The Haunting of Chill House: A PTSD Horror Satire by lydia.pettit

A PTSD Horror Satire

by Lydia Pettit

A PTSD Horror Satire

by Lydia Pettit MA Painting Tutor: Jonathan P. Watts Wordcount: 7868 2019

Contents Dread

Denial

Reflections

Anachronism

Truth

End

Bibliography

THE HAUNTING OF CHILL HOUSE: A PTSD Horror Satire

“This is going to be the BEST VacATioN EvERRRRR” An avalanche of beer cans poured out of the Range Rover as all four doors opened, legs clanging through the aluminum into the driveway. Tiff and Chad were knotted together, faces attached and tongues waggling in a way that was definitely… too much? Jacob and Andrew exited the mountain of crushed cans, the former ripping a hit from an obnoxiously large bong, and the latter staring longingly at Tiff as he breathed deeply from an inhaler. Val was last out of the vehicle, and immediately pulled a concerned face as she looked up at the massive Victorian mansion. Perhaps once a lovely powder blue color, it was now dark grey with the weathering of time, rotting window frames barely containing the loose inlaid panes. “Where did you find this place again?” Tiff detached from her other half, grinning. “Airbnb, duuuhhhh. Isn’t it, like, sooooo cute?!” She shimmied over to Val, arm at a right angle with her designer bag dangling back and forth. “Normally I wouldn’t go for something sooo cheap, but it’s like, totally retro, right?” She beamed in admiration toward the dilapidated period construction, her cheeks flushed with pride. 9

Val seemed deeply unsure. “Um… were there any reviews? Did you talk to the owner?” Tiff shot an indignant look at her and huffed. “I don’t need anyone to tell me what I want! I knew it was the right fit,” Tiff said. She took another long look at the building. “It does look a little different from the photos… and my laptop was flickering a lot on the webpage… and blood started coming out of my keyboard…” “Whatever, this house is sick,” Chad chimed in. “As long as there’s four walls and a roof we can PARTY!” He produced a large cooler seemingly from nowhere and tucked it under his arm, walking to the house while chugging a beer. Tiff scampered eagerly after him, delicately scaling the steps with her Very High Heels, as the other three followed. Val took a last look behind her before entering the mansion, seemingly the only one filled with

“You know, dread.” A muffled voice creeped into existence. In the middle of the massive front door Val had just closed, a bronze lion knocker with a wild mane and gleaming teeth shifted. It spat out the ring in its mouth to speak, relief washing over its face. “Sorry, that’s been in there for a long time, and I haven’t had much excuse to take it out. Oh!” The knocker gasped. “Apologies, back to the point. Dread! That unconscious reaction to signs we all feel, best exemplified here by beloved horror classic The Haunting of Hill House:” I should have turned back at the gate, Eleanor thought. The house had caught her with an atavistic turn in the pit of the stomach, and she 10

looked along the lines of its roofs fruitlessly endeavoring to locate the badness, whatever dealt there; her hands turned nervously cold so that she fumbled, trying to take out a cigarette, and beyond everything else she was afraid, listening to the sick voice inside her which whispered, get away from here, get away.1 “Like Eleanor,” the Lion continued, its metal teeth jangling like a box of nails as it spoke, “we all see signs. Every day, in fact. Now, I’m not talking about stop signs,” It nervously laughed at its own joke, paused for reaction, and quickly continued when it realized no one was there to appreciate its humor. “But in a way, that’s exactly what they are. That shiver creeping up your spine telling you that something isn’t right—you need to leave. You need to run. However,” The knocker’s eyes cast downwards and it shook its head, “we like to ignore our instincts. Tell ourselves that we are just being crazy, overdramatic, that there is no threat present. Push it down and move forward. And often, that leads to—” i dream of them finding me

I wake up and can’t remember w here I am

will I ev er

feel

“NOOOO! FUCK!!””

safe

? Chad’s shriek shook the already tragic window panes, the moon quivering in the reflection. The five twenty-somethings stood over the open cooler, gazing into the melted ice drift bobbing on the surface of the stagnant water. “Where,” Chad continued, “Is ALL OF my BEER?” He rapidly ran his hands through his brunette, regular-guy-length hair, 1 Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 35.

droplets of sweat beginning to form on his deeply concerned brow. He began searching the living room, lifting up ancient couch cushions and tossing pillows carelessly. “Jesus Christ.” Val shook her head. The four watched on while the frat boy frantically tore through the house, his panic rising as the elusive beers remained lost. “Chad, do you think you might have forgotten to pack them?” Andrew asked tentatively, pushing up his horn-rimmed glasses, before Chad shot an Alpha-As-Fuck glare his way. “Do I LOOK like a dumbass?!” Grunting and popping the collar of his letterman jacket, Chad tried to puff himself up like a bear encountering a threat. He loomed over the much smaller man, who shakily reached for his inhaler in anticipation of a beatdown. “How the fuck are we supposed to get wasted without beer??” He asked in angry desperation, stabbing an index finger into the much smaller man’s chest. Tiff put a hand on his shoulder g e n t l y. “Babe, you know this doesn’t mean we have, like, six anything romantic, right? handles of vodka. I i was swallowing your cum as think it’ll be you said that to me, a rigid, ok.” He u nsympathetic arm around slapped her reassur ing gesture away, my shoulders. the ground s t o m p i n g was wet and soaking west into the k i t c h e n . into my leggings in “IT’S NOT THE SAME.” As the ditch next to quickly as he had disappeared, a the road. i didn’t r e m e m b e r booming laugh rang back to the living room. They all followed how we slowly, afraid of g o t another bear moment, and peered into the kitchen. here On the rickety farmhouse kitchen table at the end of the room, there sat the beer in an inverted pyramid, one can at the bottom supporting the other seventy-one.

