At first- distant, a pulsing patch of contortions; a swelter, shifting pattern of familiar faces & grisly ends, circling overhead to bend & shape space-time into fabulous new contortions. Some memorable images pulled from this cavalcade of perversions, this storm of deus ex machina death scenes & stream of conscious contrivance, labyrinthine incongruity:
A lynch mob of angry villagers confronting an occult artist in his humid Louisiana inn, chain-whipping him in a rush of hysteria-fuelled violence before casting out the warlock to the secretive sub-basement below, crucifying our pulverized painter before launching the last blow, drowning his face in quicklime & watching as it dissolves into a puddle of warm mush....
A beautiful blind girl & her loyal seeing-eye canine standing dead centre of the Pontchartrain, miles of coast stretching endlessly into the distance on all sides, the deformed rings of her retinas staring somehow knowingly into the camera lens.....
A child with scarlet hair walking into a hospital morgue, her mother lying prone on the ground as a glass jar of acid turns over above her, spilling down into her face to burn away flesh & sinew, cartilage & bone in a snap crackle *puff* of acrid smoke-the growing puddle of gore spreading beneath the girl's shoes & a one-eyed zombie reaching out of the freezer to grab her in the frantic effort to sidestep the mess....
A man in the library prowling amongst the stacks, startled off his ladder perch at a high shelf & crashing to the ground below by a freak strike of lightning before a parade of tarantulas slowly march on his face, tearing it to oozing shreds in a cacophony of squealing mewling insect noises, the illustration on the pages of the discarded volume beside him vanishing into thin air....
Deformed by putrefaction, a recently dead plumber slowly rises from the filthy black murk of a forgotten tub in the dilapidated remains of the very same inn some 60 years hence, grabbing his prey by her face & slowly forcing her head onto the deadly point of large nail protruding from a crumbling wall, pushing all the way through her skull on impact & dislodging an eyeball, blood raining in a fountain out her hollowed- out ocular cavity....
The blind girl in her parlor at twilight, pleading with a zombie horde not to take her back to the other side, their grotesque, rotten visages staring implacably down, all before her loyal dog turns in a fit of supernaturally inspired treachery, with the force of it's muzzle tearing out her throat, her ear & scalp; the screen stained again with crimson rivers.....
The abandoned inn deserted by night, the silhouettes of nameless dead lurching to & fro by the illuminated windowsills, spine-tingling echoes reverberating over the soundtrack....
The plucky duo of recent innkeeper & skeptical doctor fleeing a newly risen zombie horde through the linoleum hallways of the abandoned local hospital, freshly opened hell-gate again folding space-time in their wake so that a random doorway inexplicably leads, as if in a dream, back to the haunted inn from whence they started, miles transversed in seconds, their gravest efforts thwarted in a twinkle. We leave them, passing through that trans-dimensional gateway to the other side, a barren wasteland with no beginning & no end, doomed to an eternity wondering the void with retinas transmogrified like the blind girl....
Some constants amid the chaos, landmarks in the void: the gatekeeper blind girl uttering dire warnings to the living, the dead bringing swift jealous vengeance to the same, the dead artist & his final work, extracting blood from his canvas & of course the hotel itself, looming ominously over all- points on a singed map past reading, no true direction nor destination, doomed to wander the dreamscape like our protagonists, trying to impose order on the orderless, shape on the shapeless, meaning on the meaningless.
A lynch mob of angry villagers confronting an occult artist in his humid Louisiana inn, chain-whipping him in a rush of hysteria-fuelled violence before casting out the warlock to the secretive sub-basement below, crucifying our pulverized painter before launching the last blow, drowning his face in quicklime & watching as it dissolves into a puddle of warm mush....
A beautiful blind girl & her loyal seeing-eye canine standing dead centre of the Pontchartrain, miles of coast stretching endlessly into the distance on all sides, the deformed rings of her retinas staring somehow knowingly into the camera lens.....
A child with scarlet hair walking into a hospital morgue, her mother lying prone on the ground as a glass jar of acid turns over above her, spilling down into her face to burn away flesh & sinew, cartilage & bone in a snap crackle *puff* of acrid smoke-the growing puddle of gore spreading beneath the girl's shoes & a one-eyed zombie reaching out of the freezer to grab her in the frantic effort to sidestep the mess....
A man in the library prowling amongst the stacks, startled off his ladder perch at a high shelf & crashing to the ground below by a freak strike of lightning before a parade of tarantulas slowly march on his face, tearing it to oozing shreds in a cacophony of squealing mewling insect noises, the illustration on the pages of the discarded volume beside him vanishing into thin air....
Deformed by putrefaction, a recently dead plumber slowly rises from the filthy black murk of a forgotten tub in the dilapidated remains of the very same inn some 60 years hence, grabbing his prey by her face & slowly forcing her head onto the deadly point of large nail protruding from a crumbling wall, pushing all the way through her skull on impact & dislodging an eyeball, blood raining in a fountain out her hollowed- out ocular cavity....
The blind girl in her parlor at twilight, pleading with a zombie horde not to take her back to the other side, their grotesque, rotten visages staring implacably down, all before her loyal dog turns in a fit of supernaturally inspired treachery, with the force of it's muzzle tearing out her throat, her ear & scalp; the screen stained again with crimson rivers.....
The abandoned inn deserted by night, the silhouettes of nameless dead lurching to & fro by the illuminated windowsills, spine-tingling echoes reverberating over the soundtrack....
The plucky duo of recent innkeeper & skeptical doctor fleeing a newly risen zombie horde through the linoleum hallways of the abandoned local hospital, freshly opened hell-gate again folding space-time in their wake so that a random doorway inexplicably leads, as if in a dream, back to the haunted inn from whence they started, miles transversed in seconds, their gravest efforts thwarted in a twinkle. We leave them, passing through that trans-dimensional gateway to the other side, a barren wasteland with no beginning & no end, doomed to an eternity wondering the void with retinas transmogrified like the blind girl....
Some constants amid the chaos, landmarks in the void: the gatekeeper blind girl uttering dire warnings to the living, the dead bringing swift jealous vengeance to the same, the dead artist & his final work, extracting blood from his canvas & of course the hotel itself, looming ominously over all- points on a singed map past reading, no true direction nor destination, doomed to wander the dreamscape like our protagonists, trying to impose order on the orderless, shape on the shapeless, meaning on the meaningless.