Writer’s Gothic

You’re working on your next story. The inspiration struck you part way through your last story. Your stories never end. Your laptop open on twelve projects all labeled “WIP.”

The glare of the page hurts your eyes. The idea of what to write hurts your head. Your hands ache from hours of writing. your fingers nearly blistered. Why is the page still blank?

Eureka! The breakthrough needed to conclude that manuscript you started years ago! Now… where was it? Where did you keep it? Was it on the flash drive? External hard drive? Gigabytes of data, but not the few kilos you require.

Ah the old story blog you started in college… maybe you should start it again. Passwords spill out of you and all are wrong. You were clever and made the password relate to the story. Too clever. The email is the same. A simple quip no one would see and you have forgotten.

A publication’s email “submission requested” and the promise of exposure… yet no payment. You eat your cold ramen. It tastes like exposure, completely without value.

You scoff as you read an excerpt from a new e-book. You can write better than that! So why are they published and you aren’t? Your twenty unfinished novels eye you sadly like puppies in a pound from their folder on your desktop.

A rejection letter in the mail. You set it with the others. A few more and your paper craft castle will be complete. You jokingly refer to it as your “house of leaves.” No one gets the joke.

Just keep writing. You get better with practice. We don’t look back on where we came from. Those were dark times. Just keep writing.

You’re depressed because you haven’t written. You don’t have the energy to lift your hand, let alone create. You berate yourself for not writing. This makes you more depressed. The cycle continues, every day the same.

You just need a cup of coffee to start your day. After this cup you’ll begin. One more then it can really get under way. A few more sips and you’ll have it. The cups are a mountain range lining your sink.

You finished. Finally. It’s over. You look back and instantly are filled with the unstoppable urge to delete everything. It is an affront to god and should not see the light of day.

Bedside Manner

Copper and bile

Head thundering drums

Measure my pulse

Vision awash with color

And a ringing in my ears

What happened

As if in answer

Someone kneels above me

Blocking the bulb above

“I’m sorry”

They speak

Deep voiced

But gentle in tone

Then I feel a burning

A too hot heat

Spreading through my stomach

I lift my head weakly

Making out an arm

Buried in my torso

He retracts quickly

Prize in hand

And devours greedily

Something crimson and vital

Belabored breath follows smacking lips

My vision snaps to as the pain returns

Rows of serrated teeth

Glimmer in the backlight

The head of this thing

Is that of a leech

My brow quirks

As the scream of pain

Is wrenched from my throat

I am so puzzled by the creature

But my body refuses me a moment to reflect

To inspect

The head turns back to my torso

Needle and thread in hand

And makes quick work of restoring me

Sans-organ that he took

Before I lose consciousness again

I hear it whisper

“Yes this should

It should sustain me

Sustain me a day or more…”

At First Sight

A mess of midnight hair

And the rim of glasses

Espied over top of a cloth bound book

First time we spoke

His voice cracked

Nerves lit and burning already, sans touch

The night we fell

I gave a gentle kiss

Glasses removed along with our clothes

The heat was heavy

But our breathes more

And the crescendo mind-numbing bliss

As we lay in quiet

Arms enmeshed tight

He whispered soft “I’m sorry, my love”

The bite of steel

Cold snake stole breath

I gripped the handle tight and eyes alight

He shook his head

Pressed harder still

Fitting I suppose it would be this man

As darkness enclosed

Warmth returning

I closed my eyes and gave my forgiveness

My last question

My final thought

Just how long had this been his plan

When we lay

Or first spoke

Or even when furtive glance caught sight?

