Fly in the Ointment: Book II

What do Joseph Smith, yesteryear founding prophet of the Mormon church and Ying, a dazzling modern day woman of Shenzhen China have in common? Both, along with a circus of ghastly monstrosities, are supernatural horrors threatening an eternal hell for the occupants of a sprawling mountaintop manor. Our stage is populated by a man who finds his humorous take on life shredded in moments of supernatural inscrutability, romance, eroticism and the pall of death. His breezy life swapped for a landscape of dread atmosphere and forced intimacy with terror. Kevin Swan is a wealthy, puckish free-thinker — disposed to kindly endeavors and droll antics for the amusement of his buds. Things proceed swimmingly under Kevin’s rudderless charge till he commits to a particularly harebrained stunt — on a lark, he purchases a remote, 97 year old manor, atop a heavily forested mountain outside Pasadena, California. In trademark reckless panache, Kevin conscripts a quarrelsome, sketchy crew to serve as house staff. He labors fitfully to develop esprit de corps with his ‘staff’ and his companion — an absurdly large, and more absurdly psychotic, periodically violent, German Shepherd. In a rare moment of lucidity and harmony, the cadre arrive at a consensus — they have blundered into an unspeakable horror in which they have no business. Unfortunately … reality can be an unforgiving bitch.