(Actual) Splathouse Lore, Part 1: The Lady And The Flame
(Actual Splathouse Lore is a series in which I detail the events and experiences that lead to the creation of this lovely site. Our first part here lays the foundation for how everything will be told. Later, I’ll introduce how what I’ve learned can be applied to producing media. But for now-be patient. All of this is connected, Deviants. -j)
“You’ve had a hell of a life,”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard that.
It’s not even the first time I’ve heard it from this particular person.
Yet every time this is said to me, it takes me just a moment to process it.
Because that’s the thing about life, right? When you’re living it you don’t really think about it. You’re so busy trying to survive the roller coaster of anxiety and bliss. You’re trying to pay your bills, to get sleep. You’re so busy trying to do the whole “life” thing that you don’t have time to review it.
At least, until it’s over.
My great grandmother, she fled Europe as a girl to get away from the nazis. She knew 8 different languages. She was in an arranged marriage, and had an affair with a cowboy. Save for a few anecdotes when she was well, I didn’t know any of that until she was close to death.
My grandfather on my mom’s side, he’s barely literate. He grew up a farm boy. His house had a dirt floor, and he worked as a spy during the korean war. Then he was a forest ranger. Every skill I know about being a woodsman, it came from him.
Only recently did he tell me he learned those skills behind enemy lines. Only recently did he tell me he was a POW. A story he brushed off with a wave of his hand until I pressed and persisted.
I mention both of these stories upfront because to me, they’re amazing. They’re the kinds of things movies are made about, and both of my grandparents were kinda like “eh, well yeah I guess, that happened,”.
They were so busy trying to live they couldn’t process how extraordinary they really were. How much they accomplished.
So when I hear that-“you’ve had a hell of a life”-I take it as a sign. A sign I need to sit down, to decompress and get all the words out. I need some kind of record of it before my already failing memory eats my head in a few decades. Dementia or Alzheimer’s, they’re both coming. They’ve already came for the two stories above.
There’s a belief that you’re not really dead so long as people still talk about the things you did. Good or ill, you’re still around.
So I’m going to tell this story. Just like my grandparents did. You’re going to get it in scraps. I’ll probably leave out some parts-I know I will. You’ll have questions, and it’ll come to me. I promise. Maybe when I’m dead, you can pass this one on for me.
Maybe my grandkid will find it. If they do, I won’t really be gone. They’ll get to see me as I was.
Kid, if you exist and are reading this-you’re about to find out a lot about me. I make no apologies for any of it. Frankly, I don’t regret a thing.
That’s what I want you to take away from this, really.
Do the thing.
Have a hell of a life.
Love every fucking minute of it.
Write it down-the good and the bad-and live forever.
@@@
So let’s start right at the fire.
It’s funny, looking back on the years I was a drug addict, I don’t give it much thought. Mostly because I don’t have many memories of it. I’d do acid, shrooms, LSD, and entire hay bales of weed. I stayed away from uppers. I didn’t want to go faster, not really. I just wanted away. Out of my body I hated so much. Out of this life that I felt I didn’t deserve. Not dead, but adjacent. Courting it. Close enough to kiss, but never quite making it. On one night, I dosed up. I got nice and thick and in it, and then I laid back on my couch. I closed my eyes, and fell asleep pretty quick.
It’s a dumb fucking thing to do, getting high and falling asleep. You could choke on your tongue, seize. It’s especially dumb to do if you’re manic-depressive and live alone. Even more idiotic if your nearest neighbor or family are an hour away. But see, I didn’t see myself as human. Depression and drugs are funny like that. You stay so fucking high all the time that you’re a shell. The few times you’re sober you’re terrified of your reality, so you get high again. As long as you’ve got money, nothing else really matters. You learn to act along the way. A smile, a joke. All the little tricks to tell people you’re human. That you’re safe, and normal, and fine. You’re not, not really.
It’s not that people don’t care, it’s that they’re unobservant. They’re so busy surviving, so busy trying to live things just slip. Like a love one being a fresh 21 years old with a few years of addiction under their belt.
I’m rambling, I’m sorry. So. I got skunked and I fell asleep.
My house at the time, it had these paintings up. A gift from another druggie friend. Dude was the most talented painter I have ever met in my entire fucking life. To this day I haven’t met another that could match his skill, and it’s because the guy just wasn’t here when he painted. He was a lot like me-when he was high, he created. When he created, he wasn’t on earth. So it all came out completely uninhibited and real and raw. It was all abstract, but his works spoke to you in this perverse invasion of privacy and space. He gave me his paintings because he said they gave him nightmares. There were six in all in my house. Three on one side of the hall, three on the others.
I’d go on to give them away.
They gave me nightmares too. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I already told you-you’re gonna get this in swaths, patches.
So. On the couch. Asleep. I slipped into a dream right away. I blinked, and I was in a massive hall. Ceilings so tall that I couldn’t see them. They went all the way up into a star filled night sky.
It was my venetian chapel. Right up until I felt a foot slam against my neck, and my face was brought to the floor.
Describing them now feels impossible. They were, after all, of dreams. Ethereal and terrifying, solid and real enough in the moment my heart started pounding. What few views I caught of them made me realize they were familiar.
