occupational hazard

"Occupational Hazard," February 24, 2022 (#55)

title from Bag of Bones by Stephen King (1998)

Hellraiser (1987)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988)

The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier (2008)

two lines from "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo" by David Benioff (2004)

Occupational Hazard

You can't let me stay like this. Please. You can't.

I got all those coffins on my hands -- and I hate to see them go to waste.

The two inventors go on, rubbing the rough edges off one another,

and though we were all a bit curious, we spent the morning doing

explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some.

It's not the icebergs. But there are certain men who would try to take advantage

of a reputation as a witch, who could wish illnesses upon you if you

could tell something important was going on by the number of network

door slams as FRANK's body is torn apart in a welter of blood and flesh fragments.

Leaning against a column, supervising the proceedings, is a dark, menacing young

hard, sparse thing, anti-social, self-contained, an essence. Why did it annoy

another background component of your awareness, like the scratching of

"I'm sorry, I don't follow. What was there to see?"

Spills, thrills, laughs, games -- this may even turn out to be a surprise party

spreading discord. He brought them into the meeting hall and asked them to

stink to the heavens; jungle and farmyard odours mingled with a rich aroma

just beginning to darken to red, and stitched together by the condensation trails of

the mantelpiece of one room, a plaster saint. In the kitchen, evidence of life here

must have spread, because pedestrians are also running in the same direction

of letting slip the secret of what the whores had been up to,

nestled between a birch-colored fisherman's sweater and a cotton blazer,

nothing but trees and melting snow littered with broken twigs.

9-30-21

12-9-21

8-23-21

10-22-21 from The Devil's Treasure by Mary Gaitskill (2021)

10-22-21 from The Devil's Treasure by Mary Gaitskill (2021)

10-14-21 HSPVA

2-24-22

8-24-21

Goya, "Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat)" (1821-1823)

From here.