PULP: ISSUE 03 2022 (zine #1)

This issue contains

PULP is published on the sovereign land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, as well as Indigenous members of our creative community.

We respect the knowledge and customs that traditional Elders and Aboriginal people have passed down from generation to generation. We acknowledge the historical and continued violence and dispossession against First Nations peoples. Australia’s many institutions, including the University itself, are founded on this very same violence and dispossession.

As editors, we will always stand in solidarity with First Nations efforts towards decolonisation and that solidarity will be reflected in the substance and practice of this magazine. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

October is known to many as spooky season. The haunting holiday, Halloween, finds its roots in a Celtic festival that celebrated the end of summer harvest. For the average student, the end of October heralds a period in which they must plough through readings and lectures that fell to the wayside during the semester. Whether or not fruits arise is a secret left wrapped until the Christmas gift of results materialise in your inbox.

Regardless, many of us throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the theatre of haunts and spookiness. With that in mind, we decided to do something a bit different for PULP ISSUE 03: A loosely Halloween-themed zine (a Hallo-zine if you will) with articles that are short and sweet. In the coming pages you’ll find everything from ruminations on cutting your finger while making dinner, a spooky tree in the Inner West, and catching a train through the infamous WiFi deadzone to dragon dildos, flash games, and testicle surgery.

Thank you to our contributors for their crazy ideas, and our readers for continuing to support them! We hope our second-last edition of the year leaves you curious, laughing, and a little bit scared. Drop us a line at pulp@usu.edu.au.

R.I.P. the midnight spook show

The Midnight Spook Show were screenings of horror films that would include elements of interactivity. Following the emergence of television, film studios concocted a range of gimmicks in order to provide a reason for audiences to make the trek from the comfort of their living rooms to the picture palace. There was Cinemascope, 3-D, Smell-O-Vision, and of course, the Midnight Spook Show.

Actors would hide in the audience and frighten unsuspecting patrons. Ghosts, ghouls, and goblins would careen from the rafters, and large props would wait outside to greet arriving guests. These more theatrical elements bridged old and new storytelling techniques, and also provided a reason for people to go to the cinema.

The House on Haunted Hill featured a sentient skeleton in one of its more bone-chilling sequences. To accompany this, a prop skeleton would descend

down from the ceiling in a deus ex machina display of pulleys and wires, flying over the audience and frightening oblivious visitors in the dark.

Monsters Crash the Pyjama Party sees a group of teenage girls unwittingly set up their sleepover in a haunted house that doubles as the laboratory of a mad scientist. His goal — to turn his new guests into gorillas, followed by chase scenes with people in gorilla suits. Live actors were placed amongst the unknowing audience, who were chased up and down the aisles of the theatre by gorilla-suited performers.

Director and producer William Castle eventually pioneered this mode of cinema. His film, The Tingler, follows the murderous rampage of a growth that — once removed from the protagonists spine — goes AWOL. As Castle inserts himself into the film and addresses the audience directly, the film is brought to a grinding halt to dissolve the

WORDS Harry Gay

boundaries of cinema screen itself.

He warns that the eponymous tingler has been let loose in the very cinema that they are playing at. Electric buzzers were placed in the audiences’ seats to mimic the crawling of the creature, and actors were hired to scream aloud and grab other patrons.

The spook show as we knew it may have died, but its echoes can still be heard today. Whether it be the barf bags handed out in the 70s at screenings of The Exorcist, or the plethora of horror MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) series that exist online like MarbleHornets — where audience participation pushes the story along. We will always have a craving for interactive horror, and the spectre of the Midnight Spook Show lives on to haunt us.

In our current age of streaming, with movie theatres closing worldwide, cinema must once again find reasons to justify paying for admission. Hopefully one day, the Spook Show shall rise from its grave to frighten us once more.