They were the things I saw in those paintings. These crooked, twisted shadows clothed in a rainbow accusation. Formless save for their hands-save for the things they held, punishments wrought in iron. They had swords and spears, scepters and rods pointed at me as they spoke in a guttural tongue to one another. I couldn’t make it out, not even a word. But I got the feeling I was on trial.
It wasn’t going well.
My face grew hot, and it was only as they drew closer I realized I was crying. I remember thinking in that moment I was going to die. One of them jabbed a finger at me, shouting as he raised a hammer. It arched over his head, and the room fell silent.
Not because they were still themselves-but because the stars had gone out. At least, I thought they had.
They had collected at the far end of the chapel, oozing down in a twinkling flow over the far wall. They sluiced and slid and gathered, taking shape as they met the floor. A slender, massive foot. An ankle, then legs formed out of the gathering dark. I watched, a boot against my temple as the stars took the shape of a woman.
Like the beings, words alone can’t contain who and what she was. Imagine if the sky took shape in front of you-with all it’s lights and beauty and luster. That’s close, but still a poor imitation. This thing-she-she was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
I doubt I’ll ever see something better. Maybe when I’m finally dead, when people forget my name and my stories, I’ll meet her again. I’d like that.
She crossed the room, and the things parted. The boot fell from my neck, and I lifted myself off the floor with my palms. But I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. I didn’t know what she was, but I knew I wasn’t worthy enough to look at her. I felt her presence draw close, and she spoke in a voice that sounded like a thousands choirs.
“What do you desire most?”
Five words. Five very simple words, and my mind pulsed for the answer. I felt my brain palpably throb as I tried to think, but then my lips moved. The words came, uninhibited. Raw and real, like the place I found myself in.
“Happiness,” I rasped out.
The thing bent low. It gripped my chin, and my fear went away in an instant. I felt calm-not joyful, just calm. The thing lifted my chin, and I looked right into her eyes. I watched as she lifted her other hand, and opened it.
That brings us to the fire. To you and me, right now. Telling an old addicts hallucination. That’s what I tell myself this was, when I’m angry and kicking myself. If that makes it easier for you to accept, then by all means go on. Think it’s all a story, that I’m crazy.
That doesn’t change the flame. A golden, living fire that rose like a sun from her hand. She pressed her thumb at my lips and parted them.
“Then never waste your potential” she said, in that same booming voice of millions.
She brought her other palm close, and poured the flame down my throat.
To describe the searing pain I felt, I have to get biblical. Hell. I thought I’d died and I was in hell, and this was my punishment. For being a liar, for being a piece of shit. I was being burned by a beautiful woman from the inside out. I wanted it to end, I wanted my stomach to burn away as this molten-whatever ate it’s way out. But it kept pouring, even as I shook and my mind reeled.
But I didn’t pull away from her.
I didn’t get scared, not again.
Because I knew she’d never hurt me.
Whoever this was, she wasn’t going to put anything upon me I couldn’t handle. I knew that, despite the pain and her sheer eldritch nature.
She meant me no harm, and so I swallowed the flame down, and held it in my belly until there was nothing left.
@@@
I barely made it to the toilet before I vomited.
That’s how I woke. With my stomach rolling as it burned. So I ran to the toilet, and threw up what felt like years worth of abuse. I slumped beside the porcelain after, and felt the most sober I’d been in years.
A few things happened after that.
I got rid of my drugs. Made damned sure I got rid of those paintings. Sobriety fucking sucked, but I clawed my way into it. In time, I even almost entirely stopped drinking.
I started writing every day. Not just horror fiction when I was depressed, which was all the time. Doing that, it lead me to meeting others. Writers, artists.
A lot of people like you, too.
I never stopped. Every day, I tried to do it a little different. I tried to do it a little better, a little weirder than before. In my free time, I started reading occult books. Stuff on “magick”, with that pretentious K, by people claiming to be real witches. Real warlocks. Then came Phil Hine with Condensed Chaos, and Liber Null. Chaos Magic, they called it. Basically making use of the raw concept of belief to craft reality into whatever you needed it to be.
Now, you’re probably saying that all this with the dream, it was the brain of an addict trying one last time to rescue the body. Sure. I could go with that. But sitting there reading on chaos theory-about how the power of belief itself can lead to changes in your person, into things becoming real in one reality enough to affect your current one?
It makes me think of that lady. The one literally made out of the stars, so big and beautiful and massive.
How she gave me a second chance. A literal rebirth into someone new, and better.
I know, I know. All I’m saying is, I’m not so sure. Even seven years later, I’m just not sure. Call it a placebo effect if that makes it easier to swallow.
Writing and art, it’s not pointless to do it for your own pleasure. But the thing is, us creators? We’re attention whores. We want people to talk about it, see it.
We just want to live as long as we can. Even if our bodies are rotted away. If people talk about our work, we’re never really gone.
That night with the lady, my years of addiction, the depression and the writing. It all lead to this moment. This blog, this page.
The one you’re reading right now.
The stories of your life, you don’t think about them while they’re happening. It’s too hard, too stressful and painful during. But then you look back over it, at all these little swaths and pieces. These seemingly unrelated events that lead to a single moment.
Call it life, call it fate. Call it magick (with that damned K) if you want to.
But your life is no less extraordinary because of it.
That’s enough for now, I think. I apologize for what was suppose to be an informative series off with a drug trip. But I promise by the end of the week, it’ll all make sense.
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