duannewalton
2nd Level Red Feather
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
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Castlemare's Lost Horror
By
Duanne Walton
It was when all was quiet, when the pain in her sides had finally subsided and the tears in her eyes had finally dried, that the delusions came.
That's all they were, they weren't real. That's what she'd been told and that's what she told herself. If she could just remember that, she had a chance for recovery.
But that didn't make then any less vivid, or haunting...
"Kris? It's me. Meet me at the store tonight- I've found it! The Lost Horror has been found!"
Kristen Munny grinned at the message Pierce had left on her machine. His dramatic flair was one of the things that made him good.
He'd been chosen over a year ago by the local tv station to be its' late-night horror movie host. But ever since Cathy Paulson had made such a splash with Enchantra, sexy, smart-aleck hosts (with the emphasis on sexy) were all the rage. And Pierce, with his academic approach to horror movies, wasn't fitting the bill. Waxing philosophical about incredible two-headed transplants was only getting him so far.
Enter Kristen Munny- and Demonica Hellenbac.
At first she was just the comedic sidekick, with Pierce as the straight man. But of course, the fanboys' hormones cried out, and Demonica's role on the show got bigger and bigger, along with the ratings. And soon, Pierce was ousted and Kristen was the sole host, and a bona fide celebrity.
And she didn't even have to let the fanboys tickle her feet for charity!
Still, Kristen had felt awful about him being let go, so she made him the show's unofficial advisor, a smart move on her part. While she was great at ribbing them, Kristen had realized she didn't really know the first thing about horror movies. Pierce's encyclopedic knowledge about them was staggering. He also had a gift for hunting down the rare and obscure ones ("The ones everybody's heard of, but nobody's ever seen," he said.). And behind it all was a genuine reverence for them, no matter how cheesy they could be. He could always manage to find something good in each of them, and it gave Kristen a newfound respect for them. Last, but not least, Pierce was actually a decent guy. It would've been natural for anyone to feel bitter about losing their job the way that he did, but not him. He helped Kristen with the same exuberance that he had when he was still on the show.
Yes, Pierce was good.
The masks always grabbed Kristen's attention first in Pierce's store. They glowered at her from the walls with permanent rubber hate, as if they knew who she was and what she did. You dare make a mockery of us, do you?
But Pierce's contagious enthusiasm always swept her up. Beaming triumphantly, he led her to his backroom office and gave her the seat at his computer. A resin figurine of the Hydra from "Jason and the Argonauts" croutched atop the monitor, all seven heads looking ready to strike her at any moment. Pierce's fingers danced across the keyboard as he typed in the URL of an auction site. He entered an item number and gestured at what came up on the screen.
Kristen leaned foreward and read, "`Tales From the Asylum.'" She looked at Pierce. "One of those British anthologies?"
"Almost," Pierce said. "It was an attempt to cash in on them."
Kristen read further. "`Directed by Ron Castlemare.'" She thought for a second, then shrugged. "Never heard of him."
"He was an adult filmmaker that wanted to break into the mainstream, but just didn't have the luck or the talent. This was the last film he made, then he died in a car crash before it was ever released. It got buried and never saw the light of day- his Lost Horror."
Kristen took another look at the screen, then slowly sat back in the chair. She looked up at Pierce as a grin spread across her face.
"I like it."
Three days, sixteen hours, and twenty-three minutes later, "Tales From the Asylum" was theirs'. It arrived a week later, still in its' film form, so it had to be converted to video. Then, Kristen and Pierce sat down to watch the final offering from the late Ron Castlemare.
Castlemare himself starred as Doctor Morandilas. Kristen might have found him a little more imposing (though not by much) if it wasn't for the frizzy fright wig and the glasses that made his eyes look like fried eggs with baby-blue yolks.
As the Chief of Staff at Amicus Asylum, Doctor Morandilas encountered some very bizarre cases. "The human mind is the greatest paradox of our time," he declared in a pompous voice. "For though it is enclosed in such a small area, it is a virtual continet of mysteries. No one can fully uncover all of its' secrets. Nowhere has this become more evident to me that in the cases involving the unfortunate ladies I am about to introduce to you. All come from different backgrounds, with very different delusions, but all sharing one common link."
