Forbidden Zone: The Novelization

By Joshua Millican and Richard Elfman

If you're a loner, beware.
Abused and misunderstood, beware.
Proud and lustful, beware.
Dregs and druggies and transgressive artists, beware.
If you're on your own, you might end up in the FORBIDDEN ZONE!

Experience the bizarre and musical tale of a girl who travels to another world through a gateway in her family's basement. Follow the dysfunctional Hercules Family into the erotic and hellish catacombs of the Sixth Dimension. Meet the sinister and scintillating residents of the Forbidden Zone and party down with the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo!

Richard Elfman's transgressive cult sensation is now a novel, oozing with sex, mayhem, and body horror. This irreverent reimagining isn't for the faint of heart—or the easily offended!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encyclopocalypse Publications
• Release date: Sep 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223856092

Book preview

PROLOGUE

There’s life underground!

Deep beneath the Earth’s surface, where the caverns are vast and the walls between realities are thin, where space and time operate beyond the strict confines of physics, where fantastical domains rise and fall over eons or in an instant, intrepid explorers may find delights to astound the body and mind.

But beware, for this labyrinth also teems with all manner of Minotaur, demonic forces that writhe and thrive, horrors certain to make your blood run cold. But of all the realms in this near-infinite underworld, one pushes the boundaries of sensation and madness past ecstatic extremes like no other, a land of otherworldly pleasures and apocalyptic nightmares, heavenly hellscapes and immaculate mutilations occupying the entirety of the Sixth Dimension: The Forbidden Zone!

By all accounts, living in the Sixth Dimension can be tough. When you’re living in the Sixth Dimension, things get rough. Psychotic minstrels and interstellar entities describe traveling to abysmal depths, going down, down, down, deeper than buried toxic waste, deeper than the lost City of Atlantis, deeper than dinosaur bones and the animated skeletons who bang out semi-melodic percussions on tyrannosaurus rex ribs, deeper than ancient alien flying saucers; crossing dangerous borderlines monitored by insidious creatures, escaping into a carnal Nirvana of sex and pain, Eros and Thanatos inextricably intertwined, a never-ending fever dream, an eruption of warped euphoria, a prison and a paradise: The Forbidden Zone!

Most mere mortals will never glimpse the gates of the Forbidden Zone. Even if they knew of its existence, even if they believed the truth, they simply wouldn’t have the guts to make the perilous voyage. But the Forbidden Zone has a voice all its own—and it beckons. With the sweetest of Siren songs, it shines like a beacon, drawing freaks and outcasts like moths to the proverbial flame. See, the Forbidden Zone is a hungry, sometimes gluttonous territory, and it must feed. To that end, it lays traps in the form of doorways and portals hidden under beds, behind closet doors, and in the darkest of alleys. If you’re a loner, beware. Abused and misunderstood, beware. Proud and lustful, beware. Dregs and druggies and transgressive artists, beware. If you’re on your own, you might end up in—the Forbidden Zone!

CHAPTER 1

Our story begins in Venice, California, the beachside suburb of Los Angeles made famous by thousands of Hollywood cameos. But it was a much different city in decades past, far from the tourist mecca of bikinis and sunglasses, tattoo shops and t-shirt peddlers, muscle-heads and hipsters, that it’s become. While always a bastion for avant-garde creators and political revolutionaries, Venice in the 1980s had a dark side. Sure, remnants of this past era remain in the form of crime, homelessness, and addiction, but Venice in the 1980s was another animal entirely—especially in its seediest sectors, neighborhoods awash in desperation, degradation, and depravity. And the sleazy top-dog of this graffiti-soaked fiefdom was Huckleberry P. Jones, larger than life and lower than dirt.

Before moving to California, he was a circus geek at an outfit in Arkansas. Now, Huckleberry P. Jones was a trafficker of exploited sex-workers and a peddler of narcotics, made all the more insidious by his dastardly ambitions. Not content with merely preying on the poor by providing the pleasures of escapism, Huckleberry wanted to control the very lives of his constituents. To that end, he bought up most of the abandoned and dilapidated properties in Venice, making a name for himself as a ruthless and treacherous slumlord. He’d turn his tenants into prostitutes and drug dealers under threat of eviction. Or he’d throw old ladies and single mothers out on the streets just for the fun of it. He’d use his properties as stash-houses, crash houses, and crack houses. Huckleberry P. Jones was not someone that you’d want to fuck with. He was also a fucking clown.

