"I'm sorry, sir," the waiter replied to the gentleman's order. "All we have left today is two-head soup. But it's our specialty."
"A baby crying so noisily that I can hardly read my newspaper, and I've waited all this time simply for the pleasure of being told that all I can eat in this place is thin soup. You'll have to do better than that. I could go across the street, you know."
The waiter bowed graciously and removed himself, returning a few moments later.
"Sir, I'm pleased to inform you that today we have an excellent three-head soup."
"So! I sit here reading the same paragraph over and over without understanding a word of it because some little whelp is yammering in the background and now my sole consolation is to consume a sickeningly thick soup which would probably give me a blood condition, if I didn't already have one."
The waiter bowed even more graciously than the first time and, once again, removed himself. The gentleman reburied his head in his newspaper, looking up only when the expressionless waiter returned with a tray bearing a big steaming bowl. (A few packages of crackers were already on the table.) "Well, at least that brat has shut himself up," said the gentleman, heartily picking up a large spoon from the table. "I suppose I'll just have to take my chances with the soup. Can't have everything in this life; I know that."
"Especially prepared for you, sir," said the waiter as he set down the bowl before the gentleman's eyes: "Two and a half-head soup."
"Oh, my God!" gasped the would-be gourmet (his words not so much spoken as exhaled) when he looked down into the bowl, his hand growing white around the enormous spoon. And everyone in the restaurant was now gazing at the seated paralytic, an intense but in no way ostentatious hatred in their eyes. Finally the waiter inclined his face toward the gentleman's.
"You ordered it, you eat it," he whispered through a perfect set of teeth.
—Louis Miguel Riaz
(originally appeared in journal L'amour fou (Brussels), #14)
An Interview With Louis Miguel Riaz (1982)
This "interview" appeared in Grimoire #2 Fall 1982. Ligotti converses with his alias, Louis Miguel Riaz. The introduction to the issue says our interview this issue is with exiled surrealist Louis Miguel Riaz, who certain governmental agencies would also like to catch.
First published in Grimoire #2, 1982.
GRIMOIRE: Could you please explain the term "automatic horror" and how this process works.
RIAZ: I can easily explain the term itself, which simply denotes the consequences of "automatic writing" when applied to the utmost limit. If a writer allows the deepest stratum of his consciousness to do the talking, the transcript of oratory will always be one that is appalling, in varying ways and degrees, to the upper levels.
GRIMOIRE: But how automatic is automatic horror? Yours seem every bit as structured as, if you'll pardon the expression, manual narratives. Consciously controlled, that is.
RIAZ: You're assuming there's no structure to be found in the abyss of the individual mind and perhaps not even in the fundament of being itself. That the universe is founded upon an indifferent chaos has traditionally been a soothing conception. The infinite armies of atoms are blameless because they care not what they do. They're not responsible for their own nightmare by virtue of the universal disarray. But so does a bed of crystals seem to be a disarray, until you observe the rigid inner design. And in automatic horror the design observed can be a very dismaying one, at least to those sensitive enough to catch on. Of course not all instances of automatic writing yield such horrific treasures, meaning that the practitioner's brain did not touch absolute bottom. Then again, there may be more involved than merely searching the depths of an individual consciousness. Automatic horror could be a breaking through to some supra-zone linked to all matter and sensation. But this intrudes upon the totally unknown and its establishable validity, in my opinion, is ultimate zero. Theoretically, of course, this concept is crawling with possibilities.
GRIMOIRE: Perhaps you could elaborate on some of them for us.
RIAZ: I really don't think I should have to. The idea that if a brain with a penchant for literary composition can penetrate to the fount of its own awareness, it will inevitably produce horror texts is certainly not new with my writing. Others have already repeatedly exploited this principle in their own works, that ultimate knowledge is ultimate horror, that to understand all is to dread all, etcetera.
GRIMOIRE: Are you saying that automatic horror is just another backdrop to literary creation?
RIAZ: From a certain viewpoint—not my own—yes, that's all I'm saying. My own viewpoint claims much more. You have to understand that for years I've lived and breathed what you've termed a "backdrop to literary creation." If my outlook is a somewhat dogmatic one, it has not been arrived at hastily or without laborious examination. All the mocking services of my skepticism have been placed at my imagination's disposal. At grave personal risk, I might add.
