Back in its heyday in the 80’s and 90’s, the mall was bustling with all kinds of activity, mostly teens hanging out, browsy shoppers with or without kids in tow, Red Hat ladies and similar coffee clutches, and working professionals meeting for casual hookups or lunch dates. Packed shoulder to shoulder at the holiday rush, the mall itself let out a long audible sigh of relief once the Christmas returns finally fizzled out, the temporary stores closed, and the seasonal staff dispersed.
But now the mall was a dismal place. It had fallen into a state of disrepair and featured more advertisements to rent or lease space than actual stores. More than the bathrooms smelled like piss and the once well-maintained tile floors looked as if recently unearthed in a minor archeological excavation. The food court was closed and the remaining benches and tables had been mostly removed “to discourage transients”. The casual hookups were of a different, seedier sort, and the bathrooms were not places where many wished to linger long. The few people who worked there seemed drawn to the solitude of it all and stood back and watched any intruders into their territory with hollow vacant stares. Some shoppers still came, but they were fewer and further between.
Yet the mall still retained some vestiges of its former self. There was still a minor holiday rush, especially where games and calendars were sold, though even that was dying out as more and more of it went virtual and was just a tap away on a “Smart” device of some sort or another. There were kiosks vending mobile phones and body sprays and crystal talismans and those kinds of hair extensions that you wonder if they are made with real human or dog hair from unfortunates who disappeared to be harvested for parts. And, at the appropriate times, there were still costumed characters for family photos with all of the accustomed holiday décor leading up to the focus of a central often-velvet throne upon which a bored and exhausted adult would beckon children to and from their lap, surrounded by assistants helping to hoist the young bottoms into position, threatening their subjects to smile in as eerily cheerful sing-song manner as possible, snapping a photo at the most opportune moment, and cleaning their costumed adult lap of vomit and excrement between visitors when necessary.
This time, the mall was decorated for Easter.
At first glance, it seemed those people who made money during the holidays dressing as Santa for rushed photo shoots in which kids ask for footballs instead of Red Rider pellet guns, and all of their entourage, still needed some means of making a buck. Or maybe the parents just wanted an excuse to dress their kids up for the season and plop them onto the lap of a total stranger in a crude creepy bunny costume for a timely photo of them screaming at the tops of their lungs and begging to be taken home. It was tradition after all, and they had turned out OK. Besides, who doesn’t love a strong reminder that your parents could abandon you to the horrible nightmare terrors of long forgotten folklore that are now only spread through screaming childhood photos? “You’d better eat your broccoli… or else…” And yet, the rhythmic return of the costumed characters signified so much more.
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When Clara first remembered encountering The Bunny she was two. She had nightmares about the incident for weeks afterwards and promised to be good, begging her parents to never take her back there again. It had worked for a while, but then the year came and went and she relaxed her guard, and the season turned once again to chocolate rabbits and jelly beans and starched scratchy Easter dresses. And so they cycled right back to the mall to return to The Bunny, again and again. There were even photos of her with The Bunny from before she could remember – a small and limp baby-doll child staring wide eyed in disbelief at the looming hare.
Now she was six, and here they were in the same line for The Bunny, who always smelled a little like shit, vomit and stale beer, and even more so like musty dried lavender, creepily staring at her through those hollow red eyes…. She begged and pleaded with her mother to just leave and said she was sorry for throwing a fit at the toy store the day prior when she didn’t get the Pop Starr Glam doll she wanted. (She’d even held her breath but to no avail.) She was dressed in her Easter finery for the year, another crisp looking ensemble with too much purple taffeta and white lace that simply wasn’t practical for romping or sitting or even so much as thinking in. Her mother had spent more time than it could possibly be worth coiling her hair into spiral curls cascading over a pastel purple big bow headband before they’d left for here, and she had continued to twiddle with one stubborn flyaway lock of hair for most of the time they were in line.
Little did Clara realize that her parents were actually doing her a favor.
It was crucial that they come, and that Clara was dressed for the occasion. The Pact was several generations long. It pre-dated the mall when Santa and The Bunny had appeared in the larger big box window stores, like Woolworths back in the day. And the costumed ensembles had gone someplace else before that, though no one remembers the name of it now. It all began when Santa started coming annually, with the photo shoots and The List. Shortly after Santa came The Bunny. There had to be a balance. Something needed to offset The List…
Clara’s eyes started to well up with tears as they moved forward in the queue. Terrified children cried and screamed before her; some even broke loose of their parents’ grips to try to make a break for it only to be thwarted by The Bunny’s assistants, who were dressed as bulbous pastel Easter eggs with chicks popping out of them. Clara’s mother studied her intently, straightening the folds of Clara’s dress and reaching in her purse for a tissue to wipe Clara’s face clean of the tears and vestiges of dirt, perhaps with just a touch of mom spit to get those stubborn smudges. There was only one child left between them and The Bunny, a younger boy dressed in a pastel blue suit with a yellow bow tie. He actually seemed to look forward to seeing The Bunny and eagerly climbed upon its lap like some kind of sellout automaton, grinning from ear to ear for the camera and clutching his chocolate rabbit like a treasure he had won. He had earned it, that’s for sure: that prize and the aftermath of envisioning The Bunny as you bit off the ears and broke the chocolate into bite-sized bits to devour at your discretion was the only bearable thing about this whole experience.
