Shock Totem 9: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  A little lower on the musical tier (and I speak not in terms of quality but in terms of public knowledge), The Cramps took the psychobilly sound and camped it up even more. Their simple groovy ditties were often drenched in sexual innuendo and jokey horror movie themes; sort of a bizarro world B-52s. In New York, a band called The Ramones was taking a love of horror, exploitation films, and three chords to thrilling new heights. They slogged through the gutters alongside bands such as the Dictators, Talking Heads, and Blondie to bring punk to the masses. Giving us shout-along anthems about freaks and weirdos.

  By the mid-80s, horror was making small appearances all over the musical map. The Charlie Daniels Band had already given us a song about a fiddle duel between a good ol’ boy and the Devil, and in 1982 we were taken to Wooley Swamp to deal with the ghost of a murdered miser. Michael Jackson had turned pop music on its ear with the commercial monster Thriller, with the brilliant title track that featured none other than Vincent Price in a narration cameo. Rockwell delivered another pop gem with his ode to paranoia, “Somebody’s Watching Me.” We had Soft Cell making us wish for more “Tainted Love,” when they gave us the creepily unsettling “Sex Dwarf.” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were delivering albums full of dark gritty mayhem.

  By the beginning of 1985, things were about to explode in a very heavy fashion. Bands like Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, and Van Halen were priming the gears for a movement that would go unbridled for the remainder of the decade. Bands that had toiled in relative obscurity outside of their proven fan base we suddenly hoisted up onto the shoulders of those fans and proudly shown off. The ranking columns and countdown shows were rife with songs by groups like Europe, Kix, and Kiss. But this was nothing compared to the hard rock atom bomb that was set to drop the following year. Crawling out of the Hollywood gutter, a rag tag group of swaggering punks called Guns N’ Roses delivered Appetite for Destruction, still considered by many to be the greatest hard rock/metal album of all time. Blues-drenched and smart-assy, they took over and the progeny they spawned choked the scene like so much kudzu.

  The movement seemed to give elder-statesmen like Kiss and Alice Cooper a new lease on musical life. Cooper had one of his biggest hits with the Friday the 13th inspired song, “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask),” which appeared on the soundtrack for the 1986 installment of that endless franchise. W.A.S.P. were throwing raw meat at their audience and the music scene was spawning faster and heavier children in the dark. We were seeing bands like Death, Sodom, Obituary and others playing ferocious music to a specialized crowd. And this was all just the tip of the iceberg.

  GOD BLESS THE CHILDREN OF THE BEAST

  Mötley Crüe, whose first album, Too Fast for Love, was a stomper of a sleaze rock record filled with under produced, punk-inspired energy, was my (Bracken’s) gateway from late-70s punk like Generation X and the Damned into metal. Their sophomore effort (and breakthrough album), Shout at the Devil, featured richly dark imagery and enough threatening sexual swagger to suggest the album itself could stand as sufficient proxy in your daughter’s bedroom for the sneering, bad-boy band members. They positioned themselves on the album cover and in the videos for “Looks That Kill” and “Too Young to Fall In Love” as tightly coiled servants of evil, going so far as to hint at the darkest part of rock’s musical heritage by covering Charles Manson’s Spahn Ranch anthem, the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.”

  Those two albums promised more than the band ever delivered, however, and they dropped the horror vibe of their early releases in favor of strip club sleaze chic like their contemporaries.

  Underneath the anodyne surface of popular heavy music, however, ran a fast current of music devoted to propelling fans into the dark places that would make both the pearl-clutching PMRC and Evangelical leaders shiver in their piss-filled galoshes if it ever surfaced into the mainstream. With images in their minds of Tipper Gore holding up Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Going to Take It” as an example of middle finger anti-establishment rebellion, fans of King Diamond were laughing at her naïveté all the way to the mosh pit.

