Unholy Water

Vitamin Fortified Unholy Water is made and distributed by the fine people at Leviathan Industries, with added minerals to replace electrolytes lost during possession of corporal beings.

I purchase two bottles at the craft store, not just because they had cool looking stoppers with crosses affixed to them, but they were also on clearance. Of course they were on clearance because of the flimsy crosses, but I figured for bottles that only see the light of day for one month out of the year they’d be alright. 

Yep, three days, that’s how long it took me to break one.  Turned out to be the best thing I could’ve done, because I realized I didn’t have to put it back exactly the way I found it. I had already decided one of them would end up being holy water, and now all I had to do was invert the broken cross to make unholy water. 

I made a small dome of air dry clay on top of the stopper and made an impression with the tip of the cross.  Once it was dry I glued the cross in place and painted the edges and clay black.  You could achieve the same effect with any old cross and a cork stopper both of which you can find at the craft store.

Where the cross merged with the clay it looked disjointed.  Little stretchy snake to the rescue! The snake brought the two pieces together and with a little acrylic paint you can’t even tell it spent its previous life in bubblegum jewel tones.  I started with a layer of black and then kept adding layers mixing silver with black, each time using a larger concentration of silver and randomly pouncing it on with my fingertips. A little bit goes a long way, the last layer was the barest of highlights along the edges. 

You might notice there are three labels posted. Sometimes labels practically make themselves and this one made itself with the wrong dimensions. So I modified it, but it was still too big.  I realized that if I shrunk it to fit the bottle, all the details would be lost.  That sent me on a quest to find the perfect bottle, which I did, but then I didn’t like the way the label looked on it.  So it underwent one more modification.   Hopefully one of these labels will be perfect for you. 

I used A Lolita Scorned and Fiddums Family fonts from fontspace.com.  

The bottle is black, so I didn’t have to fill it with anything.  It also received a stretchy snake and the finger paint treatment. If you don't like to get as messy as I do, you can use a bit of sponge or scrunched up cloth. 

My Leviathan Industries is a nod to Hellraiser. Even though Cenobites don’t inhabit human form or even outsource that sort of thing as far as I know, so why they would get into the Unholy Water business is beyond me, but I’m all about what sounds pretty, not in being historically accurate.

As an added bonus I just found out there is a new (for me, yes I live under a rock) Hellraiser comic available online and actually co-written by Barker. Yay!

There is a real Leviathan Industries, “providing rubbish and garbage removal”. I’m sure they have such sights to show you.  Reminds me of the Neil Gaiman short story “We Can Get Them for You Wholesale”, where the protagonist is looking for a hit man and finds an ad under Pest Control, “Complete discreet disposal of irksome and unwanted mammals, etc.” It’s all in the wording.  

Speaking of words, I’ve used entirely too many just to say, “Oooh look at my bottle and here’s some labels.” When it’s my time to go, no one better let me have a few last words, I’ll end up living forever.