4 posts tagged “industrial”

Anyway, Bret was there, too, and he said this place had always creeped him out because there was an old orphanage nearby, and pointed out an abandoned-looking Victorian house surrounding by trees in a row of other abandoned-looking houses nearby. The backyard was real lumpy-looking, surrounded by a rusted iron spiked fence, and it looked like there'd been a bonfire in the center of it. Naturally, me and some other guy (just a random dream character) just had to go check it out before showtime.

We found the heavily-shadowed yard was literally full of tiny crucifixes--some wood, some stone, some clay...none more than six inches tall. Many of them, however, had been torn up and tossed into pits dug in the ground (hence the bumpiness) and quite a few had been burnt in one of the pits. There was a fresh pile of little crucifixes on the burn pile awaiting the flame; all of them were made of terracotta, and when I picked up one it rattled as though it were hollow with...well, it sounded like it had two beads or rocks in it. On the back, carved into the terracotta, were two names: ALETHEA & ARETHA PARKOUR. And a date: 1898.

"You'd better put that back down right now," said a nasty voice--and I looked up to find myself surrounded by four ragged figures. (My dream-companion had fled or dematerialized or something.) One of the figures was a big, sweaty guy wearing a filthy shirt and suspenders in which hundreds of bone pines were hooked; his head was huge and covered in tufted black hair, and he had no nose--just a livid gaping hole. One of the others was wearing a black robe and had a thoroughly mangled face--just strips of flesh hanging from a battered, broken skull--and was dripping with blood; the only thing whole in that macerated visage was his eyes...five of them: wide and pale blue and glowing like low-wattage bulbs. The other two were horribly misshapen but they were behind me, so I never got a good enough look at them.

"We want 'em out of hell," No-Nose said. "They only way to purge 'em is to burn what's left of 'em--burn even their names, if they ever had 'em. You shouldn't be here. But we'll let you help...."

Then the two behind me grabbed me and dragged me into the abandoned house...which was full of garbage and unimaginable filth. They took me to the basement, where some kind of huge, rusted meat-cutting machine was sitting next to a portable generator. They fired the generator up and a long metal belt, shiny with use, began to screech as it spun across a flat surface edged in years of dried blood.

"Can't kill the dead unless you're one of 'em," No-Nose said, and tried to force my face down onto the blade. Somehow, I managed to wiggle to the side and the hand he was using to hold down my head slipped onto the blade and it sawed his fingers off. He fell back and Slashed-Face attacked; with unerring dream-fu I ducked under his bloodsoaked arms and just ran like a motherfucker for the stairs.

Soon as I stumbled out into the backyard, they were already there waiting for me, laughing. "'Round and 'round we go," said No-Nose, "with nothing in between." They started coming toward me again.

There was only one thing that came to mind. I grabbed the little terracotta crucific that had the two girls' names on it and smashed it onto to the ground. The hellions all screamed hideously as the clay shattered and two tiny half-formed fetal skulls rolled out into the ashes. Immediately, they burst into harsh green flames, and the flames took the form of two young women--I'd say about their mid-twenties--both with curly black hair and fingers that looked like they'd been burnt to the bone. "You goddamned ass-backward savages," the one snarled, and attacked.

The fight with the Wounded (that's what my brain was calling them) lasted only a few seconds; the two girls released from hell made short work of them, banishing them in gouts of pitch-black, ice-cold fire. Then they turned to me....

"Dude, we owe you one," the prettier of the two said. "Let's go watch the show."

So we went back to the performance and watched Taya, Mindy, and that punk-rock chick from New York perform. Taya did a really sweet ballad on her little stage; Mindy sang some awful country song--but sang it real well--and then it was the punk girl's turn. We were all hoping she'd kill this, and she did...doing a song that reminded me greatly of something by Evanescence--slow and synthy at first, then blasting into grinding guitar fury. It was The Shit. She was an exquisite perform and I knew, somewhere in the Real World--wherever that was--that right now I must have a glorious boner.

And then she jumped on the drummer and everyone saw her ass. The drummer tried to pull down her underwear and they got in a fight. Oy, it was embarrassing. Bret just stood there like, "What the fuck just happened?" And, even though she'd done the best performance, he had to let her go because she was just too slutty.

"We'll see her again someday," one of the demon girls said.

"By the way," the other said, "we're going to be moving to Orlando, Florida, soon. You should come down and visit."

"I know this girl from Orlando!" I said. "Natalie S------. You guys know her?"

"Yeah!" the first said. "She's totally cool!"

"Well, if you want a chance at me, you'd better get crackin' before she lands this prize catch."

Honest to gods, that's what I said.

Then I woke up.