The latest e-mail edition of The Goreletter was delivered on July 18th. It features two new contests for subscribers only, where you can win free signed copies of my books. Check out the Refrigerator of the Damned at gorelets.com to see one of them in action.

Subscribing is free and easy. Newsletters are mailed roughly 13 times a year, so it’s a low traffic list. It’s the easiest way to keep up with this weblog, and always includes bonus materials like contests and coupons that you won’t find here.

“I greatly look forward to each newsletter. I don’t look at it in progress because I don’t like to spoil the enjoyment and shock that I get from reading the finished copy. Sometimes something you’ve written sticks in my mind and I can’t get it out…then I have to get my electric drill and…but I won’t bore you with that.” — subscriber, Jennifer Peterson

alone, the mortician plays
a facial reconstruction game
and calls it “Mr. Potato Dead”
the corpses skin like spuds
and he makes the freaks his friends
but when the Picasso-faced
cut-ups haunt his daydreams
and threaten to pull him apart
all he can say in his defense
is that he turned the other cheek,
over and over again

+ Invent a new form of water torture.
+ Give a character an occupation involving cages (warden, zookeeper, dancer, wrestler…), and then trap them inside of one.
+ Murder an idea.

***
Instigation is a WEEKLY department in Hellnotes newsletter. If you publish or post something instigated by this department, let me know and I’ll mention it here!

This month a cat was born with two faces and I have to marvel over this wonderful mutation. If you’ve seen the photos plastered all over the internet, then you know that “Gemini” is a tabby that has two sets of eyes, noses, and mouths. The faces share a throat, however, which decreases the likelihood of two sets of hairballs on the carpet every morning, but hey, this freak of nature proves that anything is possible. After all, Gemini is able to lick itself twice as much, in an effort to get twice as clean, and therefore would swallow twice as much hair to spit up on twice as many carpets.

Cats are two-faced by nature, but this is still a pretty wild invention. I sort of wish it was a Siamese, and not a tabby, however, just for irony’s sake.

Gemini isn’t a genetic experiment, per se, but the offspring of what the breeder calls a “miniature cat” and a full-sized feline. Male cats have spiny genital organs — barbs that actually hook inside the female to hold on to the squealing kitty long enough to conceive. I don’t know which mate was the “minature” cat, but I’m sure the consummation was exceedingly painful. Geminis.

Hey, if I had a two-faced feline, I wouldn’t call it “Gemini.” What is this, the 70’s? I’d probably go for something much more schizoid. Like “Tragicomedy.” And I’d pet only one side of the creature, just to make that side smile and purr while the “tragedy” side just sadly scowled.

Oh, the possibilities. And I don’t just mean “His and Her” water bowls. Imagine the uncanny set of double eyes, glowing green at you in the dark. Imagine the frightening shock of its stereo hiss. Imagine the unspeakable horror that rodents would experience, torsos torn asunder in the multiple mandibles of this double-mouthed mouser.

And when the dopplekitty did something bad, like claw my couch to hell (due, perhaps, to an preternatural sense of depth perception), I’d have to send Cerberus, my three-headed demon dog, out to chase it. Mayhem would ensue, but I’m sure Tragedy would win the battle.

But all of this is rather moot. I think a schizocat wouldn’t survive very long after birth. And not just because its biology is an affront to all that is natural. No, I think the thing would surely go insane and claw itself to death. Cats can’t stand their own reflection in a mirror, let alone one glued to their own cheek. The itch of hidden whiskers, tickling somewhere secret inside, alone would be madness. And I seriously doubt that one face would deign to be cleaned by the other side’s spit-laden paw. No, Tragedy and Comedy would want to go their separate ways, but each would learn the hard way that nine lives simply aren’t divisible by two.

***
Postscript: Shortly after writing this article, poor Gemini died of natural causes, with less than a month of life. Only one funeral was arranged. Double frownie: ::–((
You can still see her and read all about this freakcident here:
http://www.newsreview.info/article/20050616/NEWS/50616015

“This life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed with a desire to change his bed.”
– Charles Baudelaire (died 1866)

PostSecret

Not Proud

I Used to Believe

For your next movie night, rent:

Land of the Dead (2005)
The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005)
Firestarter 2: Rekindled (2002)

I found Geoffrey Abbott’s treasury of trivia, A Macabre Miscellany (Virgin Books, 2004), entirely by accident. I was gift shopping at the local chain bookstore, and somehow found this morbid little book in the Reference section. After reading the back cover — which calls it “a compendium of carnage, a treasure chest of torture and terror…the very best of the very worst things that can happen to a person” — I immediately knew that I had indeed found a gift…for myself!

Published by the quirky book division of UK outfit Virgin Entertainment, this 4×6″ title manages to collect “a thousand gruesome and gory facts” culled from world history by none other than a former Beefeater at the Tower of London. In his introduction to the book — which is essentially a compendium of bizarre historical factoids revolving around torture, mutilation, and capital punishment — Abbot explains that in his work at the Tower of London, he would most often get lurid questions from tourists who would want to know more about the execution chambers than the Crown Jewels…and so he began to research the answers, which led to a lifelong obsession. The book is divided into chapters with titles like “What a Way to Go!” and “Bones, Brains and Body Parts” which catalog the extreme lengths that “civilized” cultures have gone to in order to exact punishment, cruelty and revenge. The book is filled with “little known facts” that would make for delightful dinner conversation. Here’s a typical entry (and one of the tamer ones, I might add):

“Before severed heads were displayed in public on London Bridge, they were preserved by being parboiled in salt water and cumin seed to deter the sea birds from eating the flesh.”

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine more where that came from. Reading this book I learned about virtually every execution method tried by man (I particularly like the “Brazen Bull” (which boiled victims inside a golden calf) and the ancient Chinese punishment of sawing a man in half, vertically, starting at the head); bizarre medical experiments (like the time a dog’s head was sewn onto a freshly guillotined corpse…and momentarily brought to life!), and numerous freakish delights (like the story of Peter Kuren, the “Monster of Dusseldorf,” whose blood fetish was so neurotic that even at the guillotine he expressed regret, “not for his crimes, but because he would not be able to hear his own blood pumping out after the blade had fallen”). I learned how long it takes a body to be cremated and when the last beheading was performed in Germany. Abbott’s talent for digging up history’s horrors — from the banal to the absurd — greatly impressed me.

If you like true crime, you’ll get a kick out of this book. The old clich