Chair Demons

/ Diane Henders

I’d like to think it’s not just me. Doesn’t everybody harbour a few items in their home which, when considered out of context (which is to say, ‘by any sane human being’), are just a little… um… creepy?

Some things are intentionally creepy, and that’s okay. For instance, I love this candle-holding sculpture my sister gave me years ago: As the candle flickers, its eyes glow and seem to follow you around the room.

Totally creepy, but in a good way.

Totally creepy, but in a good way.

In the ‘that’s odd’ category of creepy, I also own a stuffed beaver.  *insert the revolting double entendre of your choice here*

No, really, it’s a child’s toy. I’m not sure I’d want to meet the twisted toymaker who one day looked up from his designs of cute, cuddly bunnies and bears and thought, “We need beavers!”

…Okay, I realize most guys have that revelation at some point in their life, but this guy followed it to its logical conclusion: “Everybody needs beavers!” And here’s the result:

He’s cuddly-soft, and his name is Bob. Don’t ask.

He’s cuddly-soft, and his name is Bob. Don’t ask.

Moving on up the ‘disturbing’ scale, I also own two rubber chickens that reside in the planter in my living room. Well, to be technically accurate, one’s rubber and the other is silicone, which is even grosser than rubber because it’s all wobbly and floppy.

But the rubber one makes up for its deficiency in the gross-out department, because:

  1. Its gaping beak is disturbingly reminiscent of a blow-up doll; and
  2. It squawks when squeezed – a horrible half-strangled wail like bagpipes possessed by the spirit of an evil piper who died in the throes of an asthma attack.
creepy chickens

I’m not sure which bothers me more, the gaping beak of the big one or the flaccid-phallus appearance of the little one…

 

But the top ‘Creepy and Disturbing’ award goes to our dining room furniture. You’d think it would be pretty difficult to make shudder-worthy dining chairs. And I’m not talking about physical discomfort.

No, I’m talking about the kind of creep factor that sends a shiver down your spine and makes you question whether you really want to turn your back on the item in question. I mean, seriously, what sick and deranged mind thought it would be a good idea to carve this on the back of a dining-room chair?

Would you turn your back on this?

Would you turn your back on this?

It looks like one of the minor demons from hell, perched at exactly the right height to chew a crippling chunk out of your spinal cord with its fiendishly gaping mouth. Then once you’re incapacitated, who knows what it might do?

This dining-room set belonged to my husband’s grandparents, and as far as I know they lived healthy, normal lives unmolested by denizens of the Pit… but these chairs give me the shivers anyway. I’ve lived with them for over a decade by convincing myself that, like gargoyles, they’re fierce guardians of our home. If anybody ever threatens us, look out! The chair demons will get them!

But that only works if I don’t think about it too much…

Anybody else harbouring satanic furniture or other creepy items?

* * *

Woohoo!  I’ve finished the draft for Book 8, and it’ll be off to my beta readers / editors this week!

49 thoughts on “Chair Demons”

    • Hmm, you raise an excellent point! At least I know the inanimate things aren’t going to follow me around or jump out at me without warning… at least, I don’t think they will… 🙂

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      • Oh, yeah? You sure about that? What about that chair that savages your little toe in the middle of the night? Or the thumb tack you dropped in plain sight but couldn’t find until you stepped on it a week later? They’re out there. And they’re waiting…

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        • Well, that explains a few things! My fridge has it in for me – it keeps whacking me on the back of the head whenever I straighten from reaching for something in the lower compartment. Maybe it’s trying to tell me I need to go on a diet… though it seems to get me most often when I’m reaching for something in the crisper drawer, which is where the healthy food lives. Maybe it’s trying to tell me I should be drinking a beer instead.

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  2. I like your candle demon, Diane – I like that kind of thing! And, do you know that the face on the chair is not dis-similar to some of the faces I see when I see the ‘Spirit of the Trees’? That makes perfect sense to me, carving a face like that, I mean! Your chickens made me smile – in total contrast to both the planter and each other!

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  3. Hi Diane,

    My daughter and I got into a discussion about, “When Canada attacks” and how polite youall are.  Something along the lines of:   “Excuse us, but we want your land. It was ours anyway and we want it back, so please move!”

    As a real Canadian, I think you could make an hysterical posting about that, so I’m submitting the idea to you. Should you choose to use it, it is yours, free and clear with no need to mention me at all.  I would just get huge enjoyment out of whatever you came up with, as I do of all your posts.

    I’m currently rereading your books and enjoying them just as much the second time around. Thank you for some wonderful hours of enjoyment. 

    With gratitude,

    Diann M Morales

    Sent from my Sprint tablet

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  4. A collection of ‘creepy and disturbing’ home demons seems like an excellent way to rid yourself of house guests who have overstayed their welcome.

