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Hellraiser

from Who Let Him In Here? by Tom Smith

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about

This was inspired by the first and last two minutes of the Clive Barker movie of the same name, wherein a little old man sells a magical artifact to someone, and then sells the same artifact to someone else. I figured someone would eventually notice the problems this little toy caused, and the old guy might have a sales pitch to entrap the wary. It won the OVFF Songwriting Contest in 1987, and was nominated for the Pegasus Award for Best Filk Song in 1993.

lyrics

Welcome, nice to meet you,
We've been waiting for so long,
In the hope that you'd drop by our little store.
We may not be accessible
To everyone, it's true,
But we've got everything you want and more.

So many other eyes have held the anguish in your own,
Ambition burns within you like a fire,
And I believe we have the thing
To satisfy your every black desire.

The things you want are found beyond doors
More obscure than mine,
But they will open if you have the proper key.
The pleasures of the ages
And the tortures of the damned
Are at your fingertips for just a modest fee.

And each sadistic fantasy exceeds the one before,
You'll not believe the wonders to unfold,
The mystery and majesty locked up
Inside this box of black and gold.

You twist it, and you pull it, and you twist a little more,
Then you wait for your new playmates to rise up from the floor.
If you want to buy damnation, I've got some to sell,
Come take a chance and raise a little Hell.

The greatest aphrodisiac
Is power, so they say,
Ambition leads to daring new extremes.
But goals are meant to be fulfilled,
And once you have, your careful-knit
Existence can unravel at the seams.

Contentment leads to boredom, to frustration, to the grave,
A wasted life of emptiness and pain...
Unless, of course, you walk the roads
A lesser man would surely call insane.

The world is made of other worlds
We barely know are there,
And beings that we cannot understand.
Some are helpers, some are healers,
Some have made an art form
Of the vivisection of their fellow man.

You'll marvel at their scrupulous attention to detail,
Creativeness and exquisite technique,
And when they've had you for awhile,
You'll say "I love you" every time you shriek.

They tease you, and caress you, and they slowly break your heart,
Then oh-so-very carefully, they tear your soul apart.
If life means nothing more to you, I think you might as well
Come take a chance and raise a little Hell.

Everything is relative
Within the eyes of God,
Someone's pain brings someone else's delight,
And all it takes is just a subtle
Shift in point of view
To make the wrongs of Man seem good and right.

But I should give you warning that a thing that's done is done,
You cannot just abandon it and go,
And if you try, you may find out
Eternity is longer than you know.

They play with every inch of skin, and seek out every nerve,
An Inquisition giving you what you think you deserve.
Where agony and ecstasy unite, you'll never tell,
Come raise yourself a private little Hell.

credits

from Who Let Him In Here?, released January 20, 1991

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Tom Smith Ann Arbor

Weird Al with more books, JoCo with more jokes, Carlin with more Cthulhu. Since 1985, Tom Smith has been breaking hearts, minds, and laws of propriety and physics with his insane blend of sf/fantasy, Life With Computers, pop culture, politics, and puns. More than twenty albums later, he maintains the best is yet to come. ... more

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