Literally Horrible: A Hellitosis Novella

By Joshua Alan Tate

"I feel dirty after reading this" - Authors ExGirlfriend.
Hellitosis: Literally Horrible is a disgusting romp alongside a Serial Killer and their insane quest for a self fulfilling prophecy. A mid 90's era look at the desperate differences that thrust some people into the fringe of society and the edge of humanity. If you have ever listened to loud music and relished in thoughts that you would never express to another person for fear of being thrown into a mental hospital...then buckle up and climb aboard the most Distatasteable thrill ride of a literary journey one could muster. While you are at it, play the companion piece 10 song album titled (Hellitosis: Seshing The TrenchMouth) as a pairing like stale wine and hard cheese. They were written for each other and meant to be experienced together. If you don't feel disgusting for having read this book, you didn't do it right.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667821535

Book preview

cover.jpg

© Joshua Alan Tate 2021

ISBN: 978-1-66782-152-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66782-153-5

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Trench mouth (intro): Chapter 1

DickWitch: Chapter 2

Manifuck Destitute: Chapter 3

Hero-Out: Chapter 4

To the Hilt: Chapter 5

Can You Say Tan?: Chapter 6

Dr. Benfang, and the Dark Lollipop of Death: Chapter 7

The Apple: Chapter 8

Hot Dog: Chapter 9

Imprisonment in Tartarus: Chapter 10

Obituary for Hecate (Hector) Rosado

Keys to typeset:

Bold Words are Lyrics from album

Italicized Bold words are Spoken word from album

Trench mouth (intro): Chapter 1

I have tried to write something meaninglessly gory and something eternally deep yet probably have achieved neither. While dealing with the idea that all creators, artists and people of intent bludgeon themselves with, What am I trying to say that is different? I have realized that most never come up with anything new. How can we really? It is all laid out, it’s all been thought of and somehow stated, eloquently in most cases, by someone that lived possibly thousands of years before us. Greek poets, Sumerian fables and Monastic theologians from our collective unconscious who have all drifted into dust, their voices carrying down to us in the crackling flip of paper with the lot of them trying to deliver the same message; Stop fighting! get over it and evolve already. There are many forces out there in which we all must take up arms ... famine, disease, environmental cataclysm, and the dreaded knowledge that our time here is short, but there is no need to fight each other, especially over things like religion, which itself is supposed to bond us together and enlighten the human experience. Nor should we kill one another over food which we have learned to produce Ad nauseam and should not be the means to our end. Life is rough, and we can never truly touch or understand another human being completely, because we live in the dark recesses of our brain, like a prisoner catching glimpses of a world lit externally but reflected inward through cracks and crevices in the bastion wall that is our iris, our tactile sensations and our long lost olfactory senses. Yet still frightened we lash out at whatever is different from us or doesn’t seem like it will go along with what we SEE as the correct path, few understand that it does not matter, our vision is just a reflection and not the path itself. We all walk a path but are still blind in our search of light. All that can be counted up at the end of it all, is what was left behind…our children and/or the grandiose works of the individual, for good or ill…and these pass away also. So much more could be accomplished and made to do well, if only we cared less about our egos and more for the projectile that is our future. Again, this has already been said, and my voice’s echo is slowly fading in degrees of deteriorating decibels as your eyes leave this sentence.

I started writing this novella and album in a time when people listened to whole albums as if they were a complete statement and a capsule of gratitude. In my youth, one would buy a vinyl album and gawk at the artwork and the lyrics. Music was not a simple and easily acquired set of data streamed through a portable device. Genres like punk rock, hardcore and metal were sought in dark clubs and smudged mailers. You were lucky to have friends with connections to such hidden gems. Music was cherished in the form of a library, a constant physical reminder of what was yours, and not screens of algorithms and suggestions. I listened to my coveted albums on repeat while reading through books that my Jehovah’s Witness parents told me were blasphemies to our God. Those songs became wed to the stories I read. Fleetwood Mac and Ray Bradbury joined succinctly in the short fictions of R is for Rocket. Cinderella’s album Long Cold Winter will, to this day, bring chilled flesh reminders of Edgar Allen Poe’s Tell Tale Heart and the thumping drum beat underneath the floorboards within that story. Also I must remark that in my later life I continued this tradition while obsessively listening to Mastodon’s Leviathan while finally tackling Herman Mellvill’s mighty tome Moby Dick. So when I started this tiny beast that took up to 15 years of my life to write, I wanted an album to bring forth with it. The chance to not only work on a piece of literature but also perform a musical piece of art to go hand in hand with the written word was a project of dreamlike fantasy. From pen to paper and prose to lyrics. It was the hardest thing I have ever done and the longest task taken on. These stories of Heck are all pulled from my life as well. Not the raping or murdering of course. Yet most of the scenes have some base in my life experiences and the characters around Heck are amalgamations of friends and occurrences that changed my worldview. You see, this story is about how I became someone else. I went from a sheltered child of almost cultish religious fervor into an alcoholic drug dazed adult. Then finally I found sobriety and defeated the demons that had plagued my self esteem throughout my life. I got clean and the story finally started to fall into place. My Friend David was the basis for this book. He died of a self inflicted heroin overdose. I started this for him using the poem I wrote for his birthday. He was 21 years old when I got the call that he had died. My Father passed away from huffing canned air a couple years later. I resolved to change my life and be better than him. When I decided to quit drinking I found out my girlfriend was pregnant, but we then lost the baby and the struggle to stay sober was challenged even more than I thought I could bear. I kept on though, and I remained sober and constantly killed my goals. What I came to know is that no one knows. We can try to find the reasons for why things are and what makes people act the way they do, but it is still a mystery. We don’t live in a universe where knowledge is doled out to us completely. We are imprisoned within the constraints of time and space and the five senses. If you can accept that and give each person you meet that benefit of understanding, then you have made the world a better place.