He walked down a dismal corridor to a huge metal door. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. "They are currently being held in what I've come to refer to as the `Gargalismophobia Wing.'"
Kristen's eyebrow rose. "Gargle-what?"
"You see, " Doctor Morandilas explained. "Gargalismophobia is the fear of tickling."
As he entered each of their cells and introduced them, the movie detailed the circumstances of each patients' delusion: Megan was tickle tortured by Russian water spirits. Peggy was trapped in an amusement park dungeon exhibit, placed in stocks and tickled in front of the crowds. Lori rented a haunted bungalow and was tormented by tickling ghosts. And Christine was pursued by the tickling hand of a recently deceased Dominatrix. Each vignette served as an excuse for seemingly endless sequences of lurid tickling. The actresses were laughing so hard, tears were streaming down their firey cheeks.
Kristen turned to Pierce with an incredulous look. "You found a
tickling horror movie?"
He shrugged. "Well, haven't you ever been tickled to the point where you thought you were going to die?"
"No, I'm not ticklish." She watched his eyes narrow at her. "No, really. I'm not."
He shrugged again and returned to the movie. "Well from the look of it, I'd say it'd be pretty horrible."
"Poor deluded souls, all of them," Doctor Morandilas declared. "Yet there is hope- a hope that only I can provide. That is why they have been entrusted to me. I believe they can be brought back to reality with shock therapy that utilizes the very root of their delusions: tickling."
Then followed a seemingly endless montage of more tickle torture with feathers, paintbrushes, combs, cat tongues, and anything else a pervert's mind could think of. Climaxing it all was what Doctor Morandilas called “Group Therapy:” the girls were strapped to a long bench, their feet locked into a row of stocks. A device at each of their feet tormented them with motorized brushes, driving them into hysterics and turning their faces from red to purple. If they weren’t crazy, they were well on their way there!
In the end though, it was revealed that (wotta surprise!) Doctor Morandilas was the one that was delusional. He was led away in a straight-jacket by four nurses, all of them the women he imagined under his care.
"Poor deluded soul," one of them sighed.
As Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" played over the closing credits, Kristen sat with her eyes asquint and her mouth open. After several minutes, she blurted out, "Tickling? Why tickling?"
"It was a holdover from Castlmare's adult film days," Pierce explained. "He specialized in fetish films about tickle torture. Apparently, he was into it himself and put it in every movie he made."
Kristen nodded. "Like Wood and his angora. Well, you can't say he wasn't original."
A tickling horror movie! What next?
Kristen could just imagine the mileage Cathy Paulson would've gotten out of it. Or would she be relived that someone else found it first?
She told Pierce to keep digging for anything else he could find on Ron Castlemare. Then she watched the movie again to get ideas for the show.
She wasn't lying when she said she wasn't ticklish, so she could only imagine what it felt like.Yet as she watched their tear-streaked faces and heard their increasingly crazed laughter, it became pretty obvious that the women in the movie weren't faking. How long and hard would they have had to be tickled to get them so hysterical? What was it about tickling anyway that made it torture for some people and drove others to make movies about it, not to mention shelling out big bucks to do it to their favorite stars, even if it was for charity?
Well whatever it was, it was going to have one heck of an impact- for both her and the show.
Kristen knew Pierce had found something when he showed up at her apartment, but she wasn't expecting him to look so unenthusiastic about it. In fact, he almost looked scared.
"I think you need to see this." He glanced over her shoulder and nodded towards the inside of her apartment. "Mind if I come in?"
"Um, sure."
After Kristen invited him into the living room and got him a soda, Pierce showed her what he'd found: "Hollywierd Babbles On," a book recounting some of the more unusual stories that came out of Hollywood. Pierce opened it to a certain chapter and handed it to Kristen. It detailed Hollywood's fascination with the occult during the late sixties and early seventies, as seen through the eyes of a practicing sorceress named Gayle Costner. After adopting a Romanian accent and calling herself Madam Cosma, she found herself a considerable following among the elite and the fringe.
"Who in the world's going to pay attention to Gayle Costner from Cleveland? She's a nobody," She recounted. "But Madam Cosma from Romania- she's got weight, authenticity. People pay attention to her- and they did."
