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[A very very very very extremely incredibly loose riff on the film [which was terrible]]

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‘What are you doing…you absolute clump?’

There was no need to add anything else, but Roxanne threw the sponge crab toy at the TV anyway. Then picked it back up and shrieked into its gormless crabby face as the final girl, trapped in the voodoo trance of whichever hack dribbled out this farce, bent down to unmask the loon who’d spent the last twenty minutes trying to chop her labia off.

‘He’s not dead, pokkai fuck.’

A trembling hand moved onto the killer’s neck, pulling at the fringes of the Asa Vajda mask…

‘The street, it’s right there…’

…paused as the killer coughed up blood…

‘…run, move, god’s fucking sa-…’

…then grabbed the hatchet and started chopping.

‘Ah…okay. You’re killing him. Good.’ Roxanne patted the crab toy, nodded approvingly at the glowing rectangle opposite. ‘Not a pokkai fuck after all. Still shit writing though.’

Beyond the couch, the sound of keys in the front door, followed by a whine of, ‘like the Gobi fucking Desert out there’ as the lights came on and broke the darkness.

‘Back already?’ replied Roxanne, muting the sudden violin screech on screen, then forcing herself up into a more comfortable position so Megan wouldn’t scold her about bad posture for the five hundredth night in a row.

‘Could be all this shit I’m carrying. And, no, it’s not more frozen shrimp, before you start moaning.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

Megan put the bag down on the floor, grabbed a tissue and gave her forehead a quick wipe. Then her armpits. Then [with a muffled, ‘sorry, Jesus’] her snatch. Satisfied, she dived back down again and started pulling out her latest haul of psycho-trash.

‘What is all this?’ asked Roxanne, picking up each piece as it landed.

‘That one…is the Munich Manual…abridged. This is a Mary Sidney pic. The purple rocks are something to do with geomancy, according to the shop guy, and this one here…’

‘Shop guy?’

‘…is Prince Tab’s key to Hell.’ She paused, using one hand to rotate a box that looked like a plastic toy version of the prop from Hellraiser III. ‘The guy running the pop-up relics shop I randomly came across just now. Open for one night only, apparently.’

‘And he sold you all this?’

‘Yeah, as in he took most of my money. Didn’t push me or anything though. In fact, he warned me specifically not to get this box, said it might aggravate satanic forces.’

‘Err…’

‘But I know you like that kind of stuff, so…here you go. An early Halloween present.’

‘It’s for me?’

‘To spark ideas for that novella thing you’re pretending to write. Or to be used as an ashtray, whichever works best. Just don’t open it when I’m around, okay?’

Roxanne muttered a weak okay, then took the box, running a nail down one of the trench lines.

‘God, eleven already. I’m gonna go shower then slide straight into Odin sleep. Gotta leave early tomorrow. Margaret wants to know about Moldovan trade regulations and obviously can’t be bothered looking it up herself, so…all on me again.’

‘Yeah…’

‘Anyway, have fun with your new toy.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Grabbing another tissue, Megan wiped her whole face this time, picked up the probably-not-authentic Munich Manual and headed off towards the bathroom.

‘Prince Tab’s key to Hell…’ Roxanne whispered, stopping her nail, ‘…in a pop-up relic shop…popping up…right into my paw.’ On the table, a second book Megan must’ve sneaked on there, a chunky tome, coated in clearly artificial human skin. ‘Could take that, I suppose…book of the dead, box of the dead…icon one or icon two…hmm, what do you think, Boxy?’ She tilted the cube, frowning at the response. ‘Yeah, me neither.’

+

A few hours later, after falling asleep somewhere in the labyrinth section of Hellraiser II, Roxanne woke to a thumping noise from the flat above.

What was that, wrestling?

Furniture shift?

An over-sized water melon?

Feeling something solid, she looked down and saw not her phone but the Hell box nestled snugly in her left hand. No, not nestled, clutched, as if she’d pinned it into her own palm with an invisible wire nail.

Wah, sleeping with a box that opens Hell?

