by Frank Lesser
Mr. Seluice then asked me not to print his last comment, as the trial was ongoing, but I argued that he hadn’t said “off the record,” and I can only assume it was in recognition of my journalistic integrity that Mr. Seluice relented and finally offered to let me interview the Shadow Skinner—and right before that evening’s opening!
I look forward to writing about what Mr. Seluice has assured me will be an unprecedented vantage point of the Shadow Skinner’s artistic process during the creation of his latest piece, The Physical Impossibility of Writing About Art in the Mind of Someone Being Eaten Alive. I can almost feel the artist’s genius washing over me, unless that’s just the ram’s blood dressing.
Whoa Oh, Here She Comes
[Excerpted from the Esoteric Order of Tiamat’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum demon-hunting manual, 1983 revised edition.]
Chapter 26: The Maneater
According to dire warnings in a long-dead alphabet recorded in the fossilized arrangements of prehistoric trilobites, “When the stars are right in the sky and the unwholesome slumber of Wo’oa-Harsheikhoms the Maneater is disturbed, what once was shall be again, and what is shall be no more”; or, in a more modern translation, “Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up.”
Scholars are still debating the exact details, as the early Cambrian era was rife with trilobite typos, but occult experts agree that such a disturbance occurred in the summer of 1982 during a raucous Hall & Oates outdoor concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater. The harmonies and driving synth of the blue-eyed soul duo’s number-one single “Private Eyes,” when amplified through the sandstone monoliths, perfectly mimicked an ancient Sumerian awakening prayer, and the rest of the concert kept the Maneater from falling back asleep, so she’s in a terrible mood.
At the urging of the Esoteric Order of Tiamat, Daryl Hall and John Oates wrote the song “Maneater” to alert the world to the beast-god’s arrival in our temporal plane. Technically, it was written by Hall and his Oates homunculus; when the real John Oates was devoured by one of the Maneater’s tentacles shortly after she manifested herself during a sandstorm, the Order created a golem replacement out of clay, dust, and mustache hair.
Our mortal plane’s knowledge of the Maneater remains fragmentary: “She only comes out at night,” and she is “a she-cat tamed by the purr of a jaguar,” although here Hall and “Oates” may have just been looking for something to rhyme with the next line.
As horrifically detailed in song, the Maneater preys on cosmopolitan centers with a high concentration of nutrientrich bachelors. She infiltrates the city’s sewer system, sending tentacles shaped like beautiful women into trendy bars to lure unsuspecting morsels into her embrace, where their nightmares will fuel the Maneater’s surprisingly fragile ego.
Accurate depictions of the Maneater are rare, as she only reveals her true self in the fevered paintings of artists driven mad by visions transmitted from distant alien stars, and because she exerts considerable effort to keep her tentacles fashionable. Currently they’re wearing leg warmers made from the tanned hides of past conquests.
Unfortunately, critics and fans have misinterpreted the song’s true meaning—an outcome that a certain member of the Order predicted, but he was overruled by the chair-vizier, so I hope you’re happy now, Gerald. Regardless, the Order is readying a plan to divert the Maneater, which largely involves distracting her with a shopping spree. We have already spent our entire lives poring over arcane manuscripts and medieval grimoires predicting the Maneater’s arrival, meeting weekly in our secret lairs disguised as comic book shops, and avoiding all women for fear that they could be the Maneater’s tentacles. This is why we don’t have girlfriends.
We are willing to do whatever it takes to stop this unutterable evil, providing it doesn’t involve moving out of our parents’ basements.
If we fail, may Tiamat help us all, for Wo’oa Harsheikhoms is merely the herald of the even more fearsome worlddevourer Seigh Sai Saie. Our only hope is that radio listeners do not ignore the warning of this ancient evil’s imminent arrival, hidden in Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’s smash pop single “Say Say Say.”
In the future, if there is to be one, we will consider warning the world with something that is less open to misinterpretation, but this may be difficult because Gerald is really into pop rock.
