doomsday_disco

Brown sugar cookies with fat chunks of cinnamon-dusted apple and swirls of caramel.

Piles of ube pumpkin cheesecake batter blorped into a brown sugar graham cracker crust.

Tartly sweet, brusquely pavement-kissed, zesty with fermentation, dusted with leaf-litter, and relished by opportunistic squirrels craving a tipple.

Nothing will squash our interest in creating new pumpkin scents!

Pumpkin spiced and buttery.

Ladies, is it gay to have a skeletal system? Short answer: YES! Because the human wrist was undeniably made to flap and go “enh.”

There are many theories about the historical origin of the so-called “limp wrist” gesture, which has bedeviled arbiters of masculine/feminine presentation since at least the ancient Roman times. So when we defiantly flop our phalanges, we’re reclaiming a time-honored tradition! And letting our skeletons do what they do most naturally: camp it up.

Did you know the human wrist is made up of eight small bones, plus the forearm’s radius and ulna? Factor in the four small ones that comprise that lightly extended pinkie finger, and the number of bones required to execute this delicate maneuver add up to FOURTEEN. No wonder we’re always so tired.

So defy nature if you truly must, but never forget: when bones are all that’s left of you, the wrists will be extra floppy. And we think that’s worth celebrating while you’re still alive!

This scent debuted in 2023 as “Is He, You Know” but since this is commonly deployed as an equal-opportunity aphorism, we’ve created a campy companion scent: sweet 13-year aged patchouli, peru balsam, white oakmoss, spikenard, bourbon vanilla, sugar cane, and a sprig of lilac.

Roasted pumpkin soaked in golden brandy, clove, nutmeg, and vanilla absolute.

Saying “bone apple teeth” instead of “bon appétit” seems to take on a special meaning in the context of Halloween treats. Here’s a scent commemorating the allure of everything our dentist would have us avoid: a luscious red apple rendered nigh impenetrable by armored plates of toffee and caramel, sprinkled with bone-dry cinnamon-glazed almonds and hard bits of popcorn.

A scent inspired by the debris left over from frantic last-minute costuming sessions. Torn scraps of velvety black voodoo lily mingled with dried rose petals and a flash of red peppercorn.

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playground and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

Radiant emptiness: a breezy citrus-touched aldehyde with a hint of sunny amber and dusty heliotrope, and the metallic tang of sun-warmed iron bars.

But there is something else about that paper—the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.

It creeps all over the house.

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

It gets into my hair.

Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it—there is that smell!

Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like.

It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.

In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.

It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house—to reach the smell.

But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell.

Scorched wood and oversteeped chamomile petals pressed wetly into beeswax, brittle fossilized amber, a whisper of honeyed hay and saffron, and the sweet decay of overripe butter figs.

By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind,—that dim sub-pattern,—but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

A perfume of veils and bars, moonlight slashing through prison walls: silvered lavender and white iris shuddering like lamplight on stained plaster, ambergris frothing through vanilla husk, and the phantom outline of a rose-touched woman’s silhouette.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes—a kind of “debased Romanesque” with delirium tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the cross-lights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

Flowers in full chase, radiant and absurd, grotesquely endless: narcissus blooms lolling on broken stems, their buttery perfume swelling into a debased crescendo of honeyed heliotrope, toxic lily of the valley, almond blossom, and opium poppy.

He stopped short by the door.

“What is the matter?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what are you doing!”

I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.

“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”

Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

Torn paper revealing scorched plaster embedded with bitter citron, yellow grapefruit, and damp white cedar.

I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

I see her on that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.

I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

Furtive, uncanny. Blackened blackberry bleeds onto bruised green leaves, crushed grass, and wet earth while tendrils of honeysuckle clutch and grasp at noontime shadows.

It is stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.

The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.

No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

A smouldering, unclean scent: turmeric-dusted acrid marigold, linseed oil, bitter orange peel, crumbling plaster, clotted vanilla, and a whiff of sweet mildew.

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

Indolic jasmine glaring through a haze of tobacco yellow and stained lace.

Happy Halloween, all! Brian here — Doc Constantine to some — making my occasional guest appearance narrating BPAL scent copy.

The Porcelain Bat came into our lives last year, the morning we staggered home from New York Comic Con. Samantha and I were running on fumes—suitcases still in the car, clothes sticky from the long drive, brains mushy from lack of sleep. All we wanted was showers, silence, and unconsciousness. Instead, at the crack of dawn, we encountered a fluffy ball of chaos.