Insane, if she actually believed any of that Black Sunday shit. Which she didn’t. And even if she did, it wouldn’t be the Hell that the zealots talked about, or the Hell that the Satanists pined for, it would be a blank, moon-like place with discordant flute music playing on loop in the-

She yawned, breaking up her own line of philosophical enquiry.

Ah, there is no Hell, it’s ludicrous. As is this quaint, little box. Key to the Underworld? With a side order of Zolpidem maybe, plus a giant cup of-

Yawning again, she scraped a finger down the edge of one of the trenches…then flinched as the skin caught on the plastic-metal…aluminium…whatever this thing was made of.

‘God,’ she hissed, wiping off the tiny dribble of blood that had sneaked out. ‘Who sanded you? A drunk Alsatian?’

The box answered by trembling in her palm…

‘What the-’

..then, without fanfare or firework, blitzed out a gargantuan shower of black hole silhouette in all directions, absorbing most of Roxanne’s bedroom instantly and replacing it with…a passage of some sort…or the shadowy simulacrum of one…right where her door used to be.

You’re dreaming, said a voice just east of nowhere, and Roxanne muttered the phrase back to herself as her dream legs dropped to the carpet and her dream body proceeded at herbivore pace towards the dream bael trees visible in the near distance, dream moonlight glitching off their dream leaves.

Glancing back at the one thing still visible, the writing desk, she made a silent promise: I’ll come back soon…wake up, I mean…and when I do, there will be ideas.

Usable ideas.

Darker and more deranged than anything those shitty giallo directors ever-

She blinked, taking in the eerie silhouette that had somehow crept up on her, possibly a house.

No, not a house, a mansion, Corman-esque, with a pale green light buffering in one of the downstairs windows and…a keyboard melody…coming from somewhere inside.

Ah, wait…I know that song.

The Fulci film, House of Clocks…quite a good tune.

But-

‘Turn back now,’ said a voice nearby, possibly elderly.

She turned, not back but sideways, catching sight of the old man in a puritan’s hat who was already a few yards past her.

‘…before it’s too late.’

‘Too late for-…’ she started but the pensioner was fast, shifting off the path and into shadows between shadows that were probably the trunks of the bael trees.

In the sky above, thunder rumbled.

Then, possibly on cue, smoke started coasting out from the foliage, dense smoke, the type that had to have come from a smoke machine, a smoke machine built and operated by the same thing that was playing the keyboard, something her subconscious had created to slowly terrify her.

Or perhaps it was something else?

The musika continued, as did the smoke.

Throwing a sack over the shrill voice inside yelling RUN, YOU CLUMP, Roxanne picked up a small twig and walked slowly down the path towards the mansion front door, humming along to the giallo electronica as she went.

Just a dream, I’m in control, no threat, no horror.

Well, no tangible horror, at least. In a Bavan way, the mansion did look ominous, but also oddly artificial, a kind of drained relic from a past film where actresses merely pretended to die, and the creaking noise it produced as she used the tip of the twig to nudge open the door didn’t make her flinch at all because, actually, this was nothing but a visceral dream with suggestive background music, and the group of college girls in occult robes dead ahead were just messing around with that comically-large textbook, and the words they were chanting barely even qualified as Latin, let alone an ancient spell to summon up a murderous demon from the depths of the Acheron or wherever.

But then there was a cracking noise in one of the windows – a visceral crack – forcing the fear centre of her brain to kick in. Hold out your palm and stab it with a clean nail, it said.

Shaking a little, she did as she was told, using the twig instead.

A slight jolt of pain.

‘Hey, if you’re gonna join in…’ said one of the college girls nearby, taking a break from their vaudeville Latin.

Roxanne pointed the twig forward, shivering out of pure reflex.

‘Grab a robe, dummy.’

‘This isn’t a dream,’ she mumbled, shifting the token weapon around the circle until it rested on the one who had spoken to her.

‘No, it’s wish fulfilment,’ the bleach-haired girl replied, pulling down the hood of her robe. ‘We clean the mansion, summon the demon, they thank us for it, we get two wishes each. Three, if you believe the Trachea version of the manual.’

‘Torchia,’ corrected the girl next to her, holding up the black book with a pentagram on its cover.