Dr. Van Helsing’s Patient Notes
History: Patient Lucy W., early twenties, presents with severe blood loss, acute fatigue, aversion to sunlight, puncture wounds on neck by jugular artery, “moral laxity.” Symptoms appeared shortly after mysterious Eastern European duke (viscount?) moved into abandoned abbey next to patient’s home.
Diagnosis: Patient is victim of nosferatu—the vampire!—foul predator of virtue!
Treatment: Fasten garlic around patient’s windows, arrange bouquets of wolfsbane on her nightstand, and bind her hands and feet to bed frame so she can’t whore around with filthy Romanians. If symptoms worsen, first course of suggested treatment is beheading patient and stuffing her body cavity with garlic, with follow-up appointment a month later.
Additionally, as public health measure, have nubile young nurse ask mysterious duke if he’s noticed any vampires in the vicinity.
History: Patient Alexander B., early forties, presents with shortness of breath, nausea, sudden acute chest pain radiating to left arm. Patient couldn’t gather breath to speak during examination; instead I was informed of symptoms from guests at his surprise party.
Diagnosis: Victim of a vampire, one that likely bit patient in the axillary artery beneath his left arm immediately before guests hiding behind furniture leaped out to surprise him.
Treatment: Bed rest, with patient’s friends taking turns on a watch during evening hours. Watchers are to shout “Vampire!” in random intervals of ten to fifteen minutes to frighten off any vampires lurking outside patient’s window. If patient’s condition worsens, first course of treatment is emergency garlic-stuffed beheading, followed by more bed rest.
History: Patient Henry C., mid-forties, presents with fatigue, frequent urination, unquenchable thirst. Condition is exacerbated by consumption of sweets.
Diagnosis: Victim of the foul vampire! No doubt a foul vampire who while living was a pastry chef, and who is now attracted by the patient’s excessively high-sugar diet.
Treatment: In attempt to lure the vampire from its charnel abode, patient is advised to drink sugar water while my assistant and I wait, stakes at the ready. Failing that, would like to try experimental treatment on patient: Skip the beheading, and stuff patient’s body cavities with garlic. Follow-up at two, four, and eight weeks post-treatment. Compare to control group being stuffed with pimentos.
Additionally, exhume the bodies of all pastry chefs who died in the past seven years, behead them, and fill the body cavities with custard. Bake at 200 degrees for half an hour, remove from oven, and let cool.
History: Margaret H., mid-twenties, collapsed during church service shortly after sudden bout of impaired speech.
Diagnosis: Associate physician Dr. Wilson assumes apoplectic fit, but I have my doubts. Presence of undercooked pork in patient’s cupboard, along with patient’s occupation as assistant swine-gutter at condemned pig butchery behind the public baths, suggests neurocysticercosis, a parasitic infestation of the patient’s nervous system by the tapeworm T. solium.
Treatment: Due to the limitations of medicine in this, the nineteenth century, there isn’t much to do but pray the tapeworms leave patient’s body on their own accord, at which point we will stake and behead them.
History: Edward H., late thirties, upstanding member of Parliament and staunch defender of traditional family repressions, presents with bulbous inflamed growths on face, shuffling gait, paralytic dementia, and a marked change in personality as attested to by his wife and several of his favorite prostitutes.
Diagnosis: Vampire attack! No doubt one if not most of the prostitutes are vampires—unless it is his wife who is the vampire!
Treatment: Since patient’s vampire attack symptoms have progressed to their final, or “tertiary” stage, there is little to do but make the remainder of patient’s life as comfortable as possible, before his inevitable and excruciatingly painful beheading/stuffing.
Additionally, take the preemptive measure of exposing patient’s wife to sunlight, an experimental treatment being tested by Dr. Grushinsky, which may someday obviate the need for unnecessary and messy beheadings. Medical science marches on!