“Who did this?!” Chad asked eagerly, scanning the shocked and confused faces of his comrades. “Jacob? This is totally a prank, right?” He playfully punched the stoner’s arm, who, obviously not paying attention to anything that was going on in the middle of the bowl he was smoking, coughed a plume of ash. “Uhh… yeah bro, sure,” he replied unconvincingly, getting back to the task at hand. Val’s eyebrows raised so quickly they nearly tore off her face and hit the ceiling. “I’m not sure there’s any world in which Jacob possesses the engineering skills required to pull this off…” Val’s skepticism was ignored, as the other four banded together to dismantle the pyramid amidst chuckles and pats on Jacob’s back. In fact, she wasn’t convinced anyone in the house could have accomplished this feat.

“It’s funny, the things we tell ourselves.” Beside the refrigerator was an ancient cast iron stove, three doors on the base oven with two cabinets built in above the hob. The doors of the old fixture flapped open and closed like five mouths, metal clanging and flaking off rust at the end of each word. Flames spilled out of the lower half, flicking about like tongues, and the cabinets above creaked and bent into the form of two dark eyes under concerned brows. “Denial is a powerful gift we all possess—the ability to convince yourself that you are not seeing or experiencing what is plainly before you. Above all, it’s a defense mechanism, the conscious mind refusing to process reality in order to protect itself. What sorts of signs might you deny?” The stove made a horrible scraping sound as it morosely dragged across the floor of the kitchen, toward the table where the pyramid had been. “My colleague mentioned them earlier. Images, smells, sounds, things that appear to you and trigger a memory. You don’t have to look for them—in fact, they present themselves when you least expect it. Deleuze expands:”

At what level, then, does the famous involuntary memory intervene? It will be noticed that it intervenes only in terms of a sign of a very special type: the sensuous signs. We apprehend a sensuous quality as a sign; we feel an imperative that forces us to seek its meaning. Then it happens that involuntary Memory, directly solicited by the sign, yields us this meaning…2 “A memory cuts through.” The stove leaned against the table, causing the rickety wood to bow and strain. “Involuntary memory can be seen as a visitation—vestiges of the past in our present, specters and souls from eras before exacting revenge or trying to seek some sort of absolution. This is distinctly different from when we turn and look back.” In other words, image is dialectics at a standstill. For while the relation of the present to the past is a purely temporal, continuous one, the relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical: is not progression but image, suddenly emergent.3 “What happens when you can’t deny what’s before you?” The oven slid back to its spot against the wall. The fire extinguished within its core, turning cold an d sil ent .

It was 3 a.m., long after the group had recovered the phantom beers and nestled into the moth-eaten sofas and armchairs. Val was starting to nod off, her head slowly falling before snapping back with a quick gasp, and repeat. She stood up from the one 2 Gilles Deleuze and Richard Howard, Proust and Signs (London: Continuum, 2008), 53. 3 Walter Benjamin and Howard Eiland, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Pr. of Harvard Univ. Pr., 2003), 462.

well-preserved armchair and went to the kitchen, dragging her feet across the room as the others chatted and laughed, blitzed out of their minds. She leaned over the kitchen sink and turned on the tap. The surprisingly new chrome faucet sputtered and spat air for a moment, before brown swampy water shot out of it. It ran clear after a few seconds, and Val filled up one of the many strange glasses from the cupboard. Heaving a sigh, Val stared up at the peeling ceiling, and considered her place in this group. Which part of the formula was she? We had the jock, the nerd, the hot popular girl, and the stoner. She wasn’t a virgin, she wasn’t rebellious—perhaps just the skeptic. Every good horror film has one. 4The voice of reason, the one who clutches the edge of the pit of denial, refusing to fall in. However, skeptics can still be vulnerable. Nobody is above it all, incapable of being manipulated or duped. We all can be hurt by what wants to hurt us, if they want it badly enough. Val placed the glass to her lips and sipped as she went through this philosophical tangent. Suddenly, her entire body seized, every hair on her skin standing on end as a shiver ran up her spine. Her tongue met a texture very unlike the nothingness of water; this was slick, prickly. She could feel the bile creeping up her throat as she pulled back—a scream escaped from her gaping mouth. She dropped the glass. Amongst the shattered remains were spiders, huge, hairy, and black. They were trying to crawl away, but were covered in a thick, gelatinous slime. Strings of fluid connected the arachnids together, forming a twitching and P

Val puked in the sink, choking and coughing and retching at the thought of the taste, capillaries bursting in her eyes as she strained and dribbled. 4 The Cabin in the Woods, dir. Drew Goddard, by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon, prod. Joss Whedon (United States: Lionsgate, 2011).

