Pulp San Diego

FOREWORD

It is well known that all the trees on Idylwilde Street served as hosts to the Shell-Less Snails. All the trees that is to say, but one. There is perhaps nothing about the tree itself that prevents it from being a host to those things children know of but forget exist as adults, it is only that it is already occupied by other more hungry, terrible guests.

The old woman who harbors in her dark heart many secrets too awful and evil to speak of has laid a previous claim to the tree outside her home. No creature of light or dark dares to trespass the woody bole for fear of a fate more horrible than destruction. Instinctively, children do not linger to play in its shadow and adults do not trim its grasping branches or rake the fallen, scabrous leaves from the stained and damaged sidewalk.

At night the Burlap Monkeys follow the commands of the old woman and forage the homes and driveways of Idylwilde, careful not to be seen lest the pressure of an untrained gaze render them to dust. Neighborhood pets, mice, birds and the occasional unwary, unlucky resident are ferried back to the old woman's house like crumbs borne on the backs of ants stealing from a picnic, to suffer in unknown rites and strange transformations. Every so often the odd distilled energies of the missing are bound to innocuous idols of wood and clay, hung from a chosen tree as the condemned are sealed in gibbets, in tribute to almost forgotten and ravenous gods.

"Happy Birthday Denise!", "In memory of a beloved pet", "We miss you, Charlie!" and other false sentiments scrawled onto the tops, sides and bottoms of the sacrificial urns are in truth secret, taunting messages to survivors, desperate icons of hope painted on the sides and slats of makeshift prisons. Beneath crude lettering hides painstaking runes from out of antiquity that hold within tormented spirits more securely than iron chains.

Centuries of lies and misdirection allowed the old evil woman in the house on Idylwilde Street to work in secret and without fear of discovery, slaking her lust at the expense of the innocent. The old woman may have acted with impunity forever if not for the fact that the neighborhood kids, Stinky Joe and Utter Farley, took notice of what was occurring on our street and banded us all together to form in defense of our homes the squad we came to call the the L.K.R. of Idylwilde Street. Until now, no one who was not present that one fateful week in 1969 knew what a great service, and indeed sacrifice, the L.K.R. performed in saving us all from evil.

I was eventually proud to be a founding member of the L.K.R. or, as it was vociferously known ever after in our penultimate battle cry...Little Kid's Revenge.

This is our story.

Tags: San Diego Pulp Horror