Monday, June 02, 2008

Escape from Asylum Le Rixe

At first a stately refuge with hedonistic accommodations:
A home studio with “coat cheque” to fuel the all-night sessions.
A deluxe jacuzzi (with ‘therapeutic’ pretenses) where ‘Bobbing for Satan’ was a joked-about pastime.
The meditative chamber of Bad Greiferfuß, in all its purple murk.

And then slowly, like the paint peeling from the walls, ghosts emerge from the past and present:
Dogs barking at empty transoms. The baying of wolves from beyond the fence. Spectres said to drift down the main hall. A seat at the piano in the empty, darkened parlour that brings forth an invisible presence to stand at one’s back.
All this and the contagious madness that spreads to the living:
LeVira, the shut-in with a litany of dodgy excuses for every neurosis.
Behold, a nutritionally inventive new pizza topping: nail clippings. That should suitably supplement an otherwise dreary diet of white wine and menthols.
A proclivity for phony artsy friends is embarrassing enough, but when self-destructive tendencies come to the point of inviting sociopaths over for tea, one could say a line has been crossed.
Witness the vile yob known as The Hackler. Choking the dog in a spun-out bevvied stupor? That would be he. Chicken bones on the doorstep? His brand of voudou. A cinder block smouldering inside the shattered remains of a 24-inch television screen? Well, let’s just thank Mr Greenberg’s photographic prowess for capturing the posterity of that scene on an 8x11 glossy. As it drove even him from the asylum.
In the event, it drove everyone of sound mind.
Yes, the line is well beyond crossed.
Stealth evac to the true asylum: The Men’s Lodge.

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