“Whoaaa, had too much already?” Chad was standing in the doorway. He crushed a can in his hand and tossed it on the pile of empties, grabbing another one from the fridge. The man snickered at his companion’s illness. Val shakily pointed to the floor. “No, spiders, they were everywhere…” There was nothing more than a puddle with glass. , you were blissfully unaware of m

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Chad rolled his eyes. “Have you been smoking Jacob’s w e e d ? That shit might be too strong for you.” He begrudgingly grabbed a broom and swept the pieces into the bin while Val stared into space, nothing but painful confusion on her face. Chad approached her and put an arm on the perplexed w o m a n’s shoulder. “There’s no shame in not being able to hold your liquor.” He moved closer, squeezing her tight to his side. “It can be good. It can make you more… open.” He nestled his face in her hair and breathed deeply. A hand creeped down the small of her back. Val stared at the wall, and realized that, somehow, this was the most disgusting thing to happen to her this evening. Her sickness, her fear and perceived intoxication—to him, c to s t o p and invitation? this was an lders - we A g neon sign screaming I Need to Finish OPEN FOR BUSINESS? up . lean

your hands gripped

my s

“No thanks.” She shoved him away, and hurried out of the room. Everyone had already retired, so she quickly followed, shaking with the thought of his odious hands on her spine.

i was an object, a m ea n

s to an end.

Chad stumbled up the stairs, vodka sloshing out of the dusty glasses he had found in the disused kitchen. Alcohol kills germs, right? He pondered, gulping from one of the cups and wincing as the dime store booze burned down his throat. He tripped a bit on the ancient woven carpet upon the landing, but composed himself, and saw a mirror before him. He grinned, and flexed, admiring his meathead body in his jacket. Just as he pursed his lips together in an I’m-feeling-myself move, his image disappeared. He dropped his arms, careful not to spill his drink, furrowed his brows quizzically, and shuffled forward, squinting at the glassy surface. When he was just a few inches from the mirror, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped silently. Before him was his reflection, yes...

but it wasn’t him

but it was.

But he didn’t have slick, putrid skin, did he? He didn’t look like a hulking beast, did he, steam rising from flesh, muscles convulsing violently, but he did, it was him, he could feel it. The bloodfilled eyes felt familiar, the twitching tongue lolling out of his detached jaw, the at once skeletal and engorged hands squeezing the glasses, the pulsating veins all over his body couldn’t be real, 19

WHEN I S

EE YOUR

THUMBNA

IL FACE A

HILL RUN S DOWN M but they could, and Y SPN EI they looked like the rage he felt, the IS A , N E EVAW entitlement, the overwhelming drive IBBE N G DNA he felt to dominate, t o OLF W I N G O control. A flush of shame SID F TSUG A came over his face, thick sweat N D ROH R O R oozing from his pores as the deepest YU. R S O TUPID FUCK ING F disgusting thoughts were mined from the ACE A ND HO pit of his brain. He wept. W IT H OVER S u d d e n l y, ED NEhunks of XT TO tissue began FELUTO OH DErepSIHW DNA EM DE N , BYUW SSIKM,IE T IT W sloughing off AS A FARC E, A C the face of this distorted ON m i r r o r

AND YO R ABURUOY HTIW DNAL NO HSIFTAC A .LIVED EHT EREW U LES WRA PPED ARO UNDtwin, hitting the floor in great MY T slaps, one HRO after the other. First AT. H AHA the nose, then the lips. , YOUC h e e k s GOT dropped onto his chest, and slid down ME. Y AM UO his distended belly. The skin D E M E L O O K L I K E A UOY .LOOF A EM DESRUC NI TDOENRUT I DN A TO of his gnarled torso AD, A TH peeled off like a chicken breast, draping ING I DID NOT across his feet where his toes curled REC OGN in the piles of IZE, meat. The glasses OOZ shattered in his hands in the mirror, ING SAD NE piercing through the disintegrating figure DNA SS S E L F before him. Beneath IHTAOL UOY GN S T O L all the flesh, there was MORF E NA EM D M A D nothing. A void deeper than a black FEELMSE E MALL. AND I W ILL NEVER KN hole, hanging OW WHY. NEV ER. I WILL LIV E WITHOUT R H EMY in stasis, took the place of the monster. It dominated A N RD SAE the reflection for a moment, and in the O N ROF next was gone. EHT R SE FO T M Y EFIL

“Chaaaaaad!” Tiff whined from her room, growing impatient with her boyfriend. “Where’s my driiiink?” It had been hours since she retired to their room. In her drunken state she had been sporadically drifting off, losing track of the time. She groggily opened the door, peered out, and tiptoed to the stairs, descending hesitantly in the dark. “FUCK, FUCK, Fucking SHIT!” Her shocked scream rang through the house as she fell back onto the steps, grasping her right foot. The bottom of her foot had turned into a pincushion, beads of blood forming at the base of each shard of glass. Tears budded in her eyes as she reached down to pull out the fragments, a whimper escaping her mouth, each hitting the floor with a gentle ping. Blood poured from the wounds. “What’s happening?” bleary-eyed Jacob asked as he peered out of his room, wielding a flashlight toward Tiff. She raised a hand to protect her eyes from the light. “Oh, it’s nooothing, one of you dicks just left broken glass on the stairs,” she snapped, shooting a frustrated look at him before returning to her injury. Jacob rolled his eyes, and as he moved to close the door, the light hit the floor of the landing. A beat passed before Tiff wailed. Her wide eyes had met the pile of flesh in front of her. Beneath the mince of bones and organs was Chad’s letterman jacket, stained in blood and viscera.