  Finding inspiration in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, “popular” Thrash bands like Slayer and Anthrax were punishing eardrums with driving songs about Hellfire and pandemic disease. Metallica in its prime invoked Lovecraftian cosmic horror in songs like “The Thing That Should Not Be” and unrestrained violence in “Battery” between delivering political jeremiads. And even further below in the undercurrent, Thrash was spawning an even darker style of music.

  Death Metal took the musical energy of Thrash and combined it with the sensibility of slasher horror cinema. Possessed, Deicide, and Chuck Schuldiner’s legendary band, Death (not to be confused with the similarly-named protopunk outfit out of Detroit), fully embraced the lyrical themes of Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath, taking them far across the line of conventional decency without once looking back. While Glam was beginning to stagnate in its own materialistic excess, Death was aiming at an alchemical magic that would turn crushing musical brutality and lyrical savagery into pure art. At the same time, Bathory, Hellhammer, and Celtic Frost were giving birth to the first wave of what would become known as Black Metal. (Which in the 90’s would take “keeping it real” to a dangerous extreme. Between Mayhem using a photo of their former singer’s suicide on an album cover, Varg Vikernes’ murder of their founder, Euronymous, and a rash of church burnings, the European Black Metal scene was going to make gangsta rap look like a Sunday outing.) Black metallers lived horror, wearing corpse paint and taking the names of devils and the darkest monsters from fantasy literature.

  In 1987, the Plasmatics reunited with a Punk/Thrash concept album titled Maggots that expressed the perfect intersectionality between heavy music and cinematic horror, going so far as to feature fully dramatized spoken word breaks in between songs about giant maggots devouring every living thing on the planet. Although I’d long been a Plasmatics—and Wendy O. Williams—fanatic, this was the album that stayed in my auto-reverse cassette player for a full year. Excepting Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime, there has never been another concept album that has captivated me so fully.

  The year 1988 saw the return of Glenn Danzig who had elevated horror punk to an art form first with the Misfits and then his band, Samhain. On his eponymous solo album, he pursued a stripped down, blues-styled hard rock that carried more threat in the sincerity of its delivery than an unfamiliar guy standing in your house after midnight. The lyrical content and tone of the first Danzig album earned a Parental Advisory sticker on the cover despite the complete lack of profanity and marked what should have been a new high water mark for dark music. But by the end of the decade the golden age of heavy metal, for me anyway, was slipping into self-parody.

  We also got our first glimpses of the mighty GWAR around this time, with their initial demos eking out and their debut for Metal Blade dropping in late 1989. The intergalactic scumdog monsters pummeled a bloated music establishment and bludgeoned the censorship mongers with satirical clubs of humor and horror.

  Glam Rock, or “Hair Metal,” as it was becoming known, had gone almost mainstream. Reaching the zenith of its excess, innumerable spandex and hairspray bands released an endless stream of cookie-cutter radio-friendly power ballads meant to appeal to audiences who didn’t necessarily like metal, but liked energetic schmaltz and insincere sentimentality. Bands like Slaughter, Cinderella, and Warrant traded in party anthems and sappy love-songs more than they did in the darkness that had been early metal’s trademark. The only thing scary about a band like White Lion was the potential impact on the ozone layer from using so much hairspray.

  As the 80s came to a close, metal as a form of publicly acknowledged popular music was dealt a death blow by the arrival of Grunge. Mother Love Bone tied the glam aesthetic with a punk ethic and an arena rock bombast that was as volatile as it was short lived, that is until they found a new singer and changed their name to Pearl Jam. Soundgarden and Sonic Youth set up the eventual h
eadshot delivered by Nirvana in 1991.

  The effect of Grunge in the early 90s was three-fold: First, it delivered a well-deserved mercy killing to the power ballad. Second, it sent popular acts like Metallica backpedaling, trying to maintain their relevance and popularity. And third, it sent the rest of the extreme metal scene underground into the rich and fertile soil out of which bands like In Flames, Opeth, and Emperor would erupt and drag metal into the new millenium. But first we have another decade to cover...

