Cognitive disability is typically decorative in the horror genre—a surface on which to project our fears—but ‘Hereditary’ is one of the first horror films to complicate that narrative.

Warning: there be some spoilers ahead!

For me, the most haunting image of disability ever depicted in a horror film is a sequence in Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond (adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s short story). A woman peers at the inmates of a psychiatric institution through the tiny windows of their rooms, their aggressive performances of mania framed like paintings in a gallery. The imagery sticks with me for its tidy encapsulation of the attitude toward cognitive disability in the horror film.

Cognitive disability — specifically, a stylized form of cognitive disability that I will refer to as madness — is decorative in the horror film, a surface on which to project our fears. Unfortunately, this particular depiction of madness serves as little more than a colorful, sensational accoutrement, reducing disability to a storytelling or stylistic device, playing into a medical model of disability that reduces its complexity into a series of external expressions to be controlled and eliminated.

Ari Aster’s excellent film Hereditary risks the same fate and interpretation.

On the surface, Hereditary appears to be a film in which disability constitutes a prop in a play of terror, only to be overwritten and forgotten in the presence of overwhelming supernatural explanation. But to ignore the role of real mental illness in Hereditary would be to miss a salient facet of the disabled experience and the role of mental illness in horror cinema.

Terminology is important here, because different terms imply different models: I use “mental illness” deliberately because that is, I think, the lens of certain characters in the film, and it seems the most apt term to describe Annie’s relationship to the idea of cognitive disability, which dominates the early film.

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To ignore the role of real mental illness in Hereditary would be to miss a salient facet of the disabled experience and the role of mental illness in horror cinema.
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When Annie lays out her family history, she uses clinical terms to describe her family members’ various mental states — psychotic depression, schizophrenia, etc. — in a subdued scene that minimizes sensationalism and emphasizes Annie’s process of medicalizing, rationalizing, and therefore managing her family according to one of the most prominent models of disability.

Tobin Siebers, noted professor and disability scholar, usefully lays out the two major models of disability: “the medical model defines disability as a property of the individual body that requires medical intervention,” while “[t]he social model opposes the medical model by defining disability relative to the social and built environment.”

Siebers suggests that “the next step is to develop a theory of complex embodiment that values disability as a form of human variance.” Hereditarydramatizes a shift from the medical model — e.g. Annie’s representation of her family — to a model of complex embodiment exemplified by the film’s ending.

Disability theorist Robert McRuer suggests there is a transient nature to disability in the dominant cultural imaginary: “According to the flexible logic of neoliberalism, all varieties of queerness — and, for that matter, all disabilities — are essentially temporary, appearing only when, and as long as, they are necessary”; this may be enacted through the “miraculous cure,” as Martin Norden calls it, or through disavowal of a disability that was never really there in the first place.

Take the third Nightmare on Elm Street film, Dream Warriors, which is centered on teens incarcerated in a psychiatric facility. The terror the teenagers feel for the murderous Freddy Krueger— who hunts them in their dreams — is mistaken for mental illness, and the children must battle the staff whose misconceptions could (and sometimes do) prove fatal to them.

Dream Warriors encapsulates the ways that disability functions as a veil to be discarded and a label to be rejected: The protagonists aren’t actually “crazy,” not like those people — namely, the “hundred maniacs” said to have fathered Freddy Krueger. If Hereditary at first appears to be just such a film — in which disability appears early and is later discarded — closer readings reveal it to be a much more nuanced take on disability.

Where so many horror films use disability as a cover for or diversion from the supernatural, Hereditary is both part of a tradition of films that use horror to explore mental illness as lived phenomenon and part of a recent wave of body horror films that redefine the imagery of the genre.

Mental illness in horror is madness; not madness in the way that the word has been re-appropriated by, for example, a variety of groups and movements that have used the moniker “Mad Pride” in celebration of mental illness, but in the (arguably related) sensational, exploitative sense, preceding scientist or doctor: madness as the horrorization of disability.

