Analysis of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the name of the first two of four films based on Jack Finney‘s 1955 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers. Though the writers of the novel and the first film vehemently denied any allegory or political subtext surrounding the “pod people,” one finds it irresistible to read such meaning into the story; for however one may insist that the story was just meant as an entertaining thriller, there are subtle, if unconsciously given, meanings to be gleaned from it.

According to the Wikipedia article on the novel (sadly, without a source to verify it, so I have to take it on faith), a “pod person” tells a human that the latter’s race is no less parasitic than the former, what with man’s using up of resources, wiping out indigenous populations, and destroying ecosystems in order to survive. Assuming Wikipedia is accurately referencing the novel, is this not a clear political subtext?

Then, in the 1956 movie, Dr. Miles Bennell says, “In my practice, I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind… All of us — a little bit — we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.” Such a line doesn’t seem necessary in a mere thriller without any sense of, at least some, social commentary.

Here are some more quotes.

From the novel:

“I saw my father’s wooden filing cabinet, his framed diplomas stacked on top of it, just as they’d been brought from his office. In that cabinet lay records of the colds, cut fingers, cancers, broken bones, mumps, diphtheria, births and deaths of a large part of Mill Valley for over two generations. Half the patients listed in those files were dead now, the wounds and tissue my father had treated only dust.”

“Why do you breathe, eat, sleep, make love, and reproduce your kind? Because it’s your function, your reason for being. There’s no other reason, and none needed.”

“If we believe that we are just animals, without immortal souls, we are already but one step removed from pod people.”

The 1956 film:

“It started — for me, it started — last Thursday, in response to an urgent message from my nurse, I hurried home from a medical convention I’d been attending. At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.” –Dr. Miles Bennell (voiceover)

“Sick people who couldn’t wait to see me, then suddenly were perfectly all right. A boy who said his mother wasn’t his mother. A woman who said her uncle wasn’t her uncle.” –Bennell (voiceover)

“Keep your eyes a little wide and blank. Show no interest or excitement.” –Bennell

“Look, you fools, you’re in danger! Can’t you see?! They’re after you! They’re after all of us! Our wives, our children, everyone! THEY’RE HERE, ALREADY! YOU’RE NEXT!” –Bennell

“I want to love and be loved. I want your children. I don’t want a world without love or grief or beauty. I’d rather die.” –Becky Driscoll

“It’s like the first impression that’s stamped on a coin. It isn’t finished.” –Jack Belicec, describing a body he’s found.

“A strange neurosis, evidently contagious, an epidemic mass hysteria. In two weeks, it spread all over town.” –Dr. Kauffman

“You say it as if it were terrible. Believe me, it isn’t. You’ve been in love before. It didn’t last. It never does. Love. Desire. Ambition. Faith. Without them, life is so simple, believe me.” –Kauffman, as a pod man

…

Ambulance Driver: We had to dig him out from under the most peculiar things I ever saw.

Dr. Hill: What things?

Ambulance Driver: Well, I don’t know what they are, I never saw them before. They looked like great big seed pods.

Dr. Hill: Where was the truck coming from?

Ambulance Driver: Santa Mira.

The 1978 film:

Elizabeth: I have seen these flowers all over. They are growing like parasites on other plants. All of a sudden. Where are they coming from?

Nancy: Outer space?

Jack: What are you talking about? A space flower?

Nancy: Well, why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?

Jack: I’ve NEVER expected metal ships.

…

Elizabeth: I hate you.

Dr. Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), as a pod man: We don’t hate you – there’s no need for hate now. Or love.

Matthew: There are people who will fight you, David.

Elizabeth: Will stop you.

Dr. Kibner: In an hour you won’t want them to. Don’t be trapped by old concepts, Matthew, you’re evolving into a new life form.

…

“We came here from a dying world. We drift through the universe, from planet to planet, pushed on by the solar winds. We adapt and we survive. The function of life is survival.” –Kibner, as a pod man

“It’s like there’s some kind of a hallucinatory flu going around. People seem to get over it in a day or two. All I can do is treat the symptoms.” –Kibner

Now, as far as political interpretations go, liberals see the 1956 film as an allegory about the excesses of McCarthyism and conformity to American values during the Cold War. Continuing with the Cold War theme, conservatives see an allegory on Stalinism.

As for the 1978 film, which I’ll be focusing on the most, I’ll examine the story from my more decidedly left-wing stance, as such a position, to my knowledge, seems lacking in any interpretation of the films.

The anti-McCarthyist and anti-communist interpretations of the 1950s were fitting, what with the realities of the Cold War and the Red Scare. It is also fitting that the novel has a happy (if unconvincing) ending, and the 1956 film has a hopeful ending, with the defeat of McCarthyism, the rise of the radical 60s as a cure for the bland conformity of the 50s, and (from the capitalist class’s perspective) the substantial end of communism by the early 1990s.

The 1978 film, however, has not only a pessimistic but outright frightening ending, which I find fitting for the political allegory I propose: the metastasizing of neoliberalism, which substantively began around the time of the film’s release, and which has continued unabated to this day.

This idea of metastasizing–of growth, spreading (as of a disease) is important when we consider an important motif, developed the most in the 1978 movie: pods–plants–flowers…Just as seeds spread out over the land, and themselves grow into plants; just as a contagion spreads and infects more and more people–so do pods replace more and more humans with unfeeling automatons, comparable to Winnicott‘s False Self.

How can this idea of a contagion be related to our world, especially since the late 1970s? I normally find little inspiration in Richard Dawkins (i.e., his anti-Muslim attitude), but he had one good idea–how ideas spread in the form of memes.

One of the memes that started spreading from around the mid-twentieth century was the ‘philosophy‘ of Ayn Rand. Government involvement in the economy should be minimized, or at any rate only used in the service of capitalism. ‘Rational’ self-interest has a way of benefitting everyone. The individual will outweighs collective needs in importance. (The individual would never, ever subordinate the needs of the many, causing them to conform to the dictates of the individuals in the ruling class! No, no!)

Rand’s ideas, combined with those of Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, resulted in a hijacking of libertarian thinking, changing an originally left-wing ideology into a right-wing one. Pods, all four of them.

Doctors and departments of health do all they can to stop the spread of contagions, and the Doctors Bennell of both films (Miles Bennell, played by Kevin McCarthy in the 1956 film; and Matthew Bennell, played by Donald Sutherland in the 1978 film) do all they can to resist the pods.

One of the ill effects of ‘small government’ right-libertarian policies is cuts to healthcare coverage, with a risk of thousands of poor people acquiescing to sickness and death annually. Single-payer healthcare is just something the rich don’t want to pay for.

As a health inspector doing a thankless job searching for health violations in a fancy restaurant, Matthew finds “a rat turd” in a pot; the owner of the restaurant insists it’s just a caper. Matthew suggests he eat the “caper,” which of course, he won’t.

As a capitalist, the owner hates Matthew, a man working for the government in the Department of Health in San Francisco; the restaurant employees, dependent on the restaurant’s survival and without a sense of class consciousness, also hate the health inspector, showing their hate by smashing the windshield of his car.

Those promoting health go against capitalism, forcing regulations on bosses, which limit their ability to make profits; those supporting capitalism, including workers without class-consciousness (i.e., workers who are asleep) tolerate the spread of germs…of pods…

Recall that the pods come from a dying alien world, adapting to Earth and taking over for the sake of their survival. This, an invasion, is akin to the capitalist form of imperialism: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall endangers the survival of the capitalist, and when markets dry up in his native country (the “dying world“), he must seek out new markets in other countries, steal their resources to enrich himself, and either take over or kill off the locals, as the pods do on Earth.

The pods “adapt and [they] survive”…as does capitalism: ‘Capital is not a fixed magnitude! Always remember this, and appreciate that there is a great deal of flexibility and fluidity in the system. The left opposition to capitalism has too often underestimated this. If capitalists cannot accumulate this way, then they will do it another way. If they cannot use science and technology to their own advantage, they will raid nature or give recipes to the working class. There are innumerable strategies open to them, and they have a record of sophistication in their use. Capitalism may be monstrous, but it is not a rigid monster. Oppositional movements ignore its capacity for adaptation, flexibility and fluidity at their peril. Capital is not a thing, but a process. It is continually in motion, even as it itself internalizes the regulative principle of “accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production.”’ –David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital, page 262

A well-known ill effect of capitalism is alienation, not just that of workers, but of society and of one’s species-essence. This alienation is vivid, even literal, in this story. People are made alien: alien to each other, and alien to themselves.

The pod replicas’ creation causes the disintegration of the original humans. On the other side of the coin, Miles and Matthew destroy the pods about to replicate them. As we can see, the feeling of alienation is mutual.

Little Jimmy Grimaldi, in the 1956 film, is crying because his mother isn’t really her; in the 1978 film, Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) complains that her boyfriend (Art Hindle) is no longer himself. Characters constantly complain about imposters at the beginning of both movies…then many of the original complainers stop complaining, because they’ve become pods themselves who, like capitalists, deny any evil intent.

By a strange (dialectical?) irony, it’s plants in the 1978 film that destroy humanity, instead of vice versa, as in real life; or, more accurately, the invasion of alien imperialism poisons the environment, which in turn destroys humanity–like Monsanto, Agent Orange, or land mines; then there’s what Jair Bolsonaro wants to do to the Amazon rainforest…

So with this invasion, instead of people bonding together in love, they exist merely to survive–just like the ‘sleeping’ proletariat (i.e., those without class consciousness); and as those ‘woke’ proletarians who fight to end this scourge of imperialism are hunted down and destroyed, so are Miles and Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), or Matthew and Elizabeth. Furthermore, they are branded as crazy (as how left-leaning people may be labelled ‘nut-bars,’), extreme, or conspiracy theorists…how familiar. Paranoia about neoliberalism is as justified as it is about pod people.

Recall Kevin McCarthy, both as Miles and as the ‘running man’ in the 1978 movie, frantically yelling to all the drivers passing by, “They’re coming!” and “You’re next!” In the first film, drivers shout at him to “Get outta here!,” and call him “crazy,” “idiot,” and “drunk”; in the second, Matthew and Elizabeth lock their car doors. This is the average person’s response to such desperate warnings.

When the ‘running man’ is hit by a car and killed, pod people surround the body and stare at it with unfeeling faces, yet they’re satisfied that the threat to their ascending hegemony is removed. This is like the ruling class’s response to warnings about the growth of neoliberalism.

Outwardly as replicas of the humans whose bodies they’ve ‘snatched,’ the pods have all their memories, and can even mimic emotion on a superficial level, causing us often not to know for sure when the switch to pods has happened. This is the case with Nimoy’s character, Dr. David Kibner, who, a third to halfway into the movie, still shows some emotion, but has no sympathy for Matthew’s fears about the pods at all. As a celebrity pop-psychologist, pre-pod Kibner represents the capitalist tendency to exploit people’s emotional problems by selling them happiness in the form of self-help books, so the blurred line between him as human and as pod makes sense.

So many of the ‘left’ are pods, people who are publicly known as progressives, but who are actually, directly or indirectly, helping the neoliberal agenda. George Soros is one: he helped with the demise of the USSR, yet he pretends to be concerned with the excesses of contemporary capitalism. Slavoj Zižek critiques capitalism, but doesn’t offer any real solutions. I’ve written about how the Clintons, in ‘left-leaning’ guise, have caused enormous damage to the lives of ordinary people, as have Obama and Tony Blair. Justin Trudeau is doing this in Canada, though he’s seen as ‘progressive.’ Pods, all of them.

Neocons like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have pretended to be progressives, too, in their opposition to religion; yet they were and are content to let imperialism in the Middle East carry on unabated. Pods, pods, and more pods.

The memes that people such as these have spread–“socialism doesn’t work,” “communism killed 100 million people,” “the freer the markets, the freer the people,” “TINA,” ‘only the state is the enemy of the people,’ etc.–continue to infect the entire world in a pandemic. No matter how loudly we yell to warn people about neoliberalism and growing fascism, we aren’t listened to…or we’re struck down and killed, like Kevin McCarthy’s frantic runner in the street, in the 1978 film.

Matthew, Elizabeth, and Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright) learn that they can fool the pods by hiding their emotions whenever they have to walk among them. This is like how crypto-communists have had to hide their sympathies about the Comintern…yet it seems left-leaning George Orwell turned into a pod when he helped the IRD compile a list of those people.

Becky, or Elizabeth, can hide her humanity for only so long before something shocks her–like a dog hit by a car, or a busker sleeping too close to his dog, causing a pod to merge the man’s head with the dog’s body.

Note how the pods don’t care if an animal is killed, or if a dog-man monster is created, symbolic of the bestial nature man is reduced to by neoliberalism. Similarly, the pods don’t bat an eye, or make that ugly shriek, if a pod is walking about naked outside…but they will react if a human is still among them, as chagrined Nancy learns.