GRIMOIRE : Your experiments in automatic horror.
RIAZ: Yes. There is, of course, much more involved than sitting at a desk where a blank sheet of paper and a steaming cup of coffee have been placed in convenient proximity. In fact, this is hardly ever the case. More often I'm undergoing or have just emerged from some critical turbulence of the psyche, not to say it doesn't reach beyond this handy psychological focus. And this, I'd like to point out, is only superficially related to those simulated states of mental turmoil used by the surrealists of old for their production line automatic writings. I've never simulated anything.
GRIMOIRE: Is it true that you deliberately incited a group of roughnecks in a bar to threaten your life in order to write "Thou Strike Me Dead"?
RIAZ: Of course it isn't true. I religiously avoid instigating conflicts both within and outside of myself. I equally avoid avoiding them. If some instance of internal or external derangement arises, I merely do my best to let it take its course and lead me where it will. But the difficult, the impossible thing is to follow it all the way without at some point having your involuntary protective mechanisms force you to turn back. Even the most minor crisis cannot be allowed full flow, because even the least trickle of chaos will lead you back to that infinite ocean of horrors which is the source of all being. For instance, a moment of panic deriving from some precarious episode on the highway, if you could only keep from blocking out its implications, would pulverize your every atom right down to the dead cells of your toenails.
GRIMOIRE: And if you could withstand such an onslaught of information and then express it in language...
RIAZ: Yes, you could write the words that would drive the reader mad, the truly forbidden book. This is only a mythical beast of horror fiction, though. No writer could ever approach this achievement, except perhaps by sheer accident, that is automatically. This cataclysmic act would have to be unthinking in the extreme, like jumping off a high building, just to see what it felt like, and only remembering on the way down that you would die and never have the leisure to contemplate your experience. It would be self- assassination of the most thorough kind. You would literally destroy whatever cohesive stuff it is that enables you to sustain whatever illusions your existence is based upon. The worst always happens, or seems to, automatically, by accident. Who would ever desire such a thing?
GRIMOIRE: It's been said that you did in your narrative about the New Orleans bordello which by force of voodoo managed to impress an old-fashioned angel into the services of the house. The concluding passage where the protagonist imagines he's eating the angelified flesh...
RIAZ: Are there many other questions? I'm rather tired.
GRIMOIRE: Just a few more, if you would be so kind. It might seem like a lot to ask, but could you give a brief definition of horror.
RIAZ: I don't think a definition is so much needed as a history, an excavation into horror's origins. This is a monumental undertaking and right now I could only sketch out the first few pages of such a chronicle. Should I bother?
G
RIMOIRE : Please do, by all means.
RIAZ: All right, then. First, horror did not always exist and is probably not universal among all the varieties of sentient life. Though the horror experienced by certain types of vegetable and animal life under certain conditions may be an unending source of speculation, I can only speak with authority for my own kind. We can imagine that the first experience of horror was bestowed upon a humanal prototype just below the line of Australopithecus. This creature might have been swimming across a narrow width of river to reach his primitive social unit, vaguely musing on the meal and mate waiting for him on the other side. But suddenly the fulfillment of his diffuse but intense longings is threatened, as they have been countless times in the past. This time the threat takes the form of a fishy predator with a man-sized mouth which is wide open and heading straight for our hungry/lonely pre-human. But this time a new dimension of feeling emerges from the crisis of physical survival. Og, or whatever him name may be, swims as fast as he can toward safety, but as he thrashes through the murky water it becomes clear to him, in a way it never was before, just what is happening, and for the first time he is consciously, brilliantly aware of what may happen if he doesn't reach shore before The Beast reaches his hysterically paddling feet. He will be reduced to a morsel, the kind he unthinkingly shoves into his own mouth every day of his life. Post- morselization, he will never see others of his kind again, and they will never see him. But the formula for true horror is not complete until Og asks himself that utterly unnecessary and unanswerable question: How could a thing like this happen? Even when Og is safely on the river bank and panting from his ordeal, this question continues to haunt him. Afterward the whole world looks different, very strange. And The Beast, which previously was confined to the world of water, now lives everywhere—in flowers, in shadows, even in dead things. It lives in the moon and sweeps down every night to invade Og's dreams. It lives in the very air Og breathes. At first no one else understands what Og's problem is. But it is only a matter of time before everyone begins seeing The Beast, whether it's really there or not, and Horror has been delivered into the world. Do you get the general idea?