‘But you’ve gotta lose the pyjamas and put on a robe first, otherwise they might get pissed off. Get it?’

Roxanne shook her head, started backing off towards an open doorway that she could see out of the corner of her eye.

‘Ah, fine, edge backwards, whatever. More wishes for the rest of us.’

‘No,’ Roxanne muttered, holding out the twig again as the four college girls returned to shlock Latin and, a few seconds later, the triangle they’d painted on the floor began to tremble.

Before anyone could say not an earthquake, the wood erupted, releasing a pale green mist that funnelled upwards to the ceiling, taking the skin of each bimbo groupie along with it…then raining their blood back down as an encore.

Vomiting was the expected response.

Retching a contingency.

Roxanne’s insides settled on the latter as slightly wobbly legs and a maelstrom brain took her down the corridor with peeling paint on its walls, through the door-less doorway and into a dimly-lit car park that she vaguely recognised from somewhere.

Her old housing estate?

A shopping mall?

She wasn’t certain, and the cars didn’t help much either, the whole garage appearing grey and muted, unlike the new song that had materialised in the shadows, the Morricone piece from Something of the Black Tarantula, discordant and sinister, not good at all, and just as she was about to start looking for an exit, the picture of the college girls being flayed shot back into her brain and then it was retching time again, flanked by lights that were now flickering and…a loose piece of wiring that came out of nowhere…tripping her slapstick into the rear wheel of a nearby car.

God, this can’t be real, she told herself, fingernails digging into the tyre.

Must be a dream.

A soon-to-end, insanely visceral, wake-me-the-fuck-up now dream.

Not connected to the Hell box at all.

No way.

Cos that would be-

Behind her, from the doorway that still wasn’t closed, a wailing noise, slowly tuning itself into a human-like cry.

‘Run, run, run, fucking run,’ she shout-whispered at her own legs, not moving an inch from the safety of the wheel.

No, it was impossible.

There were no visible exits.

All the cars were grey, dead-looking, totally unusable.

Unless…

She blinked, momentarily confused by the set of car keys now laying on the concrete by her feet. And the bright red car that she was attached to. With a licence plate that said GET IN AND DRIVE YOU CLUMP.

Indulging in a quick wah, where did this come from, Roxanne grabbed the keys and edged round the driver’s side of the car.

There would be a noise when she put the key in the lock, and an even bigger one when she started the engine, but…the demon appeared to be pretty quiet now…in fact, there weren’t any wailing sounds or skin requests at all. And the Black Tarantula tune…had reduced itself to a kind of faint hum.

It’s over then?

The dream-scape moved on?

Dipping her whole mass down on to the concrete, she looked past the belly of the car and had no choice but to yell, ‘WAH!’ as she saw a flaking green mess staring back at her, weirdly animated.

‘I see you, wah,’ the demon cartoon hissed, laughing as its own echo sailed back.

Keys, keys, KEYS, shrieked Roxanne inside, clawing her way up the car door and shoving the key into the handle. Then the lock. Then dropping it on the ground as her hand started to shiver uncontrollably.

‘Fucking…animated…’

She collapsed, one hand fumbling for the keys, the other raised awkwardly as footsteps approached from behind. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t freeze. That would be a humiliating way to be murdered. Much better to flail about erratically.

‘What you doing down there, Pasolini?’

‘Die, you fucking were-dog,’ shouted Roxanne, turning like a dervish and stabbing the keys forward at the luminous green animation from Hell.

No, wait…not an animation.

Something brunette and human-looking, with a very familiar scowl and [thankfully] fast reflexes.

‘Wah, are you trying to cut me or something?’

‘Megan. God, get down, run.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Cartoon demon…over there…chasing…wants my skin.’

Megan folded both hands together, acting out a begging gesture. ‘Okay, Zardoz. How about we get you home?’

‘No, you don’t understand. The box…key to Hell…I opened it and…’

‘Key to what?’

‘…there was a tunnel. No, the box…the Hellraiser thing. You gave it to me, earlier.’

Megan stared down at her flatmate, at the key still clutched in her right hand, at the nightie hanging off one shoulder, at the exposed nipple, and gave out a soft yeah in response. ‘Let’s find an exit, shall we?’