I’ve argued elsewhere that–citing Shakespeare’s use of the word in Hamlet—naked can be used to mean ‘without any possessions or means.’ Pod-Elizabeth’s nakedness can thus be seen to represent those deprived of basic necessities by neoliberalism. Many of the deprived, like her, would rather rat out (or ‘squeal out’) those unlike them, as working-class supporters of fascism do, instead of banding together with other workers in solidarity against the ruling class. Neoliberal capitalists, like the pods, don’t care about the deprivation of the naked, such as those suffering in Yemen or Palestine.

The pods are spread by boat from San Francisco (or by truck from fictional Santa Mira in the 1956 movie) to the rest of the world, just as the contagion of neoliberalism spread from Austria to the US and UK, and then to the rest of the world.

And how do humans turn into pods? By falling asleep. What a powerful metaphor for how one’s liberty…one’s very humanity…dies. Only through endless vigilance–indefatigable class consciousness–can we prevent our dehumanization, our mutual alienation.

So, to recap, the contagion of the pods can be seen to represent the spread of capitalist imperialism, in its neoliberal form, through tax cuts to the rich, deregulation, and pro-capitalist/anti-socialist propaganda in the form of memes spread in a market-friendly, corporate media. We lose our humanity to wage slavery, with soulless False Selves that are alienated from each other.

We’ve allowed this to happen because we’ve lost our sense of awareness–we’ve fallen asleep. What had been a thriller with a happy ending–due to the tireless efforts of humanity to repel the pod people in Finney’s novel–grew into an increasingly pessimistic story in these two movies (even the 1956 film originally had a dark ending–that is, before the studio wanted the framing story with the psychiatrist [Dr. Hill, played by Whit Bissell] listening to Miles tell his story, to add a hopeful ending).

But such is the nature of a contagion: to cause a problem to be more and more desperate. Such has been the metastasizing of neoliberalism, to bring the problem of capitalist imperialism from a formidable struggle–in which at least there had been hope of victory–to one in which defeat seems almost a foregone conclusion.

In the 1978 movie, we go from a vigorous Department of Health, with human Elizabeth and Matthew aggressively trying to find out where the flowers and pods came from, to one with pod-Elizabeth and pod-Matthew sitting around lazily at their desks, doing nothing of importance. No one is interested in healing the sick, or stopping the spread of disease. The 1956 film would have ended with Miles shouting his hysterical warning to the drivers on the highway, and perhaps–after the film’s end–hit and killed by a car, as he is in the near-sequel 1978 movie…a dire prognosis for the world.

Can we, our bodies snatched by neoliberalism, find a way back to Finney’s ending?

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

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[NOTE: this is the seventh chapter (click here for the first, here for the second, here for the third, here for the fourth, here for the fifth, and here for the sixth) 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…]

Alice woke up…or did she?

She found herself in the hotel room again. The radio was off.

I don’t remember turning off the radio last time, she thought.

She got up, saw herself in the mirror, and the waves of her ego’s uncertainty flattened–somewhat–when she saw her image in the reflection. She sighed in relief at it.

She turned on the radio. Agent Curtis and Inspector Trudeau were chatting…again, why on a radio program, instead of in a crime lab, or something?

“It seems to be a dead end, Agent,” Trudeau said.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Curtis said. “I’ve got a feeling the killer will show up again.”

“Dropping bodies,” Trudeau said.

Dropping bodies, she thought. Bodies, dropping down rabbit holes, dropping into seas of dismembered body parts, dropping into black, downward spirals…

“Still, we’ll get out of this dead end only if there is another killing,” Trudeau said.

“There will be,” Curtis said. “Killers always drop bodies. That’s what they do.”

“But what if the killer isn’t quite a killer?” Trudeau asked.

Yeah! she thought. Maybe I never killed anyone. Maybe the drugs made me hallucinate the whole thing.

“Interesting theory, Inspector,” Curtis said.

“Right,” Trudeau said. “Very strange world.”

“Whew,” she sighed. “I’m safe.”

“.ecilA, pu ekaW,” a familiar female voice said.

“What?” Alice said with a jolt going through her body. “Am I still dreaming?”

“.ecilA er’uoy kniht llits uoY”

“But I am, aren’t I?” Alice’s vision blurred, then faded. Her body began dropping into that black spiral again.

“.t’nera uoy ,oN”

As those black coils spun around her dropping body, she saw a hole in the left side, a kind of window looking into a mental hospital. She saw Daniel Torrance, strapped to a bed, receiving a sedative from a nurse. He was struggling to break free of his bonds. He was screaming.

“Stop it!” he screamed in his faux German accent. “Stop it!” His body switched back and forth between his and Goebbels’. “Please, stop it! Please!” Then he slumped down on the bed.

“The sedative doesn’t work that fast,” the nurse said to a psychiatrist standing next to her. “Could he have had a heart attack?”

“Could be,” the psychiatrist said. The hole in the side of the spiral closed up.

Alice smiled as she continued falling. Daddy, she thought. Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

“.thgir lla, hguorht er’uoy ,hO”

Lily suddenly woke up, crying. She was lying on a raft with endless water all around her, as far as the eye could see…no land in sight. The waves moved in gentle rises and falls. A fog hovered over her, greying the sky everywhere. She was in her pyjamas, with a blanket over her.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I…”

“What is it, Lily?” a familiar female voice echoed from the depths of the fog.

“I thought sleep would do it,” Lily said. “To die, to sleep…would help me escape.”

“What’s wrong?” asked the voice.

“I don’t know who I am.”

“You’re Lily.”

“No, I’m not. I’m Alice. I’ll show you. It’s in my purse…wait, where is it?” She looked down at her body, recognizing that of a flat-chested girl instead of that of curvy Alice. “Why…why am I in Lily’s body?”

“Because you are Lily.”

“What about Alice?” Lily looked at herself in the water. She saw Lily’s face distorted in the moving waves.

“There was no Alice. There never was an Alice. She was just a role you played. A false self. You’d played that part for so many years, you forgot it was just a role. You thought you liked being a ‘slut’…to protect yourself from the pain. But you were always Lily.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do, Lily. Deep, deep down inside. You’ve just repressed it for so long. But here’s the thing: you can’t keep the truth away, no matter how hard you try. All of your attempts to present yourself as a ‘metal chick’ and a ‘slut’ are just armour to keep the truth from you.”

“And what is this ‘truth’?”

“‘Alice’ is a role your parents and uncle forced you to play in the series of child pornography videos they were making and selling.”

Lily’s eyes and mouth widened. She shuddered.

“You mean, my…mom…made me do it, too? I don’t remember her at all.” She got dizzy.

“I know,” the Mystery Girl said. “Her betrayal of you was so painful, you had to blot all memory of her out of your mind. The only trace of her remaining was a likeness to the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

Lily broke down and cried. “Oh, my God!”

“Your tormentors all played roles, too, in those awful movies,” the Mystery Girl said. “Your father sometimes dressed up in lederhosen with you in a dirndl, sometimes he wore a Nazi uniform while doing a bad imitation of a German accent, sometimes he dressed as a Protestant minister while blaming you for tempting him into sin. Your Uncle Ray sometimes wore a cowboy hat and did an even worse imitation of a southern accent; sometimes he wore blackface and pretended he was Morgan Freeman. It would have been laughable, had it not been so horrifying, what they did to all of us.”

“To all of us?” Lily sobbed. “You mean, you were a part of it?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Daisy, or I used to be Daisy, the girl you saved. I’m her spirit.”

“Wait; if I ‘saved’ you, why are you a ghost?”

“Well, you saved me and you didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“You saved me from being used in their porno films, but they murdered me. Still, you had me die a virgin rather than raped, so that’s saving me enough, as I see it.”

“Wait…it’s all coming back to me…”

A flurry of memories flashed by Lily’s eyes: Donald and Ray Terence (for those were their real names) making teenage Lily get tattoos, dye her hair a devil red, and wear ‘metal chick’ clothes to make her look ‘Satanic’ in the porn films; Donald and Ray becoming ‘born again Christians,’ but keeping their underage porn business alive, as Donald’s wife, Wanda, insisted on keeping the money rolling in from their pervert clients; the ‘born again Christians’ reconciling their would-be faith to their crimes by making scapegoats of Lily and the other boys and girls they raped as Wanda filmed it on her smartphone.

“I remember now,” Lily said with a waterfall of tears soaking her cheeks. “Mommy found you chatting with Bunny about Stan in a café. She said you looked like ‘actress material.’ I know because I was there. Because you and I were classmates at school, I wanted to warn you and stop her, but I couldn’t–they had that much power over me.

“I gave Uncle Roy–er, Ray an overdose of sleeping pills in his bourbon one night several years ago; I wrote a suicide note, imitating his handwriting (for I’d practiced writing in his hand many times on scrap paper, then hid the drafts, for I didn’t dare throw them out; Mommy watched everything going in and out of the house like a hawk).

“In my wish to save your innocence, I now decided to use the same fake suicide plan on Daddy…but Mom found all my drafts, and realized what I’d done and was planning.”

“Yes,” Daisy’s ghost said. “Wanda found all those scraps of paper, with imitations of Donald’s as well as Ray’s handwriting. Your mom and dad were so infuriated, they went wild with thoughtless rage, and got a murderous revenge on you.”

“They gave me a choice: let Daddy rape you on camera, or he’d kill both of us. I figured him raping you was like murder, as I’d died every time he and Uncle Ray raped me,…”

“You chose death for us, your mom shouted, “Off with their heads!”, and we were killed, our bodies dismembered, driven all the way from South Dakota to the Oregon and California coasts, then thrown into the ocean, with the body parts of a few other boy and girl victims.”

“Yes,” Lily sighed, noting a leak in her raft. It started to rain. “I can sense the whole thing now, as if I’d witnessed it in life…I’m in the spirit world with you, aren’t I?”

“Of course,” Daisy said. “You’ve been here the whole time, since your dream about going from your ‘apartment’ to the dance club. Here, in the dreamland of the collective unconscious, where ghosts have access to all the knowledge–however garbled it may be shown to us–of the world, including knowing what happened to us after we were killed.”

“No wonder everything I’ve seen is so fucked up,” Lily said. “It’s all been like a dream.”

“Yeah, and I have to comment frankly on your parents,” Daisy said. “Dumping our bodies in the Pacific Ocean was such a stupid thing to do. The police could easily trace the murders to your parents. In fact, Donald and Wanda are being arrested as we speak.”

“Daddy always was a moron,” Lily said. Her body began dropping slowly into the water. The rain was coming down harder. “So, I’m dead?”

“Yes, Lily. You have to face the facts. It’s time to let go. Let go of your ego, and your suffering will end.”

“I’m afraid.” She was up to her waist in water. The rain was coming down so heavily, there seemed to be more rain than air.

“Don’t be afraid, Lily. The pain will go away as soon as you fully let go of your desire to be alive. Let go, be one with everything, and you’ll finally have peace.”

The water was approaching her shoulders now.

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

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[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…”

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

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[NOTE: this is the fifth chapter (click here for the first, here for the second, here for the third, and here for the fourth) 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…]

The next thing Alice (still in Lily’s consciousness and feeling herself having gone, so to speak, further and further down the rabbit hole) heard was an elegant piano waltz. The notes were punctuated with such crisp precision, one would think Glenn Gould had risen from the grave.

Still, there was an eerie sadness in the melody.

Lily opened her eyes and saw herself in the middle of a playground in that Austrian grassland, with the Alps not too far away. The skies were a cloudless blue. Her father was in lederhosen again. She, in the dirndl, was physically about nineteen years old, though in her cute pigtails and childlike manner, she psychologically seemed to be about six.

The piano player was a man in a cowboy hat, plaid collared shirt, and jeans. He seemed charming to her. She felt an urge to get up.

“Daddy, I wanna dance,” she said.

“Darling, sweetheart,” Danny said in his fake German accent. “You can’t be doing that.” He, back in the Nazi uniform, pushed her back onto her swing.

“But why, Daddy?”

“This dance requires both legs, darling.”

She looked down at herself, and saw only one leg. She began sobbing, then said, “But, who cares?”

“Well, people will be watching.”

“Tell them it’s OK,” she said, stopping her crying. “They have to understand it’s OK.”

“I can’t risk my reputation,” he said.

“Daddy, you’re a moron.”

He looked down at her with threatening eyes.

The piano man stopped playing, got up, and walked over to her and her father, who was now in lederhosen again.

“Hey, howdy, man,” the pianist said, in a southern accent so overdone it could only have been fake. “I’m Morgan.” He reached out his hand to shake her father’s.

“Howdy to you, Morgan,” her father said, shaking his hand and genuinely pleased to meet him. “Nice to meet you. I’m Dan. Daniel Torrance.”

“Nice to meet you, Danny Torrance. May I call you ‘Danny’? Like The Shining Danny?”

“What’s The Shining?” Torrance asked.

“Oh, forget it,” the would-be southerner said. “You don’t have it anyway.” He paused, looking down at Lily. “I want to ask you something, man.”

“Talk to me.”

