Suggested Audio Jukebox ♫

 

[1] The Automatic “Monster”

[2] The Union Underground “South Texas Death Ride”

[3] Japan “Halloween”

[4] Wednesday 13 “The Devil Made Me Do It”

[5] Heart “These Dreams”

[6] Beastie Boys “Intergalactic”

[7] Orbital “The Box”

[8] Randy Newman “You’ve Got a Friend In Me”

[9] Blondie “Call Me”

[10] Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Heads Will Roll”

[11] Miranda Lambert “Sin for a Sin”

[12] Sister Sledge “We Are Family”

[13] The Cranberries “Zombie”

 

So we’ve inspected all the vintage monsters of horror cinema and, all things considered, they really weren’t all that nefarious. Misguided perhaps, misunderstood in certain cases, but hardly beyond therapy. However, their modern-day counterparts have tended to be considerably meaner in spirit. That said, with a little tender loving care, things could have been decidedly different as many of the villains I am about to meet and greet had no end of unresolved childhood trauma to blame for their sudden shift towards the dark side. It seems to have been a recurring theme over the past forty years and I guess it all stems back to Norma Bates for giving their parents ideas back in the sixties. Had Norman turned out to be a pillar of his community, then perhaps all of this trouble and strife could have been avoided. Whatever happened to children being the future? Ultimately it all boils down to shoddy parenting.

Our first monster took a leaf out of Norman’s book by having a vested interest in ornithology. That said, cleaning his room was never a priority and, where Bates Motel was something of a tidy shrine to our feathered friends, that old decrepit house in Texas was a far less sanitary sanctuary. Jedidiah Sawyer, or Leatherface to those he was about to pound to death with a meat tenderizer, was the ultimate man-child and, while his overbearing frame suggested that puberty had never eluded him, he possessed the brain of a small child and, like any kid his age, was more than happy playing with his favorite plaything. Perhaps a fully fueled chainsaw wasn’t the best toy to present to a young boy with learning difficulties but, to Leatherface’s credit, he mastered it reasonably well. Granted, on occasion, he had a tendency to lose control of his instrument, but when a group of wayward teenagers stumbled onto his plot one blazing summer day, he was thrilled to be able to give his toothy monster a well-deserved run-out.

Needless to say, his new friends were less than enamored by his idea of play time and he was forced to take extreme measures to ensure they stuck around. It was all going decidedly well until Sally Hardesty threw a spanner in the works after taking exception to his treatment of her paraplegic brother Franklin. A drawn-out chase ensued and Leatherface got to kill two birds with one stone as he had been tasked with cutting down the overhanging foliage on the house’s grounds and his chainsaw came in handy for getting any wretched gardening chores out-of-the-way. However, the spirited Sally remained one step ahead and it was left to good old pops to bail him out before disaster struck. Thankfully, it was just about dinner time and all that fun and games had left Leatherface utterly ravenous. The chainsaw wasn’t permitted at the Sawyer dinner table as, while Grandpa was well past his prime, he still considered himself as head of the family and had his own designs on entertaining their unexpected guest. Damn right, it was hammer time!

To his credit, Grandpa gave it the old college try and managed to get a fair few digs in before his arthritis started playing up. However, Sally was nothing if not resourceful, and managed to slip the net a second time, leaving Leatherface to pick up the pieces once again. It wasn’t as though he was ill-treated by his folks, more that they were not your average family unit and he was just the runt of the litter so ended up with all the dirty work. Given that he was hardly blessed in the looks department, he was never likely to bag himself a long-term girlfriend so he made himself a mask of human flesh and kept himself to himself behind that rickety sliding door. Here he could while away the hours however he saw fit and, when Sally managed to give him the slip, he consoled himself by heading back to his chop shop to continue playing butcher. Kids will be kids.