Sam was the first to notice. She was upstairs when she heard a shuffle in the bathroom. At first, she thought it was a mouse, but when she leaned closer, she froze. Pressed against the frosted glass of our under-sink cabinet was the very distinct, unmistakable silhouette of a bat. One wing splayed, tiny body smushed, like it had been waiting all week for us.

Her scream shook the walls: “BRIAN! THERE’S A FUCKING BAT IN THE BATHROOM!”

I was so exhausted that her words barely made sense. “I know all those words,” I muttered, “but not in that order.”

By the time my brain caught up, Sam had cracked the door open. The bat had managed to get out from under the sink and was boinging around the bathroom like a rubber Halloween toy brought to life. It zipped around the bathroom, frantic, wings flicking against tile and towel racks. For a creature that small, it felt huge—its wingspan may have been a mere handful of inches, but to us, shrieking bat-startled banshees, it was a twenty-foot beast.

Everyone’s goth AF until a bat is flying straight at your face in your own house.

Sam called every bat rescue service in Delco and all neighboring counties, but no one could give us an assist until at least ten hours later. We didn’t have that kind of time, not with the bathroom locked down and our bladders on strike.

So we started preparing.

I pulled on every piece of protective gear I owned: chainsaw helmet, gloves, goggles. If I could’ve found hockey pads, I would’ve worn those, too. Sam looked me over and frowned.

“BUT YOUR NECK ISN’T COVERED!”

I glared at her. “Don’t.”

“WHAT IF IT’S A VAMPIRE BAT?”

The joke is funny in hindsight, but in that moment I wasn’t laughing.

I peeked through the old-fashioned keyhole, heart hammering, but saw nothing. Was it perched on the towels? Hanging from the door? Clinging to the ceiling like some tiny gargoyle? There was no way to know.

So finally I muttered, “Fuck it,” shoved open the door, and went in with a plastic storage bin and a scrap of cardboard.

Luck was on our side, and the little guy had ended up in the bathtub. The porcelain sides were too slick for him to climb: a tiny prisoner in the big white basin.

Carefully, gently, we lowered the bin over him. He rustled his wings but didn’t fight. We slid the cardboard underneath, lifted him up, and carried him outside.

Out on the porch, we set the box (opened, so he could make his way out on his terms) on a shady table and let him rest. Our tiny intruder, the Porcelain Bat, had survived his ordeal. And so had we.

The sweet little guardian of our bathroom sink. The warm, unsettling thrum of musky fur and leathery wings smushed against frosted orris root and vanilla plaster dust.

The Lovebirds wanted to be spooky this year, and we didn’t have the heart to tell them that no one will be fooled.

A frothy strawberry malted with papaya juice and black cherries, topped with marshmallow cream.

“You weren’t always a lovebat, were you?” he began.

A spoopy confabulation: Pink strawberries floating in sparkling blood orange and French lime fizz, enveloped in a swooshy cape of black velvet plum.

The Lovebirds wanted to be spooky this year, and we didn’t have the heart to tell them that no one will be fooled.

Fuzzy foamed milk with peppermint cream, green currants, and sugared green apple.

Don’t you just love that new hearse smell? A stylish, contemporary corpse-carrier for the most discriminating clientele: traces of embalming fluid clinging to white satin curtains and fresh white leather seats.

*clinks bottles*

*clinks shovels*

How about one for the road? Fizzy pop and a syrupy slick of motor oil splashed across disintegrating tan leather seats.

Does this look like it healed funny? Globs of vanilla cream splattered with a honk of electric cherry, red currant, and a spatter of ink.

As soon as I smelled this in the decant, I knew it reminded me of something I've tried.

As soon as it put it on, I went to get that other scent to deathmatch with it.

I think I've crackled at least one prominent floral note!

I believe Dangers Untold features the same moonflower utilized in Zorya P. I had Zorya P on my left arm and Dangers Untold on my right, and I kept sniffing, switching from one arm to the other, and I'm pretty confident that moonflower is at least one of the pale florals in this scent. I'm getting something with it that reminds me of the porcelain of Pediophobia and the mineralic aspect of Black Opal, BUT I destashed my partial of Black Opal for a partial of Gothabilly (no regrets), so I can't compare the two to know for sure. I think there may also be some some metallic-infused musk representing the silver glitter, as after the mineralic, powdery (but not in a bad way or an orris baby powder way!) floral phase calms down, I get something high-pitched infused into what I believe is a silvery musk. But I also wouldn't rule out that high-pitched note being a different floral note or some sort of non-fizzy aldehyde. I don't get anything vanilla-like from this on my skin, but I do feel like layering this with a vanilla-centric blend like Antique Lace 2017 would be really lovely.

I don't think I need to upgrade this one to a bottle, but I think I may try to keep the decant around for layering purposes.