Women-Directed Horror Films Take Aim At The ‘Celluloid Ceiling’

Madness is a cloak in horror cinema: It drapes its subject in meaning; it’s an easy shorthand for a medium whose mantra is show, don’t tell. The villain is mad: dangerous, unpredictable, shattering the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Whether in the tradition of tinkerers like Dr. Frankenstein or killers like Norman Bates, mental illness is stylized into madness (or perhaps the reverse: style goes mad) and then violence is projected onto it.

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'Hereditary' is both part of a tradition of films that use horror to explore mental illness as lived phenomenon and part of a recent wave of body horror films that redefine the imagery of the genre.
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It is a well-worn truth that mentally ill people are more likely to be the victims of violence than to inflict it themselves, but the problem with the “madman” trope is as much in its hollowness as in its inaccuracy: It is all surface and no depth, fleeting and ephemeral. However, there is another strain of horror, which I’ll call mad horror, that explores madness in a different way: namely, as an experience, a “complex embodiment” in which a person lives.

Mad horror cinema can be traced at least back to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1920), in which the exaggerated, subjective sets that have come to define German Expressionist cinema are the representations of a mind in the throes of madness.

Caligari, through its use of exaggerated, counter-realistic design, narrates the process of rendering mental illness into madness; it is the process of, in Siegfried Kracauer’s words, the “transformation of material objects into emotional ornaments,” the visualization of the ostensibly invisible. Caligarihelped set a precedent in horror for the visualization of cognitive disability in everything from cinematography and lighting to physical sets and props (since Caligari, sound cinema has allowed for the use of sound effects to signify madness as well).

The projection of madness into the physical environment of Caligari is echoed in Hereditary through Annie’s hyperrealistic miniatures and her daughter Charlie’s grotesque dolls. If Annie’s gallery of perfectly lifelike imitations reflects her attempt to maintain sanity in her family, Charlie’s suggests an abnormal mind that foreshadows an alternate reading of the film.

As much as it is the story of a coven of witches conspiring to place the spirit of Charlie (who was really a king of hell all along, or something) into Annie’s son Peter’s body, Hereditary may also be Peter’s slow break from reality, probably triggered when Peter accidentally kills Charlie. From this standpoint, it makes sense that Peter would symbolically resurrect Charlie the only way he can: within his own body.

Sex, Nudity, And Rape In Horror Comics: Where Are The New Lines?

Peter’s descent into madness echoes mad horror films like Repulsion and more recently films like Black Swan and Darling: films that explore mental illness as a lived, physical experience, in which the horror is derived from one’s mental state. Hereditary — in presenting multiple possible readings — is a film that revels in the slippages between psychosis and the supernatural and the indeterminate nature of that boundary.

The line between those two phenomena has always been tenuous in the horror genre, but Hereditary takes that boundary as its secret subject. Before Hereditary, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome more overtly explored the same slippage between reality and hallucination. “There is nothing real outside our perception of reality,” Brian O’Blivion tells Max Renn, suggesting that reality is just one shared hallucination.

Hereditary follows in Videodrome’s footsteps both by exploring madness as something lived rather than merely seen and by disrupting the line between the real and the unreal and that between body and mind.

In his book Crip Theory, Robert McRuer argues that:

“[a] system of compulsory able-bodiedness repeatedly demands that people with disabilities embody for others an affirmative answer to the unspoken question, ‘Yes, but in the end, wouldn’t you rather be more like me?’”

McRuer, by contrast, proposes the radical possibility of taking pleasure in disability, that “disability and queerness are desirable.” (McRuer’s focus on queerness — in addition to disability — is actually quite relevant to a film centrally concerned with the breakdown of a traditional nuclear family unit.) This desirability is central to Cronenbergian body horror, particularly the oeuvres of Cronenberg and Clive Barker.

Hereditary — along with recent films like The Neon Demon, The Lure, and Get Out — is a kind of post-Cronenbergian body horror focused less on dramatizing transformation visually on the body, but rather on redefining the relationship between self and body and between body and image.

Less sadomasochistic than their predecessors, post-Cronenbergian body horror (which actually may be said to begin, ironically, as far back as Cronenberg’s own Dead Ringers) focuses less on pleasure and more on the uses and abuses of the (literal and metaphorical) social body, like the dehumanizing cult of female beauty in The Neon Demon.