Not figuratively, literally: Huckleberry P. Jones was a fucking clown. Decades before creepy clowns became a mainstay of horror movies, before Pennywise or Twisty or Art, this motherfucker was the real deal. He’d strut confidently down the street in his white linen suit, white velvet bowler over an eccentric wig, black polka-dotted bowtie around his neck, and a face covered in greasepaint. He sported blue ovals over his eyes and bright red lips. His ensemble was completed by a bright cherry-red nose the size of a tangerine.

This wasn’t normal, of course, but Huckleberry didn’t give a good God damn! In fact, he was daring motherfuckers to start shit with him, to laugh behind his back or make some cliché Bozo comparison. Any excuse to open a can of whoop-ass on some bitch or bastard. He was so eager to fight, he wore boxing gloves as an every-day accessory.

It was just another day: April 17 th, 1980.

Huckleberry had just finalized a lease agreement for one of his worst houses with a new batch of suckers, aka tenants, the Hercules Family. They were a married couple with a pair of teenagers and a senile old grandfather. He’d have them working corners and turning tricks in no time, he figured. He found the family matriarch especially scintillating, having long harbored a fetish for women who wear pink curlers in their hair. But before the family moved in, Huckleberry needed to retrieve a few kilos of heroin he’d previously stashed in the basement, for safe keeping.

It was a sad house, to be certain. A decrepit, termite-infested, piss-yellow bungalow constructed out of rotting plywood and asbestos. Decaying shutters hung depressingly on the windows, most of which were cracked and broken. The lawn was dead, covered in garbage and dog shit. Even the trees that once offered fruit and shade were bare, leafless skeletons of their former selves, knotted and twisted and lifeless from disease. A tire swing hung on a branch, once a symbol of childhood exuberance, now a death-trap certain to maim or kill the next body stupid enough to try it. The interior of this piss-yellow bungalow was somehow even worse, with walls coated in layers of lead-based paints, pools of bodily fluids left by squatters drying in every corner, and a stench rancid enough to empty stomachs.

On that specific day in late April, Huckleberry was seen entering this disgusting, currently-vacant house on the outskirts of Elfman Avenue at around 4:20 PM. Not five minutes later, the pusher pimp came bursting out again, screaming, flailing, and utterly off his rocker.

Holy shit! What the fuck was that! Huckleberry screamed, running in circles on the dead and dirty front lawn. I gotta get the fuck outta here! Shit! Holy fuck! Yow! Mama, I’m coming home! And with that wild display and those panicked words, the slumlord took off down the street like an Olympic track star going for the Gold.

Neighbors had no idea what happened inside that derelict, death-trap of a house to illicit such an extreme outburst from old Huckleberry. They imagined he came face to face with a ghost or a boogeyman. They imagined he sampled a bad batch of drugs. They imagined all kinds of wild scenarios. But no one could have possibly known that a portal to the Sixth Dimension had recently opened in the basement, right next to the pimp’s stash-spot. It was a gateway to the Hall of Doorways, the antechamber of the Sixth Dimension. But this wasn’t your typical entryway. This one looked like a giant mouth adorned with gruesome teeth and a quivering tongue.

Huckleberry had been gobbled-up and transported into the underworld where he was apprehended, fucked, and tortured. He endured a lifetime of transgressive and transcendent experiences packed into a few short minutes. Because time works differently in the Sixth Dimension, that place where even things that look familiar aren’t what they appear to be. It had been like a nightmare for the miscreant, a brain-scrambling exercise of strange highs and extravagant terrors.

No, he never told anyone what he’d been through and, of course, he never considered giving the Hercules Family the courtesy of a heads up. No, Huckleberry ran home, jumped into bed, and hid under the covers for days. He was certain a contingency of hooded centurions were on their way to retrieve him, to drag him back into the dominions of the unsane, back into—the Forbidden Zone!

CHAPTER 2

It had been over a month since Huckleberry P. Jones completed his whirlwind trip to the Forbidden Zone and back again. And while the notorious clown-faced street criminal had almost convinced himself that it was just a nightmare, that someone must have slipped him a bad tab of acid, he was in no hurry to return to the piss-yellow bungalow on the outskirts of Elfman Avenue—not even to collect rent.