Most of those that paid attention were struggling actors and actresses that wanted to become stars, faded stars that wanted to be revitalized, successful stars that didn't want to fade, directors that wanted their movies to be blockbusters, and studio heads that wanted nothing but blockbusters. But there was one that wanted something very different.
"His name was Ron Castlemare. For years, he'd dreamed of breaking out of the porno industry he felt trapped in, and being recognized as a serious director. But with each failure, each belittling review, the cracks in his dream got bigger and bigger until it broke. And in Hollywood, broken dreams sometimes lead to broken minds.
"When he came to me, Castlemare was a warped, bitter man. He'd sworn that no one would ever ridicule another movie of his again, and he needed my help. He'd just finished a horror movie, `Tales From the Asylum.' He wanted me to curse it so that anyone that tried to put it down in any way would wish they'd never seen it. So I did.
"The next day, he died in a car crash. They never figured out if he was killed or committed suicide. But anyway, I used all the connections I'd made and stopped the movie from being released. And a good thing, too! He actually made me watch it with him, and I can tell you, anybody that saw that thing would be hard-pressed not to put it down!"
She couldn't say what form the curse would take. "That I left to the forces at work in the universe." When asked why she would agree to curse the movie, she merely replied, "Money talks. You didn't think I did it all for free, did you?"
Kristen looked up at Pierce and broke into a huge smile. She clapped her hands on his shoulders. "Pierce! You're a genius! Nobody could make up publicity this good!"
Pierce placed his hand on one of Kristen's. He licked his lips. "Kris... I don't think this is something to-"
"We're gonna hype this to the hilt! `Only Demonica Hellenbac would dare show the unshowable! Only the Delectable Darling of Darkness would risk the wrath of the Castlemare curse!'"
"Kris! The movies are one thing!" He grabbed the book and waved it in front of her. "This is real!"
"Yeah- just like our ratings will be!"
She looked him square in the eyes, and acted on her impulse. Pierce's eyes bulged as she planted the deep kiss on his lips. Kristen burst out laughing.
The first part was done: the station's hype machine was going full blast. The city was buzzing about the world premiere of the Lost Horror, and the curse. Now it was time for the second part: to make the hype real.
Pierce has insisted on being by her side the whole time-even as she dressed!
"All right, but only if you turn your head." she teased.
Kristen slinked into the crimson vinyl dress. She slid on the crimson fishnets and stepped into the crimson spike heels. She put on the crimson lipstick and attached the crimson horns to the top of her head. She slipped on the crimson fingerless opera gloves and pressed on the crimson nails. Lastly, she put in the contact lenses- crimson, of course.
She gave the full-length mirror a smoldering stare and a seductive smile. Demonica Hellenbac had arrived. And she noticed Pierce had his back to her the whole time and didn't peek once. Yes, he was good.
Heavy velvet drapes were lowered behind imitation marble columns as the fog machine blanketed the set's floor. Front and center was a Victorian fainting couch, lit candelabra on both sides, a plastic pitchfork on the couch. As Kristin made her way to the couch, she was greeted by a guy with striking baby-blue eyes and a firm handshake.
"Miss Munny? Roger Castelle- I'm the new cameraman."
"What happened to Joe, the regular guy?"
He shrugged and Kristen noticed he also had an arresting smile. "Don't know. I just got the call, and here I am." He then turned to Pierce, who was eyeing him strangely, and handed him a note. "Oh, you got a call from a Gayle Coster. Said you'd been trying to get in touch with her and you could reach her at this number."
Pierce blinked and his eyes widened. "Yes! I was waiting to hear from her!" He turned to Kristen and muttered, "I thought she could help." He took the note from Roger and gave him a last glance. Then he dashed off the set. "I'll be back!" he called.
It was showtime. Kristen took her place on the couch, pitchfork in hand. Roger took his place behind the camera. After a few moments, the camera's red light came on and Roger pointed at her.