Above Tiff ’s screaming, scrambling body, the mirror gleamed. In its reflection was a Victorian clock, on the adjacent wall to the looking glass centered within the peeling, ornate wallpaper. Carved wood, filigree leaves and inlaid designs framed the 21

Mother of Pearl clock face. The long-neglected mechanism beneath the hands were visible through two small holes, beside the numbers 2 and 10. The gears began to move, one millimeter at a time. Tick, tick, tick. “I expect some of us have a bit of schadenfreude.” The hands spun on the timepiece face, until they both stopped pointing toward the sad remains. “Our not-so-missed friend here was confronted with an ugly truth. A divergent version of himself; a grotesque.” There are instances in which normal anatomy grows deviant… this follows classic tropes of abomination, monstrous forms reaching back to the Rabelais and before line between natural and non-; elements out-of-place; crossed borders and cultures, inappropriate intimacies. In these wretched examples, the boundary between subject and world, self and other, does not coincide with the limits of the body… the anomalous body has provided a medium for pondering the boundaries of the species, and those of the individual subject.5

“We have already seen a glimpse of the boundaries, or lack thereof, that Chad possessed.” The hands began spinning this time, much faster, and the wooden foliage fluttered. “Some believe our boundaries are derived from our self image, which in turn is derived from our reflections. It begins when we are infants, and solidifies over the years as we see ourselves over 5 Joshua Comaroff and Ker-Shing Ong, Horror in Architecture (San Raphael: ORO Editions, 2014), 24, 26.

and over again. We internalize that image and we experience ourselves as we see ourselves.6 However, others believe that we cannot truly have a sense of who we are without seeing our reflection in others. The Looking-Glass Self reads the judgment of our peers as a reflection of who we are - their opinion, or our perception of what their opinion may be, forms our behavior.”7The glass cover over the ancient machine began to rattle. “But what about people who lack empathy? What about people who see only what they want to see? What about people who CANNOT SEE FEAR? PAIN? WHO VALUE THEIR OWN

FLEETING PLEASURE OVER THE LIVES THEY EXPEND

EMP OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN SEARCH OF THAT TY F We locked eyes at the Crown from EELI NG?the room—I had just walked in across WHOplay in whatever band to see whoever U E that night with my S friends, were WOyou M E N LI by the bar with yours. My stomach CUM-SOAK K ED RAGS, DISPOSA immediately dropped andBL twisted into E E AND INFINITE, Uknots, T A Cand I about-faced as quickly ARE O F as I could to run T toHthe E Dbathroom. AM GE I burst into the nearest stall andAshit my THEY brains out, sweating and trying to calm E , TH ION ONFUS my racing U heart rate. that all I ND ItCseems A T R H E H E, T CAUSneeded to do was catch your gaze to

WITHO

BLA ECST SHAM beEsent fit of illness and shame, AUIN THinto AT aHO LD SG S SO EW MUCH E Cremembering you hovering over me asPOWER ANNOT I lay rigid. SPEAK TH E UNSP 8 EAKAB LE? 6 Brett Steenbarger, “The Mirror Principle: Shaping Your Experience, Shaping Your Self,” Forbes, June 30, 2015, , accessed June 05, 2019, https://www. forbes.com/sites/brettsteenbarger/2015/06/30/the-mirror-principle-shaping-yourexperience-shaping-your-self/#6e1744a73ec0. 7 Leigh S. Shaffer, “From Mirror Self-recognition to the Looking-glass Self: Exploring the Justification Hypothesis,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 61, no. 1 (2004):. 8 Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (London: Penguin Books, 2016), 67.

“Excuse me..” The breakneck spinning ceased, the shaking glass settled, all was quiet again. The holes in the mother of pearl flexed into an ap pre hen sive expres sion. “I don’t know what came over me. Some “I don’t understand,” Tiff sobbed softly in the armchair, as Jacobthing is and Andrew watched on from the couch. Andrew stood anda bit odd put a stiff arm around her shoulders, offering a handkerchiefh e r e . . . I to the object of his affection. “What happened to Chad? Whatdon’t feel could even do that to him?” She blew her nose in the cloth,well...” dropping her head into her hands. “We don’t even really know if that was him, it could just be, like—” he trailed off. “Maybe he just went to get beer?” Jacob offered this quickly, with absolutely no confidence. “Well, unsurprisingly, we have no cell service and the car is dead,” Val said as she walked in the room, wiping the blood and filth off her hands, having just bagged what was left of Chad and put him in the freezer. She looked at the crying heap on the chair, and then to the remaining two men. “This is why,” she seethed, “you ALWAYS. CHECK. THE. REVIEWS! Who the FUCK would book this OBVIOUSLY HAUNTED HELLHOLE?? Tiffany, your love for vintage has FUCKED US. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.” Tiff recoiled and cried louder, and Andrew shot back, through his asthma, “Hey! That’s not helping anything. We have no reason to believe anything seriously wrong has happened— whatever that… stuff… is, it could have come from anywhere. It’s an old place, maybe some animals got in here and killed something.” Andrew helped Tiff out of her chair and guided her toward the stairs. “I’m going to take her to get some sleep. Let’s sleep in pairs so we can keep an eye on each other,” he suggested. “Just as a precaution.” Before Val could protest, the two disappeared upstairs. After a moment of silence, Jacob shrugged in his baja jacket and offered a joint to his companion. “If we’re going to die, we might as well be stoned, am I right?” Val frowned and shook her head. “Dude, you’re just here for comic relief. Let’s go to bed.”