Note: If patient’s wife survives the sunlight exposure, it would be in the public’s best interests to behead and garlic-stuff her. Just in case.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Who Aren’t Fifty Feet Tall
A phone in a booth on Fifty-third and Seventh rings. Claudia, a fifty-foot-tall woman, rips it out of the sidewalk and puts it to her ear. Before speaking she clears her throat, shattering the windows on the fifth floor of a nearby skyscraper.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Claudia? It’s Mark.”
“Mark! Hi!” she says, her voice rising in pitch, which disorients a flock of pigeons flying past. The birds veer through the shattered windows into a fashion agency, inspiring a new line of dead dove berets.
“I’m so glad you called,” she continues. “I had a great time Saturday at Coney Island. It was so adorable how you kept pretending to run off in terror.”
A pause. “Yeah. It was fun. I really liked hearing about how small everything looks from your vantage point, although it was kind of tough that I had to wait until I was at the very top of the Ferris wheel to say anything in response. And it was a bit awkward when we walked past the freak show booth and people kept paying me five bucks to take a picture with you.”
“But it was so sweet how you used some of that money to pay for half of dinner,” Claudia says, absentmindedly bending and unbending a streetlamp around her finger. “Are we still on for drinks Friday at the Flatiron Building’s rooftop bar? If so, I’ll need to know soon so I have time to move a bar to the roof.”
A longer pause. “Look,” Mark finally says, “you seem like a really nice fifty-foot girl, and I hope this doesn’t hurt your freakishly large feelings, but I don’t think this is going to work out.”
Silence. Mark starts looking online for the first available flight to Brazil.
Claudia finally speaks. “I’m sorry, I’m a little surprised—I thought our date went so well. You fit inside my hand perfectly, and you laughed at all my jokes.”
“I was actually screaming in terror,” says Mark, “but I guess you couldn’t tell because your ears were forty-four feet away.”
Claudia begins to cry. Mistaking her tears for rain, motorists turn on their wipers. “This always happens to me,” she says, blowing her nose on a king-size bedsheet. “And I was so excited, I even made a new dress out of a Chanel billboard.”
“I’m sorry,” Mark says. “With other girls I wouldn’t have called, but I was afraid that if I didn’t, you might get upset and destroy the condo I live in.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You’re a fifty-foot woman.”
“It’s because I’m a woman?”
“You’re missing the pertinent adjective.”
“It’s still sexist,” Claudia says. She puts down the sedan she was about to toss into the Hudson River. “I’m sorry, we should really be having this conversation face-to-face.”
“Face-to-giant-face,” thinks Mark as he zips up a duffel bag containing his pared-down life’s belongings. “Now’s not really a great time,” he says. “I don’t know if I mentioned this when we hung out, but I was thinking of going on vacation for a while.” He squints in a mirror with his finger under his nose to see what he’d look like disguised with a mustache.
The army arrives, and tanks begin firing at Claudia. “My connection is about to get bad,” she says, swatting away a helicopter. “I can see your apartment from here—I’ll be over in two minutes. If you need to reach me before then, call me on my cell.”
Claudia scales a nearby building, removes a cell antenna from its top, and bounds down Broadway.
Mark sees Claudia when she’s ten blocks away. From this distance she looks almost normal size, and Mark wonders if things would be any different then. No, he decides, she has an annoying laugh.
She approaches the window of his fourth-floor apartment and bends down to talk to him, revealing a swimming pool’s worth of cleavage. Mark briefly reconsiders.
“Hi, Claudia. This is a huge surprise.” He forces a smile.
“Is that a crack about my weight?”
He stops smiling.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just haven’t had much luck with guys recently, ever since I turned thirty shortly after being hit by an enlarging ray. I don’t want to seem too desperate, but I’d just like to know what went wrong.”
“To be honest,” Mark says, “your profile on that dating site wasn’t very accurate. You looked a lot smaller in the picture.”
“Didn’t you see the trees next to me? I put those there for scale.”
“Claudia, I’m sorry. I just don’t think we’re a good match physically.”