The terrorising Haberfield fig tree

WORDS Aidan Elwig-Pollock

I am thoroughly a child of Haberfield: the long, carefree days of my pre-school youth were spent driving matchbox cars along the rounded rocky outcrops of Algie Park. Other days would involve a short walk down to Hawthorne Canal, where we would clamber over the frankly dangerous metal plane climbing frame, or watch toadfish silently run their errands between rusty shopping trolleys and twisted bicycle wheels in the shallow brown water.

But there is one bit of Haberfield greenspace into which I wouldn’t dare venture. Between Marion Street and Parramatta Road hides a particularly gloomy stretch of the ill-fated greenway. A tangled jungle of lantana rumbles down the sloped side of the light-rail track. Whistling boughs of stunted casuarinas fall beneath the eerie shadow cast upon the whole boulevard by a long, gnarled maw made of coiled fig trees.

“Why?,”

whole

These trees were the object of my terror until I was significantly older than you might expect. They are the reason that I felt my stomach tugging at my chest, meekly murmuring, “Hey, I’m not so sure this is a great idea Aidan.” To this day, I remember a sunny stroll along this path with a childhood friend whose name has been apparated from my mind by the shade of time. This other small child — him being a year older granting him an aura of wisdom he almost certainly didn’t deserve — turned to me with the wideeyed expression of a pre-double-digit bullshit artist who believes his own dubious facts.

“Do you know what these trees do?” he asked. At this point I was still smiling, perhaps hoping for a train to rumble past. I shook my head, absent-mindedly.

“You can never, ever come here at night — or by yourself…”

This got my attention.

“Why?,” I asked with gaping eyes of false confidence, betrayed by a quivering lip.

“You see those trees? They eat people.”

The combination of his authoritative seniority, coupled with the gaping eye-like holes and slithering tendrils of the fig trees, leant his assertion immense weight. I felt a cold, tickling whisper of air tread across my up-ended peachfuzz neck hair. And so began the reign of terror that this strip of cracked pavement held upon my innocent young mind.

It made so much sense. If a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, does it really make a sound? If a tree eats someone, and there are no survivors to tell the tale, who’s to say we’re not walking through a murderous forest?

Monsterfucker

WORDS Danny Cabubas

For millennia, humans have been fascinated by the inhuman — from the grotesque monsters of myth and legend, to the human-faced demons and vampires of modern romance fiction. We’ve found excitement in the horror, titillation in the terror. For some, this fascination goes deeper than surface-level interest; it probes further, penetrating their deepest, darkest fantasies.

Monsterfuckers do exactly what it says on the tin. They fuck (or at least fantasise about fucking) monsters and other non-human entities. Whether it be the terrifying Alien Queen herself or the elusive mothman, monsterfuckers want what’s in their pants. Over the past few years this thriving faction has cemented its place in the online fandom community, rising in popularity amongst the release of media such as The Shape of Water (2017) and Venom (2018).

People can be attracted to monsters for different reasons. It could be the adrenaline rush, finding that there’s just something so enticing about the danger of it all — a thrill that comes with fucking around with (or simply just fucking) the unknown. Or perhaps it’s pure fantasy that gets you; who needs a shitty, boring human partner when there’s a hot, hunky alien out there who’ll treat you right and has tentacles?

I theorise that in some ways, everyone is a monsterfucker. At least a little bit. Did you watch Twilight and find the concept of a vampire/werewolf partner kinda sexy? Maybe Mileena from Mortal Kombat gets you going? Surely Lady Dimitrescu (of Resident Evil fame) gets you a little bit hot and bothered under the collar, right? But they don’t count, Danny!

I can hear you saying, and to that I say nay! Embrace it folks, you’re monsterfuckers, the lot of you. Entrylevel perhaps, but you’re still in the game.

For the more experienced and dedicated, monsterfucking can go beyond hornyposting about the Balrog of Morgoth and Pyramid Head; companies such as Bad Dragon and the Australian-owned Darque Path are dedicated to designing and creating adult toys inspired by monsters from myth and pop-culture. If you dare to look them up, prepare to see some very interesting (and perhaps intimidating) products.

