$30.00
**A Cursed Shakespearean Tragedy**
In the quaint, aging town of Eldergrove, where cobblestones bore tales of heartache and whispered regrets, there lived a peculiar man named **Bud Houghtaling**. Known around town as a mender of broken things—almost like a nightmare conjured from the shadows—Bud’s true passion lay in something other than mere repairs. No, no, it was an obsession, a ♦️curious craft he honed from remnants of discarded hopes and dreams, breathing life into forgotten fragments. His sculptures—ah, the sculptures!—were wonderous and grotesque, each one embodying the deepest woes of the human experience.
Among these strange creations was the piece titled **"Common Stomach Issues,"** a collection of unsettling figures that reflected the bitter symphony of discomfort: the writhing twist of *Abdominal Pain*, the ominous bulge of *Bloating*, and the ear-piercing wail of *Nausea*. But behold, his great masterwork—his pièce de résistance—was but an echo of madness. He had sculped **“Blistered Dreams in Ash,”** a harrowing figment that seemed to pulse with a life of its own.
On a summer night heavy with the scent of damp earth, Bud toiled within the confines of his workshop, where odd shadows danced upon the walls, clinging like forgotten spirits. The workshop, oh, what a sight! It had become a museum of the bizarre, an abode of the forsaken, steeped with the dust of sorrowful memories and lost dreams. It was here, as he cradled a splintered piece of wood, that he played a recording he had come across in a questionable marketplace, a peculiar cassette tape titled **BUD HOUGHTALING s/t c40**—a cryptic blend of melancholic musings and haunting echoes.
**“Wha…Wonderous sounds... haunts my very core...,”** weaved Bud as he spun into an almost trance-like state.
As the tape crackled and hissed—a murmur growing louder, like the whispers of history itself—he felt an ominous wave of unease wash over him. The gasping sounds resonating from the speaker intertwined with echoes of his own turmoil, weaving a tapestry of discomfort untold.
And then, it all happened; oh, how it happened! A gut-wrenching tumult seized him—*what is this? Ah, heartburn! A fury inside, like fire! Why dost thou plague me?* The whirling shadows thickened, roiling with darkness as Bud distinctly felt that *he* was somehow connected to those sculptures—those ghastly embodiments of his own misery—each one becoming a living nightmare.
Without warning, the figure representing *Vomiting* came alive, eyes fracturing like shards of glass. **“Pray thee, Bud! Speak of thy discomfort! Must thou wrestle with the truth alone?”**
**“I...I, uh…oh, can’t... bear the weight!”** Bud stammered, clutching his belly as if trying to contain the tempest within. The room spun with fiendish laughter—the shadows encircled him like jackals anticipating a feast. **“Burdens of the heart, they crush like stones!”** he muttered, slumping against the wall in despair. **“I’m... I’m no poet... I’m a maker of... of things... broken things.”**
Then came *Heartburn*, sliding forth, voice echoing across the workshop like the final notes of a somber aria. **“What dost thou seek, Bud? Confess! Or be swallowed whole! Confess thy truths or succumb to the darkness!”**
**“I... I...”** he muttered, his voice slipping through his lips like spilled ink. **“What truth, hmm? A feeble vessel, yes! Am I not but a fractured mirror reflecting the pain of all? The *blistered*, the *bloating*, oh, they mock me! They munch on these memories, and what remains?”**
A flare of realization pierced through the fog thick within him. Bud sank to his knees, the cold floor grounding him. “Speak, must I? Speak to shadows that mock my plight? Ha! What becomes of a man who stifles his pain?”
The sculptures began to swirl, their forms rippling like fabric caught in the wind. The echoes turned into visible shapes, stretching and spiraling, morphing in an anguished dance of desperation. *Diarrhea, Constipation,* all came alive, a circus of affliction parading before him. The stench of *Nausea* hung low, heavy, and suffocating.
**“I...I sense your tales, though I comprehend not. It... haunts, yes, it haunts my very core! Why dost thou linger?”** he wailed.
In that moment, the shadows writhed as if surprised by his vocal fury, a silence lingering—tense and heavy.
And then they spoke in unison... **“Ahhh, brave Bud! Thou art woven of the same fabric! Embrace the *common plight*! Find salvation in a shared lament! The shadows: they are fragments of THY own spirit.”**
Bud closed his eyes, feeling a surreal alignment—a merging of pain and release, intertwined delight and despair. The sculptures, all of them, became part of him, a vivid echo of his soul laid bare.
**“Confess, my dear,”* croaked the *Blistered* figure, rising magnificently from the dark. “For even a curse can be turned into art! Speak of thy woes though thy tongue be twisted!”**
**Art, unfortunately, was not what Bud had meant to create—but it was there! It simmered beneath the surface, a fire waiting to flare.** “Alas! Even fears bear beauty, no? A heart burdened—oh, do I dare? Am I to record the tortured existence of each weary soul I see? To give voice to despair? Aye, I am but a scribe of the misery I avoid!”
With newfound clarity, emboldened by the chorus of shadowy beings, Bud rose from his knees—a fragile emergence from the cocoon of fear. **“These art forms are not mere reflections; they are jubilant cries of life! The twisted, the deformed, they encapsulate our very being!”**
And in that very instant, Bud launched himself into a fevered pace, his hands—oh, those hands!—flying over the rough wood, chiseling and crafting with a fervor unknown.
In a whirlwind, the shadowy figures glimmered, their forms shimmering as if kissed by starlight—*Cursed Reflections of the Heart*, he would name it! Each grotesque hook and line accentuating the beauty of shared pain, the intertwining threads of human experience shining gloriously amid the shackles of discomfort.
As he sculpted, he felt their laughter, a tremorous joy vibrating through his very bones. No more curses but a celebration—a recognition that suffering birthed artistry, and truth transcended suffering.
Yet, as the last stroke was its finished dawn, Bud knew the shadows would always hover, eternal spectators in the grand performance of creation. The figures, roots planted deep in the living soil of grief, were his loyal companions, reminding him of the stories yet untold, and the hearts yet to be pierced by joy and sorrow alike.
And so it was that Bud Houghtaling, once a mere fixer of broken things, became a keeper of stories—a sculptor of human anguish and delight alike. He plunged boldly into the murky depths of despair and emerged with glimmering treasures, a luminous connection to the beating hearts of Eldergrove, made whole by the tapestry of their lives woven together in all its splendid chaos.
Totally handmade edition of 1.