“I’ve been playing that waltz for years. Kids always dance to it. Ha! My lil’ Jack and Jill over there…” he pointed to his twins, his ten-year-old son and daughter “…were dancing to it just now. Dancin’ ’til they done got dizzy, that’s how they danced.”

“Those two blondes?” Danny asked, eyeing the two kids lewdly.

“Yeah,” Morgan said. “Sweet kids. I love them, man.” He paused and looked at them with a similarly eerie lewdness, then back at Lily the same way. “Your lil’ girl didn’t dance. Why? All kids have fun dancing to my waltz.”

“Well…” Danny began.

“Tell me,” Morgan almost commanded.

“There’s a problem. She thinks she has only one leg.”

“Jesus Christ! How come?” Morgan looked down at Lily and ogled her two legs.

She also looked down at herself; she smiled to see both of them there again. Then she thought, Wait a minute: I have one leg if Daddy says I have only one?

“I don’t know, man,” Danny said. “I keep saying she’s wrong, but she won’t listen.”

“Strange world,” Morgan said. “Do you play the banjo by chance, Danny? You seem like the type who might.”

“Why would I play the banjo, of all the low-class instruments?” Danny said, offended. “It’s the kind of instrument a nigger would play. I’d be risking my reputation if I played that.” He was in his SS uniform again.

“Daddy, you’re a moron,” Lily said.

“One more word of lip from you, young lady, and you’ll wish you’d kept your mouth shut!” He scowled down at her with Goebbels’s face again. She recoiled, shaking.

“Well, I gotta say you know jack about niggers and banjos,” Morgan said, now a black man. “And you’d better change your attitudes, Danny. ‘Cause you don’t wanna mess with niggers in the South.”

“Says who?” Danny said, in lederhosen again and looking like himself.

“Says Morgan Freeman,” Morgan said, now looking like the actor, but still with the ridiculously fake southern accent. “But you don’t have The Shining thing anyways, so you won’t get it.”

Lily looked up at him, excited to see him looking like the movie star in the cowboy hat and jeans. “Oh! That’s coool! So you’re, like, Morgan Freeman from the movies?”

“Yeah, pretty girl,” ‘Freeman’ said, eyeing her lewdly again.

“So, maybe you can give me two legs so I can dance to your waltz…could you?” She pawed at her legs, to feel only one.

Her father, in the SS outfit again and looking like Goebbels, scowled at her, “Lily! You can’t be doing that! You’re supposed to have only one leg!”

“What is the problem with you, Danny?” ‘Freeman’ asked. “Why can’t you let your kid have both legs? I thought you said she only thought she had one leg. She really don’t!”

“Yeah! Please, Daddy!”

“Well,…” her father said, then leaned over to whisper in ‘Freeman’s’ ear, “Because if she has both, she’ll misuse them.”

“Oh, but how?” Morgan asked, white again, and smirking.

Her father whispered again, softer, “By spreading her legs before other men!”

Now both men smirked while looking at her…who had both legs again.

“So, why can’t I have both legs, Daddy?” she asked, feeling her leg shrink away yet again.

“Strange world, indeed,” Morgan said.

“I just can’t risk my reputation,” Danny said again.

Moron, she thought.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Morgan said. Lily looked up at him. Now he looked like Donald Trump in that cowboy hat. “You know, if you weren’t his daughter, I’d probably be dating you.”

She cringed at the sound of those words.

“You know, maybe we could allow her to have both legs,” Danny said, smirking.

They all looked down at her, and indeed, she had both legs again.

The men grabbed her.

She had a dizzy spell. She felt herself falling down that rabbit hole. Further and further down. It was pitch black all around her.

Then, an ever-so-slight amount of light allowed her to get a sense of her surroundings.

She looked up at the sky. Now it was night. The sky was starless and black, for there was a new moon, and the pine trees were so tall all around her that they blocked out any possible starlight. The pines stood tall…then she did fall.

She shook as she felt Danny and Morgan on top of her, tearing off her dirndl.

They’re both beneath my skin, she thought as she felt them entering her.

As the men were panting and having her, she heard a familiar voice call out to her.

It hissed, “!yliL, yliL…yliL”

As the men shook and stabbed inside her, she looked around, trying to find the source of the voice.

“.doog od uoy fi emit erom eno em raeh lliw uoY”

Lily’s head swung left and right, following the voice as spectators would watch a tennis ball in play. The men’s sweat and saliva were dripping on her skin.

They’re both beneath my skin.

“.dab od uoy fi semit erom owt em raeh lliw uoY”

Am I doing bad now? Lily thought, since she felt no pain with the men inside her. Numbness was a protective shield, as she’d learned years ago.

The Mystery Girl ended with “.thgin dooG”

Lily lay there, catatonic on the grass, as the men zipped up their pants.

“As you can see,” Danny said, smiling, “she does have her uses.”

With her eyes closed, she felt a man’s foul beer breath by her face.

“Time to wake up, pretty girl,” that familiar, fake southern accent grunted in her left ear again.

She opened her eyes and saw Roy Torrance in the cowboy hat, standing next to Nazi Danny.

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

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[NOTE: this is the fourth chapter (click here for the first, here for the second, and here for the third) 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…]

As Alice drifted back into unconsciousness, she remembered a dream of Lily’s, when the girl was thirteen years old. She was in Danny’s car, going along the Oregon coast on a vacation. She looked out the car window and sighed with a smile as she watched the peaceful ocean waves flowing by her side. Some Sixties saxophone lounge music, like something from a noir film, was playing on the car radio.

Alice heard a voice say, “It’s all beneath your skin,” as she felt herself returning to Lily’s head in that dark, mental ocean. Coming back into Lily’s consciousness, Alice wondered, What is all beneath my skin?

Now as Lily, she sat in the passenger’s seat, trying to ignore Daddy’s Dan’s non-steering, right hand on her knee. The sentence repeated in her mind over and over again, like a mantra: It’s all beneath your skin.

Lily herself was drifting off to sleep, and and in Lily’s dream, that mantra grew into a song.

The Mystery Girl’s voice said, “.ecilA, pu ekaw ot emiT”

Lily got scared, and the wind blew heavier, howling against her slightly-opened car window. Her consciousness, merged with that of Alice, sank deeper into farther removed states of unconsciousness…beyond repressed memories, and into dreams within dreams.

It was like going into a dark basement cellar, then opening a secret door in the floor and entering a second basement cellar below, even darker than the first, then going down into a third, even darker cellar, and so on, and so on…

Finally, fully as Lily, she saw herself as a teen with Danny somewhere in the country, near the Alps. The June sun was shining in an ocean of blue skies, with only occasional white islands for clouds. Cows and sheep could be heard grazing on the grass.

Danny was wearing lederhosen, and she, sixteen, was in a dirndl. Her hair was in pigtails, each arching cutely over her ears.

He looked down at her, with lustful eyes thinly disguised as loving. She looked up at him and frowned.

“How lovely you are,” he said in a badly-mimicked German accent. He put his arm around her and tried to pull her up close to him. She resisted.

“Daddy, no,” she said in a trembling voice.

“I can’t let go of such a treasure,” he said, still in the faux German accent.

She avoided his eyes and looked at his legs. No longer in lederhosen, he now wore black pants and black leather shoes.

“Please, Daddy, let me go,” she said, struggling to pull free from his tight grip. She looked up and saw him in a uniform of the SS.

He looked down at her with cruel eyes. No longer in Danny Torrance’s body, her father now had the form of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

“You must obey your father, you little bitch!” He slapped her.

She drifted still further into a deeper, darker level of unconsciousness. Lily was swimming on waves of pitch black…or trying to swim, for she looked behind herself and saw only one leg! The bloody stump where the other leg should have been was dying the black water red.

She struggled to keep her head above water. She panted in desperation for air. She felt her face often sink below, the reddish-black water rising to her eyes.

Soon, she found herself swimming in nothing but red. Only the sky was black. She could hardly see anything.

She passed out, and fell into an even deeper level of unconsciousness.

Now she found herself in a brightly-lit hotel lobby. The elevators were directly in front of her, about ten metres away.

Blood started pouring through the side openings of the elevator doors. The red filled the lobby like the Great Flood.

What is this? Alice thought. The Overlook Hotel?

She felt that blood gushing out of her leg-stump like a cascade of red. Lily’s skin grew lighter and lighter. She looked like a living corpse.

It’s all beneath my skin, Lily thought, over and over again.

Then she heard the voice of a man by her left ear. He said, in a badly imitated southern accent, “Time to wake up, pretty girl.”

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

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[NOTE: this is the third chapter (click here for the first, and here for the second) 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…]

Alice woke up at about two o’clock in the afternoon. Her whole body was in throbbing agony from the hangover she’d worked so hard the night before to drink herself into.

She seemed to be drowning in the seas of her feeble ego-state; then, with effort, she rose from the carpet she’d been sleeping on and looked at herself in the mirror on the hotel room’s dresser.

“There I am,” she gasped. “Thank God.”

Then she looked down and saw blood stains by her feet.

What are those drops on the carpet? she wondered, then the memory of the night before faded back into her mind. “Oh, yeah…”

She turned on a radio on the bedside table and set it to the local news-station. As the news played, she went into the bathroom and washed the rest of her victim’s blood off her face. The stains on her dress would have to wait ’til she got back home (if she’d be safe from the cops there). Besides, the red and black stripes on her dress obscured the blood well enough for cleaning it not to be urgent.

The news continued playing as she scrubbed the stains off the carpet with an old rag she found in the bathroom. By the time she’d almost finished getting those red drops off, she–in spite of her relatively dissociative state–heard the radio announcer say, “The search is ongoing for the murderer of Ray Terence, a man found with his throat cut in the alley between the NRG Club and the Eden.”

Alice heard the announcer say, ‘Roy Torrance,’ ‘Energy Club,’ and ‘The E-Den.’

“Oh, my fucking God,” she whispered, eyes agape, then she put her hand on her mouth. Looking away from the mirror, but still half-listening to the news report, she felt those ocean waves carrying her off into another ego-less reverie.

She heard the voices of two men investigating the case. It sounded as if they were…maybe…being interviewed by the radio announcer. She saw dark waves enveloping her in a vortex of darker and darker grey, fading into that black spiral.

Inspector Trudeau said, “The slash on Roy’s neck. It looks big enough to be the slash of a machete.”

FBI Agent Curtis spoke in a gravelly near-Brooklyn accent; it sounded cheesily stereotypical of crime investigators in noir novels or films. He said to Trudeau, “So…the report says there were teeth marks on his skin, as if he was bein’ sucked by a vampire, or a psycho who thinks he…or she…is a vampire. Barely distinguishable from the goddamn machete cut, if that was the murder weapon, but still, there…That’s not quite a typical case, is it?”

“Pretty far from typical, agent,” Trudeau said.

“Do ya figure the killer has any connections to Satanic sects, devil worshippers, maybe?”

“None so far that we can see.”

“Do you know know anything about who the killer might be?” Curtis asked. “Anything that could lead to him…or her? Background? Occupation? Family members?”

Every time Curtis referred to the killer as possibly female, Alice felt a chill go through her. Just this once, she thought, it would be great to hear a sexist use of pronouns.

“Well, the victim’s name is…Terence…or Torrance…something like that–I don’t have the file with me,” Trudeau said. “But this killing happened outside a bar, so I doubt there’s any family connection with the killer, or close friendship, or anything like that.”

Alice breathed a sigh of relief.

“In any case,” Trudeau continued, “our Winchester boys in South Dakota are on the case. They’re informing the victim’s brother…one Donny, or is it Danny? I don’t remember. If you like, I’ll tell them to ask if there’s a possibility of anyone in the victim’s family wanting to kill Roy. Anyway, that’s all for now.”

“Thank you, inspector,” Curtis said.

Alice turned off the radio and shuddered to hear the name Danny.

He was Roy’s brother…and her father.

But…was he Alice’s father…or Lily’s?

Still spinning down that black spiral, Alice couldn’t remember.

“Lily,…Lily,…” she whispered in the darkness. The waves returned, the undulating shifting from absolute black to a dark grey.

The current of waters surrounding her brought Lily’s head near. Alice’s consciousness entered the head…

…Lily, eighteen, was on all fours on a large bed with wrinkled blue sheets. As the bed creaked and jerked back and forth with Roy on top of her, the sheets looked like rolling ocean waves.

Beside them on the bed were Lily’s father Danny, and a girl about Lily’s age, who was getting doggy-style from him, just as Lily was getting it from Roy. Also as in the case with Lily, the other girl’s face was hidden by her hair and her tears.

As the men were invading them, Danny chanted, “We’re…the sons of God, coming into…the daughters…of men!”

All the girls could hope for was a quick end to the ordeal.

“The sons of God…are good…men of God,” Roy grunted between thrusts. “We’re…the descendants…of Seth!”

“You daughters…of men,” Danny panted, “are descended…from Cain…You’re wicked…you tempted us…you look…like sluts!”

“Your hot…slut-lips,” Roy moaned, “make us want…your slit-lips.”