"Fond felicitations, fanboys- and you fangirls, too! Don't want you to feel left out! Time to pull up a tombstone and let me, your tawdry temptress, tickle you with another tale of turgid terror. But don't worry, you won't get tickled like the vapid victims in tonight's tale! That's right, we've scoured the movie mausoleums and found the world's first and only- praise The Lord!- tickling horror movie! `Tales From the Asylum,' the Lost Horror that test audiences cursed before director Ron Castlemare did! Now I know you may be worried about the curse, and well you should be! The powers of darkness are not to be toyed with. I should know, they sign my paychecks! For your own safety, do not make fun of this movie... I'll do it enough for all of us! So, prepare to discover the Lost Horror of `Tales From the Asylum-' and why it should've stayed lost!"
Roger flashed his irresistible smile. "Perfect! Miss Munny, you'd be a natural in the movies!"
"Thanks. And call me Kri-"
She started blinking as her eyes began to itch. She took out her contacts and rubbed her eyes.
"Everything all right?" Roger asked as he approached her.
"Yeah, I think it's these contacts. Just let me put some drops in my eyes and I'll be fine."
Several minutes later, Kristen returned to the set, ready to shoot the first host segment. Demonica was pretending to be afflicted with the curse and suffering from the fear of gargling with Listerine.
As soon as Roger started rolling, though, her eyes stared itching even worse. She squeezed them shut as she called, "Cut!"
"Everything all right?" Roger asked.
"No! I don't know what's wrong with my eyes!" She tried to look at him, but her eyes were watering so bad, everything was blurred. "I've gotta get these contacts out!"
She took them out and wiped her eyes furiously. The itching and watering stopped.
"Everything all right, Miss Munny?"
She opened her eyes- to find herself in a hospital room, sitting on a bed, wearing a gown. Roger stood before her, flanked by two beefy orderlies.
"R-Roger? What-?"
Then she noticed his Doctor's coat and frizzy hair. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses. Putting them on, his eyes became fried eggs and the change was complete.
"Roger? No- I'm Doctor Morandilas."
Icy terror welled up inside Kristin, triggering raw panic as it reached her brain.
She bolted through the door and ran down the dingy corridor. She could hear the orderlies right behind her, but she kept running, turning as many corners as she could to lose them. There had to be a way out!
She charged through a door- and found herself face to face with them: the girls from the movie, whatever their names were. Locked in the stocks with the tickling machines brushing their feet, they looked at her with pleading, tear-filled eyes, laughing too hard to speak.
The orderlies' meaty hands clamped onto her.
"NO! STOP! LET ME GO!" she screamed.
She struggled furiously, but it was no use. They brought her out of the room and into the corridor where Morandilas-or whoever he was- waited.
"I see you've found our Group Therapy room, " he told her. "You'll join them soon enough, but for now, we'll start with individual sessions."
The orderlies wrestled her back to her room and onto the bed as Morandilas produced four leather straps and secured her wrists and ankles to the bedposts. She looked up into his fried egg eyes.
"PLEASE... ROGER, MR.CASTLEMARE, I'M SORRY!"
"You're delusional, Miss Munny. But don't be afraid, I'm here to help you. That's why you've been placed under my care here at Amicus. To recieve the treatment that only I can provide."
Treatment? But that meant...
"In fact, I see no reason not to begin now."
He undid her gown and opened it, revealing her bra and panties. He nodded to the orderlies and they each stood at one of her feet. Kristin knew what was coming, but not what would come of it.
"Begin."
Morandilas fluttered his fingertips along her tummy towards her ribs and the orderlies ran their sausage fingers up and down her soles. The forced laughter shot from Kristen's mouth before she knew it. She tried to beg them to stop, but only shrieking laughs came. She'd gasp a breath, then more laughs came, fueled by her terror. Kristen no longer had to imagine what being tickled was like.
Morandilas shook his head. "Poor deluded soul."
It was when all was quiet, when the pain in her sides had finally subsided and the tears in her eyes had finally dried, both from laughing so hard, that the delusions came.
That's all they were, they weren't real. That's what Dr. Morandilas had told her and that's what she told herself. If she could just remember that, she had a chance for recovery.
But that didn't make then any less vivid, or haunting...
"Broken dreams can lead to broken minds," he said. "Please try to remember that and be charitable as you watch tonight's film. And also, please be charitable in your thoughts toward Kristin, wherever she may be. Maybe she'll be able to feel you. `Tales From the Asylum' is next, here on American Monster Classics."
