HEAD HILL

Hyperbole, hell!

WHY I DIDN'T SHOWER FOR 21 YEARS

I have nightmares where I’m trapped in a shower. The drain is plugged, and the water won’t stop pouring down on me. Water rises to my ankles, to my waist, and then over my head. The shower curtain turns to glass, and my screams turn to gargles. A dark figure presses its face against the glass on the other side, and it watches me. I plead, but it won’t let me out. I swallow water and flail helplessly in my glass coffin.

I wake up gagging.

I know where the nightmare came from - I never have to dig deep. The incident is never far from my subconscious. Finding it is easy.

Getting over it is not.

It was the summer of my 12th birthday when the Hudsons moved in across the street. Three people, one of them a really old woman. She was tiny, frail; skeletal almost. Thin white hair; faded, blue flowery dress - her head hung from her neck and it wobbled as the man pushed her up a makeshift wheelchair ramp into the house. At the time I couldn't figure out if she was alive or dead.

A few minutes later she appeared in an upstairs window, sitting in her wheelchair. She was directly facing my bedroom, and I cautiously peered out from behind my curtains. Her head was upright now, and she stared at me. Just stared, without moving her head an inch.

I closed my drapes.

For days she sat at the window. She watched the cars putter down our suburban road and gazed at the neighborhood kids scurrying through their yards. I never saw anyone else in the room; never saw her move from that wheelchair. At night I’d nervously peek through the crack in my drapes. Her silhouette was still in that window, lights off, staring out into the darkness at my bedroom. I couldn’t tell, but I knew she was watching me.

The stories about her cropped up pretty quick amongst my friends in the neighborhood. That she was a witch. That she was just a doll. That she was actually dead. But I knew she wasn’t dead. Sure, I never saw her move from that window, not once. And I never saw her head turn. But I felt her eyes move as they studied me. I could feel her watching me. All alone in my bedroom, in the middle of the night with my drapes firmly shut, I’d wake up and shudder. Her eyes were on me, I just knew it.

I began sleeping on the floor. The lower I was, the better. Maybe she couldn’t see me if I was on the floor.

I told my parents that the old woman across the street was creeping me out. I pleaded with them to talk to the Hudsons and ask them to move her to a room without a window. They laughed and told me to let her live out her twilight years in peace. She was just watching the street, they said, and that probably made her feel happy and feel younger.

“Are you just going to stick me in a windowless room when I’m an old lady?” my mom laughed. “Remind me to move in with your sister when I’m in a wheelchair!”

A week later there was some commotion at the Hudsons'. I watched from my bedroom window as the man ran out of the house and opened up the double-doors of his van. He jogged inside, and he reappeared minutes later pushing the old woman in her wheelchair down the ramp. She looked frailer than before. She couldn’t have weighed more than 70 pounds. Her head was flung to the side, resting on her right shoulder. Her body jostled in the wheelchair.

But her eyes never left me. Watched me the whole time.

The man picked her up and placed her in the car. He folded the wheelchair and stuffed it in the trunk. He quickly hopped into the driver’s seat, the younger woman pounced into the passenger seat, and the man put his foot to the pedal.

The old woman’s limp head still faced me. It bobbed up and down as the van reversed down the driveway. I studied her face. It was expressionless, emotionless. Her tongue slightly hung from the right side of her mouth. But her eyes were on mine, and they stayed on me.

The van accelerated down the street, and it was gone.

My parents heard the news that afternoon from other neighbors: the old woman’s condition was getting worse, and the Hudsons had taken her to some sort of a home. She wouldn’t be coming back. I went straight to my bedroom, and I looked across the street. I smiled. Her window was finally empty.

The Hudsons didn’t come back the next day. No van. That night I looked out towards the old woman’s window. There was no one there; no wheelchair. But the bedroom light was on. I remember telling my dad I thought it was strange, and he just shrugged and said, “Must be on some sort of timer or something.”

I woke up in the middle of the night and nervously peered out my bedroom window. That bedroom light was still on. It suddenly flicked off, and I ducked below my window frame. I slowly rose and looked out, expecting to see the silhouette of that tiny, skeletal being. I watched for ten minutes, pinching and straining my eyes. The lights quickly flickered on and then off again.

I slept on the floor again, clutching my pillow close.

I had a late baseball practice the next evening. When I got home, my house was empty. My parents were at my little sister’s softball game. I headed to the shower to rinse off.

About three minutes into my shower, I felt cold. The hot steam was escaping the bathroom somehow, which didn’t make sense because I had shut the door. I wiped the shampoo from my eyes, turned my head, and I heard a strange noise that would haunt me in nightmares for years: the metal rings of the shower curtain being dragged across the shower rod. Someone was slowly opening the curtain.

The shampoo stung my eyes, and through the stinging I saw a dark figure behind the curtain. Long, pale, bony fingers gripped the curtain as it slowly opened. I instinctively backed up in the shower, and the curtain opened completely.

