Velociworld

THE FOUR STAGES OF HELL

Well, I could be cavalier and say attend one of my counseling sessions if you want to see one of those four stages, but that would be a lie, as I haven't attended one myself in months. Fuckers don't get it.

No, the Four Stages of Hell was a geek show at the Coastal Empire Fair as a child, when I would split off from the vomitous Bullet with my brother and climb under tentflaps to witness the bizarre, the disfigured, the queer. We were always on the prowl for burlesque, or at least a triple-nippled girl, being all of 9 or 10, but alas, those particular tents were apparently heavily guarded. Praetorian Rotarian Guard, I think.

We could see geeks, though. In these waning days of the Callow South, a good freak could make a decent living. Not too many bearded ladies, but one could view a man with three thumbs, or someone afflicted with gigantism, or the fattest woman in the world, who would end up being a hippopotamus.

Back to the Four Stages. This was a Madame Tussaud's, or Potter's Wax Museum, type set up. A wax figure of some poor bastard, obviously shanghaied from a dive, who'd upset the pirate captain. And so he was encased in a coffin like box, separated into four sections: head, torso, important area, and feet. And ravenous fucking Norwegian wharf rats were enclosed in every section. Maybe four in each. To have their fiendish way.

Yes, I know it was only wax. But it was still an eye opener. To be nine years old, and to see this, and to think I've only been dipping her pigtails in the inkwell? I ain't been thinking outside the box! is an eye opener.

This concept applied to little brothers as well.

It translates well into adulthood, of course. If I were not now terrified of rats I could have an erstwhile boss or two lovingly encased in mine own Four Stages of Hell, which I have conveniently constructed in the backyard, lacking only the rats, which, as I have told you, I am terrified of.