‘Exit?’

‘You go that way, down there. I’ll go into the darker part. Meet back here in ten minutes.’

‘No…’

‘It’s the fastest way. Just holler if you find something.’

‘And scream if I’m getting stabbed to death? Fuck that.’ Roxanne pulled herself up and adjusted her grip on the keys [but not the loose nightie strap]. ‘There’s still a demon around here some-…Megan? Hey, Megan, what you doing? You can’t go down that-…wait up.’

Putting one foot forward and instantly tripping on a fresh batch of coiled-up wiring, Roxanne staggered another few yards, rubbing awkwardly at the gash on her knee. In the distance, on invisible speakers, the opening bars of Spirale Misteriosa, and, twenty yards in front, the completely non-plussed shape of Megan passing through another doorway that imploded into nothingness as soon as Roxanne got within arm’s length.

Megan was the obvious thing to scream and, even if the demon could hear it, she tried anyway, adding fucking clown at the end for abandoning her like that.

Luckily, this car park horror show had other doorways up its sleeve, conjuring out a soft green light a little to the left, dampening the Morricone score, and inviting her in to a room with one bare lightbulb hanging from a piece of string and vague furniture covered in white renovation sheets.

Glancing back at the shrinking car park, Roxanne breathed out a measured burst of dream molecules and edged forward into the shadowed space.

‘Megan,’ she whispered, spotting a human-shaped form propped up in a rocking chair, unbothered by the white sheet supressing it.

There was no response, except for the fresh music cue.

Ah, I know this one too, she thought, moving forward, reaching out a hand towards the white sheet…then halting suddenly as the mad puppet laugh bounced off the surrounding walls.

‘Goblin…’

Taking a babysitter’s breath, she prodded what seemed to be the face of the figure on the chair. Whispered Megan a few more times. Jumped at the sudden volume hike in the background laugh. Muttered fuck in Cantonese. Began edging back towards the new doorway that had just materialised out of-

A violin strike, movement from the shadows.

Roxanne flailed her arms, clipped the leaping cat, shrieked at a second one coming from ancillary shadows.

‘What the-’

Pre-empting Hell, four more cats jumped out from the void, each one doing a fly-by scratch at her cheeks as they passed.

‘Stop fucking jumping me,’ Roxanne cried, spinning in seventeen different directions, swatting at the potential of further cats, stumbling manically away from the cacophonous puppet’s laugh and into the doorway that

clearly had no sense of the existential terror she was clawing at

as it had put her in some kind of factory boiler room, with metal-on-metal scraping noises in the near distance, and

wait, was that Megan?

Sitting with her back to a giant lump of coal?

Acting out a couple of side-steps, Roxanne wiped the blood off her cheeks and asked her oddly still flatmate what she was doing.

‘It’s okay, he’s dead,’ she replied, pointing backwards at the giant lump that Roxanne could now see was a stocky-looking man in a Paganini mask.

‘Megan…’

‘I pushed him and he hit his head on the pipe. That one there.’

‘The knife…it’s right by his…’

‘…hand? Yeah, I know. Didn’t wanna touch it, too bloody.’

Roxanne opened her mouth to shout, get away from there, you dumb malt, or something to that effect, but was cut off by yet another music cue, this one stumping her for a second then quickly making the skin of her face tighten.

‘Megan…the killer, he’s…’

‘…as dead as an Appalachian post office. You know, this whole ordeal wasn’t actually that bad, not compared to what it could’ve been. In fact, I feel weirdly aroused, like, I could just get up and grab you, do something brazenly…’

Erotic shot out through the middle of her throat, along with the tip of the knife, and a solid amount of blood.

‘Not real,’ slurred Roxanne, vocal chords barely functioning as her best friend [and part-time side fuck] of almost thirteen years dropped face-first onto the boiler room concrete.

‘CANNOT be fucking real,’ she modified, staggering backwards, tripping over an imaginary plant root, crawling into the fresh doorway that had to be better than sticking around this Hell-Hound burlesque and

to a certain extent it was

the green light rolling Roxanne up into a weightless ball and spitting her out onto the same path from earlier…ten minutes, an hour, whenever or however it was…the one that led up to the derelict mansion, the place where the sorority girls had been slaughtered by the…green, flaky mist thing.

