fuck yeah locative gothic

uncanny geography

[kess333]

Horror Writer / Author Gothic

You make a character you love. You almost feel bad for having to kill them.

The plot consumes your time. The plot consumes your thoughts. The plot consumes your existence whole.

Your like the colour red. You make sure there’s always some seeping from your characters flesh.

The outline is clean- so very clean. So structured. But the manuscript drips. Bleeds. Veers. The rules do not apply. The genre does not obey. The horror is not on the page- the horror is in the gaps.

No matter where you are, you always feel as if you’re being watched. Perhaps it is the characters you’ve killed. Perhaps it is the monsters you’ve made. Perhaps it is both. You are not so sure they are separate anymore.

There is blood on your hands. You have committed horrible atrocities. You will not be punished for them. They were not real. The guilt is.

Each monster you create always has a piece of you in it. Your anger. Your jealousy. Your pain.

You create a character based off of someone you hate. You spend hours thinking of how to kill them off. You find that justice enough.

Your heart aches knowing you will be buried with hundreds of ideas you will never bring to life.

[counting-unfortunate-stars]

I-95 Gothic

-The road rises with the landscape, glowing with lights. Sometimes it looks like a sinuous snake, fed by the exhaustion of commuters and the sparks of anger that bring guns to hands in stalled traffic.

-There is a white SUV to your left. There is a white SUV to your right. There is a white SUV in front of you. They are all going 55 in a 65 zone.

-A small gray sedan is weaving in and out at high speed. What are they running from?

-You pass the exit. You are not sure how. You pass the next exit too. And the next. You are trapped. 

-You’re not entirely sure how the junction works, even though you have lived here for years. Somehow you always get where you need to go anyway. The road protects those it likes.

-The exit ramp is so long. The trees along the side of the road seem to laugh at you. The green sign has writing in a language you have never seen. Just keep driving.

[borgevino]

hoosier gothic

there is the river and the field and the forest.  there used to be the swamp, but that got filled in years ago; the ghost of it still lingers, sending misty tendrils between trees and winding through the corn stalks.

the corn is knee high by the fourth of july on good years and even then you don’t go into the fields after august, when the stalks are over your head and one wrong turn will mean you’re lost.  those who don’t know better go missing for days before staggering out into the road, dehydrated and hungry; usually it turns out they’ve been ten feet away from the edge the entire time. halloween sees corn mazes every year; the dark settles down and the moonlight hardly illuminates anything, and whatever moves with the rattling breeze comes out in full force.

a webbing of roads holds the land together, spaced out evenly, every quarter mile, numbered in turn. 100W. 200W. 500E. sometimes the land strains against its confines and the roads crack open, shimmering like water in the summer heat.  you don’t get lost in the indiana countryside; the roads catch you with their numbers, guiding you home.

the heart of indiana is a circle: monument circle with its lazy hustle and bustle of cars and pedestrians; I-465, the hub through which nearly all transcontinental travelers pass.  the semis barrel along at 20mph over the speed limit at night, their headlights barely illuminating the six deserted lanes.

you drive a motorcycle at night through the bean fields (it’s an alternate year, and almost nobody has planted corn).  it’s pitch black and your headlight flickers. the field flickers back, a glorious burst of light; the fireflies understand you as one of them.

you grow up with two sources of water: the well and the river.  one year, the bitter cold brings an ice storm with it; the well freezes over, and you can’t very well drink the river.  there’s a spring ten miles away. you make the journey there, every day; joining a line of bundled-up, red-nosed fellow sufferers whose forced cheerfulness sends frozen breath in clouds.  the spring water tastes different; that winter is strange, and you can hardly remember it years later.

there are small graveyards everywhere, inset into the cornfields and fenced in with wrought-iron that’s centuries old; drooping pine trees shelter them, leaving them cool, even in the heat of the summer.

in november, fog sits on the newly-shorn fields in the pale dawn light before slinking sullenly back to the river.

possum-eyes watch you at night, red in headlights and flashlights; sometimes they seem too high above the ground, even in the fields, where there are no trees.

every river is the wabash. every tree is a sycamore. every light is a candle.