“You’ve earned,” Danny sighed, “God’s wrath.”

I wish God’s wrath would cause the Great Flood to wash you two away, Lily thought. An endless ocean to purify me of your filth. Envelop us, ocean.

The pain of the men’s stabbing was getting overwhelming. The girls felt more and more blood coming from their insides.

Suddenly, the queen’s voice was heard: “Off with their heads!”

A Great Flood, indeed, came and enveloped them all. Alice’s consciousness left Lily’s head, which Alice could barely make out rolling away under the water. She saw other dismembered body parts whisk past her like hurrying schools of fish being chased by a shark.

As the dark waves continued to flow around her, Alice heard an unintelligible voice repeat something to her.

A female voice said, “ecilA ,pu ekaw ot emiT.”

I’ve heard that weird woman’s voice before, Alice thought. Who is she? She feels so close to me, yet so far away, too. Is she a part of me,…or am I a part of her?

“lrig ytterp ,pu ekaw ot emiT,” the Mystery Girl said again.

The dark waves were getting a bit lighter, and Alice rose to her feet, saw herself in the mirror again, and tried to ignore her pounding hangover. She looked down.

“Fuck,” she hissed. “I’ve still got some drops on the carpet.”

Too exhausted and still too much in pain, she collapsed on that spotty carpet.

She heard a voice–it sounded like Daisy’s–say, “Lily…It’s all beneath your skin.”

The waves grew darker again. She lay there, hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness…

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

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[NOTE: this is the second chapter (click here for the first) 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…]

Those ocean waves, all around her mind and in it, were making it difficult for Alice to keep walking straight on the sidewalk. A couple of times, her high heels clopped off the curb, and she almost walked into the road. The honking of car horns pushed her back onto the sidewalk.

She needed a unified self to keep stable. Her reflection in the store windows, dark in the night oblivion, and further off from her than her mirror at home when she’d stood before it, wasn’t clear or detailed enough to reassure her that Alice was indeed Alice. She needed another self for her body to assume.

Among those waves that rose and fell in her mind, she saw the floating heads of Daisy and Lily. “Daisy,” she called out.

Her consciousness entered that head. Animating it, she now saw a different world: a sidewalk during the day.

She skipped on the sidewalk like a carefree little girl, singing the main riff from a song called “Scapegod” as she approached school one weekday morning. Trees lined the sides of the sidewalk. Birds were chirping. It was a lovely day.

She looked down at herself and saw her now-teenage body in a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform, with a white blouse and a red-and-black plaid miniskirt, instead of the red-and-black striped dress Alice had been wearing. Also, instead of the black fishnet stockings and high heels Alice had had on when leaving the apartment, Daisy was now wearing knee-high white socks and black leather shoes.

She’d gone from slut to sweetie.

She arrived at the ‘school’ and opened the door. No student chatting or horseplay, though. No teachers monitoring the halls with disapproving scowls. Electronic music was blasting all around her, as palpable and thick as those enveloping mental waters. She also saw mirrors for walls, everywhere. It was safe to be Alice again.

Safe for her–not safe for the man she’d take home.

She removed her consciousness from the Daisy-head, ignored the surrounding water, and looked at herself in those mirrors on the walls. No longer did she see a sweet teen in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. Now, she saw thirty-something Alice, in that tight-fitting, red-and-black striped dress.

Reassured of her distinct ego, she lit a cigarette, took a drag from it, and looked around the bar. She saw a familiar face…or at least one that reminded her of someone from her remote past. She swallowed an ecstasy pill.

She slid in among the sea of gyrators on the dance floor. A special guest DJ was doing a show for the club.

She swayed her ass to the pounding beat. Her eyes met those of the man. Her eyes’ lewdness set a snare for him.

As she looked further off to find her reassuring reflection in those wall mirrors, she thought, That guy kind of looks like Uncle Roy, Daddy’s twin brother. Looking at him is, in a way, almost like looking in a mirror. She eyed him again.

Her undulating curves continued their enticing dance for him. As he approached, though, she slid into the crowd of dancers. She was submerged in that ocean of bodies, invisible to him.

No matter, he thought. I’ll wait for her outside.

An hour later, she–wasted–stepped through a side doorway of the club and into a dark alley. Without any mirrors, Alice saw and felt only dark waves. The decapitated heads of those girls floated by in her mind. Instead of her addressing them, and them ignoring her, though, it was the reverse.

She just barely heard Daisy’s voice, “Hi, Alice!”

Lost in her thoughts, in that black ocean of oblivion, Alice just sailed by. She sensed the presence of that man as she passed him. Roy Torrance, she thought. It is him.

“Hey!” he shouted to get her attention as he stepped out from the shadows. “Our eyes met when you were on the dance floor, then you disappeared. You’re hot, in a kind of vampiress way.”

Vampiress? she mused as she turned around to look at him. I could play that role for him.

“Are you, like, BloodRayne, or something?” he asked.

Looking in his eyes, she was reconfirmed in her mind that he was her uncle. She smiled to see a face that, as hateful as it was to her, was nonetheless like a mirror reflection. She was sure of herself in seeing him as one acknowledging the reality of her existence. One who once dominated her, but who now would be dominated by her. “Yeah,” she sighed.

“Cool!” he said, looking her up and down and licking his lips. “Do you suck?”

“Oh, yeah,” she purred with a lascivious smirk.

“So,” he grunted, sliding his fingers up and down her bare arm as he stared at her tits, “You wanna do it?”

“Yeah.” She giggled lewdly. She plunged her tongue into his mouth. He grabbed her ass as she reached into her purse. Their tongues slithered over and under each other.

Then, she felt his hand sliding up her dress. A memory flashed before her mind’s eye: Daddy and Uncle Roy taking turns on Lily…when she was only twelve! She remembered Roy’s hand approaching that part of her body back then. Definitely not a turn-on for her.

Alice bit off the tip of his tongue and swallowed it.

“Aah!” he screamed, pulling away. “What are you doing, you toffer?” he shouted in an inarticulate voice, as if he had no teeth. He kept moaning in disorientation as she pulled a switchblade out of her purse.

What am I doing? she thought. Sucking your blood.

She slashed with the knife in a sweeping arc, the blade slicing through his throat and spraying blood everywhere. He fell to the ground, his body shaking as he coughed blood. Then his body stopped shaking.

She reached down for his neck and began feeding on his blood. As she sucked and drank it down, thoughts raced through her mind: Come into me, Uncle Roy. Be a part of me. You always liked being inside me: now’s your chance. We’ll be one now. She cackled for a moment.

Though she couldn’t see his face in the dark, she knew something was wrong. She suddenly remembered–this couldn’t be Roy.

She stopped sucking and pulled away. “Wait a minute!” she said. “Shit! He was already dead.” Uncle Roy’s been dead for the past five years…hasn’t he? she thought, her head swimming and swaying. I don’t remember…

She rose to her feet, and waddled and stumbled a bit. Instead of seeing dark blue ocean waves, now she saw a black spiral. A void. Blacker and blacker. She felt dizzy. Keeping her balance was difficult. She almost fell again.

She heard a siren further off in the background. Was it the cops? Did they hear his screaming and shouting? She felt the man’s blood dripping off her face. She had to get away. Fast.

As she staggered out of the alley, she took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped her face clean as best she could. Afraid the police would trace her to her apartment, she sneaked into a dive of a hotel just further down the alley, and checked in for the night. Her mind still in that black vortex state, she never noticed the strange look the man at the counter gave her when she paid for her room and got the key from him.

She went into her room and collapsed on the furry carpet by the bed. Within a minute, she lost consciousness.

Analysis of ‘Martin’

Martin is a 1978 psychological horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. While Romero is best known for his Dead movies (of which the first, Night of the Living Dead, I wrote up an analysis), Martin was his avowed favourite.

Martin Mathias (John Amplas) is a vampire…or is he? He lacks the fangs, using razor blades to cut the wounds from which he drinks the blood. Sunlight bothers his eyes a little, and neither crucifixes nor garlic have any effect on him.

Still, he insists that he needs to drink blood; he also maintains that he’s eighty-four years old, though he looks like a teen, or at the oldest, a man in his mid-to-late twenties (i.e., Amplas’s age at the time of shooting the film). Finally, his “cousin”?/great-uncle, Tateh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), following the superstitions of the family, is as convinced that Martin is a vampire as he is.

So, is he a vampire, or a madman driven to such extreme thinking by an emotionally abusive family, itself driven to madness by religious superstition? I’m convinced of the latter…in fact, Romero himself, in the commentary on my DVD of the film, attested to the latter interpretation.

So the film should be seen as a sardonic, modern take on the vampire genre. Indeed, Romero films are known for their critical social commentary, and there’s plenty of such satirizing in this movie.

Here are some quotes:

“Things only seem to be magic. There is no real magic. There’s no real magic, ever.” –Martin

“Do you believe God’s whole world runs by the laws of the few sciences we have been able to discover? Oh, no, Christina, there is more. But people are satisfied. They know so much, they think they know all. And that makes it easy for Nosferatu. That makes it easy for all the devils.” –Cuda

“When I see people together, they don’t talk. Not really. They don’t say what they mean.” –Martin, to Radio Talk Show Host

“In real life, in real life you can’t get people to do what you want them to do.” –Martin, to Radio Talk Show Host

“I don’t suppose it’s sacrilege to say the wine at St Vincent’s is putrid.” –Father Howard

“I can’t have kids. I can never have kids. I have something wrong inside. I don’t know, what do you think? Is that good for me, bad for me? No opinion? That’s why you’re so nice to have around, Martin. You don’t have opinions.” –Mrs. Santini

“People always go away so they can forget where they were.” –Martin

Mrs. Santini: Boy, do I wish what you had was catching.

Martin: Some people think it is catching. In the movies it’s catching.

Radio Talk Show Host: Live for yourself! Whatever it takes to get through the night. Right, Count?

Martin: Are you making fun of me?

“You may come and go, but you will not take people from the city. If I hear of it, a single time, I will destroy you without salvation.” –Cuda

I am drawn to this film for two reasons: first, my original name is Martin; second, I know the feeling of being driven to near-madness by a family of emotional abusers, so I can identify with Martin, in spite of the awful things he does, especially to his female victims.

As far as horror films go, Martin is a rather eccentric one. The whole story has more of a sad tone to it than a chilling one. There’s an overwhelming feeling of alienation and social isolation, as Martin lives in a dull, small town in the house of a dysfunctional family.

He has been subjected to gaslighting his whole life with this nonsense that he’s a vampire; and he has internalized the belief to the point that he has a craving for blood. Black-and-white sequences in the film are generally supposed to represent memories from his remote past, back when this ‘octogenarian’ was young, presumably back in the 1910s.

There are two problems with the idea that these sequences are real memories. First, there’s the first of them, at the beginning of the movie, when he’s about to attack his first victim, a pretty brunette on a train. The black-and-white part shows her, not a woman from a distant memory; and she welcomes him with open arms, as if he were a desired lover, instead of the “Freak, rapist asshole” he really is. It isn’t a memory; it’s wish-fulfillment, as is the case of a black-and-white sequence later on (i.e, just before the scene with the second rape victim, the woman cheating on her husband), in which another pretty girl calls out “Martin,” as if she wants him, rather than being terrified of him; again, this must be wish-fulfillment. These two sequences at least suggest that all of them are mere fantasies.

Second, there are technical issues affecting the believability of the other black-and-white sequences. For example, the ornate interior design of certain homes suggests a time at least close to the Victorian era, hence my conclusion that they’re meant to be memories of about sixty years before the time of the film; yet we tend to see 1970s hairstyles. Also, during an old exorcism scene, the priest’s Latin occasionally seems ungrammatical: “in nomine patris, et filii, spiritus et sancti“? I don’t consider these to be technical oversights on Romero’s part; the horror master deserves higher regard than that, even with the limited budget he had when shooting. I don’t think this would have been his favourite film if these ‘errors’ had been unintended. Instead, the errors are Martin’s, in the limits of his imagination.

I’m convinced that these ‘memories’ are just a madman’s delusions, his dissociating.

As inexcusable as is Martin’s sedating of women and taking advantage of them while they’re unconscious, though, the real villain of this movie is Cuda. The old man’s scapegoating of the boy as one having “the family shame,” as one being the ‘identified patient,’ is emotional abuse of the worst kind.

Cuda, first seen in his white suit, a costume of fake innocence, represents the narcissist who, identifying with the holiness of the Church, fancies himself a good Catholic. His condemning, threatening attitude towards Martin is a projection of his own inner evil onto the boy, and through projective identification, Martin introjects and assumes that evil, then tries to rid himself of it by putting it into his female victims, then internalizing their goodness through feeding on their blood.

Cuda would rather call Martin “Nosferatu” than by his real name; he thus denies the reality of Martin’s human existence, and replaces it with one he’d rather project onto the boy. He says he’ll save Martin’s soul, but after that, he’ll still “destroy” the boy, saying so with a smirk; the sadist clearly enjoys threatening and tormenting Martin.

