Welcome back friends, acquaintances and enemies alike, to this week’s delectably spooktacular edition of Wheatley Horror, your all-access pass into the insanity that lies beneath the tattered floors and asbestos-ridden walls of UMass Boston’s most detestable hall. However, as you may soon come to find, sanity often lies in the eye of the beholder, or should I say…eyes—and I’m talking about a lot of eyes, not just two. An inhuman amount of eyes!
Lucy Lostello, an undeclared liberal arts major going into her seventh year, has never quite gotten the hang of navigating Wheatley. Whenever Lucy has a class in the building, she always makes sure to leave a trail of candy corn to help her retrace her steps should she take a wrong turn. According to Lucy, the day that she had forgotten to do this was the strangest and most terrifying day of her life.
Joe DiPersio: So Lucy, what happened? Did you forget your candy corn the day you got lost?
Lucy Lostello: Essentially, I got hungry and ate all my candy corn—all two and a half pounds of it. It was pretty much a downward spiral into Hell from there. All the color drained from everything like I’d been transported into a reverse Oz. It was like I was seeing in dog-vision or something.
JD: Did the building still look the same, or were there any noticeable signs that you weren’t in Wheatley anymore?
LL: Not really. I mean, the walls were kind of, like, dripping blood, but other than that, same old, same old.
JD: The walls were… bleeding?
LL: Well, at first, I wasn’t sure if it was blood or chocolate milk. Did you know that in old, black-and-white movies, they used chocolate milk in the place of blood? Anyway, I took a little taste test. It was blood. Then I got really paranoid because I realized that if chocolate milk wasn’t the blood on the walls, then the blood in my body must be chocolate milk. So, I stabbed myself with a pencil and licked the wound. It was blood.
JD: I’m not going to claim to understand the method to your madness on that one, but for the sake of moving on from the chocolate milk blood, did you make any effort to escape your predicament? Perhaps by entering a classroom?
LL: Damn straight, I tried to escape my predicament. I wandered around aimlessly for what felt like an eternity, but the halls just kept repeating themselves like some kind of labyrinth. At first, I tried opening the doors to classrooms, but every time I did this, I was forced to watch the most embarrassing memory of my life play out all over again. For me, it was the time I was five and s— my pants at my uncle’s funeral and tried to blame it on the corpse.
JD: How would a corpse sh— themselves?
LL: I don’t know, okay? Anyway, I decided the doors were a lost cause and kept traversing the maze. Eventually, the walls went from being encased in blood to being encased in thick, sticky cobwebs. Little did I know that I had just stumbled into the Spider Queen’s lair.
JD: Who’s the Spider Queen? Could this be some kind of manifestation of the Devil?
LL: Manifestation? No. It was more like some horrendous, hideous spawn. Its body was so large that it blocked the entire hallway as it descended from the ceiling. It had eight gargantuan, hairy legs, two venomous fangs and a butt so big, it probably stored enough webbing to fill at least six Olympic-sized swimming pools. But the horror of its eyes surpassed that of even the darkest nightmares. It didn’t have eyes, but instead, severed human heads crammed right into the sockets! Eight sets of soul-piercing eyes stared back at me through the ghastly faces of the Queen’s former victims for a grand total of 18 eyes!
JD: No, that would be 16 eyes.
LL: Shut up, it’s my story! As I was saying, the eight heads of the Spider Queen sang in harmony like a barbershop octet: “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a…”
JD: I’m gonna stop you right there. There’s no way in Hell you’re convincing me that this Wheatley spider monster actually sang you, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
LL: Well, it did, and it was beautiful. Then it kind of spoiled the mood by removing one of the heads and gesturing to mine saying, “Your head will make a fine addition to my collection.” Can you believe it? It was like some spider version of General Grievous! I took a few steps back and I guess this pissed it off because after letting out a high-pitched squeal, a million smaller baby spiders rushed out from behind it and started coming at me.
JD: Jesus Christ! What did you do?
LL: Me and Ron hightailed our booties back to the car and…
JD: I’m sorry, did you just say, you and Ron? As in, Ron Weasley?
LL: Is that what I said?
JD: Do you think this is some kind of f—ing joke? Do you think this is supposed to be funny? It’s supposed to be scary! It’s supposed to make readers s— themselves silly, and you’re over here making s— up about Ron f—ing Weasley and Spider Queens?
LL: Okay, I made up the Ron part. I’m sorry! I was just trying to make it entertaining, but I swear everything before that was true. Honest!
JD: Alright, well from now on, stay on the f—ing ball. Anyway, how did you actually escape?
LL: Do you remember how I mentioned those doors that made me rewatch my most embarrassing moment? Well, as it turned out, all I needed to do to escape was to go through one of the doors and relive that moment, embarrassing myself all over again.
JD: Wait, so you’re telling me that in order to escape, all you needed to do was to…get the f— out of here!
LL: What? I’m telling the truth!
JD: The interview’s over. Thank you for wasting my time. Now get the f— out.
LL: I hope the Spider Queen steals your head, a—hole!
Note: After completing this interview, Lucy Lostello disappeared. UMass Boston, once again, declined to comment.