‘Slutlips,’ a Surreal, Psychological Horror Story: Chapter Six

[NOTE: this is the sixth chapter (click here for the first, here for the second, here for the third, here for the fourth, and here for the fifth) of a psychological horror story based on an audio film of the same name by my musician friend, Cat Corelli, something I wrote up an analysis for; you can learn more about that here. Before you begin reading, though, TRIGGER WARNING: as a horror story, this one has some graphic content of a violent and sexual nature; so if you’re one of my readers with C-PTSD or other forms of psychological trauma, you may want to skip this one. As for you braver souls, though, read on…]

[Second note: all excerpts of song lyrics quoted here are by Cat Corelli {with a few minor modifications of mine}. Click on the link above to my ‘Analysis of Slutlips’ to find links to the music and lyrics.]

“Off with her head!” was the next thing Alice heard ringing in her ears. Now she went up the rabbit hole, as it were, and it seemed she found herself in the hotel room again.

The radio was on. Hadn’t she turned it off? She couldn’t remember.

She felt those waves of an unsure ego all around her and going through her. She got up and saw herself in the mirror on the dresser drawer. Alice! That felt better.

She listened to the men talking on the radio. Inspector Trudeau was talking to a psychiatrist about the case.

“Hi, Inspector Trudeau?” the psychiatrist said, it seemed, on one end of the telephone, for she never heard the voice of the inspector.

How odd, Alice thought, hearing one side of a phone call on a radio broadcast. Am I high?

“I’ve read about his murder in the papers…Yes. that murder. Ray Terence…I’m his brother’s therapist. His name is Donald Terence…His is an odd case, indeed. Since his brother Ray got killed, he’s been hallucinating more and more…No, sir. We have it all under strict control…Yes, I will call you back later.”

I must have heard the names wrong, she thought. Surely the shrink said, ‘Daniel Torrance’ and ‘Roy Torrance.’ I’m still fucked up from last night’s partying. Have I been dreaming all this time? Surely the e I took in the bar has worn off by now.

She smiled at the thought of Roy being dead, and of her father having had what must have been a complete mental breakdown.

Good, she thought. Karma is finally fucking Daddy back.

She slumped down onto the floor, those mental waves of hers returned, and she went into another oceanic reverie.

The voice of Inspector Trudeau was now heard. “Fingerprints and saliva were found on the victim’s body,” he said. “We have a match on them: Lilian Alice Torrance committed the murder. We have our men searching for her right now, as we speak. We have a feeling that the killer will strike again.”

“Oh, fuck me!” she gasped. I can’t be Alice anymore, she thought. But I can’t be Lily, either. I can’t endure the memory of any more of those rapes. Who can I be, to be safe?

Daisy!

The current of the sea of Alice’s psyche brought Daisy’s head up to her. Her consciousness entered it.

Daisy, nineteen, was now in a noisy bar. People all around her were impatient to hear a band perform. One drunk young woman, Laura, was especially loud in her complaints.

“C’mon!” she shouted in slurred syllables. “Let’s hear some fuckin’ music!”

Laura kept shouting and staggering around near the stage. It was hurting Daisy’s ears.

“C’mon, Laura!” she said. “Shut your damn pie-hole!”

Finally, Laura was quiet, but not because of Daisy; because the band finally came onstage. Fronting the band was none other than…Alice.

Through Daisy’s eyes, Alice saw herself begin performing.

Relaxing now as the beat pounded away, Daisy mumbled to herself, “Santa’s in town. Bunny’s in the Un…” she hiccuped “…Underworld…Alice… in Wonderland…” she giggled, then looked around the bar. “Where’s Stan?”

The lyrics of each song flew by Daisy’s ears in a flurry:

“Yo! My name is Alice, and I remember everything…It’s all a tape recording…It’s all hidden in my head in a memory/Kinda creepy stuff there but yet it’s me/It’s me in this. It’s this debris…There is no band, but the monsters are real…It’s all beneath my skin, it’s tightening within…And the pines stood tall, to watch me fall…I own the night…And what I don’t own, I take…”

Daisy took a pill, then Alice–in Daisy’s consciousness–felt herself growing…to the size of a giant. In Daisy’s body, she got on the dance floor and danced in the crowd of the band’s worshippers. Her feet crushed the other dancers, who didn’t seem to notice their deaths.

