Horror Eyes

I came across this sight by the roadside.

Innocent?  Look again.

How about now?

A Cyclops

HORRIFYING HUMOR

A giant whose one huge eye is also his all-devouring mouth, barring my way.  Laughing and staring me down with his eye-mouth.

And it's my own Shadow.

Another Glimpse Of Hell: An Amusing Bit Of Auto-Suggestion

PRONE TO NIGHTMARES?  DRINK BEER

One who is very dear to me gave me her ring.

It's not a particularly valuable ring.  It's one of those casual one-size-fits-all trinkets and was probably cheap, although she'd had it so long she couldn't even recall how she came to have it.  It is, however, quite attractive and I like it very much, so I've been wearing it continuously, only taking it off to take a shower.

In fact, it's become such a part of me that I feel a bit incomplete when I'm not wearing it.  Which probably accounts for the fact that I've gradually come to regard it as a kind of amulet, one that provides an invisible layer of protection around me as an 'emanation' of the loving closeness that exists between her and myself.  That's how my mind works^^.

Anyhow, last night as I was getting ready for bed I realized I was not wearing the ring.  I knew where it must be -- there is a designated place in the bathroom where it goes when I take it off to shower -- and I started to go to fetch it, but then a thought struck me.

I had been going to sleep wearing the ring every night, feeling secure and protected by the feel of the ring around my finger and knowing that no ghosts or closet-monsters could disturb my sleep while I wore it.  So what if I suddenly went to sleep without it one night -- would spooks be alerted to my sudden defenseless state and take advantage of it?  Would I be haunted by ghosts and monsters this night if I did not put the ring on?

Feeling rather mischievous and adventurous, I decided to try the experiment.  I got into bed without the ring and covered up securely right up to my chin (because, as everybody knows, closet monsters cannot touch your head or your blanket, so you're safe as long as you're covered up like a burrito with only your face peeking out -- it's a universal rule), hoping against hope that some kind of encounter would take place.

Well, as it turned out, my sleep actually was disturbed.  Not by a monster as such, but by a nightmare.  One that resembled a typical teenager-friendly horror movie^^.  In the dream I was walking down a corridor in what appeared to be a hospital, along with a couple of companions -- one male, one female.  It was painted all white, and starkly lit by livid flourescent lights on the ceiling.  We were going toward the parking lot exit that we knew was some distance ahead and down a right fork.  Even though there were no windows, I knew it was night outside, and fittingly, there were no other people as we walked on.  But then, we were joined by someone -- or rather, half of someone -- moving alongside us.  It was the upper half of a man -- head, arms and torso -- sliding alongside us on some kind of wheeled platform.  That was startling enough, but what made it extra disturbing was the fact that whatever device he was riding on was not working very well, and like a shopping cart with a defective wheel, he could not move straight ahead but kept veering into the path of my female companion and tangling with her legs.  We just walked on quickly, afraid to stop or speak to him.  But then a second character appeared that was even more disturbing:  this one may have been a custodian, because he was pushing what looked like a giant squeegee in front of him as he walked, sweeping up a quantity of crumb-like debris as he went.  The debris was pink and some of it was red and wet;  it turned out to be little bits and pieces of a human body, and all the pieces were still alive and moving.  An eye was among them.  The man handed the 'squeegee' to me and I had to take over as the sweeper.  We were now totally panicked and began to earnestly sprint toward the exit.  Along the way I saw a large clear plastic box crammed full with the human crumbs;  an eye inside it blinked at me.  As we ran toward the parking lot, where my car was waiting in the darkness (the image that flashed in my dream mind was that of my actual car in waking life, bless 'er), more scary creatures appeared and started to chase us, and among them may have been the lower half of the half-man on a platform, but these new characters were just vague extras in the background and I don't remember them clearly.  As we ran pell-mell toward the exit I awoke.  With a full bladder.  Was I glad I'd drunk a bottle of beer that evening!

So that's what happened with my experiment.  Doubtless it was the suspicion/expectation of something happening because I did not have the protection of the 'amulet' that caused the monsters that were expected to appear, appear.  In a dream, if not in waking life.  Actually, I can see where some of the elements of the dream came from.  The half-man bore a certain resemblance in both face and size to Peter Dinklage, the dwarf actor whose photo I had seen earlier that day in an online blurb about the new X-Men movie.  The hospital setting was probably inspired by the fact that on the day before this I'd been informed of a friend being hospitalized.  As for my car loyally accompanying me into the dream, surely it's due to the fact that it's just a few months old and I feel very secure and comfortable driving it.  The rest feels like a hodge-podge of any number of horror movies I've seen that have a claustrophobic feel and a body-horror theme -- Jacob's Ladder, Silent Hill, and Dead Girl, to mention just three.

Or it might be that my lack of protection did attract a spook after all... and that while I slept there was a spectral monster squatting over me like in the painting by Fuseli, making me have a bad dream.

