You Will Sing At Your Own Funeral
Earlier in the year, I wrote a curious little article about my tarot cards. I started thinking, What if I conjured a tarot deck that was cursed with telling you the grimmest of fortunes? I love having scary fun, so I thought October would be a great time to post this:) Besides, I wanted to give you a tasty treat as a reward for your infinite patience in waiting for this deck. I have been a little stingy lately with posting new tarot art! I will stop hoarding it and release more images soon! Enjoy!
You Will Sing At Your Own Funeral
By Misty Benson
What would you do if a fortuneteller told you that you would commit suicide with a garden hose, and three weeks later, you’d sing at your own funeral? What if she told you that you’d give birth to Siamese twins? That God would ask you to scratch your own eyes out, and you would
eagerly comply? No one ever expects to hear such grim fortunes, and if so, they would just pass it off as a joke. They expect to hear that they will travel to Nepal and meet the loves of their lives, that they will have three healthy children, and that they will die peacefully in their sleep of old age. Sadly, not all fortunes are fortunate. The truth is this -- I knew a girl that hung herself with a garden hose. She left a note for her mother to come find her in the forest. She had just recorded a music demo before her suicide, and one of the tracks was played at her funeral. I’m sure it’s safe to say that she never would have believed her life would end dangling from a perfect green garden hose. Undoubtedly, the parents of Abigail and Brittany, a famous pair of twins that share one body, never imagined that they would have a two-headed baby. I doubt the man who spoke to God while on acid never envisioned being blinded and betrayed by his own two hands. In a world full of truth that is stranger than fiction, I would have believed it. Mine is a world of signs and shrines. A dead fish once told me that my new dentist was running a Little Shop of Horrors.
I never listened. What could a dead fish possibly know that I didn’t? Had I listened to that floating corpse, I would not have paid for a routine procedure with an abyss of pain. Now, I read the signs. No matter how strange, no matter how gruesome, these hauntingly beautiful signs are to be taken seriously.
To explore the signs, my journey of dark discovery begins with the creation of a new generation of tarot deck - The Morbidly Adorable Tarot. As I conjure the cards, I wonder what will happen if they divine scary but very true fortunes. At first glance, the cards are seemingly fun and
rich and strange - an innocent children’s game. Perhaps they are utterly benign, but what if these cards come with a curse? A history? A growing infamy? Their curse is that they can read the most grisly of futures. They have the ability to cripple people with the fear of what they will become. Querents are left wondering what they will do with this powerful yet paralyzing information. They unravel a terrible wonderland where ghostly tree limbs crawl down the walls tangled in a green seaweed madness of garden hose. Haunting black boxes act as shrines to commemorate the curious lives of the damned. My characters, which are one part whimsy and one part horror, parade right out of the paintings and roam the halls. Welcome to my sideshow of signs. Here you will meet the Twilight Sisters of Temperance, a pair of Siamese twins locked in an endless conversation about harmony and balance. The penetrating gaze of the Priestess of Skullcoco will mesmerize you as she fashionably tells your rotten fortune. You may even join a
funeral procession as the Death card unleashes a skelly jazz funeral. Whether or not you will attend the sideshow and learn to consecrate your own little monsters is up to you. Just be warned that once you enter this candyland of curses, your outlook on life will be forever changed.
You Will Sing At Your Own Funeral
By Misty Benson
What would you do if a fortuneteller told you that you would commit suicide with a garden hose, and three weeks later, you’d sing at your own funeral? What if she told you that you’d give birth to Siamese twins? That God would ask you to scratch your own eyes out, and you would
eagerly comply? No one ever expects to hear such grim fortunes, and if so, they would just pass it off as a joke. They expect to hear that they will travel to Nepal and meet the loves of their lives, that they will have three healthy children, and that they will die peacefully in their sleep of old age. Sadly, not all fortunes are fortunate. The truth is this -- I knew a girl that hung herself with a garden hose. She left a note for her mother to come find her in the forest. She had just recorded a music demo before her suicide, and one of the tracks was played at her funeral. I’m sure it’s safe to say that she never would have believed her life would end dangling from a perfect green garden hose. Undoubtedly, the parents of Abigail and Brittany, a famous pair of twins that share one body, never imagined that they would have a two-headed baby. I doubt the man who spoke to God while on acid never envisioned being blinded and betrayed by his own two hands. In a world full of truth that is stranger than fiction, I would have believed it. Mine is a world of signs and shrines. A dead fish once told me that my new dentist was running a Little Shop of Horrors.
I never listened. What could a dead fish possibly know that I didn’t? Had I listened to that floating corpse, I would not have paid for a routine procedure with an abyss of pain. Now, I read the signs. No matter how strange, no matter how gruesome, these hauntingly beautiful signs are to be taken seriously.
To explore the signs, my journey of dark discovery begins with the creation of a new generation of tarot deck - The Morbidly Adorable Tarot. As I conjure the cards, I wonder what will happen if they divine scary but very true fortunes. At first glance, the cards are seemingly fun and
rich and strange - an innocent children’s game. Perhaps they are utterly benign, but what if these cards come with a curse? A history? A growing infamy? Their curse is that they can read the most grisly of futures. They have the ability to cripple people with the fear of what they will become. Querents are left wondering what they will do with this powerful yet paralyzing information. They unravel a terrible wonderland where ghostly tree limbs crawl down the walls tangled in a green seaweed madness of garden hose. Haunting black boxes act as shrines to commemorate the curious lives of the damned. My characters, which are one part whimsy and one part horror, parade right out of the paintings and roam the halls. Welcome to my sideshow of signs. Here you will meet the Twilight Sisters of Temperance, a pair of Siamese twins locked in an endless conversation about harmony and balance. The penetrating gaze of the Priestess of Skullcoco will mesmerize you as she fashionably tells your rotten fortune. You may even join a
funeral procession as the Death card unleashes a skelly jazz funeral. Whether or not you will attend the sideshow and learn to consecrate your own little monsters is up to you. Just be warned that once you enter this candyland of curses, your outlook on life will be forever changed.