[jesusdiedforourtins-deactivated]

Melbourne public transport gothic:

You are taking the train home after work. It stops at a station and the carriage fills with schoolboys, laughing and chatting together. You don’t recognise their uniforms, which is strange because there aren’t many schools on your line. You look up to check that you aren’t on the wrong train by mistake. You make eye contact with one of the boys, and he grins at you. His large white teeth make you uncomfortable for some reason. In unision, every single boy turns his head and stares at you. They are identical, and they are all grinning now. Their teeth are so very, very white.

The bus is late again, and the sky is growing cloudy. You are pretty sure the forecast warned of rain today. You move under the cover of the bus shelter, and as you do, the old woman sitting on the bench smiles at you. “My, wasn’t the rain terrible yesterday?” she asks. You nod, and mumble something about not being able to get your washing in on time. She grimaces sympathetically and says, “My husband got caught out in it. He was a mess by the time it stopped.” As she finishes talking, you hear a wet noise and feel a wetness on your shoulder. The rain has started. The bus shelter melts into nothing, and you do too. The rain really has been terrible lately.

[fuckyeahlocativegothic]

“Everyone knows everyone in Vermont, because no one ever leaves. Just as the trees are trapped in the earth so are those born in Vermont. It is the same as outsiders, they never stay - and if they try it does not end well for them, but there is generally an excellent harvest that year.”

— bohyd (via spadesconfession)

[francisabernathy]

english village gothic

there is a large house where the last few lanes tail away, high up on a hill. when the lightning flashes, you see faces at the window, but nobody has lived there since queen victoria was on the throne.

blood spills from teacups across well-kept lawns; there are shadows drinking from a dried-up fountain in the summer sun, and the cucumber sandwiches are moulding already

you find a child’s bike in the road, pink streamers on the handlebars and wheels still spinning. you do not find a child. nobody wants to talk about it

the church has relics, and a crypt, and when the river bursts its banks you dream of the dead drowning once more. the vicar tells you that he hears howling at night, but there are no wolves left in england

the brownies and girl guides are far too pale this summer. they have strange markings on their necks, and they keep missing church parade, but their knitting is exemplary still

the romans and celts and saxons and vikings and normans march for miles in the second between midnight and the next morning; they leave no footprints but you hear their boots on the grass

the girls’ toilets in the primary school are haunted. things whisper and hiss in the pipes and you see the name of the history teacher, along with his birth and death dates, on the war memorial on the village green. he talks about the trenches as if he were there

everyone knows everyone, even the dead. especially the dead.

[korvidian]

more south-east queensland gothic:

you see a tourist walk into the gold shell sculpture at the top of queen street mall. three very different tourists exit and scatter quickly.

new fake-grass chairs have been erected in south bank. one of them weeps softly whenever people sit on it.

the happy bus driver smiles at you as you hop on. when you get off at your stop he gives you the stuffed animal you won at the ekka when you were seven that you left on the train home.

as you walk along the great court at UQ the statues have progressively more and more eyes.

there is a door in the back of your pantry in the student house you rent. from the outside there should be nothing there. sometimes you hear scratching from the other side when you try to find the good flavour of instant noodles in the back.

fortitude valley station. it is after midnight. a train dripping with blood, none of the lights on, pulls up on the other side of the platform and leaves. ‘that must be the ferny grove line’ someone remarks nearby.

the cashier at the gas station asks if you want to buy any pingas from him. you laugh. he hisses and scatters a handful of buttons on the table and disappears into a room marked ‘employees only’.

several mounted police officers are arrested after public discovers their horses were poorly disguised motorcycles. a bikie gang adopts the cycles, feeding a skittish one a lump of sugar to keep it calm.

possums mate on the fence behind your house. you become more and more disturbed as one possum asks ‘daddy’ for ‘cummies’.

coles’ ‘down, down, prices are down’ ad plays on repeat in their store. a shadowy staircase leading into unknown depths in aisle 5 has a red and white cardboard arrow pointing down. ‘prices! down! D E S C E N D’ it reads.