An ancient armchair creaked after they left, its rotting upholstery shifting in place, revealing a wrinkled face in the fabric. “Yes, indeed, our four remaining survivors choose to sleep instead of walking, running, doing absolutely anything to escape the clutches of the house. There’s nothing surprising about this, after the silly romp, dread and ignored warnings abound. They must cope with their ignorance, their naiveté, the consequences of their denial. And instead of leaning into reality, they push harder into denial, refusing to cope with the very real threat to their lives. Back to Shirley Jackson’s keen writings on this very matter:”

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...a deranged house is a pretty conceit. There are popular theories, however, which discount the eerie, the mysterious; there are people who will tell you that the disturbances I am calling ‘psychic’ are actually the result of subterranean waters, or electric currents, or hallucinations caused by polluted air; atmospheric eve ry pressure, sun spots, earth tim tremors all e ip t h e have their advocates among as s skeptical. People... a re t the three g n i always so b fligh clim ts of to a n x i o u s d a to get things out into your t h e open where they can put a ng wa i h t e n a m e som even a sn to them, ’

“What is that?” The chair’s saggy expression darted left, “I’ve right, up and down in search of the anomalous always interruption. “Who is doing this? I’m loved you.” trying to talk here!” Andrew hovered behind the weeping Blonde in a massive, filthy bathroom, as she splashed water on her face. “Now that he’s gone, you can finally be treated right.” He put his hands on her shoulders, leaning into her and squeezing. “You don’t have to pretend anymore, that you loved him. He was a brute. A vapid moron.” Tiff locked eyes with the mirror, watching droplets of water fall off her face. “What are you doing?” Tiff swatted his hands away and turned to face him, bloodshot eyes gazing. “I don’t think of you that way, Andrew. You know that.” He advanced again, this time grabbing her arms so hard with his bony hands that she winced, pushing her against the sink.

I’

g ed y. I ed nt e. i n bl ivac or ipp fere orin l m m r p u if u stu p stu q d ch s e r s nd t ike fo en a tas d l a nk s, s te e w ide dru ye doe tas d ts s ou my plie ally our re re Y In ly en uy. p m m g si se to at uy th g m fro

“How many times have I been there for you? How many times have you cried to me about Chad cheating on you, or screaming at you? Did I tell anyone that you were the one who ruined that drunk girl he fucked at that party, just because you didn’t want to believe her, the truth? That he is SICK?” Andrew’s voice was getting louder with every phrase, sweat beading on his forehead. “I’ve always supported you, caught you when you fell, ever since we were kids! Do you weep for ME? Who cares if he’s gone? Who CARES if that was him on the stairs, he DESERVED it!” He was screaming at this point, the horn-rimmed glasses on his face fogging from the heat of his skin. “You’re hurting me!” Tiff yelled, pressing her hands on her friend’s chest. “What’s wrong with you?” With all her might, she shoved him. He stumbled backward 28

I woke up at

6am

m o

until his legs hit the edge of the clawfoot bathtub. Before Tiff could catch him, before he could grab the edge of the tub and stop himself, the opening of the porcelain tub sprouted teeth, vi co ng n in a n d l up a

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long le the dorm. I got ge jagged, pa r t y. turning the portal into a gaping maw. A massive tongue writhed where the bottom of the basin used to be, leading to a pulsing esophagus. Andrew yelped as he fell back into the monstrous mouth, desperately grabbing for the side of the tub so he didn’t slide down the gullet. He managed to cling to the side closest to Tiff, legs dangling down the slick throat as he tried to avoid the sharp teeth. “TIFFANY!” He screamed, his eyes wide with fear. She rushed to grab his hands. n m ye