‘I warned you, turn back,’ repeated Gideon the Self-Asphyxiator, blood dribbling down his weathered neck skin.

‘You…’

‘But you wouldn’t listen. And now it’s too late. Now we’re all going to be punished forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s too late. They know you are here and they’re coming for you. You’ve doomed us all. And now it’s too late. If only you had listened to me earlier, none of this would be-’

‘Stop. Please. How do we escape? Who’s doing this?’

The Carradine analogue opened his mouth to either respond or dribble, then stopped and looked down at the shaking hands gripped to his jacket collar, blood trickling from the neck onto the veins between the knuckles.

Keeping his mouth cavern-like, he eked out another, much more broken version of ‘too late,’ then vanished into the midnight void scape.

‘No…’ stammered Roxanne, hands gripping air.

‘Doomed us all,’ echoed out from the nearby trees.

‘Don’t leave…’

‘Forever.’

‘…get back here, help me.’

This time the words were buried in the wind and, a second later, eviscerated completely by a new crack of lightning before the Fulci tune started up again, and he was probably gonna say it’s too late or you’ve doomed us all anyway.

‘If I could just find the box,’ Roxanne said to herself, moving down the path, pushing the already open front door, tensing up when the creaking noise answered back, and then outright shrieking when the music cut and she caught the group of cloaked glamour models glaring back at her.

Still alive, she thought, shaking her head at the line.

On a technical level, beyond normal biology, it was true, each body was functioning as a living human should, yet

it wasn’t real, couldn’t be

cos each face fixed on her was leaking blood at the seams, as if the flayed skin had been hastily pasted back on by a drunk mortician.

‘Are you…’ she started to say, but the raven-haired girl raised a hand [plus loose vein] to silence her.

‘If you don’t have a robe, or a mop, you cannot participate.’

‘But…your faces, the demon…’

‘…is from a moderate section of Hell, the wish-granting domain.’

As the girl spoke, a swirl of green anime mist rose up behind, slightly out of focus, coalescing into a large, nebulous mass as amateur Latin hour started up once more.

Not real, not real, repeated Roxanne internally, closing her eyes to the imminent re-slaughter, picturing herself back home, on the couch, laughing at the horror-sham on TV, using the Hell-box as a makeshift ashtray, asking Megan if she wanted to-

‘Coffee?’

The sound was so soft, so incongruous to the background Latin that Roxanne let out a hyena shriek and swung a hand in the direction of the voice. Luckily, she missed the cup hovering behind, and clipped Megan on the shoulder instead.

‘Wah, are you insane? This is scolding hot.’

‘Megan…you’re-…’ Roxanne killed the next word dead, reducing herself to a blank stare at the knife-hole in her flatmate’s throat, some of the blood still fresh and dribbling down onto her pumped up, UNKILLABLE QUEEN t-shirt.

‘You look like shit. Seriously. Like, Klaus Kinski bad.’ Megan smiled, raised her eyebrows at the porn stars in the background, handed over the cup. ‘You definitely need this more than I do.’

‘Your throat…’

‘I know, it’s not real coffee, but the effect’s the same. Yeah, not a real throat either. That’s what makes it so exciting. There’s a hole and I can put my finger in it as it’s healing itself up again. Quite orgasmic, actually.’

‘No, I saw it, it was-…this can’t be-’

‘And the demon…not as sinister as they look…seriously. In fact, I’d almost call them professional. Sounds weird, I know, but it’s true. Doesn’t expect you to grow or change, or fight back, or have one of those fucking cartoonish character arcs you’re always going on about. Nope, none of that movie shit. Just run around, show tits, get stabbed, revive, run around, show tits, get stabbed, revive, run around, show tits, get stabbed…you get the idea. Or I hope you do. Your face is still a bit Kinski. You okay? Maybe drink some of the coffee. It’s restorative. At least that’s what the machine said, the sticker on the side.’

Roxanne looked down at the surface of the coffee, trying to make out a reflection within the blackness. Tried for what felt like a full minute. But there was nothing.