Michael Myers wasn’t fortunate enough to be presented with his own personal chainsaw so the resourceful rascal grabbed the initiative while his parents were out gallivanting one Halloween and raided the kitchen drawer for his own signature plaything. After finding an elongated bread knife, he proceeded to pay a visit to his buxom teenage sibling upstairs and try his new toy out. Given that he was only six-years-old and not yet aware of his special purpose, jerking himself off at her doorway never entered his tiny little mind so he found a different way to penetrate and spent fifteen years in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium for his insolent outburst. Here he was placed in the care of Dr. Sam Loomis and it looked like he would spend the rest of his days under intensive psychiatric evaluation but Michael had other ideas and, with the anniversary of his sister’s slaughter approaching, he decided enough was enough and made a run for it. First stop was Haddonfield and it was time for high-school student Laurie Strode to earn her keep as a babysitter.

Needless to say, Loomis felt responsible for his subject’s wall-hopping shenanigans and headed off to call time on Michael’s reign of terror before the finger could be pointed. However, his opposite number was a smarter cookie than given credit for and found himself a new mask to remain inconspicuous as he closed in on his target. Kitchen knives are ten a penny and disposable teens ever easier to come across so he began with a refresher course, ventilating Laurie’s best friends before heading over to the Doyle house to make her life a living hell. While Michael was clearly at an impressionable age when he commenced on his path of destruction, it would appear that poor parenting wasn’t to blame. Some apples are simply rotten from the moment they drop from the tree and the Boogeyman himself was one such spoiled fruit. Bitter to the very core and without a solitary ounce of remorse, he simply loved slicing and dicing co-eds and proved himself quite the dab-hand in that department. Consequently, babysitting rates doubled after his Halloween rampage but $20 was of little consolation to poor Miss Strode.

Another child who strayed from the path of righteousness was Jason Voorhees although he had every reason to feel aggrieved after his first swimming lesson ended in tragedy. His mother Pamela held the counselors of Camp Crystal Lake accountable for his unfortunate demise as they were too busy engaging the customary promiscuous sex to spot his misshapen head slipping sub-aqua. However, she certainly wasn’t blame free as, had she not been flicking her bean in the foliage to all the supple flesh on exhibit, she may have been able to prevent this tragedy from happening in the first place. It’s hard not feeling a tad sorry for Jason as his top box resembled a spat-out avocado and, on his descent from the ugly tree, it would appear that he hit every conceivable branch on the way down at least twice. So sinking to the algae appeared somewhat rough justice as the poor little bastard couldn’t seem to shit a break. His mother vented her frustration in no uncertain terms by punishing the next crop of co-eds to spend their summer at Camp Crystal but, after she lost her head, it was left to Jason to pick up where she left off.

The first thing he would need was a disguise as a head like his was hard not to spot coming from a country mile away so he grabbed himself a burlap sack and got to work immediately. First stop was Alice’s house as she was the one responsible for halting momma in her tracks and he made short work of her. However, while his new gear provided a means to an end, Jason developed a taste for terrorization and an upgrade was soon in order. Enter the hockey mask and this seemed far more iconic a trademark. Despite the fact that crazy Ralph had been proved right when stating that Camp Crystal Lake had a death curse, the teens just kept on coming and pretty much lined up like lambs to the slaughter, making his job decidedly trouble-free. Unprotected sex, excessive pot smoking, midnight skinny dipping, wandering off solo to explore strange noises in the undergrowth – it was one big free-for-all and, with the exception of that pesky final girl, he hardly had to break a sweat.

Moreover, while waiting for each fresh influx of teens to torment, he brushed up on his archery skills and found all manner of fiendish ways to dispatch his quarry. Ax, hacksaw, pitchfork, spear and even cork screw seemed to achieve the desired results, while his machete proved the most effective tool in his armory and the closest thing he had to a signature weapon. Things were going swimmingly until wanderlust kicked in and the allure of a trip to Manhattan appeared too tantalizing to pass up. This is where it all turned awry for Jason and, with The Big Apple failing to live up to how it looked in the brochure, Jason hopped aboard the next space shuttle headed for the stars and explored the final frontier. While he was traipsing around the solar system searching for interstellar victims to perforate, somebody else was stealing his thunder back on planet earth and this particularly crispy critter proved a constant thorn in Jason’s side over the coming years.

