A Special Place In Hell

Yesterday I sat writing with a pen that looks like a needle -- you depress it and red ink comes out, the metaphorical blood on the page. I like my needle pen because it keeps me in mind of the task at hand, no less than mining a vein to get to something pure. The pen came as a bonus gift when I bought Carrie, one of my favorite horror movies of all time. I love the embryonic Sissy Spacek and her crazy mother with the huge crucifix in the trailer. It's the ideal revenge fantasy for people like me who were out of place, awkward teenage girls, hoping like crazy that things would change and when they didn't, taking matters into her own hands and destroying everything. It trumps the rash of stalker movies that came after, the ones where almost everyone was dead except a final girl, the one tomboyish character with a unisex name who lived to tell the tale, dazed by the horrors she'd seen, vowing never to go camping again. Come to think of that, I could relate to that scenario as well, even if the only horrors I'd seen while camping were rattlesnakes and Everclear poured into empty High Karate or Polo bottles for safe and undetected transport. You really haven't lived until someone says, The Everclear is in the High Karate, Southern Comfort in the Polo. There's a special place in hell where one is forced to drink liquor laced with the dregs of cheap cologne.

But some of the scariest movies ever are the ones where the danger comes from the inside -- ie, the babysitter movie where she's getting obscene, threatening phone calls and the police deliver the haunting line after tracing the line -- The phone call is coming from inside the house!. I am also partial to a good devil-child movie or a good possession movie. It's in these movies we see ourselves most clearly, the ways we wish harm on ourselves and others without thought and blame unseen forces. In our everyday existence, we live with our pettiness, our casual cruelty, and dubious motives as if we are safe, as if they don't exist. Of course, any horror fan knows that it's just a matter of time before things become uncovered and start to wreak havoc. Good thing I have my blood red pen to write it all down, keep a record of sadness and despair, evil and good, and failing anything that dramatic, the banality of my days, since there's a good chance that anything scary is coming from inside the house.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"He decided he'd told the artist enough of his business. Artists were all right in their place but he didn't like them poking their noses in the affairs of regular people." Flannery O'Connor, "Parker's Back"

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Live at Fillmore East Allman Brothers

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Monday!