  John Boden lives in the shadow of Three Mile Island, where he bakes cakes and cookies for a living. Any remaining time is unevenly divided between his amazing wife and sons, working for Shock Totem, and his own writing. His unique fiction has appeared in 52 Stitches, Metazen, Weirdyear, Black Ink Horror #7, O Little Town of Deathlehem, Radical Dislocations, Splatterpunk 5, and Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane, edited by John Skipp. His not-for-children children's book, Dominoes, was published in 2013. He has work forthcoming in Blight Digest, Once Upon an Apocalypse Vol. I, Despumation Magazine, and Halloween Forevermore. He has stunning muttonchops and a heart of gold.

  Bracken MacLeod has worked as a martial arts teacher, a university philosophy instructor, for a children’s non-profit, and as a criminal and civil trial attorney. In addition to Shock Totem, his short fiction has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Sex and Murder Magazine, LampLight Magazine, Every Day Fiction, The Anthology: Year One and Year Two: Inner Demons Out, Reloaded: Both Barrels Vol. 2, Ominous Realities, The Big Adios, and Beat to a Pulp. He has a story forthcoming in Issue 6 of the DIY horrorzine, Splatterpunk.

  He is the author of the novel Mountain Home, and most recently a novella titled White Knight, from One Eye Press.

  He lives in New England and is currently at work on his next novel.

  GOOD HELP

  by Karen Runge

  I have to get up earlier than him, waking in the clasp of clean white sheets, my pillow damp with the sweat of warm dreams. My feet turn numb on smooth linoleum as I walk to the basin in the corner of the room, splashing water on my face, rinsing out my mouth. Outside, a cold dawn rises in shifting shades of blue and grey. By the time it turns silver, and the silver tints toward gold, I know he’ll be trying to sit up in his bed in the room next to mine, groping for his blankets, or his water glass.

  I like to get there early before he’s fully awake. I like to be the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes.

  “Good morning, Solomon,” I’ll say with my softest smile.

  And a noise will come out of his throat, a sort of haggard moan that I take to mean “Good morning,” and I’ll kiss his forehead and help him sit up.

  Once he’s gulped back some water and I’ve set his glasses on his face, I’ll smother him in warm blankets, guide his feet to the floor and weight them with thick-soled slippers. I’ll walk with him like this to the bathroom, him shuffling heavy-footed against me. It’s always a little tricky when we get to the door, with me supporting him while I turn the handle with my free hand. There was an incident in this spot, once, and I think maybe he remembers it, because he’ll moan. A thin sound, strangling up against the loose folds of his neck.

  The bathroom is clean, bright-tiled, decked out with slip-proof mats and grab bars.

  “Be careful, Solomon,” I’ll say, digging my fingers into the frail bone of his shoulders. “We don’t want to fall, do we?”

  • • •

  At breakfast, I wheel him into the dining hall with its rows of tables, its pre-made bowls of oatmeal and softened prunes. There are plates of toast, too, chewy and only slightly warm, but those are not for him.

  Most of the tables are empty by the time we come downstairs, and the other guests are usually seated out on the wide veranda, playing cards or checkers, gazing out at the countryside, at the rolling green hills flecked with wildflowers that shade the green to streaks of pastel blue. When the weather is colder most of the guests will be in the common room, drinking herbal tea and watching old movies projected on the wall.

  They laugh and cough and point with hooked fingers. They use words like “heyday” a lot.

  As in, “That was the heyday.”

  Or, “In my heyday.”

  I’ve never really been sure what that means.

  Solomon can’t stand such excitement, his hands trembling and jerking as I wheel him past the open, sun-washed doorways and to his place in the dining hall.

  “Maybe later, Solomon,” I’ll say, bending down close to talk into his ear, to keep him from looking in. “You have to fuel your body first, you know.”