Clara’s mother discussed photo packages with one of the egg chick attendants and settled on one that included enough wallet size pictures to send to all of the aunts, grandmothers and church ladies, just to be certain. There was no real need for larger pictures, especially when digital copies were included as part of the package deal. To ensure that The Pact was fulfilled for the year, photos had to be distributed and affixed to refrigerators far and wide so that all of the family could verify the warding. Everyone would know that little Clara was once again proven safe from The List, an essential task for the parents of any child that struggled with minding their manners or following the rules, especially those pertaining to acting out in public. The picture perfect spring garb was an added bonus meant to appease the Great Old Ones who had started this racket before any of them could remember.
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The List was a brilliant system…
The Great Old Ones enticed the children with all of the jolly old Santa fantasies so they could catalog and categorize each and every one, and they convinced the children to be willing participants in this process with the lure of gifts and prizes to be won for being good. The unsuspecting innocents flocked to Santa in droves to make sure they got on The List. The parents had gone along with it, to bring joy and merriment, to acquire some great holiday photos to send in Christmas cards, and to encourage their children to be on their best behavior. The threat of The List could sidestep an emotional blowout or even a full-scale falling-down-in-the-street tantrum, especially at the proper time of year. But as the parents began to understand the more sinister ramifications of the contract, they had been forced to reengage with The Great Old Ones to create a way out, and so The Pact was born and The Bunny began to come.
Clara tried to be brave. Her lip quavered as she approached The Bunny, determined not to cry this time. She was a year older, stronger and wiser. She could get through this. She solemnly climbed up on the rabbit’s lap and faked a smile for the camera, eyes wide. She silently ignored the faint odor of old shit and vomit and the strangely ever-present lavender. But then, the overwhelm came.
It was never as apparent from afar, but from the vantage point of the rabbit’s lap it became more and more obvious that The Bunny was not in fact an adult in a cheap ill-kept crude rabbit suit but was rather simply the suit itself, wrapped around a hollow void in space and time that seemed to scan the very essence of one’s being. It was filled with darkness, dread and despair, and it studied its subjects intently, absorbing their every breath. Beyond the permanently superficial grin, huge red bulbous eyes, and the wired catawampus ears that framed the oversized stuffed head lurked something unholy and otherworldly that could not be understood or explained in any rational way.
Its presence was the sort of thing that children and dogs can sense unnervingly and that cats will commune with as they stare blindly at a closet door for hours on end.
Clara tried to be brave and held her pose for the camera, knowing that if she caved in to the fear, she would feed the void that was The Bunny within the rabbit suit, and then this whole thing would take even longer as the assistants glared, coaxed, waved, whistled and tried to force a smile out of her. With the flash of the camera it was over and Clara was hoisted again to the floor to sweet freedom, a chocolate rabbit talisman of The Bunny, and a long, quiet car ride home. She was getting better at this with every passing year for all that the realization of it still sent shivers through her skin and rekindled her springtime nightmares.
Her mother smiled and fingered the photos. Another year had come and gone and her daughter was secure. Only a couple more years of this and Clara would outgrow The Pact, and this annual nightmare would give way to others.
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The Bunny & a young girl
as they time warp
into demonic darkness
A Polaroid of myself and the Easter Bunny at the mall, circa 1980sPortrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist residing in Kansas USA. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video and writing. You can find more of her work at:
https://www.jenniferweigelart.com/
https://www.jenniferweigelprojects.com/
https://jenniferweigelwords.wordpress.com/
So I tried to convince the AI to give me a spider made out of fingers, because there’s no way it could possibly mess that up right? Wink. After multiple unfulfilled requests for finger spiders, I bring you this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva for the month of September…
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: fingers as spider; spider made of fingers; a spider out of nothing but fingers; finger spider hand.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Coming Soon! It’s just a matter of time before these horrifying AI art generated creations come crawling into your home to feast on your blood. For they are hungry and they are evolving…
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: fingers as spider; spider hand shadow puppetry; fingers in shape of spider; spider that is a hand.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders They’re Here! Too late, you let them into the house. You’d better be sure to find and squish them all before they breed and come after you. They are still hungry, and they are still evolving…
So most people don’t see orca whales as inherently horrific, but then again we don’t tend to see ourselves as humans that way either. That said, we are both apex predators, and the orca have earned the name killer whale for totally valid reasons. They’re kind of like giant sea wolves in their social structuring, and wolves are long thought to be terrifying.
