We Have Such Outdated Technology to Show You
Look, I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but if someone hands you Lemarchand’s Box (aka The Lamont Configuration, aka "that cube from Hellraiser") to solve, just say no thanks, I’ve got Stardew Valley on my phone. If you don't solve it, you feel like a real dummy, and if you do solve it, you've got Pinhead and his crew to deal with, which isn't worth the dopamine hit. If we’re getting down to brass tacks, saying “no puzzlin' for me, thx,” is the best course of action, unless you enjoy brass tacks in a grid formation on the skull of a dude who should really consider a tanning booth.
Lemarchand’s Box takes the questionable fun of a Rubik's Cube and adds an even more questionable payoff: a nice, leisurely skin-flaying. Puzzles are fun, but imagine if you were sitting down for a nice meal at Cracker Barrel, and instead of killing time with that folksy wooden triangle where you hop golf tees around, you were given an engraved relic to mess with, and then Pinhead and his Cenobite Crew™ appeared to scald your flesh with the biscuit skillet, followed by a sawmill gravy enema. Why did you switch to being the Cenobite restaurant, Cracker Barrel?! You had such clear branding! Country cooking, rocking chairs, and shitty retro toys for the kids to browse while dad paid the check!
I'll back up, because readers unfamiliar with the Hellraiser series (the first written and directed by Clive Barker, adapting his own stories, and the others spiralling ever-further into nonsense), may find all of this confusing. “What are Cenobites?” you may ask. “Do you mean Cena-Bites, the delicious protein dog treat from John Cena, designed so every pooch can share his muscles and winning attitude?”
No my idiot friend. It's not that nonsense product you just made up. The Cenobites are what Pinhead (the only one of the gang with Cher-like single-name recognition) and his pals call themselves. In the words of ol’ pincushion cheeks, they’re “explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others.” And let’s be clear – when he says “explorers in the further regions of experience,” he doesn’t mean that when they visit Orlando they visit both the Magic Kingdom AND LegoLand. No, the Cenobites want you to know they’re TRANSGRESSIVE. Like in the s-e-x way. All of the Cenobites wear leather with spikes and chains and such, and they give off big “I want to corner you at a party and talk at you about my kinks” energy.
Who are they, on like, a personal level? Well, aside from our lead acupuncture accident, the first Hellraiser features three other Cenobites. There’s “Butterball,” who looks like a sort of pudgy worm larva in steampunk goggles. There’s “Chatterer” whose face skin is pulled away from his mouth with hooks, to facilitate his impression of wind-up novelty teeth. And there’s “Lady Cenobite,” so named because that’s how much thought most male writers put into their female characters. She has a big gash in her throat that’s pulled back into the shape of something I really hesitate to call a “throat vagina,” but I assume was intentionally evocative, considering their whole deal.
Because that’s the big idea behind the Cenobites – they’re S&M monsters. People seek them because they want to "travel the far reaches of experience" as well, and the Cenobites oblige by making their nipples into a hat or whatever. Or, occasionally, people summon them accidentally, and are like “Whoops, not interested in the intersection of pain and pleasure. Sorry. Butt dial.” And the Cenobites are like “Yeah, sure,” and turn their penis into a knife block anyway.
Which… honestly? That’s where I draw the line. I totally get having a little salty with the sweet, if you’re talking about a little spankaroo in the bedroom. Or the kitchen, if it's Christmas. However, the Cenobites don’t seem to understand the importance of a safeword when experimenting with barbed wire shibari. There are people who will try to explain to you that the Cenobites aren’t “villains,” even though they’re super-murder-demons, because they operate under their own morality, man. I find it’s best to smile, nod, and distract these people with a coupon for Spencer’s Gifts.
Sex and horror are twinned, because so much of horror is about being fascinated with the darkness. There's some bestial part of all of us that's attracted to the danger, the power, the loss of control, etc. etc. etc. Go check Nosferatu's wang out in theaters now, if you don't believe me. Sex and horror go together like peanut butter and blood, but the narrative risk in combining them is this: they’re both tremendously specific. The thing you find scary might not scare another person at all. And the thing you find intensely erotic might strike another person as a bit silly. Then again, sometimes everyone agrees that something’s silly rather scary, which brings us to CD Head.
CD Head is a Cenobite who has a bunch of CDs stuck in his head. What, did you expect some kind of twist? I assume he's set up like this so he can use his skull like an old multi-disc changer, and switch from listening to “God Shuffled His Feet” by The Crash Test Dummies to “Chant” by The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos without having to fumble through his little case full of sleeves.
Lest you imagine the CD thing’s just an aesthetic choice, know that CD Head also uses CDs in his murdering job. Occasionally, he’ll throw a CD like a shuriken, although I remain dubious about the damage getting hit with a CD might cause, even if it’s the world’s most evil CD, “Summer Girls,” by LFO. (Btw, I discovered while writing this that LFO stands for "Lyte Funky Ones," which just goes to show that – even when you think you’ve hit your limit on hate, you can always find a reason to hate something more.)
Shed a tear for CD Head, though. Because in his own, dumb way, he illustrates the fickle nature of time. We tend to think the world we’re born into is the “normal” one, but if the past several years of constant upheaval have proved anything, it’s that normalcy is a mirage, and periods of relative calm and stability are the outliers. CD Head thought he’d be on top forever. In 1992, when Hellraiser III came out, and CD Head was loosed upon the world, CD sales in the U.S. hovered around 400 million, and would reach a peak of 900 million in 2000. He was riding high, with no reason to expect he would eventually be supplanted by even eviler Cenobites like “Napster Nose” and “Spotify Scrotum.”
So let’s have a moment of silence for the obsolete Cenobites. Poor monsters like Telegraph Terror, who drummed morse code on your skull with a hammer until you orgasmed from brain pain. Or Zune Head, the Cenobite who tortured you by not being Mac-compatible. Or Radiohead, the Cenobite who tortured people with the delusion that listening to certain types of rock music makes you somehow smarter, or more interesting.
Whether man or a monster, angel or demon, you cannot escape the true horrors of planned obsolescence. Ask not for whom the Lamont Configuration configures. It configures for thee.
For earlier posts, check out the archive. In my other life, I’m a podcaster. Listen to my show The Flop House, here. In my other other life, I’m an Emmy-winning comedy writer. If you’re looking to staff, get in touch! And if you love the newsletter, you can always consider tipping me, by enrolling in the paid tier!