Meanwhile, the Hercules Family had finally settled in to their pitiful home as much as was humanly possible. They gathered around the dining room table every morning for breakfast. Let’s get to know the clan, shall we?

Pa Hercules sat at the head of the table reading the Olvera Street Newspaper. The day’s headline was MAN BITES DOG THEN BITES SELF. He hardly spoke a word, a trait that’s common for those whose dreams had died years prior. He’d come to Los Angeles all the way from Sweden determined to be a triple threat actor/singer/dancer. But like so many young men and women who flocked to Hollywood hoping to see their names in lights, the industry chewed him up and spit him out. Even with his family, his wife, his children, and his father around him, he was always in a world of his own. Perhaps he was psychologically preparing for another day of drudgery at the factory where he hardly made enough to cover their subsistence existence.

Ma Hercules sat to his right. She looked and felt just as defeated as Pa but for entirely different reasons. Yes, she had wanted to be a star too, and a model, but her younger self had been just as excited by the prospect of motherhood. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after she had two children that it dawned on her: She wasn’t a natural mother. In fact, she wasn’t much of a natural anything. And as her husband’s aspirations faded, so did her own hopes and dreams of being someone important. Someone who mattered. She almost never got dressed, wearing her purple bathrobe with green trim like a uniform. She put curlers in her hair to create the illusion of beautification, but the truth was, she could hardly be bothered to do much more than breathe.

Directly across the table from Ma, to the left of Pa, sat Grampa Hercules, better known simply as Gramps. He sported a tangled beard that hung down to his stomach and deep dark circles under his eyes. He’d seen better days. While arguably the most famous and successful member of the Hercules family, he was a shadow of his former self. Once upon a time, Gramps had been the most famous Jewish wrestler in Scandinavia, a king of the ring who traveled the world facing challengers ten times his size—and he bested the bulk of them! Of course, thousands of pile-drivers later, Gramps’s gray matter was mushy. Like Ma, he rarely dressed if ever. Those who attempted to assist him with hygiene maintenance would receive a whack from the Billy-club Gramps always held tightly at his side.

At least the kids were alright, more or less. Susan P. Hercules, age 16 going on 17, appeared the pinnacle of youthful effervescence. She sat next to Ma, smiling, dressed in her favorite yellow dress of vibrant daffodil, and clearly happy just to be alive. She’d been that way ever since returning from her year abroad studying in France. Her transformation, in fact, had been nothing short of startling. The art, the culture, the cuisine, Susan enjoyed it so much she was altered at a cellular level, a molecular level even. She developed an authentic French accent that became impossible to shake. Doctors took DNA samples from Susan and confirmed the impossible: She had become completely French. Obviously, from that day forward, she insisted that everyone refer to her as Frenchy.

Thank you very much for that delicious breakfast, Frenchy said with flourish, sipping the last of her coffee. "It was absolument, superb!" She directed a chef’s kiss towards her mother, who hardly seemed to notice. The moment was destroyed when Gramps, as if directly contradicting his granddaughter’s assessment of the meal, vomited into Flash’s lap. Flash screamed.

Flash Hercules, the youngest member of the family at barely 16, actually looked like the oldest one of them all. He suffered from Progeria, also known as Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome. It’s the disease that makes kids look old because they begin aging rapidly starting at around twenty-four months. Though only a teenager, Flash looked like a man in his 80s. In an effort to look more his age, Flash was fond of wearing his Boy Scouts uniform and a beanie with a propeller on top. It was an obvious overcompensation. The afflicted young Hercules was nonetheless as hungry, hyper, and horny as every other 16-year-old in the neighborhood. In fact, he was able to use his disability to frequent friendly prostitutes who couldn’t have guessed his real age, not that it would have mattered to some of them.

Flash quit screaming when Gramps started whacking him on the head with his trusty Billy-club.

I’d like to chat with you all longer, said Frenchy, using this as an opportunity to rescue her brother from her grandfather’s abuse. However, I think that Flash and I have to hurry along to school. It was true. If they didn’t get a move on, they’d be late. As I am a new student, I don’t want to make a bad impression. This was also true, for that day was Frenchy’s first at North Venice Technical Academy, a long-ago-disbanded alternative high school for students with issues.

While Flash had been attending North Venice Technical Academy for years, Frenchy was being transferred mid-way through her Junior Year. She’d been branded problematic by her public high school for refusing to revert back to her American accent