Hereditary explores not only the mad body but the familial body, specifically that of the nuclear family, whose supposed safety and stability — signified by Annie’s rigorous models — is seen to be, in reality, tenuous at best (while the models themselves comment on the constructedness of the nuclear family). That the film ends on a coven chanting around Peter at the coronation suggests that the conventional family has given way to a non-conventional family just as Peter has entered a non-conventional mental state. As in Hereditary’s predecessors, this ending may not be undesirable to those actually experiencing it.

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'Hereditary' explores not only the mad body but the familial body, specifically that of the nuclear family, whose supposed safety and stability  is seen to be, in reality, tenuous at best.
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Like Caligari, Hereditary has a frame of sorts, opening on a pan through a room full of miniatures before settling on a model of Peter sleeping in his bed, from which the action seamlessly begins. By framing the entire film as, quite possibly, an exhibit of Annie’s art, the film blurs the line of narrators: is the film Peter’s, or in opening on Annie’s model of Peter, is the film Annie’s?

Hereditary is a familial intermingling of consciousnesses — Annie’s, Charlie’s, Peter’s — that defies representations of mental illness as surface level stylization or as a problem in need of a cure and in doing so, resists the stigmatization of disability so prominent and dangerous in the horror genre. Despite a fraught and complicated history, the horror model of disability can offer a surprisingly nuanced and empowering way of looking at the experience of madness.

Content warning: sexual violence

The other day I walked to work in a rage, for no reason exactly, except for every reason. And as I walked, I prayed for someone to say it to me. I scowled and stomped. One foot, two foot, up then down, hard and harder: Say it. Say it. Say it.

Will some motherfucker please just say it?

Tell me to smile.

And oh, how magnificently I would have blazed. The bus would’ve stopped mid turn; women pushing strollers would’ve cheered; some man would’ve called me a crazy bitch and I would have laughed. Yes, I am. Today I sure am.

But the street left me in peace. And I remembered a woman I know, pregnant and past the assigned due date, anxious, not wanting to be induced. Since I couldn’t fight, I thought I’d try and be of use, and called her. Listened. Then, she went off to finish a painting, and I walked into my school to teach Horror Writing to teenagers.

What is the thing you fear? That one thing. Write it down on the page, your eyes only.

Now, come up with an image for that thing. Write it down.

Anyone want to share?

Oh, how magnificently I would have blazed.
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A white room with white walls that morphs into a long white tunnel with no end. A doppelganger that is you, but not you. A locked door, without escape. Someone in your home, waiting for you when you arrive.

Now, what is the idea behind the thing? What are you really scared of?

I name mine: fear of enclosed spaces; a sealed wooden box like a coffin; fear of the loss of control.

The students nod. They write down the fear behind the fear in their notebooks. For their eyes only. In an oft-cited quote of Stephen King’s, there are three types of horror: the gross-out, the horror (aka the supernatural), and the terror — that feeling that the unknown has been made manifest; that those secret, intuited fears are in fact a reality.

The Dropped Trump Case Reminds Us That No Rape Is ‘Believable’

One of the women who has come forward, and retreated, with charges against our president says she was 13 when he raped her. She says that at a party he tied her up (he would have had to use ropes, maybe belts, perhaps his tie) and forced his penis into her vagina over and over again until his pleasure at this act — this tied up, terrified, naked child — peaked into an orgasm and he ejaculated. I suppose he then untied her. She has said she’s repeatedly dropped the suit because of death threats, to her and her family.

Before you get all righteous and Democratic about the fact such an individual is our president, remember how very many allow it, participate, are not outraged. And think of this: When articles of impeachment were introduced in the House in December, the House, Republicans and Democrats united, voted to table the article, effectively sidelining it, 364–58.

At lunch, the woman-identifying students gather in the library for our weekly affinity group. They fill me in, how last Friday, S. went to the deli and a man on the street tried to talk to her. She ignored him, and crossed the street. He followed behind her. He said, “Are you going to ignore me? I’ll punch your fucking face in.” She ran, and he chased. She made it safely into school, but said later that the fear would not leave her body.

A billboard flown across the horizon line of the beach this past summer; a headless woman in a bikini. Get this body. Now.

