“The Black Lotus” (Unusual Stories, Winter 1935)

The story opens with Genghir the dreamer on the throne of a “distant kingdom in the days of the griffin and the fleet-winged unicorn.” He does not take pleasure in manly activities such as war and hunting. Instead, he spends his time with the women of the court in rest and study. His neglect allows corruption and disease to flourish in his kingdom, and people begin to flee for greener pastures. Genghir found refuge from the world at first in ideas and in his books. Then he turned to stronger stuff such as opium. 

When that was not enough, he discovered the recipe for the most reality-altering substance known to this dimension: a concoction brewed from the rare and perhaps legendary black lotus. “Elder lore” told him that the substance would bring him incredible dreams. He sent servants to the far corners of the world looking for the mysterious plant. One finally returned, veiled and silent, with the black lotus, and Genghir dove right in.
The first dream placed him in his own crypt, a living consciousness that watched as his body decomposed and the burial chamber collapsed into dust as the centuries unspooled.

The second dream was more terrifying than the first: “His head swelled and bloated to monstrous, unbelievable proportions, then burst rottenly asunder in a ghastly blob of gray and scarlet putrefaction, from which arose the stupefying scent of black lotuses. Then, with a single inarticulate cry of horror and despair, he crumpled and toppled from the balcony, to spatter himself in red madness upon the court below.”

The third and final dream had him being attacked by the black lotus plant itself. In the dream, he took a knife and tried to extricate the vine from his neck. Upon waking, he realized that he had instead cut his own throat in the process.

So ended the journey for Genghir the dreamer.

It is not a great story, to be sure, but maybe the details of Bloch’s life could help to understand this it a bit better. By now, Bloch had graduated from Lincoln High School in Milwaukee and, in the teeth of the Depression, has set out to become a writer. He had several stories under construction at the time and was getting his first notice for the things he had begun to publish. The Milwaukee Journal, amazingly enough, interviewed him about his writing life. He claimed, at the time, that he was aiming to become a comedian and that the horror was just for fun. In any case, he found the two similar: “There is such a slight line of differentiation between what is ludicrous that I think they come from the same thought patterns… As an example, the grotesque masks worn in Mardi Gras parades are ludicrous and horrible at the same time” (“Milwaukee”).
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Randall Larson uncovered a wonderful quote from Sam Moskowitz about “The Black Lotus” that Larson included in his Starmont Reader’s Guide: “The story was a minute stylistic recreation of a certain period in Lovecraft’s writing when he was heavily influenced by Lord Dunsany. Readers found themselves confronted in the case of Robert Bloch’s ‘Black Lotus’ with the ludicrous spectacle of a Lovecraft-struck acolyte imitating Lovecraft’s imitation of Dunsany” (qtd. in Larson Robert 16). That really about covers it for this story, unfortunately. Genghir needed an intervention at some point that never arrived, and his pursuit of the greatest possible high got him killed. The revelations—especially the first dream—are somewhat interesting, but they did not seem to have an effect on Genghir. Oh, well. This is a young person learning his craft in public, which sometimes is a messy process. Onward!