Related Posts:  Custom-made hells;  More musings on hell

Horror

I don't remember the details because it was a long time ago and probably also because it was such a traumatic experience, but I think I made this object

in memory of the night when, during a group therapy session -- at the time I was seeing a clinical psychologist twice a week, once for individual therapy and once for group session -- I suddenly broke into sobs, cried uncontrollably for maybe ten minutes straight and punched a hole in the wall of the therapist's office (later I had to shell out $50 to have it patched -- who knew I had such strength?).

After that torrent of tears and snot I managed to calm down at last and drove myself home.  I went up the steps to my door and found my cat Blood crouched beside it.  Sometimes Blood would push out the screen window in the back and slip out during the day;  I had intended to have it fixed  but never gotten around to it -- but at least he hadn't gone and got himself lost, but was waiting for me by the door like a good little housecat.  I was so glad to see him and I bent down to pat his head, then felt something wet and sticky.  It turned out to be blood.  Blood on Blood.  I crouched down beside him and looked close, and saw big gashes on his side, one going around his body to his chest.  I freaked -- I started crying all over again and carried him inside -- it must have hurt him terribly to be picked up -- and when I turned on the light I realized I could see right inside his chest cavity;  he'd been sliced open.

Sobbing and in full panic mode, I looked up animal hospitals in the phone book and found one that was open for emergency care (this must have been 10 or 11 PM), ironically close to my therapist's office back in Westwood.  I wrapped Blood in a towel, carried him into the car and drove right back to the clinic in Westwood, where I deposited him on the reception counter and continued to sob.

After the staff had taken Blood inside, I collapsed on the couch and tried to collect myself.  The receptionist gave me a box of tissues and I sat there for what seemed an interminable interlude while they worked to save my pet, blowing my nose every couple of minutes until there was a sizable mound of wadded-up tissue on the coffee table in front of me.

Once the surgery was over, I had to leave Blood there until he had recovered enough to go home.  And after I did bring him home, with drainage tubes sticking out of him, I laid him down on a pile of towels, where he stayed without moving for three days straight.  I was concerned that he might have been too cold on that floor (I was living in a storefront studio at the time), but on the other hand, maybe the cold felt good against the throbbing stitches.  And once he could get up and move around a little, back he went to the vet's to have the Elizabethan collar installed.  It was probably humiliating for him, but he took it well.

EDIT 1:  It turned out that Blood had climbed under the hood of a neighbor's car.  Later, when the neighbor came and unknowingly started the engine, the fan blade...

EDIT 2:  When my friend Evelyn heard about this incident, she quipped that Blood had become Bloodbath.  O.K., that was funny.

EDIT 3:  I was living next door to a Calypso musician at the time.  A few days after the incident, one of the man's bandmates came up and said "When ah heard Blood got hurt, ah thought a bruthuh got shot!"  That was even funnier (the neighborhood was in *Blood territory).

*The Bloods were a notorious street gang in south central Los Angeles.

The World's Shortest Horror Story

Boyfriend:  "Omigod, what in God's name was that?  Are you a witch?  A werewolf?  A mutant?  What IS that horrible thing you turn into?"

Girlfriend:  "Well... I don't turn into that thing... IT TURNS INTO THIS."

More Musings On Hell

My thought is, that if Hell existed, it would be a psychological condition, not a literal place where souls are 'physically' tortured.  It would be a state of being in which one were immersed in a continuous state of utter terror, panic, helplessness and despair, as if one were in the process of being killed -- except, of course, it never ends.

Being made to feel as if one were tightly confined and suffocating -- a common scenario in nightmares -- as if one were buried alive in a coffin, or welded into a steel drum, as I read once happened to a mafioso -- would certainly constitute one such mental scenario.

  

Feeling endlessly pursued by something that inspires fear is another.  Knowing that the thing that horrifies and repels you the most -- be it a zombie, space monster, or some nameless amorphous mass of wet putrefaction -- is just moments away from catching up with you, and that you must stay on the run without ever being able to rest, forever -- that would certainly qualify as hellish.

The horror wouldn't have to be embodied in an actual monster;  it could be something more abstract, like the fear of having one's secret shame exposed, or of impending bankruptcy, depending on one's disposition.

It has occurred to me, though, that in some cases a worse fate would be the realization that one has become not a victim, but a victimizer, oneself;  that instead of being chased by a nightmare monster, one has become the monster that haunts someone else's dreams.

Especially if that someone were the object of one's most ardent longing.

To know that the more anxiously you pursued the one you love, the more he/she was frightened and disgusted by you and the more they would reject you and try to escape -- or conversely, that they might find your impertinent desire annoying and pathetic, and might be moved to go through the motions of fulfilling it, only to reveal it was all a charade. That would truly be a hell of despair and degradation.