She made it safely into school, but said later that the fear would not leave her body.
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I was at a party yesterday, an afternoon gathering, and my two-and-a-half-year-old child wanted to nurse. There were soft couches and chairs in that room, it was un-crowded, I could have (I used to) sat on one of those couches and nursed and kept chatting and nibbling cookies. Instead, I was ashamed, and went with my son to the playroom and sat on the floor surrounded by plastic toys. It was fluorescent lit, low ceilinged, with no windows. I nursed alone with my back against the wall.

Already, I’m hearing it, disguised as inquiry. Has this gone too far? How powerful should an accusation be? How much weight should we give one woman’s word? What if they just mean it as banter? What place does flirting have in the workplace?

It’s the same as asking what she was wearing.

On the radio, a call-in for an intergenerational response to the wave of accusations, which is a disguised opportunity for older men to talk about how much they don’t understand what’s going on; that the standards have changed “so much,” and blah blah blah blah.

It’s happening again, the same again and again — the phenomenon of speaking out is the phenomenon being examined. Not the relentless physical and verbal assaults. Not what it means to live in bodies we call “girl” and “woman.” Not the fear that guides me away from the wooded path in the park, pushing my stroller towards more populated places, the hypothetical protection of more people present.

We are not talking about flirting. We know what flirting is.

It’s happening again, the same again and again—the phenomenon of speaking out is the phenomenon being examined.
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Do you know the story of Cassandra? In an attempt to seduce her, Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy. Foreknowledge of the future. But when she refused him, he spit in her mouth, cursing her; though she would always know and speak the truth of what was to come, no one would ever believe her.

I remember being a kid with my mom in the park on a sleepy city summer day, pushing our bikes up the big hill, too tired to ride them, and these teenagers, these young boys, walking by and slapping my mother on the ass. I remember the strange slow-motion stillness that followed as we all continued to walk the steep hill, the boys laughing, and how there was nothing my mother or I could do about it. It was like the taste of fluoride at the dentist, the way it made my teeth hurt, the doing nothing, the disrespect of my all-powerful mother, the assigning of status.

Have you stood and looked at the array of magazines at a newsstand recently? I mean, really looked? Do that. Notice.

I am on the couch being intimate with my partner, who has a penis, and unbidden into my pleasure flashes a series of images — cinematic, not memories — of rape, assault, violence. I’m not talking here, deliberately, about the give and take of sexual play, of dominance, of submission. This is not about that. I’m talking about images grafted into my brain against my will.

#MeToo Has Made Me See Anyone Is Capable Of Sexual Abuse—Including Me

Forget the Bechdel test, try this one: Refuse to take in any images or scenes of a woman being beaten, arrested, tortured, raped, or killed. See what’s left.

(Hint: not a whole lot.)

Shall we review some numbers yet again?

1 in 6 women will experience an attempted or completed rape.

The majority of sexual assault takes place in or near the home.

The majority of offenders are people the victims know.

I don’t know any woman who has not been assaulted or threatened.

I don’t know any woman who knows a woman who has not been not assaulted or threatened.

To quote Stephen King exactly this time: “And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute.”

1 in 3 men would rape if they could get away with it.

1 in 16 men are rapists.

I know more than 16 men.

‘The Congress Planned Parenthood Massacre’

FADE IN.

INT. BREAK ROOM, GOVERNMENT BUILDING — EARLY EVENING

Cecile Richards begins to regain consciousness, stirring in the chair to which she is bound. For a few blissful seconds, she is able to believe that the past few hours were nothing but a bad dream — that her idyllic fall afternoon drive through Washington D.C. went off without a hitch, that she was never captured and dragged back to the hulking government building in which she now sits, trapped and terrified. Her eyes snap open — Cecile is forced to confront her reality. Her captors pore over book-length documents and argue. Cecile screams. The captors scream back.

CECILE
Why are you screaming at me?! I’m the one tied up here!

DESICCATED OLD MAN
Oh, that’s just what we do! We protect innocent baby lives by screaming at scared women outside of clinics. You know, calling them murderers and whores and stuff. Classic good guy behavior. Besides, we’re men and our voices should be heard over a woman’s at all times.

Cecile glances around the room and screams again.

CECILE
What are those?! What is wrong with you?!

