Who runs Hollywood? Demons.  After my third year of trying to make it to the next level as a cameraman, I kept smacking into walls, snorting coke, and not sleeping until Charlie Sheen wandered badass naked into the new Rehab Bar on Sunset.

            “If you want winning, you gotta get sinning!” 

            I marched right up to his sputtering face. Told him how much I loved his work.

            Before the cops dragged him out, he spilled the beans about a few demons.

            Named names.  It all made sense now. Especially that time when Charlie-boy said, “CBS picked a fight with a warlock.”

            That next week, armed with my Hollywood Directory, I followed up on Sheen’s leads. Showed off my portfolio.

            I sold my soul to one of the prettier and more talented demons.

            A “demoness” to be precise—Lamia. Director extraordinaire.  

            Sure, she’s not the chief demon you’d think of with the letter “L”—that would be Lilith.  But Lilith doesn’t work well with others. Lamia wouldn’t win any “plays nicely” awards either, but she hires people and stays committed to the art.

            I get educated every visit to her office. Not only on film theory and the experience of all that blazing creativity but what “demoness” really means. She eschews CGI and does method-acting shit with magic to make her own dope special effects and just totally bonkers mind-busting narrative tension. She spits venoms on the polycarbonate camera filters to paint amazing tones, argues with film professors and other directors about bricolage, metaphysics of camera angles, and post-modern pastiche.

            This supergal still finds time to get down to brass tacks by choking some agent or producer in her coils. She really knows how to make a contract. Signed in blood and all that.

            After contracting their labor for all her bleeding edge projects—including their covetous souls—she eats agents and producers for lunch and dinner, respectively. Sometimes literally.

            Once I got used to her unique appetites, I appreciated her uncompromising vision, my generous salary, and her touching story arc: she kicked the habit of drinking kids’ blood in the Middle East, gave up crocheting face-masks from human skin, and went cold turkey as far as seducing frog-belly pale poets, who always freaked out like little bitches over her snaky bottom half.

            Yeah, she had hella moxy. She said, “fuck that romantic bullshit,” found her cinematic muse as both producer-director and agent, and came to entice and dominate bitter yet starry-eyed actors and filmmakers here in Tinseltown.  

            And let’s get one thing straight. I’m not Lamia’s publicist (that would be Mephistopheles, and he’s busy propagandizing with the endless presidential campaigns right now, so no I can’t make any introductions).

            But hey, because Lamia is tentatively tied to Charlie Sheen, and I have worked with her longer than most any other mortal that’s not been maimed or consigned to everlasting torment, I have to speak out. She’s never had anything to do with those three dreaded words: “HIV.” Or had retouched photos. Or made a sex video. Well, nothing that has leaked out at least.

            Hell to the no.  Lamia might be kinky, but she’s careful and clean.  Smart. Precise. And lucky, but she makes her own luck with her own rituals. Demons get, you know, “demonized,” but like cockroaches, they’re cleaner than you’d think. They have this ichor stuff— like gods.

            Sort of a sex perfume on their skin like Poison Dart Frogs. Did you know that the cockroach is sometimes called the “cat of the insect world?” Yep.  And those frogs are known to be “aposematic.” Bright colors showing they are dangerous motherfuckers. Speaking of which, ever take a good look at Lamia’s nails? That’s no French manicure but lethal batrachotoxin.

            Pro tip: don’t shake hands to close a deal with a demoness.

            But she’s old school anyway. It’s the lady’s prerogative to shake or not. But as if! She doesn’t extend a hand to the peons. Especially pandemic days. No germs from the hoi polloi.

            See? Bet you figured a demoness would revel in some disease. Get your head out of your medieval ass. Seriously.

            Y’all got to stop judging cockroaches just like you’ve got to stop assuming you really understand demons. Neither one will plunge into your bloodstream like a mosquito’s proboscis. At least not on a first date. Despite all that conventional puritanical morality that molders about in too many Americans’ heads, Lamia is pure female sovereignty and aesthetic purity. 

            She doesn’t let a damn thing get in her way when it comes to making sacrifices for art. And yes, of course, real sacrifices. I mean that should have been obvious from the get-go, right?

            I admit when I began working camera for L, I had nightmares. She’s hard on actors.

            But I let the guilt go. That’s what you have to do when working for one of the best avante-garde filmmakers in Hollywood. 

            Sure, the cast has to pay in flesh and blood, but someone has got to suffer for your entertainment, right? Besides, she does do temporary resuscitation for retakes. Well, sometimes.

            Here’s the script we shot before the damn producers got possessed by Belial’s gut and Mammon’s balls and then we had to endure the dreaded Writer’s and Actor’s Strike.  Truly infernal delays. Goddamn Diabolical. Ok, buckle up your britches and hold on to your souls. . . .

INT. LOS ANGELES HOUSE—DAY—

DOLLY, 24, glitter and unicorn ribbons, adjusts red dress in front of the mirror.

  DOLLY
Horror reality film for smart people?

BRAD, 25, rhinestone cowboy hat and lime-green skinny jeans, lounges on bean-bag chair.

BRAD
We’re supposed to kill each other, right?

JEN, 29, black beret over purple hair, bends over clipboard. 

JEN
(reading from clipboard)
No. “You will experience two events. Evan will film continuously.”

Jen waves in the direction of the camera, which zooms in to get close-up on Jen’s pierced lip.

            DOLLY
Dolly’s rules: we’re not going in the basement, the attic, or splitting up.           

JEN
Damn right. We’ll subvert stupid horror film clichés.

THUMP against window.

DOLLY
Shit!

BRAD
(laughing)
Too late! 