“So this is about my weight.” Claudia sighs. “That’s so unfair. I try to only eat forests with low-fat dressing.”
“I’m sure you’re just very big-boned,” Mark says, and Claudia begins to cry. “Maybe online dating isn’t for you. Unless, are there online dating sites for people who are fifty feet tall?”
“There’s a dating site for giants, GDate,” Claudia says through sobs, “but it’s mostly forty-foot-tall men who lie about their height.”
Claudia’s tears are running down the front of Mark’s building, and he’s afraid the apartment downstairs will think his air conditioner is leaking again. He reaches out his window and pats a tiny part of Claudia’s shoulder. “You know, I have a friend I think you might like. He’s an incredible guy. Full disclosure, he’s an incredible shrinking guy. But he’s got a great personality, although he does get touchy if you bring up the shrinking thing.”
Mark gives Claudia his friend’s number, and she sniffs back her tears, accidentally inhaling a cat sunning itself on the neighbor’s balcony. She awkwardly kneels on a car parked in front of a fire hydrant.
“I should really get back to my kitchen,” Mark says. Claudia doesn’t move, so he adds, “I’m boiling spaghetti, and I hate when it’s overcooked.”
“I totally understand. Well, it was really nice meeting you.”
“Yeah,” he says, then gestures behind him. “Spaghetti.”
Claudia stands up, pulling her skirt tight against her legs to avoid flashing the entire block.
She decides to call Mark’s friend later that night, even though a small part of her—a very small part—knows it won’t work. She’s dated shrinking men before, and it’s always the same: Just when things seem to be going so well, all of a sudden they disappear.
Seeing Other Dead People
[The following message appeared in blood on the walls of an eighteenth-century Georgian house in New York’s Hudson River Valley during a Realtor’s showing. So far there have been no offers.]
Dear Katrina,
I know you said a century ago you wanted to move on, but the ceiling was crying blood last week and it reminded me of you. And when we bumped into each other last night at that séance, I realized that the spirit trap set by those ghost hunters wasn’t the only thing that missed you.
I don’t want to dwell on the past, but we’re ghosts; it’s what we do. And I know I should move on, too, especially because my curse will only be lifted if a living woman falls in love with me, but girls don’t seem to like meeting guys when they suddenly show up reflected behind them in their bathroom mirrors during thunderstorms. I tried online dating, but no one’s interested in a guy whose eye color is “see-through” and whose body type is “incorporeal.” A few months ago I started casually possessing a human, but she broke up with me because she thought I w
as too controlling.
My biggest problem is that girls don’t want to go out with a friendly ghost. You just get stuck in the friendly ghost zone, which is worse than Purgatory.
Anyway, I know you’re seeing through someone else right now, but nothing lasts forever, except our souls’ eternal suffering. On a related note, I’d like to point out that right before we leapt off that cliff, I asked if you were worried we might end up forever damned, and you said, “Sometimes in a relationship you have to take risks.” Not to say I told you so, but that was yet another instance of your poor long-term decision-making skills.
Sorry to bring up these painful memories. I’m still a little bitter that the whole reason for our suicide was that your parents refused to let you marry me, and you said this way we could be together forever in the afterlife—and then after just a few decades of living together as ghosts you said you wanted to take a break. Sure, our routine had grown a little stale—materialize from our graves, roam the earth in penance, order delivery. But all your new boyfriend does is ride around all night looking for his head, which honestly is a bit self-centered.
I apologize. I don’t care whose ghost you date. And I don’t want to make this about your new boyfriend, because this isn’t about him—but really, the Headless Horseman? Sure, he’s muscular, but I’ve got a much better head. I don’t mean to be shallow, and I know appearance isn’t everything, but how do you even kiss him? I’ll admit it’s kind of impressive that he can ride a horse, especially on account of the whole no-head thing, but really, it’s the twenty-first century and he’s still on horseback? To be fair, it must be tough to read about cars when you don’t have a head.