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The jaws snapped shut around his wrists with a CRUNCH, and Andrew’s shrieks got quieter and quieter. The teeth released and retracted back into the sides of the tub, returning to its mundane form. Andrew’s graying hands still clutched the side of the tub, fingers slowly releasing their life escaped. dripped from of his wrists, down the white bath

the

grip as B l o o d the stumps streaming side of the dirty and into the drain. 29

ood,

Sometimes I want to Kill you. Make you feel pain. Make you pay for the “It seems we things you have are done. I think of meeting you experiencing a bit again in some dark street, seeing of your twisted face, and plunging anachronism, a knife through it. Watching you can you suffer like you *burp* made me suffer. Seeing the life drain explain to this nice person?” out of your sallow, manipulative As the toilet overflowed, the sink taps c o r p s e . twisted to life, each one like a I am ashamed of Co e spinning surprised eye with this feeling. The k anger inside of m c m r a faucet nose between me. The words a o e , b e them. The drain I never got to r r e v on ist ll g ap u t f e c o u g h e d , say to you drift p s r h w ’ve the to pa lue I s p i t t i n g out of my lips u g e e b e. e n night, i yo v h t th ffic ati o up dark at y , try n i k e e p ing o c m s y water. to y from in her isso has t an me awake a k s o s until the e bac in A D that pa int “ W e l l , m s d A M a r k r d i small e d a e e n an ch opt tar mov a ory. hours F i s h e r t s t m d o f ar d a A that jec his time lays out that b ha re; one l o our of a anachronism is the St al, sica y. Y orm v o a f r slippage of discrete time g hy to e tr s p i u periods into one another, when time h tr

“Oh DeAR...” The toilet flapped open, gurgling as if it had an upset stomach.

just gets mixed, jumbled up together, making no sort of sense.” 10 It coughed again, its spinning eyes stopping as the tap water ran down its drain mouth. 10 Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014), 22-23.

“The temporal space is collapsing—who is the culprit?” “We perhaps sit in an example of the Architectural Uncanny,” the hundreds of dirty tiles said in unison as an unusual choir, droplets of blood and smudges of age, l old dirt forming mouths e s from which e y r a their atonal voices sung. a l e n n u “A structure within which yo d e o mic ha d to is c e familiarity and extreme anxiety su k se ar l se t e e c a come together, where doubling ba the th You ou h fe rst u o y is brought to a crisis through of nts ou. w, , yo w ge e y a d n e reflections, encounters, and ev d u s ear Th cha the 11 e o h . t repetition,” —each tile broke ng at y ou felt an’ ke e r c li as the entire bathroom began to wh at y you ou t whe y no malfunction, the monstrous tub wh at is, , h belching up black, viscous fluid, w ing It’s ies i m e v h t t t. o the mirror melting down the wall, i m the dank water rising and enveloping the floor—“where time and the laws of nature themselves the have been eclipsed by a vestige of trauma, a horrific morn event.” 12 ing. I thi v nk of every ra r s t e scenario in “We are infected, e e l r th hen t. which I finally get i sick, the symptoms e alt t w isit the revenge, get some s leaching into the form of peace, and pa y v tays ery structure of the v e s the price is you. The th , it . E e . house itself, to e fantasy is a nightmare, No am i m a nightmare where I turn everything that s t into a horrible creature sets foot in it,” of your making, no better shrieked the cast-iron radiator, than the sick minds who brainwashed and controlled steam shooting out of its cap me, turned me into a puppet before it sunk beneath the of melodrama and misery. murky waters. 11 Anthony Vilder, “The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely,” Choice Reviews Online 30, no. 03 (1992):. 12 Barry Curtis, Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 39.

“That’s not possible.” Jacob was stony-faced as Tiff sobbed into Val’s lap; his usual chill demeanor vanished. He sat across from them on one of the two beds in the room while the women huddled on the floor. “What?” Val stared at him incredulously as she cradled the traumatized woman. “How is it not obvious that this place is hellbent on killing all of us? How is it not plausible after what we’ve seen? The beer pyramid, the spiders in my water, the Chad Soup—” “First of all, Andrew would never attack you.” Val fell silent. Tiff looked up, snot running down her face. “What?” “He’s a harmless, sweet dude. He’s just socially awkward. You’ve been cockteasing him for years, I’m sure you just sent the wrong signals.” The horrified woman sat back on her knees, unburying herself from Val. She presented her bruises from Andrew. “These? These are a fiction? A fabrication?” Her quivering voice grew steady. “I’ve told him from the start of our friendship that I only saw him one way—as a friend. I did NOTHING, NOTHING beyond treating him as such.” The sound of her voice began to fill the cavernous bedroom they had barricaded themselves in, anger seeping into every syllable. “What exactly have I done to ‘cocktease,’ Jacob? Have tits, hips, a pussy? Wear makeup? Slip into the rituals that I have to do, to feel accepted, to feel an iota closer to whatever the FUCK it is that women are supposed to be?!” Angry tears were 32

spilling from her eyes, her face red and steaming. “Unless my hand is ON his FUCKING COCK, and I have CHOSEN to put it there to mine his affections, I AM NOT A FUCKING COCKTEASE YOU PIECE OF SHIT.” Val stared at Tiff as her surprisingly articulate speech spilled out of her, her façade of feminine complacency unhinged and dangling. Jacob sat blank as he rolled a joint, her impassioned words washing over him i n e f f e c t i v e l y. “Calm down,” he said, licking the rolling paper, Y pulling a zippo from his pocket. “You don’t have to be so f u c k i n g all hysterical.” ou He struck the lighter. w a t c

he d

m e As soon a s wilt. the Y o u w atc flame ignited, hed the trau m a the fire crawled eat aw ay at my fle up the joint sh and bones, my psy che and proceeded deteriorating as the days went by. Were they ignoring me? Did they to encase believe me? You said you did - you Jacob’s told everyone I was raped. That entire He raped me. I didn’t even say that body in word - it was your word you uttered an inferno. to me when i confessed, your word that you spread. That I believed. You He yelped, brought out the suppressed hurt rising from and anger that I had kept within the bed and me for months, months that i kept swatting at the secret, months that I festered the spreading and wept and had no idea why. You encouraged me to confront him. blaze. His He denied it. “It didn’t happen c l o t h e s that way.” “You wanted to disintegrated, continue after you puked.” his hair turned to SUDDENLY, All the things charcoal and fell off his that made it what it was, the moments that scalp. His skin began to replay in my mind, bubble and crisp.Though he was they didn’t happen.