Yes- Pierce was good.
By
Duanne Walton
It was when all was quiet, when the pain in her sides had finally subsided and the tears in her eyes had finally dried, that the delusions came.
That's all they were, they weren't real. That's what she'd been told and that's what she told herself. If she could just remember that, she had a chance for recovery.
But that didn't make then any less vivid, or haunting...
"Kris? It's me. Meet me at the store tonight- I've found it! The Lost Horror has been found!"
Kristen Munny grinned at the message Pierce had left on her machine. His dramatic flair was one of the things that made him good.
He'd been chosen over a year ago by the local tv station to be its' late-night horror movie host. But ever since Cathy Paulson had made such a splash with Enchantra, sexy, smart-aleck hosts (with the emphasis on sexy) were all the rage. And Pierce, with his academic approach to horror movies, wasn't fitting the bill. Waxing philosophical about incredible two-headed transplants was only getting him so far.
Enter Kristen Munny- and Demonica Hellenbac.
At first she was just the comedic sidekick, with Pierce as the straight man. But of course, the fanboys' hormones cried out, and Demonica's role on the show got bigger and bigger, along with the ratings. And soon, Pierce was ousted and Kristen was the sole host, and a bona fide celebrity.
And she didn't even have to let the fanboys tickle her feet for charity!
Still, Kristen had felt awful about him being let go, so she made him the show's unofficial advisor, a smart move on her part. While she was great at ribbing them, Kristen had realized she didn't really know the first thing about horror movies. Pierce's encyclopedic knowledge about them was staggering. He also had a gift for hunting down the rare and obscure ones ("The ones everybody's heard of, but nobody's ever seen," he said.). And behind it all was a genuine reverence for them, no matter how cheesy they could be. He could always manage to find something good in each of them, and it gave Kristen a newfound respect for them. Last, but not least, Pierce was actually a decent guy. It would've been natural for anyone to feel bitter about losing their job the way that he did, but not him. He helped Kristen with the same exuberance that he had when he was still on the show.
Yes, Pierce was good.
The masks always grabbed Kristen's attention first in Pierce's store. They glowered at her from the walls with permanent rubber hate, as if they knew who she was and what she did. You dare make a mockery of us, do you?
But Pierce's contagious enthusiasm always swept her up. Beaming triumphantly, he led her to his backroom office and gave her the seat at his computer. A resin figurine of the Hydra from "Jason and the Argonauts" croutched atop the monitor, all seven heads looking ready to strike her at any moment. Pierce's fingers danced across the keyboard as he typed in the URL of an auction site. He entered an item number and gestured at what came up on the screen.
Kristen leaned foreward and read, "`Tales From the Asylum.'" She looked at Pierce. "One of those British anthologies?"
"Almost," Pierce said. "It was an attempt to cash in on them."
Kristen read further. "`Directed by Ron Castlemare.'" She thought for a second, then shrugged. "Never heard of him."
"He was an adult filmmaker that wanted to break into the mainstream, but just didn't have the luck or the talent. This was the last film he made, then he died in a car crash before it was ever released. It got buried and never saw the light of day- his Lost Horror."
Kristen took another look at the screen, then slowly sat back in the chair. She looked up at Pierce as a grin spread across her face.
"I like it."
Three days, sixteen hours, and twenty-three minutes later, "Tales From the Asylum" was theirs'. It arrived a week later, still in its' film form, so it had to be converted to video. Then, Kristen and Pierce sat down to watch the final offering from the late Ron Castlemare.
Castlemare himself starred as Doctor Morandilas. Kristen might have found him a little more imposing (though not by much) if it wasn't for the frizzy fright wig and the glasses that made his eyes look like fried eggs with baby-blue yolks.
As the Chief of Staff at Amicus Asylum, Doctor Morandilas encountered some very bizarre cases. "The human mind is the greatest paradox of our time," he declared in a pompous voice. "For though it is enclosed in such a small area, it is a virtual continet of mysteries. No one can fully uncover all of its' secrets. Nowhere has this become more evident to me that in the cases involving the unfortunate ladies I am about to introduce to you. All come from different backgrounds, with very different delusions, but all sharing one common link."