Freddy Krueger had plenty of tricks up the sleeve of his filthy red and green sweater and a fair few rabbits under his fedora to boot. You see, while the idyllic town of Springwood, Ohio was quite the stomping ground for this child killing caretaker during his life, death supplied him with far more freedom to operate. After escaping the long arm of the law on a technicality, a mob of embittered parents decided to take matters into their own hands and cornered him in his boiler room, before dousing it with petrol and burning this cretin alive. Justice may have been served temporarily but Freddy had different ideas and continued his vile work in a far less restrictive environment. We all have to sleep right? For the kids of Springwood, Klonopin became the very worst swear word as, each time they slumbered, they entered his jurisdiction and he became the architect of their downfalls. Boundaries were no longer an issue as he knew the layout of each dreamscape and the only conceivable means of escape was that early morning alarm call. However, chances of making it that far were slim as Krueger was always one step ahead of the game.

Seemingly untouchable, it all started to go to his head as he dedicated more time to wise-cracking than he did apprehending the souls of the children. His razor-sharp talons still saw plenty of action and, with his main competitor lost in space and others around him floundering, Freddy carved out his niche for stand-up comedy with precious little resistance from others. The kids of Springwood rallied around and a handful of Dream Warriors audaciously attempted to beat him at his own game but nothing could halt his supremacy and, eventually, Jason could take no more and decided desperate measures were in order. A showdown was on the cards and, while Freddy had the edge when it came to home turf, his opponent was nothing if not utterly invincible and not about to let this grudge match end up one-sided. Battle commenced and Freddy vs. Jason proposed the fight of the bout of the century but, while these two juggernauts engaged in their merciless melee, unruly adolescents were once again safe to get up to no good with little other than AIDS and teenage pregnancy to stand in their path.

Meanwhile, at the outer reaches of the solar system, no one can hear you scream, and this had allowed the xenomorphs to keep a low profile as they embarked on their titan terror. For the crew of commercial spacecraft Nostromo, this was wretched news and, for the inquisitive Officer Kane, curiosity led to one helluva case of intergalactic reflux. After landing on an uncharted planetoid and snooping around, as you do, Kane couldn’t resist taking a peek inside one of hundreds of meticulously lined ovium and promptly regretted his actions. While grateful for a little lip-service after months floating around in space, the facehugger in question was perhaps a tad excessive with the deep throat and poor Kane ended up laid-out in quarantine in a perpetual snog. Eventually, the anomaly came up for air and crisis appeared to be averted, leaving the Officer both relieved and ravenous. Time for a last supper before the crew re-entered stasis and those growls in his belly proved to be far more than the pangs of hunger.

Et voila. Before they could so much as say grace, Kane became a father. Alas, with no discernible vagina to birth his offspring, the fiendish fetus made its entrance via its own kind of C-section. If you listened closely to Lambert’s horrified reaction as said alien drew its first breath, then it would have likely been due to the fact that, with Kane now out of the equation and Warrant Officer Ripley higher up in the chain of command, breast-feeding duties would invariably fall to her. Time to start expressing that milk dear. The remaining crew members thought on their feet and, considering the newborn’s corrosive blood could breach the ship’s hull should they opt for conventional firepower, opted for motion trackers, electric prods, and flamethrowers as they attempted damage limitation. What they hadn’t banked on was the speed in which kids grow up as, one moment you’re teaching them to crawl and, the next, they’re all grown-up and going through the obligatory teenage tantrums. Xenomorphs despise pubescence and, the moment those testicles dropped, retaliation against authority was inevitable.