Consider the two men’s names to see how Romero subverts and inverts the vampire genre. Martin Mathias has the names of two Christian saints, while Tateh Cuda’s first and last names respectively seem like a near anagram of teeth and a pun on the last two syllables of Dracula. In fact, ‘Tateh Cuda,’ said quickly with the ts gently tapped with the tongue, almost sounds like a garbled version of Dracula, spoken with a thick European accent. By their very names, sinner and saint have swapped roles.

Martin’s meekness suggests the good, almost saintly man he could have been, had he not been so brutally psychologically abused by his family. Indeed, one may wonder if he has murdered his immediate family in Indianapolis, in a desperate attempt to stop them from tormenting him; is he on the lam to Pittsburgh, then to Braddock (and does Cuda know this)? Instead of being an innocent boy, though, he’s a rapist.

Martin defies Cuda’s superstitious nonsense again and again, even making fun of it by dressing up in a Dracula costume (with fake teeth) one spooky night outside, when Cuda’s been walking about alone, looking for him. Martin (<<<!) Luther once said that, laughing at the Devil, one can defeat him through God. So when costumed Martin is laughing at trembling Cuda–the old man shaking his useless crucifix at the boy, hitting him with his cane, and calling him the Devil–we know who the real Devil is.

This projective and introjective identification that Martin and Cuda–and the superstitious members of their family, by extension–undergo, this swapping of the roles of sinner and saint, is the essence of the tragedy that is this story, the tragic effects of the abuse of religion in the service of narcissists like Cuda. Cuda demonizes Martin because this is the only way the old fool can feel like a righteous man.

Even more tragically, Martin must pass the abusiveness he’s been subjected to onto others, the projective and introjective trading of identities, for this is the only exorcism that seems effective for him. He is too shy to do “the sexy stuff” with conscious women, so he injects a sedative into them (using phallic syringes) to project his shy passivity into them. Then, after having his way with them (e.g., the woman on the train), he feeds on their blood so he can internalize their goodness.

His slicing open of their skin with razor blades to gain access to their blood, a projection of his inner hostility into them, then feeding on their blood, an introjection of their goodness, is like a grisly version of Wilfred Bion‘s concept of the container and contained. Normally, a mother contains her distressed baby’s fears, anxieties, and hostilities; she does so in a kind, loving, empathic state that Bion called reverie, which involves absorbing the baby’s distressed state, transforming this negative energy into a positive form, then sending this positive form back to the baby so it can feel at peace. Martin, having come from such an abusive family, never properly received this reverie as an infant, so now he tries to simulate it through these women-as-mother-substitutes, their passive unconsciousness being symbolic of this reverie.

The turning point of the movie is when he meets Mrs. Santini: another near anagram…of Satanic? She is, indeed, a temptress, though in Romero’s subverted sense of being bad in a good way. Up until his meeting of her, he is a total loner; he doesn’t want to socialize with neighbours, and he takes a while to warm up to Christina, who despises Cuda’s religious fanaticism and wants to help the boy.

Santini’s sexual advances, however, really open him up…after a brief, shy resistance to her. He actually makes love with her while she’s awake. He even goes, for a while, without blood, for we see what he has really needed: human connection, for which the blood has been a symbolic substitute. As his new lover, she gives him that reverie, that containing of his emotional turmoil and transforming it into love that’s then returned to him. In what we can only assume to be an unhappy marriage, she–by committing adultery with him–needs that human connection, too.

Her initiation of the sexual relationship–a needed sex role reversal, for this movie is all about role reversals: sinner and saint, good and evil, aggressive and passive, projection and introjection–shows shy Martin that he needn’t dominate women to be close with them. Santini has the potential to cure him of his ‘vampirism.’

Old habits die hard, though, and his thirst for blood is growing, so he attacks and feeds on some derelicts, then barely eludes the police; as we can see, his relationship with Santini isn’t enough to cure his or her alienation.

Indeed, alienation is everywhere in this lonely town, which “is finished.” Christina and her boyfriend, Arthur (Tom Savini, who also did the bloody effects), bicker on the telephone. Martin discusses his ‘vampirism’ with a local radio talk show host who, while grateful to Martin for getting a bunch of enthusiastic new listeners, makes fun of “The Count”; indeed, the only way Martin can be popular is if he’s also laughed at. One of Cuda’s customers, a grouchy old woman, growls at Martin, calling him “a lazy boy.”

Santini isn’t the only adulteress in the movie: the second woman we see Martin drug and rape is one whose affair he interrupts–the most tense scene in the whole movie, in my opinion. As he’s eyeing her outside a shopping area and planning how he’ll get her, a group of young men are catcalling her…though he is a sexual predator far more dangerous than they could ever be.

Cuda alienates almost everyone. Christina finds him so intolerable, she leaves home with Arthur. Cuda’s religious extremism even makes the local priest, Father Howard (played by Romero himself), feel awkward, for the old man finds him too ‘modern’ in his thinking to be a real Catholic.

Santini, a church-going Catholic, weeps after her sex with Martin. When she assures him she won’t get pregnant, she says something’s wrong with her, inside: she seems to mean more than just sterility. She adores his sweetness, wishing she could have some of it. Guilt over adultery is, presumably, her motive for suicide…by slashing her arms with a razor blade!

Cuda seems to know razors are Martin’s weapon of choice for feeding on victims, so he refuses to believe her death was a suicide. He hammers a phallic wooden stake into Martin’s chest. The ‘good Catholic’ is a murderer, having killed the boy for the one time he actually didn’t use his razors on someone. Tragic irony.

Just as Martin’s victims are unconscious when he rapes and feeds on them, so is he asleep when Cuda stands over him with the stake, a symbol–as are Martin’s razor blades, syringes and raping phallus–of a kind of negative version of Bion‘s ‘contained‘ element (see Bion, pages 97-99), which is projected into the negative ‘container‘ element (symbolized by the yoni, the holes that the blades and needles are stuck into, and Martin’s bloody chest wound). Cuda projects his evil into Martin, right up to his death, rationalizing the murder by imagining he’s preventing more murders, and punishing Martin for a killing he didn’t even commit. More tragic irony.

Martin tries to escape from Indianapolis, in a hope of forgetting where he’s been; but he can’t escape the emotional abuse of his family in the form of its real evil–Cuda. He, indeed, is destroyed without salvation.

As with other horror movies/books I’ve done analyses of, in this one there’s the conspicuous absence of God, or goodness. While Martin also, as I’ve argued, lacks devils, for there is no real magic, it doesn’t lack evil. As Father Howard noted, the wine in his church is putrid.

‘Spaz’, a horror short story

Giorgio Bianchi was playing dodgeball in PE class. None of his classmates understood why he chose to continue taking PE all the way to grade twelve instead of stopping as soon as he had his one compulsory PE credit; after all, he was clumsy and spastic in the extreme, always embarrassing himself in front of them. Taking elective PE classes made perfect sense to him, though: he’d hoped all that sports practice would improve his coordination.

But it didn’t.

At one point in the game, he dodged the ball, but bumped into Ben Davis, one of the most popular jocks in St. John’s Catholic High School.

“Watch it, spaz!” Ben shouted.

“Sorry,” Giorgio said. He dodged the ball again, but tripped over the leg of Karen Schultz, Ben’s pretty girlfriend. She ended up falling, too, and right in the trajectory of the ball.

She got hit on the head with the ball, and was out of the game.

“Eat shit, Bianchi!” she shouted at him as she walked out of the playing area.

“Language, Karen!” the coach said.

Again, a guy on the other team was aiming at Giorgio, who dodged a feint throw, but ended up bumping into Ben again; the thrower, seeing Ben’s disorientation, now threw at him and hit him in the shoulder. Ben was out.

“I’m gonna kill you, Giorgio Bianchi—Jar Jar Binks, more like it!” he said before walking off to the outer circle, where Karen and the other players stood, out of the game.

Towards the end of the game, there were only Giorgio and two girls on his team, and an Asian girl and the boy who hit Ben on the other team. That boy had the ball again.

Giorgio was nervous; he was also at the side of the play area, not at all aware that he was standing just in front of Ben.

That boy with the ball was getting ready to hit Giorgio. Before he even knew what was going on, Ben had already pulled Giorgio’s gym shorts and underwear down.

The chorus of laughter, especially the piercing, shrill cackles of the girls at the sight of his exposed penis, made him almost not notice the impact of the ball pounding him in the face.

“It’s so small!” shouted Karen, who was on the other side from Ben in the outer circle, and thus facing exposed Giorgio, as was the Asian girl, Sophie Chang, who covered her eyes.

As Giorgio lay there on the floor, he scrambled to pull up his shorts and underwear. The laughter was hurting his ears. He didn’t dare look in anyone’s eyes.

“Way to go, Jar Jar Binks!” shouted Ben.

Now everyone was chanting Giorgio’s nickname, one he’d had to put up with for four high school years: “Jar Jar Binks! Jar Jar Binks! Jar Jar Binks!”

Sophie, the only one who didn’t chant, just stood there with a frown, for she felt his humiliation.

***********

In his bedroom that evening, Giorgio was at his computer, reading for the tenth time about Reddit user Lumpawarroo’s theory that Jar Jar Binks was originally intended by George Lucas to be a villain skilled with the Dark Side of the Force, and only pretending to be a bumbling fool deserving of universal contempt.

“If only I could come out and surprise people with a hidden kung fu ability,” he said to himself as he watched the video comparisons of Jar Jar’s clumsy, yet uncanny luck in fighting battle droids at the climax of The Phantom Menace with the staggering, pretend clumsiness of the zuiquan wushu masters. “If only my bad coordination was really ‘drunken fist’ kung fu.”

***********

Sophie was eating dinner with her parents that same evening.

“You look unhappy about something, Sophie,” her mother said.

“I saw a boy get publicly humiliated in gym class today,” Sophie said. “Somebody pulled down his shorts and underwear in front of everybody. Poor guy.”

“Ooh!” her mother said. “You didn’t look, did you?”

“No,” Sophie said in Mandarin.

“Good,” her mother said. “I was worried you were interested in him based on what you saw.”

“Who is he?” her father asked in Mandarin.

“A rather clumsy boy named Giorgio Bianchi, but I think he’s cute, and I feel sorry for him, because he always gets bullied,” she said. “Instead of calling him ‘Giorgio Bianchi’, they always call him ‘Jar Jar Binks’.”

“Man, that’s mean,” her father said.

“I wish I could help him somehow,” Sophie said.

“Is he Chinese?” her mother asked in Mandarin.

“Is he Catholic?” her father asked.

“Of course, he’s Catholic, Dad,” Sophie said. “He goes to my school.”

“I mean, is he a practicing Catholic,” he said. “‘Cause if he is, maybe he’ll get you out of that silly talking-to-spirits nonsense.”

“The spirits help me with my homework and studying for tests,” Sophie said. “That’s how I get such good grades without having to spend so much time studying.”

“Whatever,” he said. “I just wish you’d study the normal way.”

“Also, it’s dangerous to tamper with the spirit world,” her mother said. “Is this boy Chinese, though?”

“No,” Sophie said in Mandarin. “Does the name ‘Giorgio Bianchi’ sound Chinese?”

“No,” her mother said.

“With a name like ‘Giorgio Bianchi’, he’s obviously Italian,” her father said.

“Anyway, nobody’s perfect,” her mom said.

“What does he want to do for a job, though?” her father asked. “Does he want to be an engineer?”

“I don’t know,” Sophie said in Mandarin. “I don’t think so. He doesn’t take any classes at school that would lead up to studying engineering.”

“What about computers?” her dad asked. Sophie shook her head. “Business? Economics? Law? Medicine?” She kept shaking her head.

“I doubt it,” Sophie said. Then she said in Mandarin, “He doesn’t seem the type.”

“Well, he doesn’t sound like he’s worth your time,” her dad said. “Let alone worth your worries. Probably just some lazy kid who just wants to play a guitar and smoke dope.”

“Daddy!” Sophie shouted. “I like him!”

“He sounds like a loser,” her dad said.

“Well, excuse me for not having tastes worthy of your high standards, Daddy! Donut-eating policemen like you are all high-class types, aren’t they?”

“Hey, don’t take that tone with me, young lady,” he said. “You should respect us cops. We do a hard, dangerous job, and we’re not appreciated much these days!”

Sophie sighed. “I’m finished my dinner.” Then she asked in Mandarin, “May I be excused?”

“Yes,” her mother said in Mandarin.

Sophie got up and left. I hate you two sometimes, she thought.

She went into her bedroom and locked the door. She stripped down to her underwear, then took out twelve small candles and laid them out in a circle around her, over a black silk blanket with a white pentagram on it. She lit the candles, turned off the light, and got naked. She sat cross-legged in the middle.

I’ve succeeded at summoning spirits to help me with my homework and tests, so I don’t have to study so hard, she thought. I wonder if I can summon one to help Giorgio.