He walked down a dismal corridor to a huge metal door. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. "They are currently being held in what I've come to refer to as the `Gargalismophobia Wing.'"
Kristen's eyebrow rose. "Gargle-what?"
"You see, " Doctor Morandilas explained. "Gargalismophobia is the fear of tickling."
As he entered each of their cells and introduced them, the movie detailed the circumstances of each patients' delusion: Megan was tickle tortured by Russian water spirits. Peggy was trapped in an amusement park dungeon exhibit, placed in stocks and tickled in front of the crowds. Lori rented a haunted bungalow and was tormented by tickling ghosts. And Christine was pursued by the tickling hand of a recently deceased Dominatrix. Each vignette served as an excuse for seemingly endless sequences of lurid tickling. The actresses were laughing so hard, tears were streaming down their firey cheeks.
Kristen turned to Pierce with an incredulous look. "You found a
tickling horror movie?"
He shrugged. "Well, haven't you ever been tickled to the point where you thought you were going to die?"
"No, I'm not ticklish." She watched his eyes narrow at her. "No, really. I'm not."
He shrugged again and returned to the movie. "Well from the look of it, I'd say it'd be pretty horrible."
"Poor deluded souls, all of them," Doctor Morandilas declared. "Yet there is hope- a hope that only I can provide. That is why they have been entrusted to me. I believe they can be brought back to reality with shock therapy that utilizes the very root of their delusions: tickling."
Then followed a seemingly endless montage of more tickle torture with feathers, paintbrushes, combs, cat tongues, and anything else a pervert's mind could think of. Climaxing it all was what Doctor Morandilas called “Group Therapy:” the girls were strapped to a long bench, their feet locked into a row of stocks. A device at each of their feet tormented them with motorized brushes, driving them into hysterics and turning their faces from red to purple. If they weren’t crazy, they were well on their way there!
In the end though, it was revealed that (wotta surprise!) Doctor Morandilas was the one that was delusional. He was led away in a straight-jacket by four nurses, all of them the women he imagined under his care.
"Poor deluded soul," one of them sighed.
As Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" played over the closing credits, Kristen sat with her eyes asquint and her mouth open. After several minutes, she blurted out, "Tickling? Why tickling?"
"It was a holdover from Castlmare's adult film days," Pierce explained. "He specialized in fetish films about tickle torture. Apparently, he was into it himself and put it in every movie he made."
Kristen nodded. "Like Wood and his angora. Well, you can't say he wasn't original."
A tickling horror movie! What next?
Kristen could just imagine the mileage Cathy Paulson would've gotten out of it. Or would she be relived that someone else found it first?
She told Pierce to keep digging for anything else he could find on Ron Castlemare. Then she watched the movie again to get ideas for the show.
She wasn't lying when she said she wasn't ticklish, so she could only imagine what it felt like.Yet as she watched their tear-streaked faces and heard their increasingly crazed laughter, it became pretty obvious that the women in the movie weren't faking. How long and hard would they have had to be tickled to get them so hysterical? What was it about tickling anyway that made it torture for some people and drove others to make movies about it, not to mention shelling out big bucks to do it to their favorite stars, even if it was for charity?
Well whatever it was, it was going to have one heck of an impact- for both her and the show.
Kristen knew Pierce had found something when he showed up at her apartment, but she wasn't expecting him to look so unenthusiastic about it. In fact, he almost looked scared.
"I think you need to see this." He glanced over her shoulder and nodded towards the inside of her apartment. "Mind if I come in?"
"Um, sure."
After Kristen invited him into the living room and got him a soda, Pierce showed her what he'd found: "Hollywierd Babbles On," a book recounting some of the more unusual stories that came out of Hollywood. Pierce opened it to a certain chapter and handed it to Kristen. It detailed Hollywood's fascination with the occult during the late sixties and early seventies, as seen through the eyes of a practicing sorceress named Gayle Costner. After adopting a Romanian accent and calling herself Madam Cosma, she found herself a considerable following among the elite and the fringe.
"Who in the world's going to pay attention to Gayle Costner from Cleveland? She's a nobody," She recounted. "But Madam Cosma from Romania- she's got weight, authenticity. People pay attention to her- and they did."