She motions with her head to a pile of posters and signs covered with graphic pictures of dead fetuses.

ANOTHER DESICCATED OLD MAN
Those are our protesting placards. We use them to stop all you evil women from aborting.

CECILE
So you collect and surround yourself with gruesome high-resolution pictures of dead fetuses and somehow women who get abortions are the evil ones? . . . That’s not even what an aborted fetus looks like!

DESICCATED OLD MAN #1
Shut your mouth! What do you know?! You’re just a dumb woman. Now quit yer screaming — you’re distracting us from our important work.

‘Those are our protesting placards. We use them to stop all you evil women from aborting.’

CECILE
What work!? What are you going to do to me?! Let me go!

DESICCATED OLD MAN #2
Well, we’ve downloaded some new fonts that make words look like they were written in dripping blood, and then we wrote a pro-life parody of Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance” called “Bad Abortion (Abortion Is Bad).”

He makes a deliberate check mark on his clipboard.

Now we’re onto the next task on our agenda — we’re coming up with new ways to restrict abortions.

CECILE
But abortion is legal! Whether or not a woman aborts shouldn’t be up to you — the decision should be made solely by the woman whose body is in question, not lobbyists or politicians!

DESICCATED OLD MAN #1
(disregarding Cecile)
Remember when we talked about “legitimate rape” and how females’ bodies can shut down pregnancies if they want to?

CECILE
Oh god, please, no! Don’t say “females!” Please! Please! Anything but that!

DESICCATED OLD MAN #2
(ignoring Cecile)
This is a graph my kids helped me create on Excel. See, there are numbers and lines — which means it’s science, which means it’s basically fact which means . . . we’re right. That line going up is the number of abortions . . . I think. I don’t know — I got caught up in choosing the right colors for my graph lines and forgot to label the axes.

CECILE
What gives you the right to weigh in on women’s reproductive healthcare?!
You’re all just a bunch of cisgender old men!

DESICCATED OLD MAN #2
Cisgender old men with a lot of money, baby!

DESICCATED OLD MAN #1
Who better to determine what a woman can do with her body?

DESICCATED OLD MAN #2
Don’t you understand — we have to protect human life, so we cut funding for food stamps and Medicaid in order to pay for more investigations into legitimate medical organizations like Planned Parenthood! How doesn’t that make sense?

DESICCATED OLD MAN #1
Speaking of . . .

Off-camera, a grinding mechanical sound grows louder and closer. Cecile fights against her restraints and spasms with terror when the source of the noise is revealed to be a maniacal hulk of a man wielding a chainsaw in one hand and a reel of footage in the other. As Cecile screams, the man guides his weapon through the film, unabashedly splitting scenes.

DESICCATED OLD MAN #1
Yes! With that video, we will surely rile everyone up and come close to defunding Planned Parenthood! Good work, Fetaltissueface! . . . You know, we should probably work on your name. It’s not exactly catchy. Kinda sounds a bit foreign too, which you know the family doesn’t like.

CECILE
That footage is blatantly manipulated! You’ll waste millions of dollars probing into claims that have been proven false time and time again!

DESICCATED OLD MAN #2
Yeah, pretty scary, isn’t it? Just be thankful that we’re not talking about your emails. Now back to this graph — do you think the red I chose for the word “abortions” needs to be redder? Should I use the new blood-dripping font?

‘The Village Pharmacy’

FADE IN.

EXT. HIGHWAY — AFTERNOON

A girl in a dirty 19th-century-style dress emerges from a thick forest. Her hands and face are covered in fine scratches and leaves are tangled in her disheveled hair. She boldly steps forward into the middle of the highway, forcing a SUV to quickly swerve left to avoid hitting her. The truck comes to an abrupt stop mere feet from the girl, who appears confused but not entirely fearful. After a few moments, we hear the truck’s door open.

DRIVER
Are you okay?

GIRL
I’m not hurt. But please — bring me to the town. I seek tools of medicine.

GUY IN BACKSEAT OF SUV
(sticks head out of his window)
Uh, if she gets in the car, that makes this an UberPool, not an Uber — I’m gonna need the charges to reflect that. Also, not to be a dick, but I think I should be dropped off first since I got in first and happy hour ends soon and I’m not paying $12 for a whiskey ginger, you know?