Of course, you don’t need to go to those lengths to call yourself a monsterfucker. Consider this the next time you sit down with a bowl of popcorn and put on Godzilla.

Dead between Ashfield and Redfern

IMAGES Nandini Dhir

Words unheard.

Emails that bounce back.

Messages trapped in a liminal cage before delivery.

The world stands still between Ashfield and Redfern station: in the dead zone. A space where Telstra and Optus phone towers can’t be reached, and any connection to the world outside the train carriage is non-existent.

The train carriage brims with Year 12s in disheveled uniforms, freshly-minted first year uni students, and everyone else. Heads downcast, foreheads face the floor, and everyone doom scrolls faster than the T1 express.

Until, of course, the train, heading east, nears Ashfield — and enters the dead zone. A chorus of mutters fill the carriages. A rolling wave of heads rise as everyone looks up, searching for meaning in this meaningless world. People remove their noise-cancelling headphones, ears awash with metal screams.

A working professional sits on the single back-facing seat — a rarity during peak hour — laptop satchel in her lap, zoom running on her phone. As she runs late for a 9am meeting, in a sardine-packed T1 Western line, she blurs her Zoom background, unaware of the redundancy package scheduled in her boss’ outbox. As the termination of her job unknowingly approaches, the train enters the dead zone. The frozen frames stutter and broken sentences become mouthed words, until there is only silence. Poor connection. She continues to nod along until the meeting comes to a close, checking her emails before the train terminates at Central.

During the quiet moments of the night, the dead zone is forever alive with digital inactivity. Even the uni student, who regrets going out on the night their assignment is due, faces the terrors of the dead zone. They get on the train with the luxury of a six-seater. Heading west, they bluff their last few references as the deadline inches closer. They send the push notification to Okta and submit with an exhale of relief at 11:58pm — only to have entered

fail What the the the

WORDS Nandini Dhir and Ariana Haghighi

the dead zone. In desperation, they hit the refresh button, they try Safari, even Firefox. They fail to accept their fate in the dead zone.

What happens to the digital prints that are lost in the dead zone? The unsent text messages, the posts that fail to upload, the words said over the phone that become unspoken, the unsubmitted Assign m en ts.

Hydro-sealing the deal

WORDS Patrick McKenzie

IMAGES OpenAI DALL-E

Imagine you’re sitting in a sterile seminar room in the University of Sydney Law building. It’s first year, and you’re still studying International and Global Studies.

Wie lautet deine Telefonnummer? The end-of-semester GRMN1001 exam paper asks you from the desk below. You squint at the page, plumbing the recesses of your mind for the vocabulary to answer the simple question: what is your phone number? You already know you’re not going to pass this exam, but you’ve calculated that the lowest possible mark needed to scrape a pass is a mere 35 per cent.

As you cross your legs a sharp, deep pain lurches across your right inner thigh. In a wave of exasperation, you grimace and begin to sweat. It’s the thorn in your side that’s plagued you since year 11 — your alarmingly large right testicle. Before you can even contemplate conjugating another verb, you make the decision you’d been putting off for years: It’s time to go to visit the GP about this.

You stumble out of the exam and over to Broadway Medical Centre. You disclose the pain you just endured to the GP and — while putting on a rubber glove — he says in an expressionless voice:

“There’s no comfortable way to do this.”

He takes your engorged ball in his hand, squeezing it, rolling his fingers over it, taking a closer look. You stare at the ceiling in silence. He shines a pocket torch through it and stands up. He tells you it’s a rare — but perfectly curable — issue. A hydrocele: approximately 150ml of fluid accumulated inside of your right nut. You begin to feel woozy as he hands you a referral. A week or so later, an elderly urologist leers at you from across his desk and delivers a scornful ramble about why you should’ve come in sooner.

He tells you, “Not long ago I would have grabbed a syringe, told you to go sit on the table over there, and I’d have syphoned it straight out of you — very painful!”

You’re given a date with destiny. The crown jewels are to be tinkered with; liquid drained, glands altered, and stitches sewn. The surgery is quick but the recovery is lengthy, it feels like you’ve been kicked in the cojones for several weeks.