‘If the Leader of the Opposition wants to see me outside the chamber, I will whisper in her ear quietly the Name of the Nameless City… To do that I will need the King in Yellow—at least two volumes’ scoffs Campbell Newman, his maw distending grotesquely in the direction of the Opposition Leader.

ibis swoop down from the sky, swarming a young child. their cries sound suspiciously close to ‘finally the atrocities of our forefathers were subject to have been avenged’.

clive palmer visits Brisbane and announces his intention to continue his anachronistic revivals by this time constructing an exact copy of the Big Bang at the Palmer Coolum Resort.

you pass outside the batman building. you hear a gentle weeping from within.

[strangely-small-rat]

Pacific Northwestern Gothic

All the gift stores have mugs, fans, clothes, etc., with the infamous sasquatch printed on them. You've never seen him yourself, but you've heard from a friend of a friend...

The schools are filled with children, but oddly enough, never in your life have you seen a single child in the neighborhood.

There are beaches here. Big ones, too. But, they're not like the crowded touristy beaches of California and the like. No, there's a reason no one talks about these beaches. They're dark, windy, cold, and the water is vicious. You grew up on stories of people being dragged out into the waves and never seen again. These beaches are filled with dead birds buried in the sand. One time, you saw the bloody corpse of a baby seal, being torn apart by vultures. And everyone knows to run when you see the vultures.

Don't drive in the fog. You don't know what's in it, nor do you want to.

Every day at noon, they test the tsunami sirens. They're supposed to last only a few seconds, unless there really is a tsunami, in which case they will blare for at least two minutes. Nobody really bats an eye when they blare, it's practically a lunch bell to them. But still, every time, there are those few second where everyone goes silent, listening, counting the seconds the sirens go. And the panic that ensues within you when the siren goes on for just a little too long...

The mountains go on forever. Don't bother trying to reach the end of the trail. You won't.

At night, you can hear the coyotes calling. Best to keep your pets inside. Let them out when you hear the coyotes and you might not see them again.

Sometimes, you'll look out your window at night and there might be a deer right at your window. Ignore it, it just likes to watch you sleep. Do not provoke it. You don't know just what happens if you do, but you're father always told you...

Don't let your dog off leash if it barks while on a walk in the woods. It knows something you don't, but it doesn't know not to chase whatever it is.

There's a church at every corner. You're pretty sure there's never been a service at any of them.

Dear skulls. Dear skulls everywhere.

[korvidian]

more south-east queensland gothic:

you see a tourist walk into the gold shell sculpture at the top of queen street mall. three very different tourists exit and scatter quickly.

new fake-grass chairs have been erected in south bank. one of them weeps softly whenever people sit on it.

the happy bus driver smiles at you as you hop on. when you get off at your stop he gives you the stuffed animal you won at the ekka when you were seven that you left on the train home.

as you walk along the great court at UQ the statues have progressively more and more eyes.

there is a door in the back of your pantry in the student house you rent. from the outside there should be nothing there. sometimes you hear scratching from the other side when you try to find the good flavour of instant noodles in the back.

fortitude valley station. it is after midnight. a train dripping with blood, none of the lights on, pulls up on the other side of the platform and leaves. ‘that must be the ferny grove line’ someone remarks nearby.

the cashier at the gas station asks if you want to buy any pingas from him. you laugh. he hisses and scatters a handful of buttons on the table and disappears into a room marked ‘employees only’.

several mounted police officers are arrested after public discovers their horses were poorly disguised motorcycles. a bikie gang adopts the cycles, feeding a skittish one a lump of sugar to keep it calm.

possums mate on the fence behind your house. you become more and more disturbed as one possum asks ‘daddy’ for ‘cummies’.

coles’ ‘down, down, prices are down’ ad plays on repeat in their store. a shadowy staircase leading into unknown depths in aisle 5 has a red and white cardboard arrow pointing down. ‘prices! down! D E S C E N D’ it reads.

‘If the Leader of the Opposition wants to see me outside the chamber, I will whisper in her ear quietly the Name of the Nameless City… To do that I will need the King in Yellow—at least two volumes’ scoffs Campbell Newman, his maw distending grotesquely in the direction of the Opposition Leader.

ibis swoop down from the sky, swarming a young child. their cries sound suspiciously close to ‘finally the atrocities of our forefathers were subject to have been avenged’.

clive palmer visits Brisbane and announces his intention to continue his anachronistic revivals by this time constructing an exact copy of the Big Bang at the Palmer Coolum Resort.

you pass outside the batman building. you hear a gentle weeping from within.

