(TagliaMani illustration via 50Watts)

(Unedited copy of an expose of Dean Castoriadis, owner of The Cube Club, the Gazzette, 19^th of XXXXXX, 20XX).

There is much to digest in the Coroner report for the ‘Disco Bloodbath’ case. The analysis of DNA suggests at least 35 victims. The causes of death include lacerations, stabbing, bludgeoning, ripping and shredding. Partial burns in some cases, from extreme heat and acid. Internal explosion of organs provoked by an unexplained agent. A true carnival of gore.

And no trace of Dean Castoriadis, the infamous owner of the Cube.

What do we know about Castoriadis? Not much. He appeared from nowhere three years ago. Tall, slender and darkly handsome, dressed in black, a signature silver amulet always hanging from his pale neck, he set up the Cube with backing from some unnamed investors. Over his tenure there he became a nightlife legend. He was also the target of several police investigation concerning drug trafficking, depravity and disappearances at the club, but he always came clean.

According to his friends (at least those who survived the ‘Disco Bloodbath’), although he didn’t like to talk about his life, he made occasional references to having lived in the West Coast, Europe and the Middle East. The only evidence about his time in these places is this strange letter that we received from San Francisco last Monday:

“ I was watching the news when I saw the photo of Dean Haxtur on the screen. It was in relation to the murders at the Cube Club in your city. The reporter called him Castoriades, but when I met him in San Francisco in the 1970s, he was Haxtur. He hasn’t aged much since I last saw him. If anything he looks younger. He was a big player in the occult and new age scene that emerged after the hippie movement. Very charismatic, very intense, with a lot to say about the transformational potential of tapping into the id through spiritual exercises. A wolf amongst lambs.

A small circle coalesced around him. My girlfriend was part of it. They used to meet once a week in Haxtur’s white manor in Nob Hill. She talked about crossing gates through meditation, about accessing a powerful reservoir of energy hidden inside her genetic memory below the apparent rock bottom of her subconscious. She did cross some gates, she did tap some pools, she was changed.

She had been too young to be a full-blown flower-child, so she wasn’t too f**ked up by the acid. She was sweet and down to earth. But that changed.  She seemed to see things that weren’t there. We would be having breakfast in the sun, and she would suddenly go quiet, and stare in front of her with a weird intensity. As if a sheet of an odd colour had sheathed her eyes, as if a swarm of insects was crawling over our table, and she was keeping tabs on their transit. Sometimes she had that curious, somewhat amused look in her eyes when she stared at me.

Then came the physical changes. She lost weight, her face became pale, her jaw started clenching in a ravenous grin. Later, I noticed a spot in her back, a dark abrasion. She said she had burnt herself with a candle at one of the meetings. She began wearing a t-shirt when she came to bed. She hid her back from me. One morning, she got out from the shower while I was in bed, and I saw her reflected in the mirror. She must have thought I was asleep. I was half asleep. I’m not sure what I saw. The mark had spread across her back. I used to work in a hospital. I had never seen anything like that. I blinked. I think I saw it pulse, crawl.

I was planning to confront her in the evening when she came back from her meeting. She never came back. I received a note from her bidding me farewell. No explanations, a big secret lurking unacknowledged under her cold words of departure.

I never saw her again, or maybe I did. One night while I was walking through Alamo Park, I saw a lonely figure standing there, a tramp, bloated and covered in rags like a forlorn scarecrow, a scarf over its face, it stood there surrounded by snarling stray dogs, I looked at it, and I saw those eyes, the same mocking eyes, a glimmer of recognition, also desperation. And then a thousand dark shadows exploded into the night sky like liquid ravens. I ran away, I didn’t look back.

A few months later, there was a scandal surrounding the Nob Hill property t were Haxtur’s group used to meet before he left town. Personnel at the Sanitation department dug up the cellar because of a foul stench. They found several deformed skeletons buried there. When they tested them, they couldn’t establish their age. They couldn’t even determine if they were human.

I saw a photo of one of the skulls they had found. There was a horrible familiarity. It was that grin, that dreadful, soul starved grin! God have mercy on her soul, that was her final transformation!