INT. WALMART — LATE AFTERNOON

The girl stands before the store’s pharmacy counter, bewildered and blinking rapidly in the florescent light.

PHARMACIST
Can I help you?

GIRL
(hushed voice)
Please, tell me — I heard whispers in my village, in the meeting hall, amongst the women. They spoke of a certain medicine that —
(her voice drops to a hoarse whisper)
— that stops a woman from being with child. I thought it was surely a farce but . . .

Her voice trails off but she continues to lean eagerly over the counter, eyes locked on the pharmacist, and hopeful.

PHARMACIST
Oh. You mean birth control?

GIRL
Yes. Yes, please. One of that. One birth control for me.

PHARMACIST
I’m sorry, ma’am, but I cannot give that to you.

The girl’s face falls and her voice takes on a trembling quality.

GIRL
But please! I must have it!

PHARMACIST
I’m sorry, ma’am, but first of all, you do not have a valid prescription from your doctor for any sort of birth control. Second of all, even if you did, I wouldn’t be able to give that to you. It’s against my religion.
(in a deliberate whisper)
You see, birth control encourages sexual activity.

GIRL
But my village doesn’t carry this medicine and I have been encouraged to be sexually active! Do you know what really encourages sexual activity? Being locked in a tiny meeting hall with the village’s eldest boys after they have returned from a day’s work in the fields, their chests glistening with sweat, faces flushed with hot blood, breath forceful and uneven like that of a stallion mounting the broodmare, and —

The girl breaks out of her fantasy and notices that the pharmacist is holding something shiny and sleek in her palm.

GIRL
What is that?

PHARMACIST
My cell phone. I was just taking some notes for my fanfiction, don’t worry about it.

GIRL
Cell phone? Fanfiction?

PHARMACIST
Never mind. Ma’am, I appreciate your story but there is nothing I can do for you.

GIRL
But what of the hideous pain that comes with my monthly bleeding? Or the fact that the bleeding is irregular and unusually heavy? Doesn’t this medicine also treat those issues?

PHARMACIST
Well, yeah . . . but the sex stuff, like I said before, it’s bad. Thanks to conscience clauses, I don’t have to give you this pill, so I won’t. Now if you’ll excuse me . . . Ugh, god.

The pharmacist begins to pull and tug at her shirt, leaning forward and shifting it around, clearly trying to alleviate some pain.

‘Thanks to conscience clauses, I don’t have to give you this pill, so I won’t.’

GIRL
What’s wrong?

PHARMACIST
Nothing, it’s just my bra; the underwire broke so it’s poking into my side.

GIRL
You know, the whole point of this movie is the shocking plot twist at the end when it’s revealed that I actually live in the 21st century and that my village is just some strange secluded social experiment. But this interaction kinda has me questioning that whole premise. Like, it’s not the 1850s, but women still struggle to easily obtain low-cost and long-acting birth control? A woman’s sexuality is still a source of shame, condemnation, and criminality? And through some black magic, you have the power to write words on this “cell phone” without a dip pen and paper, and yet you people still haven’t invented a way to hold up a woman’s breasts that doesn’t involve sharp metal shards that eventually poke out and impale the very bosom they are supposed to be protecting?

PHARMACIST
Uh . . . yes? Wait — no? I don’t . . . what was the question?

GIRL
Forget it. My Elders also wanted me to procure some firearms, but surely there’s no way that a device created to take life is easier to obtain than some pill —

PHARMACIST
Aisle 11. Unless you want youth rifles, then that’s Aisle 15, next to the Minions toys.

‘The Sexistorcist’

FADE IN

INT. MEEGAN’S BEDROOM — NIGHT

Barely concealing his revulsion, Father Yesallmen enters slowly, picking his way across a floor littered with crusty tights, underpants, and empty jars of Nutella. His eyes flit across the dimly-lit room, then widen in horror. Arms held down by a double set of restraining straps, Meegan appears barely alive. Her hair is tangled and thickly matted — and we’re not talking about in a cute beach waves or Kylie-Jenner-culturally-appropriative-Teen-Vogue-spread kind of way. Her shoulders are shrunken and festooned with sheets stained with either human blood or red wine, depending on whether murder or squandered alcohol scares you more. A laptop sits on her withered lap; we can’t see the screen, but from the noises we know she’s watching the Entourage movie. Clearly something is wrong. Meegan lolls her head toward Yesallmen, who struggles to maintain some semblance of control.