She closed her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. She chanted a triad of words in Mandarin, over and over again. As she got more and more relaxed, she ‘listened’ for any spirits who may have been approaching her. She ‘felt’ their energies touching her bare skin.

“Oh, all you guardians of the world between spirit and matter,” she whispered, hoping her parents wouldn’t hear, “release one of your kind to rid Giorgio Bianchi of his tormentors. I speak to all the spirits in the entire spirit world, from all times, all nations, and all traditions. O Lady and Lord, yin and yang, Mother Goddess and Horned God, hear my prayer.”

Just then, her parents walked past her bedroom, speaking in Chinese.

Sophie heard a spirit say, in Mandarin, I hear you, and I’ll help you.

Sophie smiled.

***********

Giorgio lay in bed that night, never able to forget his humiliation from that afternoon. Crying himself to sleep, he thought, over and over, I wish I could kill Ben and Karen…

He had the following dream:

He found himself in a dark room, what looked to him like a basement or boiler room. An Asian man of about forty years of age, wearing a fedora and red wool sweater, appeared before him. His face was glowing gold. He reminded Giorgio of Freddy Krueger.

“Hello, Giorgio,” he said to the boy in a husky voice. “My name is Di. I have been summoned to protect you from all your enemies. You’ll have your revenge on your tormentors, as well as protection from any reprisals, starting tomorrow morning.”

“How can that be?” Giorgio asked. “What can you do?”

“I can cause your body to work miracles. I am a spirit from ancient China; don’t let my modern clothes, or my fluency in English, deceive you. We in the spirit world transcend all time and cultures. I know many kinds of kung fu, though I won’t really be using them to help you. You’ll get your revenge through ‘accidents’. You’ll see.”

Giorgio wanted revenge for his many humiliations, no doubt, but he didn’t like the grin he saw on Di’s shining face.

“I’m still not sure of this,” he told Di. “What kind of ‘accidents’ will be used as revenge on people like Karen and Ben?”

“You’ll see,” Di said, the evil grin never leaving his face. “Your protection is assured. All I ask is your appreciation for what I’m about to do for you. Your soul and mine are one.”

“This revenge will be in proportion to what they’ve done to me?”

“The pain they feel will be in proportion to the pain they’ve given you. You’ll see.”

“How do you define that ‘proportion’? You’re not going to kill them, are you? I don’t want anyone’s blood on my conscience. I mean, after what happened yesterday, a part of me wanted them dead, but–“

“I am that part of you. You’ll see, because you’ll do it. Your soul is mine.” He began cackling maniacally, his laughing echoing throughout the boiler room.

Giorgio woke up, his upper torso shooting up from his pillow. He was shaking.

I’d like to kill Ben and Karen, he thought, but only in my dreams, my fantasies.

He fell asleep again after ten minutes of trembling.

He was in that boiler room again. A knife in his hand, he was staggering about for a few seconds, then he flung it at a mirror, cracking the glass. In the reflection, he saw himself in Di’s fedora and sweater. His face had Di’s yellow glow…and his grin. He saw himself laughing as Di had before.

***********

The next morning, he was in biology class. Ben and Karen were sitting at the table behind his group’s, chuckling.

“Mesa Jar Jar Binks,” Ben said in the character’s annoying falsetto.

“Mesa pi-pi so tiny,” Karen said in the same voice. Giorgio’s heart was pounding, almost in pain, at the sound of their laughing.

At each table, where trios of students were teamed, lay a carcass of a cat in the middle. Each student had a scalpel for dissecting the cat. Giorgio held his with a trembling hand.

“Don’t you cut me with that knife, you spaz,” a girl at his table said to him.

Di’s face appeared before his eyes in a split-second, flashing light.

Karen stepped over to the other side of her table, putting her immediately beside Giorgio. He began staggering.

She turned to him with her scalpel. “Mesa cut your pi-pi off, Jar Jar,” she said, then giggled. “Mesa make–“

With a sudden jerk of his hand while staggering, Giorgio swiped his scalpel in an arc across her throat, cutting her off mid-sentence because he’d sliced the blade clean through her throat! Her blood sprayed in all directions, several small dots of red splashing on Giorgio’s face. She fell to the floor.

Everyone screamed, not least of all him.

“What’s going on?” the teacher shouted.

“That little dork, Giorgio, just cut Karen’s throat with his knife,” the female student next to Giorgio said while backing away from him.

“Oh, my God!” The teacher said, taking out his cellphone to call 9-1-1 as he saw Karen’s blood surrounding her body in a growing lake of red. “You didn’t do it on purpose, did you, Giorgio? I mean, after what happened yesterday?”

“Of course, I didn’t!” the shaking, sobbing boy said. “It was an accident, I swear to God!” He began staggering again.

“You spastic idiot!” Ben shouted, stepping around his table, with his hands in fists, to get at Giorgio, who saw Di’s face flash before his eyes again. The teacher was calling an ambulance. “You killed my girlfriend, and I’m gonna kill y–“

Staggering Giorgio slipped on Karen’s blood and lunged at Ben with the scalpel, stabbing him deep in the gut. Ben buckled, coughed blood, and fell on top of Karen.

Again, the students screamed deafening, piercing cries that made everyone’s hands cover his ears, and in the confusion, Giorgio ran out of the classroom without anyone stopping him. As he ran down the hall, he passed Sophie, who shuddered at the bloody knife in his hand, the spots of blood on his face, and his bloody footprints on the floor.

“Oh, shit,” she said. “What have I done?”

When she saw a mob of students running out of the biology classroom to chase Giorgio, she knew exactly where to look to find out what had happened. When she poked her head in the doorway, already full of anticipatory dread, and then saw Ben’s and Karen’s bloody bodies, she retched. She was as frozen in shock as the biology teacher was.

A minute later, she heard sirens.

“Wow,” the teacher said. “The cops sure got here fast. Must’ve been nearby.”

“Oh, fuck,” she said, then ran down the hall.

“Get that little bastard!” shouted a student from the biology class as she and Giorgio’s other chasers saw him go for the stairs. “He killed my best friend!”

He ran up the stairs, not tripping over even one, to his amazement: he’d tripped over steps so often in the past, it was as if he’d taken fewer successful ascending steps than tripping, even when walking up them with perfect calm. It was as if…someone…was helping him get away. He saw a flash of Di’s face again.

He reached the roof of the school, opened a door, and was outside. The students had him cornered at the edge of the building. He looked down four floors to the pavement. He shook as he saw the students closing in on him. He started staggering again.

“You’re gonna pay for what you did today, you little spaz,” one boy said, his face tensed in a malicious pout.

More sirens could be heard, as could footsteps up the stairs to the roof.

“Jar Jar never died in the Star Wars prequels,” another boy said. “His death would’ve almost redeemed them. We can make this Jar Jar die, though.”

“No, you won’t,” said a female cop coming out onto the roof with two others, all of them pointing guns at Giorgio. “C’mon, kid. Let’s not make this any more difficult than it already is. Come in the car with us.”

“OK,” he said, still staggering. He dropped the scalpel and held his hands out to be handcuffed. The female officer approached him with cuffs.

Another one of the cops, Sophie’s father, noted Giorgio’s staggering. “What’s wrong with you, kid?” He said. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” Giorgio said. “I just feel…woozy.” Di’s face flashed before his eyes again.

Just when the cop with the cuffs was about to put them on him, Giorgio slid his foot on a pebble, swiping his leg in front of hers and making her trip. She fell off the roof, screaming till her head cracked open on the pavement below. A growing circle of red surrounded her head.

Immediately after her tripping and falling, Giorgio saw Di’s face in another flash. The third cop aimed at Giorgio’s chest and was about to fire, but the boy’s foot slipped on another pebble, kicking a larger rock that flew at the cop’s gun, knocking it to point up at the man’s face. When in a knee-jerk reaction he pulled the trigger, he shot a bullet up just behind his chin, up through the center of his head, through his brain, and out the top of his head.

Blood sprayed everywhere, like a gushing fountain. Screaming from all directions was hurting Giorgio ears.

Sophie’s father cocked his gun. That can’t be mere clumsiness, he thought. No one’s that clumsy…and that lucky at the same time.

Giorgio looked down to the pavement beside the dead female cop and saw Sophie’s car, a distinct one with black paint and large white pentacles painted on the sides. Its roof was also removed. She looked up at him; she felt…someone…making her drive over there.

Jump, Di’s voice whispered in Giorgio’s ears.

He saw Officer Chang coming closer, with that gun pointed at him. “C’mon, kid,” the cop said. “Let’s end this. No more people have to get hurt.”

“I agree,” Giorgio said. “Let’s end this.” Then he jumped.

As he fell screaming, he saw Di’s face flash several times in his eyes. The spirit also took over his body, carrying him in midair and placing him neatly into the passenger seat next to Sophie. He landed with his ass hitting the seat, and his feet dodging the glove compartment to land on the floor with no pain.

“Oof!” he grunted. “How the fuck did I do that?”

“A spirit made all this happen,” Sophie said. “We’re outta here.”

She sped off in her car, past her father’s squad car (in which his female partner was sitting), off the school campus, and down a road in a direction that would take them out of town. Both of them were shaking.

“I…just killed…four people…including two cops…in the past…fifteen minutes,” he said, tears soaking his face. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“I’ll explain later,” she said, turning a corner with screeching tires. “Right now, we’ve just gotta get you away from my dad and his cops.”

“How do you know what’s going on?” Giorgio asked.

“Because I’m the one who summoned the spirit that’s making you kill all your enemies.”

“How do you know I won’t kill you?“

“Because I’m not one of your enemies, of course.”

***********

Officer Chang got into his car, as did other cops in two cars behind his. They all raced down the road after Sophie and Giorgio.

“I’m pretty sure he’s in my daughter’s car,” Chang said to the female cop in the passenger seat beside him.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Because during dinner last night, I had a conversation with her about the boy, identified by his classmates as Giorgio Bianchi,” Chang said. “My daughter feels sorry for him because he’s been bullied at school. She wants to help him. I saw the car they raced off in: I bought it for her last year. From the roof, I could tell by the pentagrams she later had painted on the sides. Only she’d be strange enough to paint pentagrams on her car. She believes in weird ideas, like communication with spirits. It’s a phase she’s going through.”

“OK, but how was this Giorgio able to survive that jump?” his partner asked.

“Good question. Anyway, I talked to the biology teacher, who told me the two kids the boy killed had been bullying him. Sophie, my daughter, told me that Ben, the second of the victims, humiliated the boy yesterday by pulling down his shorts and underwear in gym class, right in front of everybody.”

“Humiliation enough to make him want to kill?”

“Seems that way to me. Funny thing, though: he has a reputation for being clumsy, and the killing of Ben and the female victim looked like accidents, just the kid being spastic again; but what I saw on the roof, Giorgio staggering for a moment before ‘accidentally’ killing Officers Denny and Howard, looked a lot more like zuiquan than clumsiness.”

“Sorry. Zuiquan?”

“It’s a form of kung fu. It means ‘drunken fist’. You see Jackie Chan do it in a few martial arts movies. The fighter tricks his opponent by making him think he’s drunk or clumsy, then he throws a surprise punch or kick. I’m guessing that Giorgio secretly learned zuiquan, and was hoping to kill his enemies by making their deaths look like an accident. If so, his plan didn’t work.”

“Still, I saw, from this car, him fall and land in her car,” the female cop said. “He didn’t even look injured. They drove off chatting with each other, as if he’d just walked over and gotten in. How could he have done that?”

“I know, it’s crazy. I’m a practicing Catholic, but I believe God causes miracles to save only the lives of the good. Sophie believes in weird things like the ghosts of our Chinese ancestors, but come on! There must be a scientific explanation. I’m gonna call her.” He took out his cellphone and dialed Sophie’s number.

“Hello?” Sophie said.

“Honey, where are you?” her dad asked.

“Sorry, Daddy. I can’t tell you.”

“You have that boy, Giorgio Bianchi, in your car, don’t you?”

“Sorry, Daddy, I can’t let you have him. He didn’t kill those people on purpose.”

“What makes you think you’re an authority on this issue?”

“Because I raised the spirit that took over Giorgio’s body and made him kill those people.”

“Well, I suppose that might explain his miraculous jump off the school roof and into your car without even an injury, as it seems…”

“That’s right,” Sophie said. “He didn’t even get a scratch.”

“But I don’t think a supernatural explanation will hold up in court,” her father said.

“Can you explain it any other way? Can you explain how a guy with a reputation for clumsiness could have performed all those feats with such precision?”

“I can’t explain the jump, but ask him if he ever studied zuiquan, you know, the martial art.”

Sophie looked over at Giorgio. “Do you know zuiquan? You know, a kind of kung fu called ‘drunken fist’.” (She pronounced it ‘dzway-chüen’.)

Giorgio thought for a second. “Huh?” he said. “Wait. Do you mean ‘zooey quahn? Like, a kung fu guy pretends to be clumsy or drunk, staggers a bit, then he lands a surprise punch or kick?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said.

