2025
My recent Ghoul Next Door column in the current Halloween issue of Rue Morgue Magazine may well be my favorite thing that I have ever written.
This began as a blog post in 2015, but I never knew where to go with it, so it’s been languishing in my drafts for the past decade! It all came together for me last spring: the past few years have given us The Substance, vampire facials as self-care, and a realization that Helen Sharp and Madeline Ashton weren’t cautionary tales…they were freaking prophets.
Here’s a wee snippet…!
I peer into my bathroom mirror each morning, arranging the implements of my beauty routine like a surgeon preparing for operation. Like Asami’s meticulous torture kit in Audition, my implements are arranged with clinical precision—though supposedly for beautification rather than revenge. My chemical exfoliants—glycolic acid, mandelic acid, salicylic acid—don’t just promise to “reveal your natural glow.” They’re dissolving the uppermost layer of my epidermis, a controlled chemical burn happening in slow motion, like Poltergeist’s face-melting sequence but with better packaging.
My dermaroller is a Lament Configuration for the face. Hundreds of tiny needles I willingly drag across my skin, creating thousands of micro-injuries because some study somewhere promised increased collagen production. Blood beads up in tiny pinpricks as I think, “This is fine,” while the rational part of my brain mocks me mercilessly: “You have $500 in your IRA, you fucking ding dong. Maybe worry about that instead of your nasolabial folds, whatever those even are.” I persist in this masochistic ritual with the fervor of a Cenobite acolyte, imagining Pinhead nodding in solemn approval. “Your suffering will be legendary, but your pores will be invisible.”