A friend comes over for dinner and is in fits of laughter when you tell him why you can’t walk. Your manspreading ceases to be out of necessity. At last, you breathe a sigh of relief.

Nowhere left to Run 2

If I listen, I can hear it — that 16-bit soundtrack. If I close my eyes, I can see it — that endless galaxy. If I focus, I can feel it — my fingers tapping the keys of a Lenovo ThinkPad at the back of class. Run 2 was all I ever lived for. But now it’s dead, and I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.

I’ll never forget when I first played Run 2. That red pill moment. It was 2012 and our teacher had booked us into the computer lab. After waiting fifteen minutes for the old IBMs to roar to life and open Internet Explorer, I did what every Australian child did — I went to Cool Math Games.

I scrolled past fireboys and watergirls. Past Bloons Tower Defences. Past pizzerias and burgerias, freezerias and wingerias, hot doggerias and taco mias, pastarias and donuterias, scooperias and sushirias, cupcakerias and pancakerias, I scrolled further and further down until finally, I locked eyes on it: Run 2. I felt an instant connection. That bulbous grey runner and I shared something.

Life went on. Friends graduated, then married, then had kids. Parents greyed, shrunk, and got sent into homes. Everyone changed. But Run 2 remained the same.

But then, on the evening of 31st December, 2020, the unthinkable occurred. Adobe decided to — without my consultation — eliminate its Flash Player. The ramifications for the children’s browser game industry were nothing short of catastrophic. I raced to check on Run 2 but it was too late. It was gone. Cool Math Games said there was nothing to be concerned about. They said they were working on a fix, that it would sort itself out. Cool Math Games, I’m still waiting.

So now I sit alone in my bedroom, watching a Run 2 run-through on YouTube. I am a cuckold, watching on in silence as another indulges in the joy that I once called my own. But I cannot pull myself away from the screen. The outside world has lost all meaning for me. What is life, if not a mere reflection of Run 2? A Sisyphean struggle wherein we are forced to face failure after failure, only to be forced to keep on running again and again. We don’t bother to ask why we’re running, or where we’re running to. I am that bulbous grey runner. The modern world has hung me out to dry, so I have nothing left to do but hopelessly chase the stars of the past.

WORDS Luke Mesterovic

TRYING TO BE TURTLES

An ongoing photographic series in which Lauranne explores her connection with the girls she encounters during her stay abroad who are experiencing the same struggle with young female adulthood. During their nightly walks she makes their personalities and the landscape come to life.

PHOTOGRAPHER Lauranne Leunis

Freaky midweek dinner

You look at yourself in the blade. The girl in the serrated reflection is tired. You’re wearing black and naturally your mind teleports you to the 2007 Lindsay Lohan knife-wieldingdigicam-jpegs — her magnum opus. You’re called to action as the kettle boils, screams, and steam wets your face. The kitchen feels cool, stale. The basil plant loses another leaf.

The vegetables get a rinse. Probably not enough to erase any lingering pesticide, biocide, regicide… The knife gets a rinse as well — gleaming as though replying, aching, sentient. Steel brutalism plummets in cruel, sweeping angles to form an unforgiving point.

You think that packing lunches is boring, so you decide to arrange them in the colours of the Irish flag. Broccolini, rice, then carrots — resting on a warm bed of seared chicken. You think it to be both economical and shamrock chic.

It was a new knife — unscathed by broccoli, fruit, limbs. It hums as you draw it out. You feel a dull, mechanical beating. Was it your pulse? Maybe. Or perhaps Spotify short circuited and

you’re You algorithm. Your your apparently, halfway violent White You the God’s This

The the You take You God?

Parramatta carnivorous Leading and

you’re now listening to ‘This Is John Maus’.

You may have control over your own cooking but you’ll always eat what you’re fed by the algorithm.