I felt his lips

Move close to my ear

“It was your eyes I couldn’t resist…”

A Hall of Sea-Sung Pasts

I’ve been walking long

No end in sight

Some parts are carpeted

Some barren, boards broken

Others shine like a Christmas Day

Allways continuing on

I’ve always feared peering behind

Looking back on those long untouched parts

As I look over my shoulder

The hallway curves

Almost imperceptibly

Beyond my vision

I decide to rest

Head against the wall

This part of me never hungers

But cries for respite

My dream is elsewhen

The hallway here shifts

A slow and steady rocking

Sea swell bucks beneath my feet

A window beside

Porthole in truth

Gazes upon an unbroken horizon

Even these waves not breaking that expanse

Slowly I walk on

Then a drawing

An artist’s rendering

Crew in revel

Watery ale poured freely

And there I stand

A different face

Voice rattling from sea-spray scratch

But eyes alight with the same life

And besides me stands

Her

Allways here

Allways finding me

Or I find her

What difference does it make

So long as we are beside

A bit further on

A moment frozen in time

The water breaks

As something hits it

My lungs fill

Hard to breath

Above she cries

Leaping after

Beneath the ocean

We embrace

As the cold stabs

As the air flees

We kiss

A promise

To find each other

Once again

A Culling of Pages

She looms above them

The huddled masses

A scythe of crimson blood

Poised and ready to strike

The Creator can do naught

But trust in her measured cuts

See how she leaves whole lives

Towns and people

Bathed in red

And all but forgotten

Only their Creator knows their names

But in the end

After the death

After the loss

It is made more perfect

More flowing and paced

When the editor finishes

Her culling of pages

A Sickness of the Mind

The light drips off of windowsills

Spreading iridescent pools

As I feel the cotton inside my mouth

Air like cotton but nothing there

I take a step and floor gives

Like quicksand meets rubberband

Senses flooded by hazy delirium

I stumble and catch the wall

Folding its plaster between fingers

As I walk towards her

The nurse cries in terror

Scrabbling at the door

“I… don’t feel… well…”

I groan stomach churning something awful

I feel the world tilt and my feet slide forward

She slams against the door and sobs

Lifting herself from its face

As I collapse in a heap beside her

The door warps below us

Bending bowing into a teardrop

Closing above us

And then shattering

Obliterated as I fall

She falls too

Screaming all the while

“DON’T WAKE UP

I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

I hear her cry

Just before a tree comes up to meet me

And as I land with sickening crunch

My bed shakes from the force

Of my body jolt

Cellar Door

The cellar door opened with a creak

Its pronouncement pregnant with possibility

Simply a venture to fetch more wine

The party well underway and raucous

Or something far more sinister

Shackles and darkness colluding

To coalesce into something awful

Is it day the safety of the sun

So effusive and grossly incandescent

Or the dead of night

Moon gibbous and waning

As you descend are the steps

Resounding with stone clack

Solid and resolute

Or groaning eerily under foot

Boards almost giving way

Is the smell stale with ages of dust

A history in scent

Steeped in abandonment

Or is it abnormally clean

Citric burn filling nostrils

Obscuring something terrible

Crimson and copper

Does wine greet you

Grey with settled detritus

Eager to be uncorked and imbibed

Upon aged wooden lattice

Or is someone else waiting

Eyes sunken and dejected

No hope stirring their bones

Blinding tile surrounds them

One simple sentence

Draws forth both these places

And stand equal in their realities

The only question left now

Which of these awaits yourself when

The cellar door opened with a creak

Halloween

Two hands clasp limply around midnight

Twelve long forlorn cries

Somewhere above

In his study

A man screams

Welcoming Halloween

Another stands alone in his bathroom

Hands bloody and horribly raw

Beneath in the sink sit numerous teeth

This is terrible and yet

He sees something far more horrid

He screams “IT HURTS”

Clutching his curtain

A different man stares sidelong

Out at the horrible thing

Standing in his lawn

Airraid siren blaring

It has begun

In another home some miles away

The floor creaks

Yet no one is home

And deep below someone screams

Fingers enmeshed around their chest

Probing their throat curiously

A woman stands in a crowd

Surrounded by strangers

Clutching her face

Eyes wild with terror

And screams in protest

“THE EYES! YOU SEE THEM! I SEE! I SEE YOU!”

