Tempers in the listening audience flared like an inquisitor's pyre as the man hunched down to an argumentative squat. "I have read all the stories, legends, and eyewitness accounts," he boasted as he arched his back, "and I have found that it is all commensurate. Cthulhu is lord."

A man stepped forward to address the preacher. "But how can we know that the stories themselves are true?" He seemed genuinely confused.

The preacher cocked his head to one side and detached the microphone embedded in his clothing. Not once losing eye contact with his questioner, he ripped off his cardigan in one fluid motion to reveal a torso bronzed with hours of defending his faith in the sun. He hunkered deeper into his squat, drawing his back muscles into fierce lumps.

The preacher craned his neck to a different listener. "What is your name," he asked.

"Jeff."

"Tom?"

"No, Jeff."

"Alex, then."

"I said, my name is Jeff."

"Precisely!" The preacher glared at his questioner. "How can you be so arrogant and rude that you won't believe someone when he tells you his name? Cthulhu tells me that he is a 'shambling mountain,' a terror that lies dormant at the bottom of the sea. He tells me that he could destroy this entire university in one dread swallow. Why should I not believe him? Why should you not believe him?"

The man began to stammer. "But that's just a fairy tale!"

"Oh, a fairy tale, you say!" Now inextricably immersed in his squat, the preacher duck-walked closer to his questioner. "If it's a fairy tale, then how can it be that fifty separate accounts of his life contradict each other in no greater manner than in detailing the exact number of leagues between each side of his maw?

"My friend, if your fifty biographers can achieve that level of exactitude for you, then I will be impressed. There can be no doubt that Cthulhu exists, for his sheer hugeness has demanded the attention of chroniclers throughout the ages. Come back when you have lain at the ocean's bottom for an eon, and I will grant to you the same respect that I grant to Cthulhu."

The man stormed off. Not long thereafter, a bald woman with sunglasses stepped forward to produce a book. "Look," she said, her finger pressed white against a line of text, "it says so right here in this chronicle of Cthulhu: 'Library of Congress 1979. I. Cthulhu- Fiction."

The pastor clenched his teeth so tightly that his jaw sockets bulged out like marbles. "What is your name," he asked.

"Jane."

"Mary?"

"No, Jane."

"Susan, then."

"I said, my name is Jane."

"Precisely!" The preacher glared at his questioner. "How can you be so arrogant and rude that you won't believe someone when he tells you his name? Cthulhu tells me that he is a 'shambling mountain,' a terror that lies dormant at the bottom of the sea. Cthulhu didn't tell you that he is fiction- the book itself did. Do you see?"

Jane dropped the book to her sides in shock. She could not answer. She had removed her sunglasses and been blinded by the sun's glinting off the perspiration that poured between the pastor's pectorals.

Wow, she thought as she staggered off. That was heaven converted in man. He's handsome. Intelligent. Logical. And he's got a message that no one can ever successfully debate against.