GRIMOIRE: Yes, it seems clear enough. One last question. Are you still writing horror and will you continue to do so?
RIAZ: Briefly, yes I am. But whether or not I will continue to produce horror texts is not really up to me. I will as long as my inspiration is going strong. Frankly, though, I look forward to the day when it peters out, when I've exhausted every horrific theme latent within my brain. Let someone else write the work that drives everyone mad. I'll just sit and stare out the window and watch the seasons pass. After all, perhaps the only true happiness, the only true glory, lies midway between absolute horror and absolute boredom: dreaming at your ease, waiting for a coffee and dessert to be served to you in a pleasant restaurant with a good view of the twilight...
GRIMOIRE : Thank you, Mr. Riaz.
RIAZ: My pleasure.
Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech (1983)
First published in Grimoire #5, 1983
Also published in: Songs Of A Dead Dreamer, The Nightmare Factory, The Shadow At The Bottom Of The World.
There is a stairway. It climbs crooked up the side of total darkness. Yet its outlines are visible, like a scribble of lightning engraved upon a black sky. And though standing unsupported, it does not fall. Nor does it end its jagged ascent until it has reached the obscure loft where Voke, the recluse, has cloistered himself. Someone named Cheev is making his way up the stairway, which seems to trouble him somehow. Though the angular scaffolding as a whole is secure enough, Cheev appears hesitant to place his full weight on the individual steps. A victim of vague misgivings, he ascends in weird mincing movements. Every so often he looks back over his shoulder at the stairs he has just stepped upon, as if expecting to see the imprints of his soles there, as if the stairs are not made of solid wood but molded of soft clay. But the stairs are unchanged.
Cheev is wearing a long, brightly colored coat. The huge splinters on the railing of the stairway sometimes snag his bulky sleeves. They also snag his bony hands, but Cheev is more exasperated by the destruction of expensive cloth than undear flesh. While climbing, he sucks at a small puncture in his forefinger to keep from staining his coat with blood. At the seventeenth stair above the seventeenth, and last, landing—he trips. The long tails of the coat become tangled between Cheev's legs and there is a ripping sound as he falls. At the end of his patience, Cheev removes the coat and flings it over the side of the stairway into the black abyss. Cheev's arms and legs are very thin.
There is only a single door at the top of the stairs. Behind it is Voke's loft, which appears to be a cross between a playroom and a place of torture. No doubt Cheev notices this when, with five widely splayed fingers pushing against the door, he enters.
The darkness and silence of the great room are compromised only by noisy jets of blue-green light flickering spasmodically along the walls. But for the most part the room lies buried in shadows. Even its exact height is uncertain, since above the convulsive illumination almost nothing can be seen by even the sharpest pair of eyes, never mind Cheev's squinting little slits. Part of the lower cagework of the crisscrossing rafters is visible, but the ceiling is entirely obscured, if in fact Voke's sanctum has been provided with one.
Somewhere above the gritty floor, more than a few life-size dolls hang suspended by wires which gleam and look gummy like wetted strands of a spider web. But none of the dolls is seen in whole: the longbeaked profile of one juts into the light; the shiny satin legs of another find their way out of the upper dimness; a beautifully pale hand glows in the distance; while much closer the better part of a harlequin dangles into view, cut off at the neck by blackness. Much of the inventory of this vast room appears only as parts and pieces of objects which manage to push their way out of the smothering dark. Upon the grainy floor, a long low box thrusts a corner of itself into the scene, showing off reinforced edges of bright metal strips plugged with heavy bolts. Pointed and strangely shaped instruments bloom out of the loam of shadows; they are crusted with... age. A great wheel appears at quarter-phase in the room's night. Other sections, appendages, and gear-works of curious machines complicate this immense gallery.