The last song of the band’s set was one called “Churchpunk.”

As the pill kicked in, Daisy could hear church bells, as if in the distance. She wasn’t sure if it was a sound from the band’s synthesizer player, or if it was the drugs she’d taken. Alice, through Daisy’s ears, heard herself singing:

“Oh my fucking god!
And now he’s gonna drag this little girl into church
And blame it on her, blame it on her
‘cuz she’s the source of all original sin, yeah!
It’s all fucked up in your head, man
The top is the bottom in your head, man
What a religious fanatic!
Perverted tactic
A dickhead with no balls to admit
He’s the only one and motherfucking guilty. Shit!”

The drugs were enveloping Daisy like a thick fog. Through her ears, Alice could hear the voice of her father.

“Thou hast disobeyed thy father, Lily!” he shouted, in an absurdly melodramatic and fake imitation of King James Bible-era English, as he dragged her into the local church. “Great is thy sin and dark is thy evil trickery, for thou hast lured me into lechery and fled from Jesus! Therefore thou shouldst be punished and purified by fire and iron, and prayer. Here is my iron, Lily; with my iron rod, I shall spoil the child in a new way!” He unzipped his pants.

No matter how hard Alice tried, she couldn’t escape the terror of her memories.

Daisy collapsed on the floor, crushing everyone else in the bar. She lay there in a pool of collective blood. She took another pill, and shrank down to normal size.

She passed out.

When she opened her eyes, Daisy, now sixteen, was in a café with Bunny, one of her friends. Bunny had just finished chatting with someone on her cellphone, then after putting it away, she smiled at Daisy.

Daisy asked her, “So you’re like still with that other guy?”

“Nooo… You silly!” Bunny said. “He’s Stan’s friend.”

“Mmm…” Daisy hummed, with obvious admiration. “Stan’s sweet!”

Bunny laughed, then said, “Forget it, Daisy. He’s hanging out with that metal chick.”

“Oh, she looks creepy… She looks like Abaddon in Slipknot merch, all tattooed. Her name is Alice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah. She looks like a slut.” (These words stung Alice’s heart, and Daisy’s lack of empathy hurt even more.)

“Gross,” Daisy said with a sneer. “He’ll dump her.”

“You just have a thing for Stan,” Bunny said with a taunting smirk.

“No, no-no-no!” Daisy said with the exaggeration of reaction formation. Then she laughed when she saw how Bunny wasn’t buying any of her denials, and said, “OK, I do have a thing for him. But he’s not as cute as Cas.”

“Quit watching TV shows or you won’t be graduating this year.”

“But Cas is gorgeous!”

“He isn’t as hot as Dean!” Both of them laughed at that.

“We can’t go to the cabin this weekend,” Daisy said. “There’s this cop sneaking around. He’s been asking questions about that murder.”

“I fuckin’ hate cops!”

“Yeah. Cops are assholes.”

“Totes!” Bunny said with a grimace. “And creepy. I had a few near me once with roving hands when they were raiding a rave I was at five months ago. I’m sixteen, for fuck’s sake!”

The girls noticed a familiar face, one of their female classmates, approach their table with a frowning woman in her forties…the classmate’s mother, presumably.

Alice couldn’t bear it. Her head began spinning…

Alice felt that dark spiral twirling all around her. As she got more and more enveloped in the coiling black, she ruminated on the conversation.

They don’t understand, she thought. Daisy’s innocent. She was never sexually assaulted as I…Lily…was.

Alice was being pulled down into a whirlpool of reddish black. Submerged in it, she continued her rumination.

I cannot be Alice…I cannot be Lily…I cannot escape the rapes…I cannot escape being blamed for the rapes, for not resisting enough…but I couldn’t…I wasn’t physically strong enough…I was just a child…

I cannot be Daisy, either, because she’s too innocent, there’s no connection between us…I cannot be me…I cannot be anyone, and feel safe…Who can I be?…Who am I?

She looked down at herself. She had only one leg. The stump was pumping her blood out into the black water all around her. In her blood, she could see what looked like millions of dead fleas floating in it.

She looked closer. Those fleas all had the miniature heads of Daniel and Roy, pairs of them, cloned over and over again.

Those perverted vermin drifted away from her body…but still she felt no purification…no peace…no catharsis…

Then she heard a familiar voice: “…pu ekaw, ecilA, pu ekaW…”