Being Consumed in Whole or in Part by Invisible Forces as if you Were a Sentient Cheeseburger on Two Legs

People generally don't realize how ugly they look after they've quit breathing. Skin goes cold, marbled, and hard—you sort of bloat up and turn blue. Dead people are only sexy if you're a necro or someone on Reddit named "Azreal Moonchild."

Be that as it may, eventually, we're all doomed to take the dirt nap, whether we like it or not. Giving the world, and all the pretentious bullshit we believe about ourselves, our egoistic pretenses, a sense of—I don't know. Am I looking for a word here? Perhaps, futility? Stick it in a box and bury it under the lawn, baby, because that's where even the princeliest prince rests when the curtain of darkness descends.

And then there's those ...things, beings that walk, "unformed and undimensioned," in realms beyond, and—guess what? Those mothers, despite the undying nature of their nature, DO GET A MITE HUNGRY.

And so, and so... they feast. They feast on "hate and fear," to use the name of my favorite old website for jacking underground etexts and various audio oddities. (Unfortunately, Feast of Hate and Fear webzine/archive was discontinued long, long ago. Pity.)

Anyway, you might get eaten by a monster you can't even FUCKIN' SEE. How do you like them apples? (Counter cultural provocateur Boyd Rice, on his Hatesville album, intoned on one track in an arrogant aside, "How do you like your meal, piggy? Tastes good, does it not?" I guess if you're an invisible demon, human flesh just might.)

I jacked the following tale from the book Stranger Than Science by Frank Edwards, who was a radio commentator and paranormal and UFO author back in the Fifties and early Sixties—who wrote all these weird little books that fill up the shelves of Goodwills across the width and breadth of the American Night. I had a dream about it, so I obtained a copy—as everyone knows, I take all my directives from dreams; and also, the interpretation of street signs, advertising jingles, random images that just hit my schizoid brain as being "significant," etc.

Clarita Villanueva was a Filipino girl with a rather curious and distressing problem: she was being bitten by mouths that were apparently beyond the capability of her to see. Big bloody bite marks all over her body. Mmmm, mmm... savor the flavor.

May 10th, 1951: Manila

The police held the screaming girl down regardless, as if she were being tormented by the Devil himself. She writhed spasmodically beneath their cold, loveless hands. Invisible fangs seemed to be sinking deeply into her very flesh, as blood trickled down and pooled on the floor beneath them.

Was she somehow causing this? Even the most skeptical skeptic might have trouble believing anyone could create the sort of phantom attack she was enduring as a subtle form of perhaps even unconscious trickery. Which left only the supernatural, paranormal forces, as being at the bottom of it as an explanation.

The Medical Examiner was understandably befuddled; said it was all "nonsense!" and complained that he was being got "out of bed to examine a girl who has epileptic fits." Mayor Arsenio Lacson was lacking a response. (So too, television personality and former actor Arsenio Hall, who didn't even chime in with a raised fist and a "Let's get busy!")

Clarita's welt-like wounds (I am assuming if she was being bitten, they must have bled, too, at least a little) just appeared on her body, and, apparently, the invisible attacks hurt quite a lot. I suppose it all COULD have been psychological.

Clarita had been discovered on a street corner, a homeless teenager jeered at and egged on by the drunks issuing forth from the taverns. She writhed in pain on the ground, crying that something—she described it as a cloaked being with bulging eyes—was attacking her. Biting her. The agony was unbearable.

Hauled into jail, the cop told the Captain. The Captain told the Chief. The Chief roused the ME. The Mayor was not far behind. Clarita claimed the "Being" she was seeing walked right through her jail cell bars to accost her. Freddy Krueger, that other Dream Demon, performed the same trick in the original haunted film by Wes Craven called A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Lest my readers (all two of 'em) get the impression that Clarita was doing the biting herself, take note: the wounds were on the back of her neck and on her shoulders. So, unless she had a Willy the Disk mouth from a Burroughs routine in Naked Lunch (i.e., a long, tuberous masticator on a length of fleshly rope), Clarita was, most certainly, not the culprit here—or simply pulling a short con.

So, what was it? Clarita was attacked in her cell. She was attacked in the courtroom. She was attacked, yet again, on the way to the hospital. Bites on the sides of her neck, Dracula-style, on her bruised and swollen palm. A nightmare ride to the hospital. But, after that, the cloaked and "bug-eyed" monsters (she claimed lastly that there were two of them giving her bites) vanished, and she did not experience such again.

The question is, as always: Did she create this reality? Was it a product of the fear and loathing of her own subconscious? Is everything?

What is real? What is illusion? We live through the "Five Gates" of our senses. and all that we experience, or even CAN experience, is simply accessed through those five sense organs--all of our impressions are simply signals. (Of what? From where? Our mind, our "consciousness," or perhaps our illusion of "reality," fills in the blanks.)

Do beings walk in the invisible world, hungry, eyeing their prey, waiting for an opportunity to strike those whose energy defenses, psychic defenses, have been weakened—for whatever reason? All that we know is only limited and relative. There is no way of knowing the answer to any of the ultimate questions.

Now, as far as this book (book, ah yes—this is but a chapter in a prospective proposal) is concerned, this will not be the only chapter on invisible attackers and mysterious wounds. I wish to write of Eleanora Zugun ("Dracu's Darling"--Eleanora also experienced mysterious bites from an entity she called "Dracu") and the Sallie House (covered extensively on the classic old paranormal show "Sightings" from the 1990s). I typically arise at midnight or thereabouts to read Tarot cards for the customers who call, and I've been doing it for many, many years. So I suppose I'm the night watchman for occult forces. As I write this, it is 3:33 in the morning. Perfect.

But I've just heard a curious knocking I can't explain.

And it's a bit unnerving.

I don't want something to reach out and touch me. Or, God forbid, give me (or you) a playful little bite.

So, I'll close and keep my skin intact.

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Note: My book Folklore of Fear: Urban Legends, Hauntings, and Supernatural Terrors is available for purchase. Unfortunately, it is curiously listed as being by "T. Boneman Burnett" a pseudonym I do not use. The cover is "T. Boneman Bakker". Either way, it's mighty good and something only a lonely Boneman such as myself could produce. By it and love it. You won't regret it. (Unless of course the Boneman come and visit YOU in the night.)

From the back cover:

Whispers in the dark... Shadows at the edge of your vision... Some stories refuse to die. Step into the chilling world of Folklore of Fear, where the most terrifying urban legends, haunted encounters, and supernatural horrors come to life. From restless spirits lurking in abandoned houses to eerie roadside phantoms that vanish without a trace, these are the tales that have been passed down in hushed voices-stories too horrifying to be forgotten. Dare to face the cursed legends that still haunt small towns. Unravel the mysteries of ghostly apparitions and sinister folklore. Encounter the monsters and myths that lurk just beyond the veil of reality. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, these terrifying tales will burrow into your mind, making you question what lurks in the shadows. Some legends are meant to be told... others should have stayed buried.