The ship’s resident android Ash had the right idea by blowing a circuit and returning to factory settings, while the rest of the crew fell foul to its puberty blues leaving only Ripley to fend off its advances. Sometimes you just have to accept that the time has come to let your kids go and the shuttle’s airlock came to her rescue at the critical moment. By blasting the alien into dead space, she likely thought the ordeal was over but let’s not forget the 99 other heaving ovium puckered up for a kiss and mankind’s insistence on poking around where it has no right to. Ripley’s maternal instincts eventually got the better of her and, when a terraforming colony on the same exomoon fell eerily silent 57 years later as she awoke from her hypersleep, she had 57 missed birthdays to make up for. This time she came prepared and surrounded herself with the finest assholes and elbows the military could provide. Fat lot of good it did her. The aliens had not been simply mincing around for the past half a century getting overweight and out-of-shape and, instead, had crowned themselves a Queen during the interim. This made for a doozy of bitch fight as the two menstrual mothers battled it out for supremacy.

Back on Planet Earth, the Rubix Cube was proving to be a unanimous hit and virtually every store was sold out with Christmas approaching. Frank Cotton was distraught as there was precious little to do in Morocco other than haggle for rugs so he procured himself the next best thing, an ornate puzzle box by the name of Lament Configuration. He was thrilled with his new acquisition and wasted no time in attempting to solve its riddle but, just as he was beginning to make significant headway, he discovered precisely why it had been going cheap. Also known as Lemarchand’s box, this mechanical device acted as a portal to another plane of existence and this schism was breached by a decidedly rowdy rabble with only the very cruelest of intentions. The leather-clad Cenobites were a kinky bunch for sure and had a thing for sadomasochism that didn’t stop at body-piercings either. Pinhead was their ringleader and lived up to his name by resembling an inhuman pin cushion, while the others were no less freakish.

Chatterer was an orthodontist’s worst nightmare and the last deviant in the world you would wish to go down on you. Inviting Butterball around for dinner was a catastrophe waiting to happen as this chubby brute would clear out your pantry in no time and likely clog up your toilet perpetually once that first bowel movement came about. Meanwhile, The Female made up for possessing one of the least inspired names imaginable by sporting a freakishly oversized nose ring that you could hang your duffle coat on. Collectively, the Cenobites were trouble with a capital T and, while grateful to Frank for freeing them from centuries cooped up inside that cursed cube, they had a funny way of showing their appreciation. Moreover, their leanings toward S&M favored chains over whips and they had plenty of these knocking about to provide their host with a sound thanking. Ironically, that Moroccan street vendor received a fresh delivery of Rubix Cubes the very next day, leaving hapless Frank further cursing his cut-price purchase.

Not every kid desired a puzzle box to keep them out of mischief and six-year-old Andy Barclay’s Christmas list consisted of one thing alone – a “Good Guy” doll. For single mother Karen this proved quite the headache as money was too tight to pay the extortionate asking price. Thus, she took a leaf out of Frank Cotton’s book and found herself a shady street peddler on her way home from work and bought one on the cheap. On the surface, Chucky appeared to be very much authentic, and Andy was overjoyed with his gift. However, wanted fugitive and renowned serial killer Charles Lee Ray, better known as “The Lakeshore Strangler”, had performed a voodoo ritual on this particular “Good Guy” and transferred his blackened soul to within its perishable plastic. Considering he had a whole toy store at his disposal when he selected Chucky as his cunning disguise, you would have thought he could have done better than this pant-wetting pint-sized partisan but needs must I suppose.

He may not have looked like the most formidable of villains, but he made a point of showing the world that size doesn’t matter and clocked up a fairly hefty body count in no time. With Andy continuing to evade his grasp and running out of batteries fast, he headed for the nearest docking station and here he met his soul mate Tiffany Ray. Even dolls fall in love right? I’ve got to come clean here as, should I have to stick my dick in plastic, then said plastic could do a lot worse than resembling Jennifer Tilly and a bizarre and not altogether healthy crush ensued. That said, while she looked like trouble, she proved to be just that as the old ball and chain had poor Chucky’s head spinning in no time. Bottom line was this: this little punk should have counted himself lucky just to break free from his cellophane as, in the history of monsters and villains, few are so pathetic and under-endowed as he. Moreover, he took the ill-informed Krueger route by spouting all manner of inane one-liners as he closed in for the kill and this just added to the annoyance.