YESALLMEN
Hello, Meegan.
(dragging a chair to her bedside)
I was told you wished to see me. How can I help you?

Meegan’s features recompose into a horrific demonic visage. Her throat swells and a nightmarish growl shudders through her body. Yesallmen remains silent, observing uneasily, until life returns to the girl’s face. It is the old Meegan once more, except her countenance is twisted with embarrassment and pain, a suggestion of an apology.

MEEGAN
(whispering)
I think it’s clear, Father — I need an exorcism.

YESALLMEN
An exorcism?

Yesallmen gathers one of Meegan’s hands in his own, careful to not pull on the restraining straps.

YESALLMEN
You want to get rid of this demon, this life, growing inside of you?

MEEGAN
Well, Father, I —

Sweat dots Meegan’s brow and some sort of wild electricity causes her frail body to seize. A foreign voice — thick, rasping, and filled with hate — passes through her lips.

‘You want to get rid of this demon, this life, growing inside of you?’

MEEGAN
Foolish man! She is ours! There is no god! Your world is scum! Beyoncé is overrated and her last album only had three decent tracks!

Meegan regains control. Her voice returns, frayed and tired.

MEEGAN
Yes, yes, I’m sure. Please cast this wretched monster out, Father.

YESALLMEN
Oooh, yeah, I don’t know if I can do that for you, Meegan.

MEEGAN
(baffled)
What?

YESALLMEN
This is a living demon that can feel pain. It probably has 12 long, poison-tipped demon fingernails already. You want me to cast something with fingernails out?

MEEGAN
Yes, I do — it keeps scratching “666” and “DEMON WUZ HERE” with a poor facsimile of the nail painting emoji into my chest. Besides, I’ve only been possessed for a few weeks. I can still talk to you as myself, so clearly the demon isn’t that strong.

YESALLMEN
Life begins at possession, Meegan. Besides, you engaged in the risky behavior; you should’ve been ready to accept the consequences.

MEEGAN
I got possessed by mistake! The Ouija board is produced by the Parker Brothers — how was I supposed to know that the creators of Monopoly unlocked a portal to hell?! I thought I was being safe; I mean, I only touched the tip of the planchette. I even faked it for awhile so it would end faster!

YESALLMEN
Meegan, I urge you to rethink your possession. This is a gift —

As YESALLMEN talks, a stream of thick greenish vomit shoots from Meegan’s mouth, soaking the bedding and the Father’s robe.

YESALLMEN
 — from God. You have to make the best out of a bad situation.

MEEGAN
How am I supposed to support myself? My savings are pretty much drained; I keep having to buy new beds to replace the ones I break after levitating.

YESALLMEN
Life is a miracle, Meegan.

MEEGAN
Considering that my flesh burns whenever I come into contact with holy water, I think this might be the exact opposite of a miracle. Father, please listen, this is my body. I alone should have autonomy over it. It is my right to decide what I want to do with it.

(dramatic pause)
And I want an exorcism.

Unable to reign back his disdain, Yesallmen glowers at Meegan. He lets go of her sweating hand and leans back in his chair, contemplating the girl’s case.

YESALLMEN
I suppose this is what you really want, Meegan. Before I can perform the exorcism, there are a few things I’m required to do by law. Firstly, I’m going to need your parents’ signatures on a consent form . . .

Meegan attempts to roll her eyes, but they go all the way into her head, leaving only the whites exposed.

MEEGAN
(hoarsely)
My parents are currently in the hospital. They were inadvertently crushed by a piece of furniture that I sent flying around my room with the new telekinetic powers I developed after a demon possessed me.

YESALLMEN
Hm, well, possessed women are known to be moody, heh heh. Hormones and all. I’d like you to look at this sonogram of the demon.

(Types on the laptop and turns it so the screen faces Meegan.)

Footage from the 1995 film “Casper” plays on the laptop screen. The bed begins to buck and fall as the Father snuggles up with Meegan in order to watch the movie.