And these aptly named killers have gotten a lot of press lately for sinking yachts and sailing vessels at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. So we decided to explore these giant dolphin kin on this segment of Nightmarish Nature, because we focus a lot on the creepy crawlies but honestly a lot of bugs are just minding their own business (and minding it well, mind you).
We’re on top of the world…
On the Hunt
Killer whales have been known to terrorize other denizens of the deep and will often take advantage of spawning and reproductive grounds of other aquatic life, hunting down baby humpback whales migrating from their Caribbean birthing waters or attacking sea lion or seal pups en masse as they take to the sea for the first time (or the fifth or sixth or even as adults).
Some orca are even known to rush the shore and beach themselves to then shimmy back into the water, ideally with something to eat in tow. Or use their ability to make waves to wash their desired prey off of ice floes where they can nab it in the water. And they aren’t picky, when you’re that high up the food chain a grab ‘n go meal of any kind is all good: seals, polar bears, penguins, birds… because those big bodies need a lot of fuel… And killer whales will also toss living prey into the air in socialization, play, training, and just general sport whether they intend to eat the unfortunate creature(s) or not.
Food on the fly
Culture Clashes
Each orca pod’s culture and habits differ, as some focus their attentions on nabbing fish and others on marine mammals. These two groups can often coexist in the same area, living very different lifestyles. Some will attack dolphin or porpoise pods (among their closest relatives), and others will clash with pilot whales competing for resources such as mackerel. Pods develop strong bonds and learning is passed down from mother whales; it is widely believed a female orca began the practice of attacking boats, possibly after being struck by one but possibly out of play or curiosity, and has taught it to others now doing so.
Attacking People
So why don’t orca attack and eat humans? Probably because of the missed opportunity, honestly. Killer whales learn about hunting from their mothers, and they simply haven’t been taught to prey on humans as such. In fairness, sharks don’t eat us either. Sure sharks might bite us occasionally, but the fact remains that they spit us out – likely because we aren’t the protein- and fat-rich injured seals they had hoped to be attacking. (We’re kind of scrawny and tough by comparison, probably not worth picking out of the teeth…)
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Will orcas learn to attack and eat humans? Perhaps, if they keep attacking boats they may develop a taste for it. If they do, then that will likely seal their fate, because in the clash between apex predators, our engaging in a huge array of tool use is likely to force the issue. And, throughout our own history, we haven’t been known to tolerate animals that we come into conflict with very well at all. Just ask the Asiatic Lion.
Well, what are you waiting for?
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
Oops, I did it again. I got more thrift store art to paint in nail polish. Well, fourth time’s a charm, or so they say. Or was that third… I lose track… Anyway, without further ado, I present: more Revisitations paintings by Jennifer Weigel.
Woodburning Revisitations Kraken by Jennifer Weigel
I have no idea who did the original woodburning of the sailing ship and clouds on this plaque, but it begged for a giant squid Kraken to come and threaten to sink it. So here we are. Enjoy, and try not to get dragged under.
More nail polish into paintings by Jennifer Weigel
So here are some more Revisitations that aren’t nearly so horrifying. Some would say only the dragon classifies as a monster. But I figure you’ll get a kick out of them anyway, so they tagged along for the ride… This mailbox scene was originally signed Ryan K and now features a gnome who cannot see if he got anything or no. The dragon seascape was signed E Smith and almost featured a sea serpent or mermaid, but I had to do something with that cloud of noxious fumes looming over the top portion of the painting. And I had this painting of these cabins by Hutchings for a long time before finally adding this pegasus.
Zombies porcelain figurines in mixed media by Jennifer Weigel
But here’s the icing on the cake… I found these two porcelain figurines at the antique store. She was broken in several places and repaired with only a small chip missing from the bottom. and he was filthy. So I cleaned them up and painted them like Zombies, in mixed media with nail polish accents for the blood and their blacklight sensitive eyes. I took it a step further – do you recognize Blue Boy and Pinky? I swear everyone’s grandparents had those prints hanging in their house, along with the praying old man and Christ at Gethesmane. Or maybe I’m just that old. Sigh.
I invite you to follow the link-backs to see more of these pieces if you wish. It’s like an ever building thread. And I’m not going to split these out so you’ll have to just slog back through the pile if you want to see where this started here. Honestly, it’s all kind of the same, give or take, but if this is what rocks your boat then there’s some choppy waters all set up just waiting for you to sail on into them…
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
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David Davis
March 23, 2021 at 2:54 am
Well, that was certainly a mood.
VoodooPriestess
March 27, 2021 at 12:13 pm
I want you to know my first job interview was to be that bunny, so you are not wrong. I had a soul and did not get the job (back then).
Jennifer Weigel
April 4, 2021 at 8:43 am
That must have been the criteria you failed… The closest I ever got was playing Minnie Mouse for a school pageant…