Having said that, I’d still take Chucky over Ghostface any day of the calendar year as this long-faced lunatic had no special abilities to speak of and spent most of his time tripping over his own cloak. Granted, he knew his horror trivia and gave the teens of Woodsboro reason to divert any incoming calls to answering machine but it was a two-man job keeping up appearances and Billy and Stu simply weren’t up to the task. Comeback after comeback followed and, while the mask was consistent, the personnel changed every time. You call yourself a legitimate monster Ghostface? Don’t make me laugh, there wasn’t a store in state that didn’t sell that gormless mask, and at least Charles Lee Ray had his own identity. Jesus, even Deputy Dewey managed to get the better of you time and again and he was hardly Dirty Harry was he? Get to the back of the line and don’t even dare showing your face on a prestigious list like this again or I’ll give you something to scream about you fuck(s).

Things were worryingly quiet on the monster front for some time after he who I shall not name came along and made a mockery of good old-fashioned evil. It was high time that somebody else stepped into the ring and news traveled as far as the swamps of New Orleans where a new pretender to the throne was preparing to embark on a murderous rampage. Victor Crowley’s childhood was far less than charmed although parental neglect wasn’t the reason for his switch of allegiances. Indeed, his pops loved him dearly and protected his deformed son from the cruel taunts of other kids by home-schooling him and sparing him the mockery. Alas, you can only shelter your offspring for so long before they have to learn life’s lessons and, while Thomas was out for his evening stroll through the bayou, a group of mean little snot-goblins stumbled across the family home and decided to pull a prank.

Throwing fireworks at the house to scare poor Victor out of his ill-fitting skin, it all turned to shit as a blaze broke out, placing the fearful child in extreme jeopardy. Already not the most handsome of adolescents, the last thing he needed was first degree burns to compound his misery and, when daddy dearest returned to save the day and attempted to break down the door and rescue his beloved boy, Victor misheard his cries of “stand clear son” and received a faceful of hatchet for his troubles. Having counted himself responsible for the death of his only child, Thomas spent the remainder of his life feeling positively wretched before death by broken heart eventually released him from his perpetual torment. However, Victor wasn’t done yet by a long chalk and didn’t so much have a chip on his shoulder as a whole sack of potatoes. With his father no longer around to teach him the difference between right and wrong, he opted for the latter. Boy, did he opt for the latter.

You see, with the exception of fellow freak show Jason Voorhees, none of the other monsters or villains we have discussed have quite as sound reasoning to feel short-changed as Victor Crowley. Damn right he was embittered and, thus, he dedicated his after life to making sure that not a single one of his many victims were granted a painless departure. Michael Myers may have been a force to be reckoned with, but at least he knew where to draw the line. If you were particularly lucky, a quick strangulation and your suffering would be over whereas Victor wouldn’t be so willing to accept any tap-out. Breaking off limbs for fun, ripping out spinal columns and using them to bludgeon your twitching corpse, using your large intestine to skip rope with – all in a day’s work for Crowley. He didn’t stop at the trusty signature hatchet either and raided the tool shed for every last weapon he could get his filthy hands on. We’re talking industrial belt sander, garden shears, shovel, chainsaw so elongated that you could cut a whole rain forest down from the comfort of your hammock and, when he felt like getting more up close and personal, bare bloody hands. I’d say he earned his place on our list wouldn’t you?