‘Ah, god, the demon’s forming. Better get over to the car park, find my marker. By the way, the cats…don’t lash out this time, just let them scratch you. All of them.’

‘Scratch me…’

‘And ignore Carradine, he’s always like that. Never answers anyone in a straight way. Just ‘we’re all doomed’ and ‘too late’ and ‘they know you’re here.’ So fucking tedious.’

Roxanne continued with the blank act as the couldn’t-possibly-be-alive friend wrapped her fingers around the cup, then turned and walked off towards the burgeoning doorway that, a few seconds ago, had presented itself as a Varo painting.

‘Not real,’ she mumbled, closing both eyes tight as more screams started up behind her, the music shifting to a higher pitch then cutting out completely as the intro to Spirale Misteriosa slid in to take its place. ‘Not real, not real, not real, not real, not…’

‘…real,’ whispered something back, not only in her ear, but everywhere, inside and beyond and out there, bringing a biting coldness along with it.

Well, not that biting.

More like a cool breeze.

Which was kind of weird for a place like Hell, now that she thought about it…

‘Roxanne?’

…but maybe not that weird cos all the fire brimstone shit was biblical and…

‘You in there?’

…this place didn’t have that vibe at all, not even…

‘God, wake up, you dopey clump.’

…close.

‘Huh,’ she mumbled, picturing a Klee outline of her living room back home before opening her eyes and seeing that it wasn’t her living room back home, not quite, it was a skewed simulacrum of it, a Jodorowsky copy with green furniture and green walls, and gigantic paintings of green squares, and, beneath the largest and greenest of these paintings, sat Megan, still-alive Megan minus the neck wound, stoic-looking Megan with green earrings and green shirt and a green-gloved hand next to a pile of rub-…no, a heap of syringes, all green-filled and…god…was she stroking them?

‘You look like you’ve just watched that Cybernator bootleg,’ said the Megan thing that must have been a mirage.

‘What is this? Why is everything so-’

‘The director’s cut. If it even exists. Though that’s your field of expertise, I suppose.’ She paused, pulling one of the needles out of her knuckle. ‘What do you mean, what is this? Our apartment, of course. Don’t you recognise the incredibly varied colour scheme.’

‘No. The walls, they’re-…’ Her brain cut off, giving the eyes another chance to confirm that it was in fact a bizarrely green clone of their living room and not the real thing. ‘Where are we? What is this place?’

‘Okay, you’re clearly still in the dream world. That’s what you get for sleeping on the couch. I told you it makes your head weird.’ Megan looked left, following the scratched record sound from the hallway outside. ‘Ah, there’s the front door. Looks like our third wheel’s back. Shit, I mean front wheel. First wheel. Animated beautifully. God. Hope they didn’t hear that.’

Feeling a shot of dread in the form of the cold breeze creeping in from the hallway, Roxanne tried to pull herself up, but the couch was like a sticky sponge, and the door was opening now so if she didn’t stop, the edge of it would clip her on the skull.

‘Hey, don’t get so cyber,’ said Megan, shifting on the couch a little, beckoning to the new arrival to sit down. ‘You’ll scare Greenie here.’

‘Who?’

It was a silly question as she could see the shape hovering above her position, the pulsating green fissures around its slightly pixellated skin, the void where a face would normally reside, the whisper that came from that void as it bent down to sit next to her smiling best friend, telling Roxanne that this was no place she could ever understand so don’t bother.

‘I don’t…’ she started but did not have the air to finish.

‘Take it easy,’ cut in Megan, muffling a reflex scream as the creature on green fire beside her placed a part of itself on her scalp. ‘Greenie here will take care of us.’

‘No…’

‘He loves us. Intensely. Isn’t that right, Greenie?’

‘Megan…’

The green creature stretched out a long patch of liquefied green essence that slowly formed itself into a gooey green hand and, with that gooey green hand, reached all the way over to Roxanne and patted her on the cheek.

Only it wasn’t a green hand, it was a fucking grill.

And it burned hard.

‘Love,’ hissed the distorted replica of a human voice, its mass growing greener and larger and col-

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