Post by altered carbon on May 6, 2007 10:08:27 GMT -5
What can I say about House of Leaves? It's frightening, it's suspenseful... it's a masterpiece. Here's an excerpt from Chapter IV, in which one of the main characters, Johnny Truant, gets an unexpected scare at a tattoo parlor.
These days, I'm an apprentice at a tattoo shop on Sunset. I answer phones, schedule consultations and clean up. Any idiot could handle it. In fact the job's reserved for idiots. This afternoon though, how do I explain it?, something's really off. I'm off. I can't do a f**king thing. I just keep staring at all the ink we have, that wild variety of color, everything form rootbeer, midnight blue and cochineal to mauve, light doe, lilac, south sea green, maize, even pelican black, all lined up in these little plastic caps, like tiny transparent thimbles - and needles too, my eyes catching on all those carefully perserved points and we have hundreds, mostly #12 sharps, many singles, though plenty in two, three, four, five, six and seven needle groups, even a fourteen round shader.
It depends on what you need.
I don't know what I need but for no apparent reason I'm going terribly south. Nothing has happened, absolutely nothing, and I'm still having problems breathing. The air in the Shop is admittedly thick with the steady smell of sweat, isopropyl alcohol, Benz-all, all that solution for the ultrasonic cleaner, even solder and flux, but that's not it either.
Of course no one notices. My boss, a retinue of his friends, some new inductee who's just put down $150 for a rose, keep up the chatter, pretty loud chatter too, though never quite enough to drown out the most important sound of all: the single, insistent buzz of the original "J" tattoo machine logging yet another hundred stabs a minute in the dimple of some chunky ass.
I get a glass of water. I walk out into the hallway. That's a mistake. I should have stayed near people. The comfort of company and all that. Instead I'm alone, running through a quick mental check list: food poisoning? (stomach's fine) withdrawals? (haven't been on a gak or Ecstasy diet for several months, and while I didn't smoke any pot this morning - my usual ritual - I know THC doesn't create any lasting physical dependencies). And out of the be-f**king-lue, everything gets substantially darker. Not pitch black mind you. Not even power failure black. More like a cloud passing over the sun. Make that a storm. Though there is no storm. It's a bright day and anyway I'm inside.
I wish that had been all. Just a slight decrease in illumination and a little breathing difficulty. Could still blame that on a blown fuse or some aberrant drug related flashback. But then my nostrils flare with the scent of something bitter & fowl, something inhuman, reeking with so much rot & years, telling me in the language of nausea that I'm not alone.
Something's behind me.
Of course, I deny it.
It's impossible to deny.
I wanna puke.
To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don't let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now image just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can't see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact that you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That's where it is. Right at this moment. But don't look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead and take an even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to image how fast it will happen, how hard it's gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails?, don't worry, that particular detail doesn't matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms - you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book - you won't have time to even scream.
Don't look.
I didn't.
Of course I looked.
I looked so f**king fast I should have ended up wearing one of the neck braces for whiplash.
These days, I'm an apprentice at a tattoo shop on Sunset. I answer phones, schedule consultations and clean up. Any idiot could handle it. In fact the job's reserved for idiots. This afternoon though, how do I explain it?, something's really off. I'm off. I can't do a f**king thing. I just keep staring at all the ink we have, that wild variety of color, everything form rootbeer, midnight blue and cochineal to mauve, light doe, lilac, south sea green, maize, even pelican black, all lined up in these little plastic caps, like tiny transparent thimbles - and needles too, my eyes catching on all those carefully perserved points and we have hundreds, mostly #12 sharps, many singles, though plenty in two, three, four, five, six and seven needle groups, even a fourteen round shader.
It depends on what you need.
I don't know what I need but for no apparent reason I'm going terribly south. Nothing has happened, absolutely nothing, and I'm still having problems breathing. The air in the Shop is admittedly thick with the steady smell of sweat, isopropyl alcohol, Benz-all, all that solution for the ultrasonic cleaner, even solder and flux, but that's not it either.
Of course no one notices. My boss, a retinue of his friends, some new inductee who's just put down $150 for a rose, keep up the chatter, pretty loud chatter too, though never quite enough to drown out the most important sound of all: the single, insistent buzz of the original "J" tattoo machine logging yet another hundred stabs a minute in the dimple of some chunky ass.
I get a glass of water. I walk out into the hallway. That's a mistake. I should have stayed near people. The comfort of company and all that. Instead I'm alone, running through a quick mental check list: food poisoning? (stomach's fine) withdrawals? (haven't been on a gak or Ecstasy diet for several months, and while I didn't smoke any pot this morning - my usual ritual - I know THC doesn't create any lasting physical dependencies). And out of the be-f**king-lue, everything gets substantially darker. Not pitch black mind you. Not even power failure black. More like a cloud passing over the sun. Make that a storm. Though there is no storm. It's a bright day and anyway I'm inside.
I wish that had been all. Just a slight decrease in illumination and a little breathing difficulty. Could still blame that on a blown fuse or some aberrant drug related flashback. But then my nostrils flare with the scent of something bitter & fowl, something inhuman, reeking with so much rot & years, telling me in the language of nausea that I'm not alone.
Something's behind me.
Of course, I deny it.
It's impossible to deny.
I wanna puke.
To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don't let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now image just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can't see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact that you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That's where it is. Right at this moment. But don't look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead and take an even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to image how fast it will happen, how hard it's gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails?, don't worry, that particular detail doesn't matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms - you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book - you won't have time to even scream.
Don't look.
I didn't.
Of course I looked.
I looked so f**king fast I should have ended up wearing one of the neck braces for whiplash.