    “Yes, feel free to get up in the middle of the night and make yourself a snack. If the candle demon or the beaver or the chair start watching you, ignore them. They’re harmless, MOST of the time. Heh-heh.”

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      • Depends on the cop. Some of the more narrow minded might not see the larger picture. Others (those with the proper perspective, mine, for example) would respond, “These thoughtless cretins have been sponging off you good people for HOW long? Well, no WONDER the dining chairs gnawed out their spines. We’ll just call the results of this irresponsible behavior death by misadventure. With their lack of judgment we could almost call this self inflicted.” But that’s just me. 🙂

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  5. We’ve rid our home of the cast iron frogs and pitchfork wielding devils and such (freebie giveaway novelties from various foundries I had to visit and qualify in previous lives as a mechanical, then a manufacturing, engineer). Probably a good Dumpster full of other cool-but-useless widgets and dust catchers have been either given away or just tossed. About the only really weird thing we have is a stuffed toy marmot. Which looks a lot like your stuffed beaver. Well, the soft cuddly one. Er, the one covered in fur. Okay, FAKE fur. And big buck teeth. Er, never mind. TMI. Moving on…

    But I’d have to include most of a room full of souvenirs and, er, cultural artifacts sent to us by all our Chinese and Taiwanese kids and their “real” parents. I will not call any of our treasures weird, but none is what I’d call commonplace here in Redneck Central. 🙂

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    • Hahaha!! Just walk away from the beaver discussion. Walk. Away. Now.

      And yes, I’m harbouring some extremely odd treasures my niece brought me from Japan and Korea. One is a “splat pig” – a liquid-filled silicone sphere that’s designed to be thrown at a flat surface, where it deforms into a disgusting splatter pattern before slowly pulling itself back together to regain its original shape. It never fails to crack me up.

      And I also own a keychain decorated with a couple of little anime-type characters – a larger humanoid one holding hands with a little squirrel-like one. And they both have itty-bitty half-spherical hard-ons. Apparently there is a correct Japanese term for that particular um… appendage? Condition? Whatever. I can’t remember what the Japanese word is, but it translates to “moss-ball erection”. So there you go: your cultural lesson for the day. This is why you keep coming back, right?

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  8. I love those chairs! Of course, this comes from a woman who has an ugly gargoyle perched in her front yard near her bushes. I do it on purpose because my community is known for being over-restrictive with what homeowners can do. So my ugly little statue is my passive-aggressive nose snub.

    By the way, don’t be surprised if a horror-movie director sees the image of your chair on Google and asks to use them in his next demonic-possession movie…

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  9. Love it! The beaver sort of baffles me tho’, don’t know whether to actually look at it or pass it up but I still laugh when I see it. I want to say “aww, poor little guy.” The chickens are creepy, almost nastily (is that a word?) so. Love the chair and love the bat candle holder but that’s because they sort of fit in with my little…. “world”? Hubby just walks around my things and shakes his head and sighs.
    I’m thrilled that your book is almost ready! I’ve started my re-read, again, of #7 just to bring me back up to date. LOL You deserve a really good vacation when it hits the shelves.

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    • Thanks! I’m looking forward to having a little extra time to play in my garden while it goes through the beta readers, editors, and proofing. But every time I think I’ll take a break from writing, the next book starts calling me. I guess it’s not work if you’re having fun… 😉

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      • The only problem I have with your books, and I mean the ONLY problem, is that I can read ’em faster than you can write ’em. I sincerely hope that your writing is as enjoyable to you as reading your work is to me and all the rest of us. 🙂

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        • I do have a blast writing them, most of the time. There are times when it’s hard slogging, and it’s a LOT of drudge-work to get it all pulled together and published at the end, but so far whenever I’ve felt overwhelmed I just walk away from it for a few days… and then the muse puts on its most seductive voice and effortlessly lures me back. I actually feel lost if I don’t have a book in progress. 😉

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  11. Like Nelson I am afraid my house is rather boring in comparison to yours. I definitely do not like creepy.
    Opening our front closet with assorted running, cycling, hiking gear I could venture that the aromas wafting out are certainly creepy. Might even resemble something half dead…which isn’t too far from the reality when I throw my gear in there.

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    • Bahahaha! Yeah, creepy smells are another story altogether. I’ll never forget the time a dish of cauliflower got pushed to the back of our fridge and got funky. The smell was so strong it even managed to escape a glass bowl with a silicone seal… and for a couple of weeks I silently suspected Hubby of easing out a silent-but-deadly every time I opened the fridge. I finally confronted him: “Is that you?” His vehement denial pointed us toward the true culprit at last…

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    • It lays an egg?!? Okay, I can’t stop laughing just thinking about it!

      And wow, $15K for a chair? And that chair is even more disturbing than mine – I don’t know many people who’d feel comfortable with an evil-looking gargoyle that close to their crotch. But hey, maybe I’m rich and I don’t even know it. Probably not, though… 😉

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