L C

And they believed you. I was collateral to their loyalty...No.

a z iness owardice

It was much easier for you all to believe your friend, that he didn’t do anything wrong, that I was just drunk and confused. It was easier to think that I was the problem, I was just stirring the pot, creating d r a m a where there wasn’t any. That I was steeped in histrionics. Easier than standing up for me. Protecting me. Taking Care of me. But you swept it under the rug. I WAS YOUR FRIEND TOO. fully i m I suffered. I SUFFERED. still suffer, long after mersed ridding myself of f i r e b a l l , in the you, all of you, nothing around him who sacrificed seemed to burn; even when he my body to dropped to the floor and tried to roll your egos. “That girl the flames out, the ancient Persian rug needs help.” was unmarred. Tiff stared at him in You’re horror from her seated position right. I while Val

scrambled to her feet. She frantically dismantled the barricade on the door in an d effort to get water while Jacob’s i screams grew piercing, his body twitching and d convulsing on the ground. Molten blood and fat began to pool beneath him—he reached out and grabbed Tiff ’s arm. The fire did not transfer, her flesh didn’t even blister. Tiff sat silent and stunned, the cumulative trauma freezing her as the dying man burned alive. By the time Val returned with a bucket of water, the fire was gone. The body lay skeletal and black, still gripping Tiff ’s arm, in a pile of ash that was once his flesh and organs.

Tiff and Val sat huddled together on the couch in the grand living room. Their time was apparently nearing; every door in the house was locked. The windows repaired themselves when broken. A fire had ignited beneath the stone mantle, and cool blue light of the early morning was beginning to creep through the drawn curtains. The light hit Val’s face, tears slowly crawling from her squeezed eyes down her cheeks. “I have to tell you something.” Tiffany said, looking up dejectedly at Val. Mascara was all over her face at this point, her previously finely finessed makeup had washed away with every horrific encounter. Her blonde hair was tangled, her designer clothes ripped and dirty. She was an echo of her previous performance. Plucked brows were furrowed and shaking, more tears turning her eyes glassy and threatening to spill. “What?” Val sat back from her crumpled companion, suspicion hanging off her words. At this point, nothing could shock her, but she still feared what was coming. “I don’t know why this is happening to us. Why I chose this place… but…” Tiff breathed deeply, head down for just a moment in preparation. “Last year, before we knew you, before you transferred, this girl was at a party at Chad’s frat house… We were all there.” As the words dripped from her mouth, her face grew longer, and she looked down to the couch cushions. “And, like, we were all fucking wasted, things were getting out of hand all over the place. Furniture was getting broken, kegs were spilling, you know, a typical party. But…” The raw pink color of Tiff ’s face began to spread down her neck, to her shoulders, her arms and chest. The room rumbled. “Chad and this drunk girl…” Her breath caught in her throat. 35

“They disappeared somewhere. I remember because I was pissed, he promised he would spend time with me.” Tiff dropped her head into her rosy hands. Her entire body had blushed at this point. Small iridescent blemishes began to bloom all over her skin, tiny white vines intertwining between them. “In the morning, I saw her downstairs, really out of it and crying. In my gut, I knew, but I still screamed at her and kicked her out of the house. We started hearing rumors, that she had been talking to people about what happened with Chad...” She looked up and took a deep, quivering breath. The elaborate floral pattern spread across her flesh, the texture of her skin turning into a brocade. “It wasn’t the first time this happened, but it was so hard to accept that he hurt other people. I didn’t want to believe it… because then, it would have been real for me, too.” She could barely got those last words out as her bottom lip trembled. “Jacob had been texting the girl, I’m assuming he was why she was at the party. She had sent him nudes…” Val sat before the afflicted woman, eyes wide with shock as she saw her transform, in a moment of complete sensory overload. Tiff seemed unaware of her physical aberrations as her body began to truncate and contort. Her clothes melded with her mutating form as she fell from the couch to the floor. “I suggested sending around the nudes…” Her bones snapped. “That it would prove that she just wants attention… that she’s A Slut.” Her joints popped. “And they sent them to everyone. Everyone. Her family, her job, her friends, the dean...” Her eyes turned pearlescent, round, and shiny, tears staining the fabric beneath them. “Her family was really religious….” Laying on her back, her spine arched toward the ceiling, her hands and feet planted 36