“I’ve read about it a bit, but I’ve never learned it,” he said loud enough for her father to hear on the phone.

“Did you hear that, Daddy?”

“Yes,” her father said. “And that’s proof enough for me. As far as I’m concerned, he’s lying about having no training. Come on, honey, be a good girl and get him to turn himself in. I don’t want you to be charged with aiding and abetting a felon.”

“Daddy, if I let you take him in, the demon inside him will kill you! Giorgio just told me about the two cops on the roof who he killed. Please stay away, for your safety!”

She hung up.

“Oh, Goddammit, Sophie!” her father said, then tried to call her again. “Oh, she’s turned off her phone. Fuck!”

“So, what do we do now?” the female cop asked.

“What do you think? We’ve gotta find them. And it’s gonna break my heart, but I’ll have to bring my daughter up on charges, too.” Di’s face flashed before Chang’s eyes. “What the…?”

Suddenly, a kind of fog came over all the cops’ heads.

All three cop cars came to a halt. The drivers and passengers in each car looked at each other in confusion.

“Wait…w-what were we just doing?” the driver of one police car asked his partner. There was an awkward pause.

“I-I forget,” the partner said. “We were pursuing a perp, weren’t we?” Another awkward pause. “Wh-who were we pursuing?”

The driver used his radio to call Officer Chang.

“S-sir?” He said. “I feel really embarrassed to ask, but–?”

“What are we doing?” Chang said, anticipating the question. “We’re feeling the same confusion in this car, as are the officers in the other car. Just give me a few minutes to think, OK?” He got out of his car and looked around the roads and buildings, hoping in vain to see something that might help him snap out of his oblivion.

***********

As Sophie kept driving, she was checking her rearview mirror with paranoid eyes: were any police cars trailing her? She heard no sirens; were her followers being furtive about it, waiting for a chance to pounce on them when she least expected it?

Then, both she and Giorgio heard Di’s gravelly voice: You lost them.

As if no proof were needed to verify the spirit’s words, Giorgio and Sophie believed Di with perfect faith. She slowed her driving, and both of them heaved a huge sigh of relief.

“Hey, over there,” she said, pointing to an abandoned old building she sometimes visited to get away from the world. “We can hide in there. Nobody will bother us in there.”

“But it’s so filthy and awful-looking,” Giorgio said.

“Exactly,” she said. “No one else will be there. Not even squatters, winos, or derelicts.” She parked behind the building, hiding her car between two tall piles of garbage. They got out.

“Oh, God, it stinks,” he said, then plugged his nose.

“We don’t have a lot of options, Giorgio,” she said, also covering her face.

They walked into the building and across to the other side, where the stench wasn’t so bad. She pointed to a corner.

“Here,” she said. “Let’s sit here and think this through.”

They sat, and he asked, “OK, what’s all this about a spirit?”

“Last night, I thought about what happened to you in gym class, and I felt sorry for you,” she said. “I wanted to protect you from more bullying. I also know a few things about tampering in the spirit world, so I summoned a spirit to protect you. I didn’t mean for it to kill your enemies, though! This has all been my fault. Don’t blame yourself.”

“So, whenever I see the shiny, golden face of an Asian wearing a fedora, right when one of these freaky things happen, that’s the spirit that’s caused all this trouble?” Giorgio asked.

“Wait a minute,” she said with her mouth and eyes agape. “An Asian with shiny, golden skin? That voice I heard, saying we lost my dad and the cops. That husky, gravelly baritone voice. And he made you move like someone who knows zuiquan…”

“You know which spirit he is?”

“Di,” she said. Her whole body looked as if it would drop.

“He said his name was ‘Di’, in my dream last night.”

“Oh, no!” She fell to her knees. “When Di is summoned, he doesn’t go away. If he leaves you, he’ll just enter someone else. The best we can hope is he’ll enter someone far away, someone neither of us knows or cares about…not that I’d wish Di on my worst enemy.”

“Well, what are we going to do?” Giorgio asked, his voice rising in a crescendo of panic. “I don’t wanna be possessed of a demon for the rest of my life! I don’t want any more blood on my hands! You have any idea what it’s like, having no control over your own body? It was bad for me before, but not like this! I’m scared just to move! Look, Sophie, you got me in this mess, you’ve gotta get me out of it!” He grabbed and shook her.

“Calm down!” she shouted, slapping him. “I need to communicate with Di. Maybe I can make a deal with him.”

“How do you ‘communicate’ with him?”

“There’s a ritual we can do with him, to get his full attention. But you have to do it with me, and…we both have to get naked…and sit together.”

He blushed and shrank away.

“Giorgio, I won’t see anything I didn’t see yesterday. We have to be naked so our bodies’ energy won’t be blocked from receiving the energies surrounding us. That’s part of how we can communicate with the spirit world.”

He didn’t stop blushing. “You OK with me seeing you?”

“Sure, why not? I have a good body, even if I do say so myself. What can I say? I hope you like what you see.” She took off her blouse right in front of him, then unbuttoned her skirt.

“Wh-why do you hope that?” He unbuttoned his school uniform shirt.

“Because I’ve always liked you.” She dropped her skirt, revealing her white bra and panties. “You’re cute…and your ass is cute. You’re eighteen, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, blushing again while pulling down his pants.

“I’m eighteen, too, so don’t worry about anything. We’re grown up enough to be doing this.” She took out some candles from her bag, arranged them in a circle around herself and Giorgio, and lit them. She got a piece of white chalk from her bag, then drew a pentacle on the ground, just inside the circle of candles, getting the sides of the five-pointed star as straight as she could, and the circle around it as symmetrical as she could. Then she and Giorgio took off their underwear, she in all insouciance, and he with trembling hands and a purple-red face.

They sat cross-legged, facing each other. His hands were covering his crotch.

“Giorgio, you have to be open. I saw it. It isn’t small. Karen was just being mean.”

He moved his hands away, but he avoided her eyes. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a smirk of pleasure on her face, her eyes looking down at him, and it encouraged him to look straight at her.

“Don’t be so shy,” she said. “I’d do you.”

“This is so embarrassing.”

“You don’t need to feel that way. It’s just the human body.”

“But I’m getting a boner from seeing you.”

“Thanks.” She grinned, looking down and noticing the growth.

“One thing I don’t get,” he said, trying to refrain from looking between her legs. “If we’re summoning a Chinese spirit, why are you incorporating Western pagan symbols into your ritual? I don’t mean to be racist or anything, but the two don’t seem to go together.”

“Oh, there’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “I find my rituals work a lot better by mixing ideas from different traditions. The Moon Goddess and the Horned God of Wicca, they’re just like yin and yang, as I see it. These opposites are archetypes that manifest themselves in all things, in all traditions, and they’re the basis for contacting the spirit world.”

“Oh, OK. So, what are we going to do?”

“Summon Di, and talk to him. I’ll be speaking in Chinese. That should draw him in better. Let’s close our eyes and take some deep breaths.” They closed their eyes. “Breathe in slowly, a long, deep breath.” They both did, grimacing at the foul odor around them. “Hold your breath for a moment.” They did. “And…let it out slowly.” They did. “Let’s do it again, two more times. Just relax. Breathe in slowly…hold it…and let it out slowly.” They did this one more time.

Sophie started chanting something in Mandarin, repeating the three-word mantra of the previous summoning, saying it several times in a rhythmic way. She and Giorgio started feeling a vibration all around their bodies, between each other, and in front of themselves, where they sensed a presence.

Suddenly, they heard Di speaking in Mandarin. Sophie replied, and the two began a conversation Giorgio wished he could participate in, for he couldn’t speak a word of Chinese. Sophie and Di kept talking and talking, their voices getting louder, more and more emotional, and with more tension, more agitation. Finally, they ended with Sophie fighting back tears.

“W-well, what is it?” Giorgio asked. “What did Di say?”

All you need to know, Di said in Giorgio’s and Sophie’s minds, is that I find you a most ungrateful host, Giorgio. I rid you of those two tormentors of yours—Ben and Karen—I helped you elude the authorities, and now you want to throw me away, like some object that’s exhausted all of its usefulness to you. You’ll be rid of me, boy, but not in a way you’ll like. You’ll see.

Di laughed in his portentous way, then Sophie and Giorgio sensed he’d left them.

“Well, what are we going to do?” Giorgio asked.

“We’re going to make love,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek.

She reached forward and kissed him on the lips. She crawled on top of him as they continued kissing.

“But what…are we…gonna do…about Di?” He asked in between kisses. “What did you…say to…each other…in Chinese?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said, then kissed him. “Di will…leave you. That’s all…that matters.”

“But Di said…I won’t like…how he’ll…” Giorgio began.

“Shut up and fuck me,” she said. “I don’t wanna d–, be a virgin. Put it in me.” He did. She winced as she bounced on him. “Ow! That hurts! Oh!” The pain in her heart made the pain between her legs seem trivial. Her pain was love for him, just as he was loving her more and more. She was the only person in that whole school who’d ever been kind to him.

He pulled out and made a mess on the ground. “Ooh!” he grunted.

“Eww, that’s gross,” she said, noting also her blood, which was mixing with his come.

“I didn’t want to get you pregnant,” he panted.

“What difference would that have made?” She got a tissue and wiped herself clean.

“What?” Noting she looked away from him and wouldn’t answer, he then yawned. “I feel worn out. I gotta sleep for a bit.”

“Me, too.” They put their clothes back on, lay side by side, and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Giorgio, this time, had pleasant dreams…unlike Sophie.

***********

The other two police cars, in their confusion and oblivion, were allowed to drive back to the police station. Chang and the female cop were about to turn around and go back, too; he had vague misgivings that he was urgently needed somewhere and didn’t want to turn around. He let the other two cars go because cops were needed elsewhere in the city. Chang just kept hoping he’d remember again what they’d just been doing.

Just then, Di’s golden face flashed before the eyes of Officer Chang and his partner; the fog of forgetfulness lifted from their minds. When they finally remembered who they’d been chasing, they wanted to kick themselves for letting the other police cars go.

“Shit!” he shouted, then started the car. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll call backup,” she said, picking up the two-way radio.

As she was calling for backup, Chang was thinking about the series of supernatural events that had occurred. He was merely assuming that boy knew zuiquan. He’d made a miraculous jump of four floors without any injury. And suddenly, conveniently for him and Sophie, all the cops had forgotten who they were chasing. Sophie often talked about summoning spirits who helped her with her homework and tests…and she routinely got excellent grades, without much studying.

Could she have really involved the supernatural in this?

“I don’t believe it!” the female cop said. “They said they have nobody available right now to send to help us, and nobody at the police station remembers the killings at St. John’s. How could that have happened?”

“Spirits,” Chang said.

“Sir, you can’t really believe what your daughter…”

“Do you have any other explanation?” Chang said, getting no answer from his partner. “Look, whatever’s going on, we’re getting no help. We’re on our own. The point is, that crazy kid’s with my daughter, and I’ve got to get her away from him. I have a hunch I know where she’s hiding, too. A dilapidated old building on Mason St. She often goes there, and it’s near here, too. If the station has any back-up available to send us, call them and tell them where we’ll be.”

***********

A half hour later, Giorgio and Sophie woke up to the sound of footsteps and talking. They scrambled to their feet, their hypervigilant eyes darting around in all directions.

“Who’s that?” Giorgio whispered. “The cops?”

“Shh!” she said. “How should I know?”

They hid in a corner, behind a stack of crates, and eavesdropped through the wall between them and the approaching voices.

“Oh!” the female cop whispered. “I’m glad the worst of that stink is behind us.”

“Shh!” Chang said. “If they’re here, they’ll hear you.”

“Oh, no,” Sophie said. “That’s my dad’s voice.” She took out a switchblade from her purse. “There’s something I’ve gotta do. You’re not gonna like it, Giorgio. Neither will I, and that’s because…I…I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said. They kissed. “But what do you have to do that’s so awful?” He shuddered at the knife, the blade of which she was holding against her wrist.

“I can’t say,” she said. “You’ll try to stop me.”

“Oh, God, Sophie, you’re not thinking of…”

The two cops turned the corner.

“And here they are,” the female cop said. She took out her cellphone to call the station.

“Come on, Sophie,” her father said. “Let’s just go home and forget this ever happened.” Then he looked at Giorgio. “Son, for some strange reason, maybe it’s this…demon…my daughter was talking about on the phone, all the cops have forgotten the crimes you committed today. I’m gonna make this real easy for you: just let Sophie go, and you’ll walk.”

“But, I want to be with her,” Giorgio said. “I love her.”

“I love him, too, Daddy,” Sophie said, hugging Giorgio.

“Oh, fuck me,” Chang said. “C’mon, honey. He’s dangerous.”

“Not anymore,” Sophie said, then let go of Giorgio and began staggering, the switchblade hidden behind her hand.

“What’s wrong, honey?” her father asked, walking toward her.

“No, Daddy,” she said. “Stay away!” She saw a split-second flash of gold.