Your eyes lock with the razor’s edge. You remember the razor scooter that fucked up your shins in the past and you lose your focus, becoming indignant. The knife does too, apparently, because it pierces your finger as you start chopping the carrots and is almost halfway through by the time you realise. You see red. Your quaint kitchen mutates into a violent Caravaggio. A picture of bloodied domesticity. Blood on the White Walls, on the White Drawers, on the Pink Toaster, on the Pink Kettle! Why is John Maus still playing?

You will never forget that crude crimson spray. Picture the girl everyone regrets inviting to the function, throwing up her eight vodka cranberries into a Merivale toilet bowl, begging for God’s forgiveness and a small McChicken meal.

This scene is localised entirely in your right index finger.

The blood spills, drools, drizzles down your arm in a cruel, wet avalanche. You’re pacified by the fact this whole scenario makes you feel like Lady Macbeth… and Lindsay Lohan

You shove a 44-gauge banana into your belt so you don’t pass out while you and your mate take an impromptu excursion to RPA in a charcoal grey Kia Rio.

You see a light. Your eyes squint, blinded by divinity. God? No — Stanmore Maccas.

Parramatta Road flees behind you, as you’re spectated by carnivorous architecture, gimmick shops, and 480 bus stops, Leading you to the not-so-pearly gates, and Royal Prince Alfred’s sterile embrace.

WORDS Amelia Raines

In what distant deep or skies

WORDS and IMAGES Ariana Haghighi

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

– The Tyger, William Blake

The air shifts, taking on an otherworldly quality, as you plunge into the depths of hell — also known as Haw Par Villa, a museum entombed in the heart of Singapore.

The Western conception of Buddhism — one of a meditative Buddha adorned by milky lotus petals — could not be more distant at Haw Par Villa, where Buddhist stories and cultural myths lunge at you.

They singe into your eyes’ top layer; they crawl up flaring nostrils, and dive down your throat like a chasing spectre. A moment for peaceful reflection would be better found in a neighbouring park, where the foliage flirts with the sunshine. That place is not here.

Haw Par Villa is a free, outdoor spectacle boasting a mountain-range of giant dioramas and statues. Each diorama is gargantuan but painfully detailed — you can feel the ghosts of its craftsmen on your back as you bear witness to their work, and hear their tears as they chipped away at the blocks, enlivening waterfalls and deities. The scenes engulf you as they regale a cultural tale. Accompanied by little written explanations, for the uninitiated eye, the tableaus’ tales are eerie, off-putting, and downright disturbing.

The park grants us glimpses into the bloody Ten Courts of Hell, where parents spook their children with looming folklore threats. Chinese literature also comes alive: it travels towards the unsuspecting tourist in Journey to the West; it hisses the story of Madame White Snake.

With graphic displays of debauchery and violence, one wonders how such a concept ever found its home on law-abiding Singapore’s shores. The park’s origin story may be as sinister as the institution itself; it was built by the multi-millionaire inventor of Tiger Balm, Aw Boon Haw, for his brother, and opened to the public in 1937. Haw and his brother Par lived onsite for some time and could be spotted creeping around the park in a dilapidated ‘tiger’ car. The two brothers are now immortalised in the park... as phallic effigies.

Haw Par Villa reminds us that eternal damnation is colourful and caricatured. Perhaps, it is even didactic. The statued tigers roaming the park are a forever reminder that hell is near, and no tourist may frame its fearful symmetry. The night’s forests are here for the taking.

étrange

This grunge photographic series establishes the good and evil within us all through paying homage to classic horror villains. After all, are we all good or just another Jason Vorhees?

The series of five photographs explores the essence of purity and the sin we possess.

PHOTOGRAPHER Claire Hwang MODELS Lily McGuiness, Georgie Eggleton

flatmates.com.au

WORDS Cynthia Loh

Creaky mismatched floorboards. The oak and pine glimmered from the lacquered surface — the resin so thick it became like mucus in the moonlight. I walked into our dining room, carrying turmeric-stained plates towards our kitchen, fumbling for the light switch. I nearly trip, forgetting that there was a step. I’ve always been a bit clumsy — or is it just the quirks of this century-old terrace?