There stood the old woman. I must have only looked at her for one, maybe two seconds, but at that moment, time stood still. All these years later I can still draw you a vivid picture of the horrifying image in front of me. Disheveled white hair, crazy in her eyes, bones jutting out from under her stretched skin, stark naked. Blotchy skin, warts all over her body, skinny breasts hanging to her waist. Hair where I didn’t know people could grow hair.

She smiled grotesquely, and I felt the shower tile against my back and the hot water pound my face. In her other hand, the old woman held a letter opener.

“August,” she mumbled. “August, August, August.”

I leaped past her, knocking her tiny body to the floor. I ran downstairs, naked and sopping wet. In my panic I somehow remembered I was nude, and I yanked a pair of shorts out of the hamper in the laundry room, sending the hamper crashing to the floor. I high-tailed it on foot down the street, eventually winding up at my friend’s house.

When the police arrived they found the old woman, crumpled to a heap in the bathroom. The shower was still running. The policemen were all really nice to me, admiring me for my bravery. I told them what she said to me - “August” - and asked if they knew what she could have meant.

“It will be August in a few days,” one of them shrugged. “And you can never fully understand old and crazy, son.”

The Hudsons only came to our street once more to retrieve their stuff. The “For Sale” sign was up in days. My mom told me they couldn’t face the neighbors for what happened. Apparently they had taken the old woman - the man’s mother - to a special home downstate. Somehow, someway, the woman managed to escape the home and caught a bus back to our town. It never quite made sense to me - she was so old, so frail, so helpless. She could barely move those weeks she lived in that house. How had she managed to travel hundreds of miles on her own?

Anyway, you can imagine what this did to me. I didn’t shower for 21 years. I took baths, which I suppose aren’t that different - it’s still a tub, and it involves hot, soapy water. But a shower, with its closed curtain, water peppering the tub floor and steam climbing the walls - you get lost inside your own head in the shower. Thoughts consume you, and it feels so utterly safe. For a few minutes, you are alone from the world. It’s your own private, misty kingdom.

But that’s what makes the shower dangerous - you’re enclosed, vulnerable, naked.

You’re exposed.

I talked to people about it - my parents, a shrink - but mainly I tried to push the incident deep down into places where I couldn’t find it. I didn’t talk about it with anyone since I was a kid - life carried on. Besides the baths, I was pretty normal.

A few months ago, something inside me clicked. I felt the urge to re-examine the incident; it was almost like a voice in my head was telling me to do it. My head wanted closure.

I spent hours online one night, trying to track down any information on the Hudsons and the old woman. I finally found what I was looking for - an obituary for the old woman. She had died four years ago. Somehow that walking skeleton hadn’t checked out for another 15 years. The obituary photo was a black-and-white picture from when she was a young woman - it was a photo of her and her deceased husband on their wedding day.

His name was August.

And he looked exactly like me.

I closed the browser and stared at my computer desktop for ten minutes. It finally made more sense: why she called me August. Why she was obsessed with watching me. Maybe she used to write letters to her husband, and that’s why she was clutching the letter opener that night.

For a small moment, I felt a little better. Things always feel better when they make more sense.

“Honey, is everything okay?” It was my wife.

“I think so,” I said.

I took the first shower I had taken in years that night. I didn’t even jump when the curtain rungs dragged across the shower rod and my wife entered. But as she embraced me under the hot water, one question wouldn’t leave my head:

How come the young woman in that wedding photo looks exactly like my wife?

Story source.

HOLY SHIT!

SHITTY FLICKS: ZOMBIE NATION

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Ulli Lommel is the guy at the party with a length of toilet paper stuck to his shoe, and he's trekking it around behind him like a limp tail, in between trips to the fish tank and the bean dip. Other party goers laugh, getting a kick out of it, and for the rest of the night, no one can take him seriously. Yet, despite this, he keeps getting invited to parties.

This is a perfect allegory for Ulli Lommel’s career. He has never, ever, ever made a good film. Not ever. And this isn’t one of those, “well that’s just your opinion, man” situations. If there was a big book called Opinions That Are Actually Facts, there would be an entire chapter called “Ulli Lommel’s Films Are Literally Shit.”

"Okay, this time, YOU ring the gong,
and I'LL scream MORTAL KOMBAT."

However, there is no denying that the guy is still filling Redbox machines and Netflix servers with his nonsense. He says "action!" and his cameras record stuff and suddenly there are studios out there who want to distribute it. I've seen enough Ulli Lommel films to know that if he can do it, anyone can.

Why not get started with this handy, no-effort recipe?

