Hell is a Mix Tape

A demon crawled from the depths of my hollow in the Spring of 2025 and said,

“My turn.”

She was born of real-life experiences, therefore, I can assure you, she exists. She is nameless but nonetheless…she is.

Her journal, found wedged between the roots of an old maple, begins as follows…

•••

My mother used to say my blood was so sweet that every creature longed for it.

Bugs and creepy crawlies salivated as their tiny teeth sunk into my flesh at their first opportunity.

Little did she know larger Beasts of Burden would later find me intoxicating and create life anew...

September 7, 1998—

The only news rags that got anything right were the ones reporting I was bit by some feral animal that was never caught, and the puncture wound was no bigger than the tip of a pencil.

The rest was fabricated, sensationalized.

Lies that the police came, that reports were filed, and that rabies shots were given dressed the front pages of state-wide newspapers in an effort to quell fears of local rubes.

But no one really cared...about me, anyway.

Especially in this shit town.

After the animal, or whatever it was, sunk its teeth into my leg, he skulked away. I watched him poop then take to the woods.

I looked on while blood dripped down my calf and the mix tape Alek gave me played R.E.M’s “Night Swimming.”

Michael Stipe’s melodic wail soothed me so much so that I didn’t think the bite deserved worry. It was a scratch, really.

The creature didn’t seem…sick. He looked happy, kind of dopey.

I told myself I’d be fine as Michael Stipe turned into Kate Bush. Once her ethereal crooning began, I knew I’d be Running Up That Hill—the one at Mosquito Bridge—before dusk.

But I wasn’t fine.

By the time I’d made it to the bridge, the boats lounging at the lake’s Sandbar were gone and my skin was on fire. My breathing, labored. My calf, bulging.

Once the sun set, I could barely stand. And somehow, I’d gotten myself to the emergency room. I don’t remember how.

•••

“Ooh, yeah. This bite looks…angry,” the on-call doctor said.

His silver-streaked, walrus mustache bobbed around his upper lip when he spoke.

“I’m going to irrigate it with a saline and hypocleanse solution. Sit tight.” He pat my knee like a grandfather who’s promised me a quarter if I finish my beets.

The doctor vanished around a sterile corner and I grew impatient.

Confused.

Angry.

Hungry.

A second later, I became faint.

My vision, suddenly compromised.

Typical hospital commotion morphed into warbled sounds.

Nothing made sense.

I awaited whatever came next while wondering why Wyclef Jean would be Gone Till November.

The doctor came back; I saw him through half-closed eyes that no longer felt like mine.

He didn’t ask.

He didn’t wait.

He came closer with a swab and gathered tissue samples from the open bite just before jamming a catheter tip syringe into the puncture wound, forcing fluid straight into my leg.

It blazed a path through newly formed veins.

I howled, kicked, and cried while Hanson sang “MMMBop.” The bedside table, now toppled over on the floor, was the only thing between me and the doctor.

A blurred version of him backed away while quickly inserting the swab into a tube. He bellowed for a nurse, a guard, anyone.

I jumped off the bed and looked to my calf. Everything was hazy, but I could see the swelling had increased, the solution he’d flushed into me was careening beneath my skin like poison.

Rage propelled me. I howled again.

“Now, now…settle down,” he said, stepping back with his palms up. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

Spittle slid from the corners of my mouth as I growled. Headphones still affixed to my skull blared Blink 182’s “A New Hope.”

I stormed past him just as my hearing sharpened. Everything came in clear: the cassette tape reels churned in the walkman, nearby machines beeped, papers flipped, pens scribbled, and gasps echoed as I rounded the corner toward the exit.

Standing before the automatic door, a nurse behind me said, clear as a cloudless Arizona sky, “The culture…rare…mycobacterium abscessus…untreatable with antibiotics…”

Untreatable, she’d said. If that was true, a hospital would do me no good.

I caught my reflection in the glass door as I left—the pupils of my eyes had become dark slits against glowing irises.

Why isn’t “Thriller” on this tape, Alek?

•••

The evening had turned humid and Smashing Pumpkins assured me that Tonight, Tonight…the impossible was possible.

Boy, was it ever.

Between panicked breaths, I looked to my hands; their shape was changing. They widened at the knuckles, my fingers elongated, my nails grew sharp as talons.

And red—my skin was now blood red.

Everywhere.

Thick, scales formed along my body in sporadic bursts.

My breasts engorged then withered within a second as I grew a foot taller.

My feet swelled, tearing my Reebok hi-tops to shreds.

My head ached as rounded horns sprouted to life.

Retractable wings tore through the flesh of my back.

The bite on my calf? Throbbing with newfound verve.

“My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit blared through the headphones. I ripped them off as the song played on at record volume from the sodden ground.

I fell to the forest floor.

Writhing.

Knowing.

Becoming.

Aware.

Anew.

Reborn.

All while Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity”, rang in my superhuman ears.

•••

No one knows how it happened.

Especially me.

Folks say they see me lurking somewhere between Mosquito Bridge and the edge of the world.

It’s true.

I stalk my own shadow along the lake’s strand, quietly existing among the Summer People and Those Who Remain once the season ends—the ones who don’t know they’re half-dead.

And long after Summer People have gone and the Leaf-Peepers of Fall go home, the lingering rubes in town say they hear me wailing in the

dead of night at Mosquito Bridge—Lake Winnisquam’s Wailer, they call me...

If they only knew that I was just singing along to Alek’s mix tape…

“I’m a Creep, I’m a weirdo…”