Well, that is enough blather out of me. If you like heavy music, then listen to the album while you read this novella. That was the intention. Or don’t. You can enjoy each separately, together, or independently without their benefactor. However, I must warn you that they are both immensely distasteable. If you do not have a hearty stomach, the stench will get you.

So…welcome to the shit show. The horror-end-us piece of crap I call Hellitosis. A vile bit of food stuck between two teeth and wafting noxious fumes offensively towards the readers and listeners. I have given this my best effort, to hail the senses of the world and call to them from the grossest place of intellect, for this is the Trench Mouth, the smell of what’s to come, the message from the mouth of our worst in human nature, the calling in of the quarters for the next apocalypse. I harken to the towers of the North, South, East, and West and to the blasting of the trumpets so this may go forth and do it’s worst. Here comes Hellitosis.

DickWitch: Chapter 2

In a slightly decrepit tavern on a snowy New England evening, the conversation begins. Where the Hell was you, man? Were you hanging out with that Gringa? She tryna get some of her wrinkly titties in your mouth? Heck asks. He laughs and grabs at his drink clumsily whilst his trademark Drunk Eye wanders like a koi fish that’s been swimming in vodka. However, Heck liked the sweet taste of rum more than that bitter bastard of a potato.

Yeah, David replies, I was just, you know, talking her down. He smiles devilishly and unbeknownst to himself, wipes the last of a sugary-looking powder from the donut of his nostril as it streaks on his sleeve.

You mean you were talking her outta her panties. Heck’s talent for poetic malpractice is honed to its usual sharpness.

Heck shakes his head side to side like a puppy shaking off rain droplets. That chica seems like a real bitch. She better pay us tonight. I mean there’s nobody in this fuckin’ dive. I’m thinking it was no good for us to drive out here to play this show. He loudly sucks the last of the drink through the straw.

David does not seem to hear him. He is chewing his fingernails with an almost typewriter-staccato of rhythm. He stares with disdainful fascination through the window to the outside of the club, where winter was doing its silently bludgeoning thing to the sidewalks. David peers through the dark shadow of his reflection in the window, staring through a vacuum of light at the cruel world outside. He stops chewing his nails for a moment and unbuttons his flannel, the white t-shirt underneath scares away the horrible vision he saw in his own image-or lack thereof.

Outside the pub, blue neon threads through the falling snow into an empty street. A brave and solitary vehicle squishes by in the slush and melt of the battering winter storm.

Heck kicks at the grime of old gum and putrefied alcohol sick stuck to the dingy carpet beneath his barstool. Hey, dude, I was thinking about writing a rap for the band. Maybe I could perform it in-between songs. Something like ‘Hey baby, we’re The Leftovers, we comin’ at you crazy with the crisco verbs. Sweet and sexy, no we ain’t that kind. We’ll punch you in the head, and fuck you from behind’ He thrusts his hips and pretends to slap an imaginary body in front of him. What do you think?"

David turns to him wearing a stone-cold face, and replies with a dead in the water, No.

With a sigh, Heck concedes and pushes on, I guess we should start setting up our gear?

No way, man, I don’t wanna kill the coke buzz. I can always wind down with the horse after we play. Why waste good drugs? Besides, you know I never sound good when I shoot up before a set. What in Hell are you thinking? David ticks and tatters along without understanding the question.

She-ite man, I didn’t mean ‘gear’ like... Heck mimics the action of thumbing a needle into his arm. ...I meant we should set up the amps and microphones and shit.

Right, right, right... The rapid succession of sped-up speech from Dave is dizzying. Sorry, I guess my head’s all fuzzed up, he concludes.

Heck grimaces. Maybe you should lay off that junk for a while. I know you’re all fucked up about Screamy and all, but she’s not worth it, man. She’s gone, like the Zombie song; you need to get over her. I mean, dude, if you can get a blow job and free drugs from a well-established club owner, who by the way happens to look pretty damn good for whatever age she is, then you don’t need some psycho x-girlfriend haunting your head.

Yeah, I know. But, David protests.

Butt, ass, or cheek, never mind that Screamy. She fucked around on you and was so Goddamn crazy that she threatened to kill herself when her hair dye didn’t come out the right color. Fuck all to her, Heck asserts.

David sniffs loudly, I know, I KNOW. Anyway, fuck it! Let’s get on stage and rock this fuckin’ two-bit tavern. This bar doesn’t know what I’ve got in store for them. He slaps the bar counter with the flat of his palm. A resulting thunderous clap echoes off of all the walls and sports memorabilia.

We’ll baptize this place in the Hell-fire of our sound, eh?

As David turns toward the stage, the loose strand of his trailing wallet chain catches on the