on the ground. Her limbs began to take on a mahogany color, carved wood vining from her fingers and toes, climbing toward her torso. “They got posted everywhere. Everyone knew. And she…” Her body cracked into new position as her arms and legs became straight, right angles descending backward from her perpendicular torso. Her neck and head descended into her body, sunk below her shoulders, transfiguring into a square. Her blonde hair spread around the perimeter of her torso, creating a silvery fringe. “I helped ruin her life. I was too much of a coward to confront the truth. We deserve this. I deserve this…” Tiff was no longer recognizable—the petite blonde had been replaced with a beautiful Victorian footstool, white buttons punctuating the tufts of pink floral fabric. The rose petals on the surface moved with every word, her voice tiny and inhuman. “I deserve this… I deserve this...” Val was alone. Before her the footstool was silent, inanimate. Her jaw was hanging open and tears were pouring in streams, dripping onto her thighs. She slowly looked around the room from the couch where she sat. It was only now that she recognized the sheer amount of objects in this house—there were too many. Too many couches, chairs, tables, stools, shelves, lamps, beds, dressers, pipes, rugs, pots, pillows—there was an absolute excess, stacked on top of each other. All were of different conditions, some new, some falling apart. She looked at what used to be Tiff. A brand new footstool. It was then that she started to see faces. In every object—eyes, mouths, ears, hands, feet. Either she had suddenly been overcome with an extreme case of pareidolia, or... “These were all...people.” She whispered. Prisoners of the house, from the beginning of its walls, to the present. 37

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Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not fair.

Why me?

What did I do to deserve this?

Am I hurt as a consequence? As collateral? Caught in a fucked-up web of sexual objectification, abuse bad judgement and low self esteem a world without empathy

Was I simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?

the people who caused my transfiguration into an angry place filled with flashes of the past why did they seek me out? What about me made me a target to control, manipulate and distort?

The House is Carrie in the gymnasium, 13 pigs blood dripping down her face and pink gown The faces of her peers contorted with laughter Her motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s words and her Principalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s refusal to remember her name her pain ghosts ringing in her ears

13 1976).

Carrie, dir. Brian De Palma (United States: United Artists Corp.,

unleashing her anger indiscriminately destroying the room and killing everyone inside it those who tortured her, who ridiculed her body those who made her feel small those who knew something and did nothing those who tried to help

written as a display of the horrors of feminine rage a spectacle of puberty and teenage bullies pointing and saying Look Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned that a woman expressing anger is to be feared destructive. 14

14 Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-feminine Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 46.

But it is really a warning to those who participate in hurting people that when Carrie was repressed, bullied, and humiliated, people suffered 15 innocent or not

As in a horror movie, I am left without answers every time I think I’ve defeated the monster, that I’ve done the work, identified the problem, fixed it, I am faced with the demon again before the credits roll 16 stopped in my tracks

15 Noah Berlatsky, “Carrie at 40: Why the Horror Genre Remains Important for Women,” The Guardian, November 03, 2016, , accessed June 04, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/03/carrie-stephenking-brian-de-palma-horror-films-feminism. 16 Comaroff and Ong, 20.

Some creatures are so powerful that their desire to return for vengeance, loss, grief projects through time itself 17 collapsing the future, present, and past making it all the more difficult to defeat

it can be exhausting to fight to have no real idea if you will ever overcome or feel free from the ghosts on your back

Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare (London: Hogarth, 1949), 100.

but like a thirteen-film franchise, the entity becomes less powerful with each movie the quality blurs, the budget is smaller the writing decays the same actions and tactics become predictable their anger turning to a dull smolder

and this House is an offering to every person who has those memories of shame, pain, and loss apparitions of the mind that take time to exorcise you are not the only one being haunted.

Bibliogaphy

Benjamin, Walter, and Howard Eiland. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Pr. of Harvard Univ. Pr., 2003. Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Penguin Books Ltd, 2016. The Cabin in the Woods. Directed by Drew Goddard. By Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon. Produced by Joss Whedon. United States: Lionsgate, 2011. Carrie. Directed by Brian De Palma. United States: United Artists Corp., 1976. Comaroff, Joshua, and Ker-Shing Ong. Horror in Architecture. San Raphael: ORO Editions, 2014. Berlatsky, Noah. “Carrie at 40: Why the Horror Genre Remains Important for Women.” The Guardian. November 03, 2016. Accessed June 04, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/03/carrie-stephenking-brian-de-palma-horror-films-feminism. Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-feminine Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Curtis, Barry. Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Richard Howard. Proust and Signs. London: Continuum, 2008. Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books, 2014. Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Jones, Ernest. On the Nightmare. London: Hogarth, 1949. Quoted in Barry Curtis. Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film. London: Reaktion Books, 2016, 12. Steenbarger, Brett. “The Mirror Principle: Shaping Your Experience, Shaping Your Self.” Forbes. June 30, 2015. Accessed June 05, 2019. https:// www.forbes.com/sites/brettsteenbarger/2015/06/30/the-mirror-principleshaping-your-experience-shaping-your-self/#6e1744a73ec0. Shaffer, Leigh S. “From Mirror Self-recognition to the Looking-glass Self: Exploring the Justification Hypothesis.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 61, no. 1 (2004). Vilder, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, MA, 1992. Quoted in Barry Curtis. Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film. London: Reaktion Books, 2016, 10.