I’ve become familiar with the strangeness of living here.

Rubbing shoulders with cockroaches the size of my palm that sneak through the gaps of our doors and windows. They were often trapped in the little crevices of our home. Mortein became a regular item in our shopping trolley. A single spray blasts the little creatures across the room, knocking them off the doorframe which they were scuttling on. They land on their back with an audible hiss — their hair-covered limbs immediately begin to flail. A frantic taptaptaptaptap echoed through the loungeroom as they struggled to take their last breath, their hardened bodies thrashing against the wood, right before silence fell. We often heard whisperings of burglars looting our neighbours for their heirlooms. I think about how A, my housemate, always shrieked when she saw one of our friendly house guests. There’s a running joke that if there were a home invasion, myself and E would dismiss her cries, thinking it was nothing more than those six-legged fiends.

Regaining my step, I looked down and strained my eyes, adjusting to the light. I tried to distinguish the grains from the swirls embedded into our floors. A small ridge masks itself amongst the chaos. For the first time, I see. Is this real? Is this a trap? I saw a hatch embedded into the planks. A dull lever revealed itself.

I reached out to touch it.

I always wondered how the cockroaches got into our home. I can recall people scoffing at the pests on Glenmore Road — sneering at their measly existence. Their darling Cavalier getting tutted at when trying to approach the bug. A harsh tug on the leash. An aggressive bark. Eyebrows furrowing. Growing wrinkles on a pure linen shirt.

Panicked, the creature scuttles away. Away, and away, into the cracks.

What is it good for?

WORDS Jordan Semmens

With the amount of filmic representations of atomic bombs, it is easy to forget how truly terrifying a nuclear detonation can be: not just the people it kills or the buildings it destroys, but for those who manage to survive.

Radiation of a high enough roentgen destroys the human biological structure by smashing through the atoms that form our DNA and genetic code. The effects of this lead to cell mutations, the body burning to exposed areas inside to out, and all types of cancers, macules, papules, raised plaques of thickened pigmented, or ulcerated skin.

Beyond the body, a nuclear attack would most likely result in a nuclear winter: a phenomenon wherein the firestorms of a full scale atomic war result in the darkening of sunlight. As a consequence, intense wide scale cooling and reduced plant activity would result in crop failure. Global famine could follow suit.

Pandemics with diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis, polio, and pneumonia, to name

a small few, are expected to be rampant due to: sewage no longer being properly treated, crowded living spaces, poor food and living standards, and no vaccines. After all this, the global population would be predicted to drop below Medieval levels, with approximated early recovery to take at least 10-15 years, and a full return to our current population not expected for hundreds.

Amid the height of Cold War tensions, films from both the East and the West captured these horrors and anxieties in a gritty and realistic way: none more than Konstanin Lopushanksy’s Dead Man’s Letters (1986). This science fiction film is an overly dreary and miserable work from Russia, which depicts the aftermath of an atomic fallout on both individuals and society at large.

In this Tarkovsky-esque apocalyptic nightmare, the atmosphere of nuclear holocaust is filled with such empty hopelessness. Characters languish in underground tunnels, coated in their own filth. Exiting into the world and scavenging

for scraps, they wade through flooded towns in gas masks and hazmat suits, unable to breath in the toxic miasma of a sepia-toned world.

Our protagonist, Professor Larsen, writes letters to his missing son, who we know is deceased: a hopelessly fatalistic task. A flashback reveals Larson active during the ground zero of when the bombs were first dropped trying to enter the children’s ward of a hospital his son is supposedly at. The ear-piercing screams and cries of children can be heard as he runs down the corridor, intercutting his horrified expressions with extreme close-ups of real-life footage of bodies being operated on and skin being torn apart.

Dead Man’s Letters prognosticates on what life in a post-nuclear apocalypse would be like in a realistic and existentially horrifying way, emphasising not only the manner in which atomic bombs destroy the body, but the world around us.