Suddenly the floodgates were open again and, while the most distinguished monsters were now in our rearview mirrors, there were a few other wannabes worthy of note. One such new arrival was Chromeskull and, while details of what led him to embark on his gory rampage remain sketchy at best, there can be no denying his presence. 6″7 tall, sporting a polished to within an inch of its life alloy mask far more swanky than any of the competition, and with a shoulder-mounted camcorder to record each of his brutalizations, Chromeskull was nothing if not tooled up to the armpits. That’s not even the half of it as his serrated blade was a thing of sublime beauty and capable of carving through flesh as though it were rice paper. Motivation wasn’t important here as he wouldn’t let you get close enough to tell you his life story. What we did learn was that there was an organisation responsible for sponsoring his pursuits and they were ony too willing to provide him the necessary upgrades to take his treachery to a whole new level.

What could possibly be worse than succumbing to that lustrous hunting blade of his? Half a dozen identical blades bound together as a deadly throwing weapon and spring-loaded for additional skull-splitting punishment. Like Crowley before him, Chromeskull could never hope of achieving the same level of infamy as his past mentors but certainly didn’t come up short in the bloodletting department. Death most inhospitable was now in vogue and Marcus Miller was next in line to supply some suffering. This masked marauder had a list of grievances as long as the credits for Zulu and they all pointed directly back to the church of all places. That’s right, while they should have been teaching the orphan to read and write, those God-fearing folk responsible for his safe-keeping were abusing their position and wiring his fragile young mind in the most heinous manner imaginable. As a result, Marcus departed the orphanage with more deep-rooted issues than tissues to cry himself to sleep with and, while the clergy were clearly to blame, his sibling Audrey was at the very top of his hit list.

To be fair, she could hardly be held responsible for the atrocities that befell him each communion, but he never forgave her for escaping the church’s clutches and living a far more charmed existence in Foster care. While he was having his face dunked in holy water, Audrey was playing with her vast collection of dolls and fashioning mud pies like all the other kids in the school yard. This was inexcusable to Marcus and, after tracking his sibling down and dangling her from barbed-wire shackles, he explained as much. Unlike the majority of mindless misery merchants, Marcus was an eloquent speaker and wished for Audrey to be made aware of how much her evasive actions had hurt his feelings, leaving him to suffer such indignity. However, for as much as he considered her crimes as punishable by death, he did offer her an out in the form of embracing her bloodline once more and joining forces. Audrey wasn’t overly keen and managed to escape his clutches by the skin of her teeth, although Marcus had done what he set out to and the demon seed had now been planted.

 

Years later and things were starting to look up for Audrey Miller. Having fled New Jersey after her brush with death, she had settled in the sunnier climate of Los Angeles and put the whole sorry debacle behind her. She had new friends and a steady job at a local factory to make ends meet and fund her weekends on the town, and life appeared to be a bowl of glazed cherries. Alas, it wasn’t all soapy showers and short floral dresses as a certain unsavory co-worker took her polite smiles as an open invite to pound her ovaries and the tyrannical Robert took workplace harassment to new extremes as he engaged in the grossest of misconduct in the stock room, causing her past angst to come flooding back and encouraging she reconsider big brother’s proposal. Marcus had located her once again and, this time, she figured that if you can’t beat them, then you may as well join them. To assist his baby sister in the decision-making process, he brought along a rather unsanitary syringe backed up with the cruel blood that flowed through his veins and gave her a shot.

You can’t choose your family and this injection removed any lingering free-will from the equation, ordering Audrey to accept her tainted heritage and team up for some good old-fashioned stalk and slash shenanigans. The reunited pair procrastinated not in raising merry hell and made sure to make Robert pay a princely sum for his insubordination. His denouement would be required to be both slow and agonizing and, after hanging him in a meat locker to test his endurance some, it was time to crank things up a notch or two. A flurry of blows from her studded leather gloves seemed like the ideal sweetener and, with Marcus’s grimy fingers taking up residency in Robert’s nostrils, they dragged him kicking and screaming towards an open steam valve for phase two of his punishment. If he thought he was going to be granted a swift demise, then he was about to find himself shit out of luck as burning off his face was certainly gratifying but still not deemed quite sufficient discipline for what he put her through.

