This Election Is a Haunted House

Happy Halloween! 🎃

I recorded this one for you, my goblins and ghouls! Click the player above to listen — all I ask in return is that you picture me reading it to you as the little clown from Saw. I’m riding my tricycle as we speak.

This week’s episode is brought to you by the Burn It All Down Coalition Against Trump Supporter Nonsense (BIADCATSN).

It seems last week’s missive reached the wrong audience and some Trump-loving lady felt compelled to leave me a bizarre comment. I deleted it and lit my digital palo santo immediately. But I’d like to make something clear: If you are a Trump supporter and are reading this on Substack’s deranged app — a platform with such a specific brand of crazy — please exit now. This is where my unhinged community and I cackle in solidarity about things you will never understand. Leave us to it. You can go shill for white supremacist patriarchy in literally every other comment section on this overstuffed hellscape formerly known as Al Gore’s internet. Bye!

---

a door slams shut, thunder rumbles

three bats fly across the full moon at midnight 🌕🦇🦇🦇

Once upon an election year-y, while I doomscrolled, stoned and worried,

Over many a bold and engaging TikTok of a pollster’s lore —

While I texted, voice note cackling, suddenly I heard a yapping,

As of someone’s anxious grappling, grappling that it’s ‘24.

“’Tis the election,” I muttered, “yapping at my iPhone’s door —

Only this and nothing more.”

the wind howls, a demon screams

---

Call me R.L. Stein, because waiting for this spooky-ass election to play out is giving me GOOSEBUMPS. This whole situation feels like a haunted house.

“The only way out is through,” says an aspiring actor dressed as Satan himself.

“But, I’m tired,” I plead, “surely, there must be a secret door.”

It turns out, there’s not.

I’m haunted. You’re haunted. This election is definitely haunted. Steve Bannon is back from the dead. The ghost of President Uncle Joe Biden is out of bed and talking trash. Honestly, for once, he has my support.

Eerie music plays from a player-less piano every time I read the news. There are jumpscares around every corner. There are zombies yelling, “libtard.” There is a rotting jack-o'-lantern and his name is Donald Trump.

The internet is my portal to this haunted house and I keep entering at my own peril. I know how macabre it is. I know about the hall of mirrors that distorts my reality. I know about the algorithms coming out of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. I could stay away, yet here I am.

Down one hallway is the past six months: the twists, the turns, a giant bleeding ear, an even bigger ear gauze, an army of brats throwing coconuts, a little person dressed as Elon Musk. It ends in a dingy psych ward where a slutty nurse reads the lab report of my cortisol spikes.

The next room is full of the memories from 2016 that I have run out of energy to repress.

And the one after that is wallpapered with the comments under a New York Times Instagram post about Gaza. A disembodied voice whispers it will be voting for Jill Stein in protest.

The last hallway leads to a room with a single chair where I am forced to sit and endure this last week before the election while listening to a bizarre playlist of all the artists who have endorsed Kamala Harris. This is the spookiest room of all, because it’s where I realize that the nightmare will continue. Trump and his cronies are already planning to dump a bucket of pig’s blood on the first female president’s head.

I walk back to the dingy psych ward to ask for pills. The slutty nurse offers me a Kamalabotomy instead. Finally at peace, I leave the haunted house, and enjoy a wonderful vacation in Puerto Rico where I throw my phone into the ocean and am never seen or heard from again.

This election, never ending, Trump lost last time, still he’s running

Yet another fascist rally yapping at my iPhone’s door;

    And his eyes have all the seeming of an orange that is peeling,

   And we both know he’ll be screaming as his ass is shown the door;

Kelly Rowland dons that suit with Beyoncé pon de floor

            End this nightmare — nevermore!

floorboards creak, footsteps echo, a werewolf howls 🌕🐺

---

Well, godspeed to us all. I’m headed to Toronto tomorrow for my dad’s 70th birthday and I can’t wait to celebrate the big guy and see the whole cast of characters. I’ll conveniently be in Canada next week (so me, eh). I look forward to drinking weed drinks with my brother as I watch all this unfold and live out my birthday in another country — who decided to make the U.S. election a Scorpio?

Then, I’m going to New York to catch a vibe, marinate in culture, and be on my absolute worst Jane Goodall behavior. I haven’t been to New York since 2019 and I yearn to go to Williamsburg and be even more horrified than the last time. If my bodega man on S 4th is still there, I might finally accept his marriage proposal. Last I heard, he was back in Yemen. I will leave it up to the universe. All that to say, I am taking a break and will write you guys upon my return to LA.

It has been an absolute honor serving you this haunted election year. Happy Halloween and see you on the other side!

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️

Liz