Terrance Lindall: The Church of the Apostates!

Descending

The Church of the Apostates!
Terrance Lindall

My artist friend Terrance Lindall is being guided by the muse these days, a rather wild, amusing muse, for he's currently working on wondrous illustrations, like the one above, which presses upon the boundaries of my story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer:

Again, unfinished, But gives you the idea. As I am doing these [illustrations], ideas pop up, I sort of thought that the place below [the shop] was Satan's church. The motto being "Lead us into temptation," as opposed to the Lord's Prayer "Lead us NOT into temptation." Here Em initiates the Apostates, as with the Naif with BEER!

Probably overstepping the bounds of your story? Am I getting too wild for you Jeffery?

I had no objections, quite the opposite, so I wrote back:

Terrance, it fits my story fine.

Add as many literary allusions to other Satanic stories and religious references dealing with the devil as you wish, e.g., in Dan Webster's library, which could contain all sorts of books, including Terrance Lindall's illustrated Paradise Lost, Carter Kaplan's Emanations 1, and Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors (which has the story "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" -- not yet read by Webster, so put it on a shelf of texts awaiting reading, along with such self-referential textual allusions as Emanations 2 and The Bottomless Bottle of Beer!).

I like the allusion to Mark Twain's story "The Mysterious Stranger" in the words "Lead us into temptation." I also like the Naif's obliviousness to Satan's church. Feel free to go hog wild! I like it! You might even set my imagination free for future stories!

Don't forget, however, that the left side of the path soon becomes a bottomless pit, but there are all sorts of artistic allusions possible with that, such as Dante descending into hell, or religious allusions, e.g., to the imagery in the "Book of Revelation."

Terrance liked these suggestions and took me up on my offer:

Hog wild it is! I did not have time to focus on your BBB until now. I will even stick Bob Wickenheiser, Banez and Kaplan in there!

In that case, put our two images in as well -- perhaps as passers-by on the street, or a couple of patrons in the Witch's Brew!