“Back-up should be here in a few minutes,” Chang’s partner said, putting her phone away. Giorgio shook at Sophie’s staggering. Her father came closer to her.

“Sophie,” he said, grabbing her free arm, “I just want to…”

She slipped and lunged forward, stabbing him deep in the gut.

“Unh!” he grunted, buckling and coughing out blood.

“Daddy!” Sophie screamed, then pulled the bloody knife out of him.

He fell on his face on the ground before her, his blood soaking the ground. The female cop pulled out her gun. Sirens could be heard outside. Giorgio backed off, the whites of his teary eyes showing. Sobbing Sophie staggered a bit on the pebbly ground. Di’s face flashed before her eyes again.

“Sophie,” the cop said, cocking her pistol. “Let go of the knife. I don’t wanna hurt you.”

Sophie’s right foot slipped on some pebbles, and the knife flew from her hand and into the cop’s neck…but not before she put a bullet in Sophie’s forehead.

“Sophie!” Giorgio screamed as he saw both of their bodies fall to the ground.

He fell to his knees sobbing and put his arms around Sophie’s lifeless body.

Five cops entered the area, guns pointing at him, their faces grimacing from the stink.

“This is the kid who killed all those people at the school,” one of the cops said. “I’ll bet he killed these people, too. How did we forget about the school, then remember again? Weird.”

Don’t worry, Di said in shaking Giorgio’s ear. I’ll never trouble you again. The echo of his laughing voice bounced off the stony walls, then faded out.

Analysis of ‘Slutlips’

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Slutlips is an album by Cat Corelli, which she released in 2017. It isn’t exactly a rock opera, since much, if not most, of the music isn’t even rock (you’ll hear an eclectic switching back and forth between neo-Baroque, jazz, rock [i.e., a kind of symphonic metalcore], and electronic styles, as well as dreamy, almost psychedelic passages, music reminiscent of the soundtracks of noir films, and even a piano waltz). You’ve heard of silent films; Slutlips is like a film without visuals. As the Chorus of Henry V advised us, we have to use our imaginations to fill in the visual details.

The first link above is to the entire playlist of songs/story scenes; I recommend listening to it all in order for the following analysis to make sense. Here is a link to the lyrics/script.

The story is non-linear, with flashbacks of Lily, one of the main characters, who was sexually abused by her father, Daniel (“Danny”) Torrance. The other main character is Alice, who sees herself in a mirror and imagines herself to be “a slut” (as is her reputation); she’s also a murderess, having bitten into the neck of Roy Torrance, sucked his blood like a vampiress, and slit his throat with a machete (we learn from the police investigation that Roy is Daniel’s brother). Daisy is another significant female character in the story, a nicer, more socially conforming type of girl, what I suspect Lily could have been had she not been abused.

Other characters include Morgan, who plays the piano waltz, Investigator Andy Trudeau and Agent Matt Curtis, who aren’t able to find Roy’s killer, and who expect more killings in the future. There’s also a “Mystery Girl” (Alice? Or, perhaps, the ‘unknown self’ described in the concluding section of this link?), who speaks in an electronically altered voice. There is much mystery in this story, without any real resolution…but this all seems to be deliberate, for the plot is of secondary importance. Slutlips is, essentially, a character study, an exploration of the mind of a victim of child sexual abuse.

Everything about this album involves disjointed elements, with a sudden switching from one idea to another, in terms of the music and the non-linear story. In fact, the whole album began as a number of separate songs written and recorded years back, then later incorporated into the story. This sense of disjointedness shouldn’t deter the listener from enjoying the story, though, for it all serves a purpose in expressing the main theme of Slutlips: psychological fragmentation resulting from childhood trauma.

Much of the story involves Lily’s childhood memories of being dominated by her beast of a father, who, far from giving her the empathic mirroring and love she needed, sexually abused her, then hypocritically imposed the sanctimonious morality of the Church onto her.

Young children, whose personalities are only just forming, need psychological structure and cohesion, which can come only from empathic parents mirroring their kids’ grandiosity in the form of an idealized parent imago. Such mirroring, coupled with optimal frustrations of the dual narcissistic configuration (i.e., grandiose self/idealized parent imago), will help the child mature by taming his narcissism and transforming it, by transmuting internalization, into healthier, more restrained and realistic self-esteem, the sort that allows one to blend in comfortably with society.

Heinz Kohut explained it thus: “The child that is to survive psychologically is born into an empathic-responsive human milieu (of self-objects) just as he is born into an atmosphere that contains an optimal amount of oxygen if he is to survive physically. And his nascent self “expects”…an empathic environment to be in tune with his psychological need-wishes with the same unquestioning certitude as the respiratory apparatus of the newborn infant may be said to “expect” oxygen to be contained in the surrounding atmosphere. When the child’s psychological balance is disturbed, the child’s tensions are, under normal circumstances, empathically perceived and responded to by the self-object. The self-object, equipped with a mature psychological organization that can realistically assess the child’s need and what is to be done about it, will include the child into its own psychological organization and will remedy the child’s homeostatic imbalance through actions.” (Kohut, page 85)

Without that needed structure and cohesion, the child is in danger of fragmentation, which leads, in extreme cases, to psychosis and a detachment from reality. The unhealthy form of narcissism is a dysfunctional attempt at structure and cohesion, in the form of a False Self.

According to Kohut: “I believe…that defects in the self occur mainly as the result of empathy failures from the side of the self-objects–due to narcissistic disturbances of the self-object; especially, and I think, more frequently than analysts realize, due to the self-object’s latent psychosis…” (Kohut, page 87)

Because of the trauma Lily suffered as a child from her narcissistic father, she feels her personality in danger of disintegration, a fragmentation into separate selves, a psychotic falling apart of the personality. I’m not saying she suffers from dissociative identity disorder, but all the female characters in the story–Lily, Alice, Daisy, and the Mystery Girl–seem to represent different aspects of her fragmented self: respectively, the innocent victim, the slut/murderess, the nice girl, and the ‘unknown self’.

The men in the story, paired as Daniel/Roy/Morgan, and the detectives, all seem to be repeats of each other, too; for splitting into good and bad versions of people (the detectives and the Torrance brothers/Morgan, respectively, as the good and bad father) is a common defence mechanism. Also, Alice’s killing of Daniel’s brother, Roy, can represent a displaced wish to kill Daniel himself (in unconscious phantasy); remember that Alice is another version of Lily, slut-shamed as a result of her trauma from the child sexual abuse, and thus–to ease guilt and anxiety–Lily projects the murder phantasy (and sluttishness) onto Alice.

Alice seeing herself in the mirror can be seen as another manifestation of fragmentation, since Lacan‘s mirror stage, not limited to the spastic years of infancy, results in a fragmented body, an alienation of oneself from the ideal-I in the mirror reflection. The clumsy baby senses a discord between himself and the unified, coherent image in the mirror; just as Lily–with only one leg, it would seem–can’t even stand up or dance; while the image Alice sees in the mirror, “a slut” and a killer, can be the ideal-I (Lily’s other self) only of someone having suffered terrible childhood traumas.

Slutlips makes allusions to several films, the noirish Mulholland Drive and Pulp Fiction (another non-linear narrative that symbolically reinforces the theme of fragmentation), and the horror classic, The Shining, also a story involving parental abuse. Slutlips‘ Daniel Torrance, who doesn’t have the psychic powers of The Shining‘s boy (Danny), or of Dick Hallorann, since Lily’s father lacks the empathy of the boy or of Dick, and is trapped in the past (as Jack Torrance is, as I argued in my analysis of The Shining [the novel]), in tradition, Daniel’s Christian heritage.

One thing deserves attention: all of the men speak in overdone, affected accents, cheesy to the point of being comically stereotyped. Rather than be irked by this, the listener should hear in these caricatured voices a manifestation of the False Self of narcissists, or of otherwise alienated members of society, alienated from themselves–more fragmentation.

Lily’s father speaks with an affected German accent, like a clownish Nazi. I say ‘Nazi’, and not German in the general sense, because of his abusiveness to her and his authoritarianism. He’s also a racist, since he doesn’t want to “risk [his] reputation” by being associated with “niggers” in being seen playing the banjo [!]. Since he has a non-German surname, Torrance, it is truly odd that he has a German accent; but that’s just part of the surreal, non-rational world of the unconscious that this story inhabits, Alice’s nonsensical Wonderland, down the rabbit hole and into a world where an authoritarian monarch threatens physical fragmentation (“Off with her head!” says the Queen in Carroll’s story [and Alice’s creator, Lewis Carroll, photographer and drawer of nude children, could have been, like Lily’s father, a pedophile], but in Slutlips, Lily’s father says, “You’re supposed to have only one leg!”). The Alices of both stories, however, remain defiant (Lily: “Daddy, you’re a moron.”) to the dictates of others.

Indeed, this is a world of dreams, dissociations, and mish-mashes of identities. Since I suspect that Slutlips is semi-autobiographical, I get the impression that Daisy, Lily, Alice, and all the other females in this story represent different aspects of Cat Corelli’s personality, the nice girl/bad girl sides, and the good and bad object relations introjected into her unconscious.

The good and bad object relations include the males in the story, too; not just Lily’s father, but also Roy and Morgan, are internalized in her unconscious. Now, the unconscious tends to make confluent mish-mashes of such things as the self and objects, or, I believe at least, between internalized objects, good or bad; just as it makes no distinction between liquids (milk, blood, urine, as Melanie Klein observed–see my analysis of Alien for more details on that).

Compare Lily’s father with Morgan. Her father poses as a good Christian, but he molests her. Morgan presents himself–as a piano player of waltzes and a connoisseur of The Shining–as at least somewhat cultured (he seems to have Lily temporarily fooled into thinking he’s a ‘good father’ substitute), but there’s something creepy in his voice. Speaking of his voice, he too has an affected, overdone accent–a southern accent, making one think of the ‘redneck’ stereotype. Morgan calls blacks “niggers”, too, though he seems to have a more ‘enlightened liberal’ attitude. He even lies to little Lily that he’s Morgan Freeman, an absurd bit of gaslighting comparable to her father’s gaslighting about her “one leg”, which supposedly wasn’t an erroneous belief he’d manipulated her into having, but one she’d pushed onto herself.

So, her father’s a quasi-Nazi bigot, and Morgan’s a redneck hick who at least seems to be a closeted bigot. Her father would have her believe he’s a good church-goer, and Morgan would have her believe he’s a well-loved movie star whose soothing voice embodies all the phoney liberal values the mainstream media promotes (too bad the real Morgan Freeman recently promoted Russophobic thinking, in aid of needlessly escalating tensions between two nuclear superpowers, in a short Rob Reiner video). More False Selves.

In Daniel and Morgan we have two oppressor stereotypes: the Nazi and the American redneck, both racist, both manipulative, the one a double of the other, a fusion of the worst kinds of German and American. The former, as Lily’s abusive father and religious authoritarian, is also representative of the traditional patriarchal family. In contemporary politics, we see Daniel representative of Donald Trump, an American ignoramus of German descent who also has creepy attitudes toward his pretty daughter (and by extension, in US politics there’s a much closer relationship with Naziism than is commonly understood). But redneck “Morgan Freeman”, being representative of the liberal Democrat who pretends to be progressive but does nothing substantive to help the needy, is hardly an improvement on Daniel. Morgan–presumably white, and claiming he’s a famous black actor–suggests how liberals replace the legitimate proletarian struggle with divisive identity politics. Thus, Lily, representing the proletariat, is manipulated by both liberals and conservatives.

So, how do we help abuse victims like Lily? Do we leave them to their phantasy world of wishing murder on their abusers, dreaming of how Daniel, for example, descends into fragmentation and psychosis on learning of his brother’s murder? Or shall we transform society, so the Lilys of the world can “wake up” (i.e., bring their unconscious traumas into consciousness, and thus, by establishing a coherent, structured self for them, we can cure them) and become whole?

If we plan to do the latter, we can start by listening to these victims, rather than preach to them about behaving better so they won’t ‘irritate’ us so much, as Daniel demands of his daughter. Listening with an empathic ear will help restore the damaged self. Part of listening will require liberating those of colour, LGBT people, and the working class, as well as ensuring equality of the sexes in a socialist, not bourgeois, context. Putting money into childcare will liberate women from domestic burdens; it will also lessen family strain and thus allow for more empathic parenting. Putting money into healthcare–rather than into imperialist wars–must include funding for improving mental health, to provide those listening ears for victims like Lily.

But for now, before a proletarian revolution happens, I urge you, Dear Reader, to listen to Slutlips with an attentive and compassionate ear. For, apart from the pain Cat Corelli screams out on this album, and in spite of (or rather, because of) the many idiosyncratic moments you’ll hear, she is an extraordinary musical talent, capable of a wide range of colours, styles, emotions, and timbres, as well as showing a creative fusion of musical and film genres. Daniel may not have the shining, but in my opinion at least, Cat Corelli does.

Heinz Kohut, The Restoration of the Self, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1977

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