  • • •

  Breakfast with Solomon is always a struggle. He has good dentures, but I think his jaw is weak. He tries to grab at pieces of toast, and when he manages I have to snatch them away from him. “I know what’s best for you,” I’ll remind him, using one of my stricter tones.

  What he needs is the clean, carbohydrate-rich nourishment of cold oatmeal, unsweetened, of course (I need to keep his blood pressure low). I crush his pills up and sprinkle them over the contents of the bowl.

  “It’s powdered sugar,” I’ll tell him brightly, and Beth, the kitchen head (who is usually around cleaning up by then), will sometimes overhear me and laugh.

  “You have such a lovely imagination,” she’ll say to me. “You just have the best way with them.”

  And I’ll smile at her, with all my teeth.

  After the oatmeal, what he needs is the soft slide of prunes that will run through his system and loosen his bowels. He really hates the prunes. I don’t like to pinch his nose to make him swallow them, but I will if I have to.

  Once, back when he was a little stronger, before the amount of powdered sugar on his oatmeal went up, he managed to grab the small dish containing the prunes and hurl it against the wall.

  “Look what you’ve done!” I scolded him, and smacked his forehead with the back of his spoon.

  • • •

  After breakfast, I take him back to his room, back to the bathroom, pull down his pants and seat him on the toilet. I’ll leave him there for just a second while I run to fetch my book. When I come back in, he’ll be waiting for me with his arms half-raised in slow-motion flails.

  “Oh, don’t you look silly!” I’ll say, hands on hips. “You know you can’t go outside until your insides are nice and clear.”

  It can take a while for the prunes to work.

  I’ll sit on a folding chair opposite him so that I can reach forward quickly if he starts to unbalance. There was an incident like that once before, and he smacked his head a little harder than I would have liked.

  If the book gets boring, I’ll tease my underwear down and unbutton my blouse. I’ll push my chest out and open my legs, just a few inches apart. I like to see that look in his eyes, that resentful itch clashed against his excitement, his shattered memories of the things age has taken from him. I like to watch the way that no matter how hard he tries to keep glaring at me, his eyes cannot stay on my face.

  “Do you like it when I do this?” I’ll ask, sliding myself slowly up and down on my seat, my skirt hitching slightly higher with each rise.

  Once I made him cry, like that.

  • • •

  After we’re done with our ablutions, I’ll wheel him down the cool, clean corridor with its calming green walls, past the open door to the common room, where the other guests are still watching movies.

  This time when I bend down to block his view, I’ll whisper in his ear, “You dirty old man,” in my most seductive tone. If I’m in a more daring mood, I’ll stay there a while longer and press my breasts to the back of his head before I straighten up. But I don’t do that very often.

  We’ll go down the ramp around the side of the veranda, and I’ll wheel him past the view of the rolling green hills and the pastel-blue wildflowers. We pass all the tables that way, and all the other guests and a handful of the carers will be out there sipping lemon tea and eating soft biscuits. Those o
f them whose brains are still more or less intact, those of them who can still talk, will usually call to us as we pass.

  “Hello, Ruth,” they’ll say, smiling, and I’ll wave.

  They’ll say to each other, “She’s the prettiest young nurse.”

  “Lovely day today,” I’ll call to them.

  They’ll smile, and I’ll smile back with all my teeth, and tell them he’s not so strong today, he’s just no good for company.

  “Oh, such a shame,” they’ll say, and wave us goodbye.

  • • •

  I take him down to the bench at the bottom of the hill, the one where I can see everyone else coming down the path, and if they look down at us all they’ll see is an old man and his carer, posed pretty against the trees.

  I’ll have a book with me that I’m supposed to read to him, Moby Dick maybe, something like that. I know how often to turn the pages as I talk, keeping my voice to a sweet, steady monotone.

  “How many other men do you think your wife fucked in her life?” I’ll ask him.“Do you think she let them give it to her up the ass? Did you like doing that to her, Solomon? Do you think the others did it better than you?”

  Wives can be a boring topic, though, so sometimes I’ll turn to other things.