Everyone will surely know by now that The Haxan Cloak is seriously hot shit. We had the privilege of watching his show at the majestic Outer Church a couple of weeks ago, and it blew us away. Rather, it sucked us in into a vortex which is Edgar Allan Poe Northern Sea dirge and modern composition drone, also the dark cave where pre-human tribes developed their first myths, which in a barely evolved form haunt us to this day. Like the Cave of Forgotten Dreams, if directed by Lucio Fulci.

The Haxan Cloak – The Fall

As included in the S/T album out in Aurora Borealis.

(Log of the CCTV footage at the Cube Club, First of XXXXXX of 20XX, 3.30am-4.10am)

3.30.23 – Grainy zoetrope of people in the dancefloor, the usual transit in the toilets. It eerily resembles a video from within an ant hive.

3.45.41 – Augment that shot. Zoom in at the back, in the shadows of the DJ booth. A pale oval face floating in the primal darkness, black lips maybe smirking. It’s hard to tell at this resolution. That is the DJ, do we have an id on the DJ? I think he’s wearing a mask.

3.46.02 – It’s not a mask. He just opened his mouth. That is a big mouth. What is he doing? He is vomiting a dark liquid. Impossible to tell what it is. Could it be blood? It looks like oil! No one seems to have noticed in the dancefloor. They are still dancing.

3.46.12 – A change of mood. Everyone has stopped dancing, they look around them and at each other, as if some invisible hunter was circling them, closing in for the kill. Shame we don’t have an audio feed for this. They are talking. Their body language is worried, increasingly fearful.

3.47.02 – Just as they start moving out of the dancefloor, an explosion of light blinding like a magnesium flare, then darkness. You can imagine the screams.

3.47.08 – Blurred snapshots generated by a high frequency strobe. Are they dancing again? There is something odd about their movement. Insectoid. Fluid. Hold on there, look at that blade. Do we have a knife?

3.47.10 –I can’t tell whether it is a knife or someone’s arm. Are these the same people? That girl there is definitely getting stabbed. There is someone on the floor there, they are trampling him.

3.47.15 – It is impossible to tell them apart from each other, what is that prehensile thing flailing blindly in the middle of the dancefloor, it looks like a large tail or a tentacle. Do we have an id on the perp?

3.47.20 – There are many. They all seem to be brandishing one of those strange knives. I think they are attacking each other. I think they are the people that were at the club before. But they have changed. Too many limbs. Look at their faces, oh god, their faces.

3.49.30 – Zoom in at the back. The DJ is definitely smiling that horrible smile of his. There is something smug about him, a priest celebrating a solemn ceremony.

3.50.52 – The strobe reaches fever pitch, the crowd in the dancefloor has become an indistinct mass, protruding a multitude of tendrils trashing wildly like an impossible amoeba. I can’t believe this is happening.

3.57.11 – The strobe slows down, everything is quiet now, the dancefloor is covered in offal, twitching spasmodically. The walls are smeared with blood. Hold on, who is that?

3.59.02 – Someone’s alive! Got an id on Dean Castoriadis. He is walking towards the booth, the DJ is still there.

4.02.05 – They are both in there. Staring at the carnage below.

4.05.45 – A light behind them. A door opening? I didn’t know the club had an exit there.

4.07.12 –It doesn’t. This doesn’t make any sense. Whatever it is, they have gone through it, they are gone.

AIDS Wolf – Please Hold the Line

AIDS Wolf are the propeller for an experimental fixed wing jet developed by a cadre of Tourette’s syndrome afflicted Lockheed engineers. It was never launched in the market because it tore passenger’s faces upon take off. The evidence suggests that some primitive variants of this propeller have been developed by hobbyists using stole schemata, and installed in the floor of underground nightclubs. When activated, they make the cityscape blink, and the freaks fly in a whirlwind witch dance somewhere in between the Wizard of Oz and the Evil Dead.

Please Hold the Line is included in Ma vie banale avant-garde, which you should order from Lovepump. Watch the video here.

 

Epilogue -
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