenish soap-stone monoliths as old as time, dread waking in the pit of my flesh. A voice, eons old trembled in the depths, waking the stars and galaxy dust from their slumber as the heavens shook and sunlight fell away into darkness. He was calling me.

The mad seas rolled in strange lullabies, and mourning-cloak moths flew with hollow eyes towards the moon. I was a helpless puppet at his beckoning, stumbling in a dream towards the terrible eyes, the cruel mouth, the wicked, monstrous head that spoke of strange beings that the dead wept over. Alien things from another world that the earth cloaked to herself like a terrible secret best left forgotten or abandoned to the utterings of mad men.

The ether held its breath, and supernovas swallowed themselves into black holes. The creature lifted a great, swollen hand from the oceaniac abyss.
"Do you like birthday cake?" It said, in the language of the Old Ones.
I started in surprise.
"Uh, what?" I managed, as almost all language failed me in wake of the damp mush that was trying to reassemble itself into my brain.
I swallowed and tried again, faintly irritated. "You, the most horrifying thing in existence, the last remaining creature of myth and legend, the thing with which men dread to speak of, the creation that twists and tortures the soul of the world - you called me here to ask me that?"
It stared at me blankly. "What were you expecting?"
I examined my fingernails, and stubbed my toe at one of the hideous monoliths rising out of the depths. "Well, to be driven to insanity I suppose. And then eaten. Perhaps."
"Eaten?"
"Well, or sacrificed to be reborn as a human reincarnate to dabble in the black arts, or mysterious workings of evil. Or as some kind of birthday-zombie?."
"I don't do birthday zombies. But it is your birthday. Cake?"
It extended its hand.
I nodded politely, and gazed at the squirming mass of rippling, swelling tentacled sea-creatures masquerading as a groteque blob of pescetarian birthday cake.
"No thank you. I'm... not quite into eating sea-dwelling bottom feeders. I'm uh, a vegetarian."
The demon-thing shrugged its huge scaled wings.
"Algae-jelly then?"
I eyed the dripping, gelatinous green goo and imagined it sliding down into my gullet. "I ate this morning."
It sniffed and scrubbed at its horrifying face.

"So uh, why did you summon me then?" I asked, feigning nonchalance.
Cthulhu smiled, a hideous, evil vista of mind-numbing proportions. The pale, sunken teeth dripped with nameless horror under those thick, flabby lips, and I took a step back, before going slightly numb.
"Well, you're a scholar. And you seem to spend all of your time studying me and other beings of dread. I thought it only polite to acknowledge your birthday."
"Very... um, gallant of you."
"I'm a gallant un-being."
"So.. um, when are you returning to R'lyeh?"
Cthulu scratched a taloned claw over its giant scabby elbow.
"When the stars are right."
"And can we expect the end of the universe? Will there be outbreaks of black magic and death, evil and horror taking flight into the world, burying the seeds of malevolence into our skulls as the oceans turn dark with sin and our universe opens like a gaping jaw to be swallowed up into darkness and antimatter forever?"
It shrugged. "Pretty much. Balloon?"
It blew a bubble from its own saliva, a rope of drool hanging down from the clear liquid bubble of horror like a string of ugly, milky pearls.
I trembled with revulsion as it dumped the wet mess into my hand.
"Happy birthday."
"Thank you." I managed.

It smiled again, and fish-things and gurgling sea-life flopped belly-up, scared into death. I looked out across the sea, filled with soon to be rotting, swollen carcasses of scaled and tentacled things that gave their last, gasping breaths before their minds warped gazing at the great Cthulhu, and their tiny beating hearts gave their last murmurs.
I started picking at my cuticles.
"I um, have to turn you into a birthday-zombie now." The Old One said suddenly. "Sorry about that. But I do actually need a mindless undead servant to conjure evil doings and black magic for me."
I blushed pink. "Well to be honest, I was imagining something of the sort. One can't be expected to be summoned by a demon at the hellmouth and simply given a rather deflated saliva-balloon and some algae-jelly."
"You didn't enjoy yourself?"
"This has certainly been the most memorable of my birthdays. I'm suprised to still be holding on to some remnant of sanity to be honest."
Cthulhu munched on the corner of its mouth, a horrible chewing sound that made my damp, squishy organs knot and begin to decompose with horror in my gut. My flesh turned sickly-pale and I began to faint away...
"Oh and hey." The creature caught me easily with a gnarled, barnacled finger. "Sorry for being about to rip out your soul and use it for nameless evil for all eternity and damning you to hell and all that. But I did organise a kind of party for you to make up for it."
An undulating hoard of deep sea monsters rose from the frothy waves and began to dance, a crazy rhythm of devil-worship and darkness around me as the very sun rolled back on itself and black clouds formed.   
"For he's a jolly good fellow..."