Ingredients

• 10-15 "actors" picked randomly from a variety of high school and community college drama programs (preferably ones dismissed for utter lack of talent)
• 1 part German wooden lead to stumble through English dialogue
• 1 abandoned warehouse to store all sets (police station with exposed sewage pipes clearly indicating it is shot in boiler room; apartment that looks like Ikea show room; furniture store whose door remains open all times of day despite lack of presence of staff or security team)
• 1/4 gallon of white paint (will not be enough to paint walls within camera range in said warehouse)
• 1 part crew man's accidental and blatant reflection in mirror
• 1 part stolen musical piece from The Exorcist (to be repeatedly used)
• Multiple parts flashback of fat bald man getting spanked
• 1 part clone of Parker Posey (for the mom role)
• 1 part asinine idea that, hey, since people liked Fight Club, let's have a scene where two men fistfight and fall into strategically placed cardboard boxes while surrounding friends and family shout encouragement, only never to mention the scene again

The boys were taken aback by Ulli's raucous laughter
after asking which color the latest script rewrite was in.

•  1/4 teaspoon of black make-up (apply generously; this will encompass ANY/ALL zombie make-up)
• Several parts weird, mood-breaking techno
• 2 cameras; one digital that shoots in good quality, one amateur home video camera that is glaring opposite the previous
• 3 parts lighting equipment to be blatantly captured in shot in every police station scene
• 1 part terribly out of place, unnoticed, non-utilized gong, placed in very fake police station
• 0 parts script supervisor
• 1 part audacity to use Marathon Man homage (in nonsensical way)
• 1 part random businessman that waits out in middle of woods to make business deals via cell phone, only to become fodder for zombie girls (who then steal car)
• 1 part mechanic who takes out penis behind door as zombie girls approach
• 1 part fake bloody penis
• 1 part hope that you won't realize Ulli didn't bother to write out the hero who disappears halfway through the movie due to real-life hospital visit
• 6 parts zombie girls to wear said black make-up under eyes up with no other make-up effects to be seen (except for continuity-be-damned close ups in mirrors)
• Multiple parts suspension of disbelief (cop takes offending woman to warehouse, partner waits outside, cop comes back out sans woman but with giant body-sized duffel bag, partner is not suspicious)
• 1 part completely ludicrous ending
• 0 parts logic

Directions

1. Take all said ingredients and throw haphazardly against wall.
2. Hope it sticks.
3. Look in awe at how movies literally about nothing can be made and sold for mass consumption.
4. Ingest generous portion, swallow with grimace as Ulli Lommel rips money from your pockets and laughs maniacally.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

PESTA

Pesta is the personification of Black Death in Norwegian folklore. She would be dressed up in all black when she visited farms, either holding a broom or a rake. If she was holding a broom then everyone on the farm would die. If she was holding a rake, then some would survive to tell her tale.

PROJECT SCISSORS: “NIGHTCRY”

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

PROJECT SCISSORS: “NIGHTCRY” 

28TH January 2015

Tokyo, Japan:

NightCry, the eagerly anticipated “horror adventure game” initially announced as Project Scissors, is coming to Kickstarter!

Inspired by overwhelming feedback from fans the world over, the NightCry team have unanimously decided to create a PC version of the ultimate horror game and are asking worldwide fans for their support in making it happen via the Project Scissors: NightCry Kickstarter campaign.

This highly anticipated game is currently under development at Nude Maker Inc., directed by Hifumi Kono (Director of “Clock Tower”, “Infinite Space”, and “Steel Battalion”) and co-created by Takashi Shimizu (Director of “Ju-On”, and “The Grudge”), NightCry was initially announced at the 2014 Tokyo Game Show as being for mobile platforms and the PlayStation® Vita.

In the game, players are invited aboard a cruise ship, where an evil presence has begun stalking and killing both guests and crew alike, resulting in the ship being lost at sea. As the player, you are unarmed and unprepared to fight back against the horrible evil that stalks you. All you can do is run and hide while searching for clues that might lead to your survival...

As a live action companion piece designed to dramatically expand upon the unique world and startling vision of NightCry, project co-creator Takashi Shimizu has created a short film that reveals another side of this dark universe and it’s environs.

You can view this short film and learn more about the Project Scissors: NightCry Kickstarter campaign from the following links:

Shimizu’s NightCry Short Film: http://youtu.be/QL77DK68Q_U


Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playism/project-scissors-nightcry 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ProjectScissors

In addition to working with Takashi Shimizu, Hifumi Kono has engaged a wealth of incredible luminaries from the Japanese entertainment industry, including Kiyoshi Arai (Concept Art, Final Fantasy XII, XIV), Masahiro Ito (Creature Designer, Silent Hill series), and Nobuko Toda (Composer, Metal Gear Solid series, Halo 4 & 5). And additionally, famed CG animation director Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed series, Halo Legends) will be serving as creative advisor.

Also, for the first time since the game’s initial announcement, we’re happy to reveal that Michiru Yamane (Composer, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) has joined the team to collaborate on the soundtrack.

Even though Yamane and Toda have a shared history at Konami Digital Entertainment - NightCry is their very first collaboration together.

With the invaluable help of Kickstarter backers the NightCry team hope to create a definitive version of the game for PC, with additional platforms being considered, if the crowd funding campaign exceeds all expectations.

Official website: http://www.night-cry.com


Official EN Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Night_Scissors

Contact: Joseph Chou – (81) 90 3915 4351

Email: joseph@sola-digital.com