Most of those that paid attention were struggling actors and actresses that wanted to become stars, faded stars that wanted to be revitalized, successful stars that didn't want to fade, directors that wanted their movies to be blockbusters, and studio heads that wanted nothing but blockbusters. But there was one that wanted something very different.
"His name was Ron Castlemare. For years, he'd dreamed of breaking out of the porno industry he felt trapped in, and being recognized as a serious director. But with each failure, each belittling review, the cracks in his dream got bigger and bigger until it broke. And in Hollywood, broken dreams sometimes lead to broken minds.
"When he came to me, Castlemare was a warped, bitter man. He'd sworn that no one would ever ridicule another movie of his again, and he needed my help. He'd just finished a horror movie, `Tales From the Asylum.' He wanted me to curse it so that anyone that tried to put it down in any way would wish they'd never seen it. So I did.
"The next day, he died in a car crash. They never figured out if he was killed or committed suicide. But anyway, I used all the connections I'd made and stopped the movie from being released. And a good thing, too! He actually made me watch it with him, and I can tell you, anybody that saw that thing would be hard-pressed not to put it down!"
She couldn't say what form the curse would take. "That I left to the forces at work in the universe." When asked why she would agree to curse the movie, she merely replied, "Money talks. You didn't think I did it all for free, did you?"
Kristen looked up at Pierce and broke into a huge smile. She clapped her hands on his shoulders. "Pierce! You're a genius! Nobody could make up publicity this good!"
Pierce placed his hand on one of Kristen's. He licked his lips. "Kris... I don't think this is something to-"
"We're gonna hype this to the hilt! `Only Demonica Hellenbac would dare show the unshowable! Only the Delectable Darling of Darkness would risk the wrath of the Castlemare curse!'"
"Kris! The movies are one thing!" He grabbed the book and waved it in front of her. "This is real!"
"Yeah- just like our ratings will be!"
She looked him square in the eyes, and acted on her impulse. Pierce's eyes bulged as she planted the deep kiss on his lips. Kristen burst out laughing.
The first part was done: the station's hype machine was going full blast. The city was buzzing about the world premiere of the Lost Horror, and the curse. Now it was time for the second part: to make the hype real.
Pierce has insisted on being by her side the whole time-even as she dressed!
"All right, but only if you turn your head." she teased.
Kristen slinked into the crimson vinyl dress. She slid on the crimson fishnets and stepped into the crimson spike heels. She put on the crimson lipstick and attached the crimson horns to the top of her head. She slipped on the crimson fingerless opera gloves and pressed on the crimson nails. Lastly, she put in the contact lenses- crimson, of course.
She gave the full-length mirror a smoldering stare and a seductive smile. Demonica Hellenbac had arrived. And she noticed Pierce had his back to her the whole time and didn't peek once. Yes, he was good.
Heavy velvet drapes were lowered behind imitation marble columns as the fog machine blanketed the set's floor. Front and center was a Victorian fainting couch, lit candelabra on both sides, a plastic pitchfork on the couch. As Kristin made her way to the couch, she was greeted by a guy with striking baby-blue eyes and a firm handshake.
"Miss Munny? Roger Castelle- I'm the new cameraman."
"What happened to Joe, the regular guy?"
He shrugged and Kristen noticed he also had an arresting smile. "Don't know. I just got the call, and here I am." He then turned to Pierce, who was eyeing him strangely, and handed him a note. "Oh, you got a call from a Gayle Coster. Said you'd been trying to get in touch with her and you could reach her at this number."
Pierce blinked and his eyes widened. "Yes! I was waiting to hear from her!" He turned to Kristen and muttered, "I thought she could help." He took the note from Roger and gave him a last glance. Then he dashed off the set. "I'll be back!" he called.
It was showtime. Kristen took her place on the couch, pitchfork in hand. Roger took his place behind the camera. After a few moments, the camera's red light came on and Roger pointed at her.
