Super Mario Nightmares

As a young kid I played a lot of Mario Bros on Super Nintendo. One time I came down with this illness that gave me fevers night after night. A temperature starts causing brain damage at 107.6 degrees. My mom tells me my brain matter stewed between 105 and 106.

I lay delirious in my parents’ bed. My PJs were sweat-matted to my scrawny frame. I started hallucinating. I still remember. Clear as they were in the games, I saw Mario, Luigi, Toad, Bowser, Chomp, and those horrifying Boos.

They shifted in the shadowy corners of the room, leering at me, engaged in some sick ritual dance with my subconscious. My brain fried. My child’s mind mistook the fever for death throes and must’ve conjured these characters in an attempt to ease the process. It didn’t work. My mom tells me I screamed at them to get away. I learned young that almost anything can become sinister given the right circumstances. Even friggin’ Toad!

Anyway… I might’ve died from a heart attack if my hallucinated Mario looked like this.

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The Creepy Mario! 😱

A post shared by Andrew Fitzgerald (@andrewfitzgeralds) on Jun 21, 2018 at 6:00am PDT

Parker Steven Jackson, Nightmare Fuel Artist

Parker Steven Jackson is one hell of a horror artist.

I love this drawing because the creature in it is so archetypal–the unconscious thing that stalks our nightmares. A mish-mash of demon, ghoul, and general nightmare shtuff that the collective unconscious regurgitates while we sleep.

Parker Steven Jackson also gives the creature character. Doesn’t he? Looks as if a friend’s snapped an unexpected photo of it, rendering him unphotogenically. He looks chummy.

Notice the frilly hair, the triple ear piercing in the right ear, the handlebar mustache. Looks like when it isn’t causing night terrors it plays tom-toms in an indie band.

Seriously cool stuff.

Take a look at PSJ’s Instagram.