Jen and Brad peer out the window while Dolly backs up, hugs herself.

EXT./INT. LOS ANGELES HOUSE

Orange and black fat lizard twiddles legs, rolls over, stands up, then lies down on walkway.

BRAD
Gila Monster!  

Brad opens the door and approaches the sunbathing thick lizard.

DOLLY
Don’t touch it! 

Brad carries Gila Monster inside by its fat tail.

JEN
That is not intelligent. At all.

BRAD
Someone abused this poor lizard—just to make us nervous.

DOLLY
It’s working. I need a Valium.. 

Gila Monster squirms. 

It clamps down its mighty mouth on Brad’s thumb.

BRAD
Fuck!

Brad shakes Gila monster dangling from thumb. 

Jen diddles her Gila monster-free thumbs on cellphone.

            JEN
Run cold water and pull it off!

Brad rushes to bathroom, turns on faucet.

BANG of lizard against wall.

Sepia filter: bashed-in head of lizard.

INSERT: Milky-Way galaxy gyrating, strawberry colored stuffed bear boogying, Model A Ford rattling in a frenzy of drifts as its driven by mohawked rabid kangaroo.

BACK TO SCENE.

BRAD
I’ll go to the hospital after this is all over. 

LAMIA, aviator glasses, head wrapped in yellow and turquoise scarves, taps with her tapered fingernails—shining blue, orange, and yellow—on the front door.           

EVAN (O.S.)
That’s the director. Let her in.

Jen opens the door.

Lamia strides in. Puts a lioness to shame with her grace. 

LAMIA
I’m Lamia. Time for the Second Event.

DOLLY
What was with the goddamn lizard?  

BRAD
Almost lost a thumb to that bastard. 

LAMIA
That was one of my babies.

JEN
What’s the Second Event?

 Lamia spreads her arms, spins around. Behold, the impeccable balance of a lead ballerina.

LAMIA
That would be me. 

Clear filter: Time for true weird.

BRAD
I got chills. I got some serious chills.

JEN
That’s probably Gila Monster venom.

LAMIA
You killed one of my scaly children. Prepare for your inevitable punishment, dear newbies.

Lamia unties her head scarf. Scales glint between fabric layers.

BRAD
What am I supposed to do? Kiss it? It bit me! What the heck does project L stand for? “Lizard?” 

 LAMIA
Losers. 

Lamia takes off her sunglasses, removes copper eyes, plays with them like Baoding balls.

Brad stares at Lamia’s puckered eye sockets.

BRAD
What the hell? How can you direct if you’re blind?

LAMIA
It’s how I do my best thinking. Focus, baby. 

Lamia waves finger at Brad. Her eye sockets relax into smoothness Botox simply can’t reach.

DOLLY
Oh my God, Brad has no face! 

MONTAGE:

Sure enough, Brad shambles forward, arms outstretched. No mouth, eyes, or nose—just bare patches of baby-smooth skin.

Jen and Dolly run in circles.

Lamia blocks doorway, uncoiling iridescent scales. Pops her eyeballs back in. Vogues. Winks.

Brad’s head detaches, floats, and rotates like disco-globe.

Women play Twister with Lamia.

Reverb crescendo with their SCREAMS.

FADE to logo of Lamia design: serpent-tailed woman with perm. Smiley-face necklace. 

LAMIA (O.S.)
Listen up, my mortal fools, the producers have a plan to steal all your souls at once. But I’ve told them it’s just not the same fun when not working with you sweeties as complete individuals. I delight in wholeness. I own each of you fully. True art suffers no divisions. No one breaches my contracts forged in the  furnaces of Tartarus. Thank me later. You know, in hell.

OUTTAKES:

#1 THUMP from basement door.

BRAD
Action! 

DOLLY
Remember my rules. 

Brad opens door.  Kitten MEOWS from blackness.

JEN
Cuteness beats caution.

Jen goes downstairs. Cat yowls. Jen screams.

#2 Jen holds up a lottery ticket.

JEN
This was beneath the clipboard.  One million!

Brad and Dolly exchange a look. Then they strangle Jen. 

#3 Lamia blinks stars.

LAMIA
         You writers are going to feel some pain now. Azazel made this AI software thing. Just diabolical.

BRAD
Chat-Poo-Poo-Pee, is it?

Jen gets up from the floor. Stares at camera. Only her chalk-white sclera are visible. No pupils to be seen.

JEN
There’s a bathroom, Brad. Take your juvenile humor to it. 

Brad and Dolly clutch each other.

DOLLY
Oh my god! Is she alive? What a relief!

BRAD
Or is she a zombie? Did we kill her?  

Dolly inspects Jen’s pupils.                                                                             

DOLLY
Oh wow, she’s got Evil Dead eyes.

Jen grins and nods to Lamia, who beheads Dolly with a slash of her lacquered nails.

JEN
C’mon, we’ve got a film to finish.

LAMIA
Good girl, Jen. Evan, keep this part.

____

That’s a wrap. No masterpiece, but this was getting into Fangoria. Maybe Madeira.  Maybe Lamia will have to have a personal chat with a certain producer who keeps using the strike in 2023 as an excuse for these nearly infinite delays. Let me tell you straight though, Lamia likes to torture producers even more than writers, so stay tuned and keep that seat warm . . . .

Jason Marc Harris teaches creative writing, folklore, and literature, and is the Creative Writing Coordinator at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. He graduated with a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Washington, and an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University. Creative work includes his novella Master of Rods and Strings (Crystal Lake Publishing), and stories in journals such as Arroyo Literary Review, Marvels and Tales, Midwestern Gothic, Psychopomp Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and Writing Texas.