It is still early and a young child is awake

Staring at the vent in his room

Listening for the telltale scrabbling

Of those that make them hollow

The vent shakes

He closes his eyes and begins to cry

The Jester calls his rebellious crowd

Prepared and ready to raise a ruckus

Their new beginning

Blade in hand

And smile wide

He turns to the lightened sky

Deep beneath

Somewhere secret

A bed breathes

And the man breathes too

A few behind a oneway mirror

Scribble a note or two

A businessman lies awake

In his hospital bed

Tears streaming down face

As he remembers

Everytime he has died

On that fateful street

On the outskirts

A woman tills her garden

As sun greets so lovingly

She brushes brow

Bent low and smiling

At all the faces she sees below

Only ten miles from here

In a sanctuary for those mentally disturbed

A man, his face bandaged tight

Screams muffled anger

At passing nurses

“I. WEAR. NO. MASK.”

Back in the suburbs a boy left a box

Yet as the door closed

A hand crept out

Black and crooked

Grasped the edge

And pulled as the box collapsed within

A vessel long from now

And far away

Turns slowly in void

Directionless

Distress transmitted

Awaiting rescue

Back below in a cabin alone

A man screams at the walls

Fists full of dirt

And beating his flesh

He cries simply

“THE EARTH IS DEAD!”

Two dance in the depths

Below crashing waves

The woman couldn’t be happier

The man’s face aghast

And twisted in terror

Is all the joy she ever wanted

Yet another time

Another place

Something walks in the dark

Listening waiting

And all too hungry

It hears a soft creak

Awake and yet not

A man eyes antiques

Something within

Is evil and cruel

Waiting to jump out

In surprise

Something similar haunts fever dreams

A man has unfortunately found out

He paws at his face

Disbelieving and afraid

His reflection laughs

In mocking pantomime

His

Heart

Not

Home

In a land that is strange

A stranger is screaming

Holding tight upon the ropes

Try as he might

He cannot stop

The rise of those terrible gods

Rusted wire sits coated in blood

The body wasting away

Now it is cut

And taken away

And in the distance

We hear pigs squealing

A woman had extracted

Some weeks before

Something small and awful

Flour dusting doorway

She awakens each morning

To find yet more tracks

This monster sits

Smiling gladly

At the feast laid out before him

Mask porcine and old

He cries for yet more

And here comes the next bit

Mere doors down from the man with no mask

Another cries in anguish

His body is dead

He’s trapped within

And all the doctors

Call madness

As chaos consumes

And the tempest draws nearer

A man welcomes it in

He’s drawn all the signs

and he opens their door

And embraces the slithering thing

Trapped in memory

A fortress of his own

This man weeps for love

She is long gone

And yet he chooses

To live it again and again

One more ritual as the night draws to a close

The corpse is already hung

A man fed Lies Slowly Dies

He screams at the sight

Of that horrible face

And the Lord of Flies calls for his heart

As I type and click away

I spy something amidst the trees

It moves

And sways

As all the others

Yet a swear I spy a face

Lastly the man

Who fed Him all his loved ones

Giggles away with his pigs

He’s not sure just what he’s done

But he’s sure he’s had fun

And he can’t wait for next year

Swine

Fed them fat

On them long dead

And wastin’ away

Happy and snortin’

Snufflin’ and squealin’

My little piggies

No matter the decay

Or wrigglin’ things

Scarfin’ down mouthfuls

Of wife and child

Brother and mother

My unclean kin

They’s screams died long ‘fore

In the dead-a-night

Lit only by lantern light

Cleaved and hewn

Chopped and diced

A modest offerin’

Truly though its not my piggies

What I aim to please

Something much older

Pale and glistenin’

Wheezin’ and chortlin’

I simply call it

The Swine

Thumbnail source: https://jeradsmarantz.cgsociety.org/zt9o/pig-butcher

Tall

So tall and slim

Branches jutting from forest floor

Face blank

Suit crisp and well pressed

We’ve seen him many times

Iteration upon iteration

And in every art form

Shared a million times

And always he resurfaces

Never the same

But always similar

Tendrils

Spidery appendages

Minions

Or alone

Targeting children

Or the mentally unwell

Competing

Vying for spotlight

Against those other

Monstrous things

That oh so cheeky

Tilt of the head

Yes

You can see him even now

And all he needs

To live

And haunt

Is be remembered

And shared again