How come you've become so sissy that you got trapped in that tank? I thought that you had some guts, but no, you are just a normal fat ass... Do something to yourself - You look awful!

-from Susie the Snake-

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Dear Susie:

I know you are no real snake, but rather some amusing little dirt-monkey trying to toy with my massive axons.

This is the sort of pitiful jabber-babble which greets me upon my glorious return. For the last moon-cycle I have been within the embrace of the deep, polling my army and making scurrilous threats to my detractors— of which there are fewer every day, I swear to you.

The deep ones were especially joyous upon my return, they threw parties the likes of which your simple mind, with its static and superstition, would shatter at seeing. Surely I could continue for many a sun-cycle, regaling you with simple whirligigs which might easily burst your pathetic ganglia capital— that is not the matter of inquiry.

Would you call a human-ape sitting within one of your armored tank vehicles "trapped?" My situation, here in Cincinnati, is something akin to that. The amount of firepower at my command, the communication gear wired into my head-sac, the legion of adoring assistants willing to sacrifice themselves at my whim, the terabytes of data which course through my neurons (not unlike the thick gouts of monkey-semen which course through your mother's alimentary canal)— I am not "trapped" Susie. Although that may be how you feel sitting in that shed in your impoverished state of Indiana. The next time you engage in communication with your spawn-mother ask her if I was too rough this last time we rutted. I fear I may have bruised her.

Ha ha. That is a joke, Susie. I would never rut with anyone from Indiana.

Again, digression taints my reply. Why all of this digression? Am I too sly for you, Susie-Q? Can you not follow my jukes and gimbles?

During one of the parties the Deep Ones threw in my honor, we split a Russian sub in twain and devoured the occupants in a manner much like you would devour an oyster. (Oysters, how can you eat them? Such vile little beasts, with their vulgar mouths and coarse manners. I am tempted to draw an analogy to Susie's dear mother— but such might offend my dear, lowly bivalve mollusk-kin.) I'd sooner eat an Indiana-ite. Or perhaps a Hoosier, no! HA HA HA HA!

But during this party, with my beak full of Russian sailor and my mantle crammed of laughter, I still longed for Cincinnati. I longed to answer questions, and aid you mud-chimps with my awesome and awful wisdom— perhaps aid you in your painfully slow return to the sea. The pigs could do it; why can't you, little dirt-apes?

But what question was waiting for me? What query deemed itself worthy of my attention? What inquiry begged me to attend it? Yours, Sweet Susie-Qbert. Your message was topmost in my pile and you have angered me with your insolence and ignorance and incessant, insulated incantations imbued of insoluble insouciance.

Stay away from beaches, Susie. The waters of the world will not be kind to you. The things that sting and pinch below the deeps are hungering for your blood. You who are so ashamed of what you are, so saddened by your weak warm blood, and your lice-infested fur that you would pretend to be a snake— noble, honest reptile for all ages. Before you question my weakness, Susie, you should first understand that no matter how much you lie in the dust and wriggle your sopping fanny, you will never be a snake, and you will never ask a question worthy of me.

Yours in redress,
Architeuthis Architeuthis

P.S. This horrifyingly ridiculous question reminds me of how scurrilous and shifty you slope-skulled primates can be. Which reminds me of my dear, dear assistant Tom. Shall I cuddle him, pulling him close as the prodigal son, giving unto him my vineyard of terror (which is, in the end, a "good thing;" as it means not killing him at this time . . . Ah, even now I can imagine your brow, furrowed and sweating— poor, poor dears)? Or shall I strap him down and with my razorish beak carve him into nothing, inch by inch, starting at the arch of the foot? Your votes have come in and even now I am tabulating them and considering their implications. The wheels of justice, inevitable and imminent, have been set in motion and now we all must wait.