house-hunting with a friend. i wander through musty halls and high-ceilinged dark rooms of a crumbling mansion with the real estate agent. something cold and wet keeps dripping onto my face. i touch my forehead and my hand comes away covered in blood. i say 'my god! what the hell is that dripping through the ceiling?'
the real estate woman says 'oh its just flesh'
when i prompt her to elaborate she tells me that a woman was murdered and her body parts are scattered, buried in the walls and floors of the house. i had wondered what the smell was. i am outraged, i protest 'but why didn't the police remove them? its their job!'
i stay the night there with some others, my mother included. the house keeps getting bigger and more dangerous every time i turn around. cracks and fissures widen in the floor and i have to be careful not to fall in, while at the same time avoiding the dripping blood. i can't sleep so go and explore. the lights are always on, like a hotel. the walls are dark mahogany.
in my normal home. but something is wrong. jimi hendrix keeps coming to stay and when he does, he has some kind of evil influence over my father and brother. they go to turkey to climb mt ararat, i can see them in the desert with my spirit eye. i know that jimi will lure them into a cave and brainwash them. hopefully i'll have time to escape with my mother before they arrive. it is too late, i am trapped upstairs, trying to call my friends on the phone but always getting the wrong number.
adrenaline pumping, i run outside and get on a motor-scooter. i seem to be always manually pedalling it through a compound, with a japanese girl called tomoko on my back. i have joined the army and they have given me a violet-blue uniform and pill-box hat to wear, but it makes me stick out too much when i'm trying to hide. i look back at the house where danger lives, it has become an impersonal office-building. it is getting dark, my best chance is to ride off into the gloom of the forest with tomoko.
copyright 1994 lisa bode