As Cheev progresses through the half-light, he is suddenly halted by a metal arm with a soft black handle. He backs off and continues to shuffle through the chamber, grinding sawdust, sand, perhaps pulverized stars underfoot. The dismembered limbs of dolls and puppets are strewn about the floor, drained of their stuffings. Posters, signs, billboards, and leaflets of various sorts are scattered around like playing cards, their bright words disarranged into nonsense. Countless other objects, devices, and leftover goods stock the room, more than one could possibly take notice of. But they are all, in some way, like those which have been described. One wonders, then, how they could all add up to such an atmosphere of... isn't repose the word? Yes, but a certain kind of repose: the repose of ruin.
"Voke," Cheev calls out. "Doctor, are you here?"
Within the darknesss ahead a tall rectangle suddenly appears, like a ticket-seller's booth at a carnival. The lower part is composed of wood and the upper part of glass; its interior is lit up by an oily red glare. Slumped forward on its seat inside the booth, as if asleep, is a well-dressed dummy: nicely-fitting black jacket and vest with bright silver buttons, a white high-collar shirt with silver cufflinks, and a billowing cravat which displays a pattern of moons and stars. Because his head is forwardly inclined, the dummy's only feature of note is the black sheen of its painted hair.
Cheev approaches the booth a little cautiously. He fails to notice, or considers irrelevant, the inanimate character of the figure inside. Through a semi-circular opening in of the glass, Cheev slides his hand into the booth, apparently with the intention of giving the dummy's arm a shake. But before his own arm creeps very far toward its goal, several things occur in succession: the dummy casually lifts its head and opens its eyes... it reach
es out and places its wooden hand on Cheev's hand of flesh... and its jaw drops open to dispense a mechanical laugh—yah-ha-ha-ha-ha, yah-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Wresting his hand away from the lurid dummy, Cheev staggers backward a few chaotic steps. The dummy continues to give forth its mocking laughter, which flaps its way into every niche of the evil loft and flies back as peculiar echoes. The dummy's face is vacant and handsome; its eyes roll like mad marbles. Then, from out of the shadows behind the dummy's booth, steps a figure that is every bit as thin as Cheev, though much taller. His outfit is not unlike the dummy's, but the clothes hang on him, and what there is left of his sparse hair falls like old rags across his bone-white scalp.
"Did you ever wonder, Mr. Veech," Voke begins, parading slowly toward his guest while holding one side of his coat like the train of a gown, "did you ever wonder what it is that makes the animation of a wooden dummy so horrible to see, not to mention to hear. Listen to it, I mean really listen. Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha: a stupid series of sounds that becomes excruciatingly eloquent when uttered by the Ticket Man. They are a species of poetry that sings what should not be sung, that speaks what should not be spoken. But what in the world is it laughing about. Nothing, it would seem. No clear motives or impulses make the dummy laugh, and yet it does! Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha, just as pure and as evil as can be.
"'What is this laughter for?' you might be wondering, Mr. Veech. It seems to be for your ears alone, doesn't it? It seems to be directed at every nameless secret of your being. It seems... knowing. And it is knowing, but in another way from what you suppose, in another direction entirely. It is not you the dummy knows, it is only itself. The question is not: 'What is the laughter for,' not at all. The question is: 'Where does it come from?' This is the thing of real horror, in fact. The dummy terrorizes you, while he is really the one in terror.
"Think of it: wood waking up. I can't put it any clearer than that. And let's not forget the paint for the hair and lips, the glass for the eyes. These too are aroused from a sleep that should never have been broken; these too are now part of a tingling network of dummy-nerves, alive and aware in a way we cannot begin to imagine. This is something too painful for tears and so the dummy laughs in your face, trying to give vent to an evil that was no part of his old home of wood and paint and glass. But this evil is now the very essence of its new home—our world, Mr. Veech. This is what is so horrible about the laughing Ticket Man. Go to sleep now, dummy. There, he has his nice silence back. Be glad I didn't make one that screams, Mr. Veech. And be glad the dummy is, after all, just a device.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 10