YESALLMEN
Look at how adorable that spirit is! Do you really want to exorcise a spirit like that? Ugh, this is my favorite part — “Can I keep you?” I get the chills every time!

Yesallmen turns to Meegan for solidarity but she is motionless, the whites of her eyes glowing eerily in the dark room.

YESALLMEN
Ah, yes. Well. One last thing: just listen to the demon’s heart.

Yesallmen pulls a stethoscope out of his pocket and presses the diaphragm to Meegan’s stomach. A deafening hellish noise screeches from the ear tips, filling the whole room. The sound is unlike any other; it is multitudinous and deep, as if every soul in hell were howling for help. It is the aural equivalent of loneliness and fear and blinding rage and stubbing your toe on the corner of a desk while simultaneously biting your tongue and shattering your iPhone screen. The cacophony ruptures Yesallmen’s eardrums and he tumbles off the bed, pulling the stethoscope with him. As quickly as the noise exploded, it stops. After a few minutes of silence, Yesallmen pulls himself up to his feet. Blood trickles from both ears and his body noticeably trembles.

YESALLMEN
(shouting)
So, is adoption out of the question?

The Ripening

These twisted tales will really keep you up at night.

flickr/Mackenzie Greer

All of the avocados Sarah O’Donnell just got for $1 each on sale at Whole Foods suddenly turn brown at the same time.

The Summoning

Cam Cameron is summoned by a judge for penalties on 54 parking tickets. Alejandro Iñárritu directs yet another stunning one-take film.

The Sexting

A man asks a woman online how she is. She responds, “I’m great, how are you?” The Wi-Fi cuts out just as he sends her a picture of his erect penis.

Mouth

For Danny Gill, what was supposed to be a night of reckless, rampant sex turns deadly when he discovers hot sorority sister Jenny Jiang has a secret: Real words come out of her mouth. She has already embedded lethal feminist thoughts into the minds of 40 men, and he is her next victim.

A Nightmare on Frat Row

Two white guys go in search for the perfect party and don’t end up losing their virginities. Jesse Eisenberg and Robert De Niro star.

A Nightmare on Bedford Avenue

Cal Rodriguez finds his Brooklyn walkup haunted by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. Except wait — she’s not a ghost. She’s real. She never moved out because apartments in New York are too expensive and they agreed to keep splitting the rent, but now it’s awkward because she’s hooking up with this other dude.

The Concealing

A man wakes up one morning and finds that his lover has removed her makeup and become a grotesque kitchen cabinet with hands for legs. What he thought was a beautiful woman with a smooth complexion was actually just a piece of furniture wearing an inch of concealer.

A Nightmare on Frat Row: Part II

It’s Super Bowl weekend. A huge blizzard shuts down every liquor store and wing place in Urbana-Champaign. After the second hour, the men of the U of I’s Sigma Chi frat become rabid and turn on each other. When the police break down their doors on Monday, they find only spilled protein powder, a soiled American flag, and a digested can of Keystone Light.

The Purge: Part II

A young woman arrives at the University of Oklahoma and chugs a Solo cup of Everclear, thinking it’s water. What’s more: It was enchiladas night in the dining hall that same day.

The Settling

Lina and Drew Crawford move into their newlywed home. But something’s up. The house creaks. The wind blows. Lina realizes Drew is a dumb piece of shit and she should have married that hot Bolivian guy from study abroad.

12 Years A Dave

Richard Linklater follows Dave, an average Plano, Texas telemarketer, from the ages of 24 to 36.

The Capturing

Janine Robertson has the night of her life. When she awakes, however, she is horrified to see that while intoxicated she posted not one, not two, but 37 badly lit unedited selfies on Instagram. She would delete them, but they have a decent amount of likes.

The Comforting

The world’s girlfriends all begin crying at once. Their boyfriends react. Some pat them on the back. Some scream at them to stop crying. Some go turn on the TV and drink a beer. The world ends.

The Awakening

A balding, middle-aged man wakes up in his studio in Queens. He rides the train to work. He eats a BLT. He catches up on House of Cards. A horrific, three-hour tour-de-force.

Illustrations by Katie Tandy

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