"Fond felicitations, fanboys- and you fangirls, too! Don't want you to feel left out! Time to pull up a tombstone and let me, your tawdry temptress, tickle you with another tale of turgid terror. But don't worry, you won't get tickled like the vapid victims in tonight's tale! That's right, we've scoured the movie mausoleums and found the world's first and only- praise The Lord!- tickling horror movie! `Tales From the Asylum,' the Lost Horror that test audiences cursed before director Ron Castlemare did! Now I know you may be worried about the curse, and well you should be! The powers of darkness are not to be toyed with. I should know, they sign my paychecks! For your own safety, do not make fun of this movie... I'll do it enough for all of us! So, prepare to discover the Lost Horror of `Tales From the Asylum-' and why it should've stayed lost!"
Roger flashed his irresistible smile. "Perfect! Miss Munny, you'd be a natural in the movies!"
"Thanks. And call me Kri-"
She started blinking as her eyes began to itch. She took out her contacts and rubbed her eyes.
"Everything all right?" Roger asked as he approached her.
"Yeah, I think it's these contacts. Just let me put some drops in my eyes and I'll be fine."
Several minutes later, Kristen returned to the set, ready to shoot the first host segment. Demonica was pretending to be afflicted with the curse and suffering from the fear of gargling with Listerine.
As soon as Roger started rolling, though, her eyes stared itching even worse. She squeezed them shut as she called, "Cut!"
"Everything all right?" Roger asked.
"No! I don't know what's wrong with my eyes!" She tried to look at him, but her eyes were watering so bad, everything was blurred. "I've gotta get these contacts out!"
She took them out and wiped her eyes furiously. The itching and watering stopped.
"Everything all right, Miss Munny?"
She opened her eyes- to find herself in a hospital room, sitting on a bed, wearing a gown. Roger stood before her, flanked by two beefy orderlies.
"R-Roger? What-?"
Then she noticed his Doctor's coat and frizzy hair. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses. Putting them on, his eyes became fried eggs and the change was complete.
"Roger? No- I'm Doctor Morandilas."
Icy terror welled up inside Kristin, triggering raw panic as it reached her brain.
She bolted through the door and ran down the dingy corridor. She could hear the orderlies right behind her, but she kept running, turning as many corners as she could to lose them. There had to be a way out!
She charged through a door- and found herself face to face with them: the girls from the movie, whatever their names were. Locked in the stocks with the tickling machines brushing their feet, they looked at her with pleading, tear-filled eyes, laughing too hard to speak.
The orderlies' meaty hands clamped onto her.
"NO! STOP! LET ME GO!" she screamed.
She struggled furiously, but it was no use. They brought her out of the room and into the corridor where Morandilas-or whoever he was- waited.
"I see you've found our Group Therapy room, " he told her. "You'll join them soon enough, but for now, we'll start with individual sessions."
The orderlies wrestled her back to her room and onto the bed as Morandilas produced four leather straps and secured her wrists and ankles to the bedposts. She looked up into his fried egg eyes.
"PLEASE... ROGER, MR.CASTLEMARE, I'M SORRY!"
"You're delusional, Miss Munny. But don't be afraid, I'm here to help you. That's why you've been placed under my care here at Amicus. To recieve the treatment that only I can provide."
Treatment? But that meant...
"In fact, I see no reason not to begin now."
He undid her gown and opened it, revealing her bra and panties. He nodded to the orderlies and they each stood at one of her feet. Kristin knew what was coming, but not what would come of it.
"Begin."
Morandilas fluttered his fingertips along her tummy towards her ribs and the orderlies ran their sausage fingers up and down her soles. The forced laughter shot from Kristen's mouth before she knew it. She tried to beg them to stop, but only shrieking laughs came. She'd gasp a breath, then more laughs came, fueled by her terror. Kristen no longer had to imagine what being tickled was like.
Morandilas shook his head. "Poor deluded soul."
It was when all was quiet, when the pain in her sides had finally subsided and the tears in her eyes had finally dried, both from laughing so hard, that the delusions came.
That's all they were, they weren't real. That's what Dr. Morandilas had told her and that's what she told herself. If she could just remember that, she had a chance for recovery.
But that didn't make then any less vivid, or haunting...
"Broken dreams can lead to broken minds," he said. "Please try to remember that and be charitable as you watch tonight's film. And also, please be charitable in your thoughts toward Kristin, wherever she may be. Maybe she'll be able to feel you. `Tales From the Asylum' is next, here on American Monster Classics."
Yes- Pierce was good.
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Oogly Boogly!
