It's neon. It's dark and covered in soot. It's windows were boarded up years ago. There is only one road that goes there. The asphalt has been cracked and steam rises from crevices, shrubs and weeds grow from the cracks, dying and rebirthing in the moist air. It's door is cast iron and warm to the touch, it's contours molded in the shape of naked half bodies which protrude at unnatural angles. The neon blinks on and off, a sizzling sound cracks from its design, the signs jutting from under the eaves of the house.
'Smut' 'Smut' 'Smut'
Sitting on the edge of a cliff half eroded, the house seems precariously perched. But its basements run deep into the cliff. It's foundation is of the rock itself, the deep bedrock that forms the cliff, not the top soil that slips, slides and descends into the lake with every light rain. It's Victorian in design and squats there on that cliff, a vulture made of wood and brick, waiting.
The house is never in darkness. When the sun sets, and the shadows of night fall across its neon, the house is lit in flickers and flashes from below. The lake never goes out. It is on fire and has been for just longer than the house has been standing. In the dancing light from the lake, the house seems to move, its shadows shift and shimmer. Occasionally the lake crackles like a hearth fire and the house seems to have set aflame itself. But still, the neon catches your eye first.
Beyond its doors are the archives, underneath its floorboards the labyrinth basements, home to things of blood and fire, of sex and knowledge. It's proprietor is a man named Bodega Smith. His skin is worn and leathered from prolonged exposure to the fire, his eyes are milky and still from prolonged exposure to life and business. His head is nearly bald, his beard nearly reaches his substantial gut. He carries with him during store hours a satchel filled with trinkets collected from his patrons. He has thrown countless items into the fire, each a wish or a curse. He finds his personal, distinct lack of sexuality liberating.
He remembers the day the lake went out and what it took to re-light it. It was his idea to put up the neon. He lives in the back room of the attic, just left of the Austro-Asian Anal Archery Room. Before the house opens, every dawn, Bodega can be seen staring out his one small portal shaped window, out across the infernal lake, at the small house that sits on its opposite cliff. A house he has never been to, one that he only noticed existed recently.
This is Bodega's story as well as it is the houses as well as it is the story of what Bodega saw across the lake of fire.
a little ditty conjured up by