After plunging a blade into his abdomen and twisting it, chowing down on a little of his charred flesh and tenderizing him with a mallet, Audrey considered them even and was kind enough to plant a bloody kiss on his groin as the customary death rattles commenced. While it was absolutely no less than Robert deserved for his philandering ways and a pleasure to watch this sick fuck suffer, it was just great to see the estranged siblings back together again. The cruel blood was flowing through them both now and the thing about sickness is that it spreads without dalliance. Armed with enough intravenous supplies to construct their own cruel militia, Audrey and Marcus found the nearest yacht to commandeer, and sailed off into the big blue to do precisely that. I’ve always been a sucker for a happy ending. So there we have it. I believe all bases have been soundly covered and, should you choose to keep scrolling at the close of this article, then you’ll find a fair few waifs and strays that just missed this particular cut. Hold on just a minute, something’s not right here. I have a nagging suspicion that I’ve missed a trick and would hate to be considered neglectful.

Of course, how thoughtless of me – zombies. How could I possibly not provide a quick nod of reverence to perhaps the most persistent of all contemporary monsters? There’s no keeping a good festering cadaver down nowadays and the apocalypse has been in full flow for some time. Granted, it has all becoming a little over-saturated of late but, credit to the undead, they don’t look like returning to the top soil anytime soon so deserve kudos for long-running attendance if nothing else. I like to refer to them as George’s boys although women, children and even beavers are more than welcome to join their ranks. While locating a pulse may prove fruitless and brain activity is somewhat lackluster, there’s certainly no questioning their appetites. Bub drew the short straw when opting to become a vegetarian as no amount of five-a-day could make his skin any more lustrous but, while he chows down on his alfresco salad, the rest of the shuffling horde are all about the meat and consider fresh brains to be the most prestigious of all delicacies.

While many of our aforementioned monsters and villains have ulterior motives to their path of destruction and unresolved childhood trauma spurring them on, zombies are just woefully famished and we all have to eat sometime. I’ve never actually seen one take a dump which suggests one of two things to me: either there’s enough red meat packed into their colons to feed the population of a third world country or someone’s making a killing from colonic irrigation. Anyhoots, this brings us to a close Grueheads and I trust that we have learned something from this exercise. We may think we’re safe by avoiding Texas like the plague, negating to light those Jack-a-Lanterns, skipping summer camp or any haunted swamp tours, drinking can upon can of Red Bull to fend off the Sandman, sticking with our Rubix Cubes, growing out of dolls, taking our phones off the hook, choosing another career path than space travel, dodging any six-blade frisbees, and never accepting a blood transfusion from the Millers, but ultimately the walking dead will run out of finger foods and, when they do, there ain’t a damn thing mankind can do about it.

 

 

 

Truly, Really, Clearly, Sincerely,

 

 

Keeper of the Crimson Quill

Copyright: Crimson Quill: Savage Vault Enterprises 2016

 

 

More Beasts in The Cellar

 

 

Time to round-up the troops one more time for one final collective hurrah courtesy of Keeper’s parting gallery. You’ll find all the aforementioned skulking about in search of their snapshot moment and no doubt some sordid stragglers bitching about their lack of inclusion. I shit you not, there’s no pleasing some monsters and villains. It’s alright for them but I’m the poor bastard playing shepherd and you try rounding up such a rambunctious flock without inheriting a bitch of a migraine. That’s not even the half of it. I’ve been snogged by randy face huggers, had my cranium incessantly pounded by Grandpa’s hammer, my frontal lobe gnawed by the legion of the dead, been knee-deep in cattle dung whilst attempting to navigate the bayou, received no end of prank phone calls, been soundly defiled by the Cenobites, contracted gut rot from one too many energy drinks, lost my digits playing catch with Chromeskull, been injected with a poison and do you know what sucks the most? I’m still waiting for my hand job from Tiffany Ray. I hope your plastic perishes you fucking cock tease.