[elodieunderglass]

actual new england gothic

- the freeze/thaw cycle of the earth births new stones every spring. Unexpected boulders erupt from the ground. there were no rocks here before. you clear the rocks out, dig a new garden. the next spring, there are more rocks. where are these rocks coming from. who is doing this

- your neighbor, an old man of few words with blind granite eyes, appears and communicates through grunting that he would like you to assist in repairing the boundary wall. you stand at the drystone wall separating your property from his and try to balance perfectly round rocks on top of each other. your neighbor does it without apparent effort. what is happening

- etc etc yes it’s all very creepy blood atmosphere, throw some residents whose working-class speech patterns and weird-seeming local knowledge makes you uncomfortable, idk, small low-income communities can be upsetting, it’s all very suffocating and very paranormal sure, in other news, there’s a rock in your bedroom now.

- in winter it is extremely cold and there is a lot of snow, and in summer it is skin-blisteringly hot, and there are the mountains with forests that would swallow you whole because that is what forests do, and oceans that would lose you because that is what oceans are, and we are not surprised, because this is not fucking surprising, the earth never agreed to be benevolent, but who the fuck is sending the rocks

- a lobster boat hauls up an eldritch tentacled horror. the fisherman examines it solemnly, and asks who filled the lobster pots with rocks.

- rocks in the mailbox, open the medicine cabinet and it’s rocks, open the glove compartment and pebbles come out.

- throw in some fuckable repurposed topless Celtic myths in there, I know y’all need some paranormal fuckery to shift stories these days, I ain’t judging, you do who/what you like, more powers to you. unfortunately the nature of the place warps them and all of your Seelie Sidhe Were-Stag fuckboys care too much about geology, instead of whispering cants of secret powers they’re all looking at your rock collection and suggesting that you could polish that quartz. Furious, you complain that they’re taking you for granted. “No,” they say, pained. “Rose quartz.”

- just 

- these fucking rocks

- Freeze-thaw cycles, everyone says, but that doesn’t explain it.

- The only one bothered by it is you. They say, “We’re all very grounded here.”

[idiopathicsmile]

chicago gothic

A fear lurks in the back of your mind, ever-present, that someday someone will realize you are the sole resident who is not yet a member of at least one improv group. For now you are safe, but you know the day will come

It is fifty outside but forty by the lake. It is forty outside but zero by the lake. It is freezing outside but the lake has never known love nor sun nor laughter, and all who gaze upon it forget they were ever born. You should probably dress in layers today.

Your friend asks you to meet them at the Walgreens on Broadway. You fail to ask which one. In the end, really, what isn’t a Walgreens?

You order a pizza. The pizza comes. It is much too deep. “Use a fork” a friend whispers, like this is not insane. You pick up your fork. You bring it down into the pizza. Your fork moves through sauce, through cheese, through crust, but it doesn’t stop. The pizza is still going. You cannot be certain an end will ever come. You cannot remember how you got here. The pizza is just so deep. You begin to cry, softly. You ask the waiter if there is anything else on the menu. The waiter accuses you of being from New York.

[andrexi1]

Australian Outback Gothic

- You see the same eastern brown snake on the trail, it only hisses you. You hide under the jacaranda tree. The hisses from the trail are still heard. One day the hissing stops, only the long grass remains. The eastern brown snake is gone. You do not go into the long grass.

- No one knew how they landed on the frontier, the men screamed with “rage”. The flame trees blazed across the bush. A black bird cries death.

You gone walkabout through the northern territory. There is a man who says he’s not from around here. He tells you he grew up here. You wonder if he is a dust eater. No one is from the down under anymore.

- You stop a cabbie. “take me to Queensland” you say. He drives you around in circles. You arrive in Queensland. It doesn’t look like Queensland. You left the banana land long ago. The driver fronts up in Queensland. It’s not the same one you know.

- “Have you ever left the down under?” the man asks. “I was born here I never left.” “Have you ever left the down under?” He asks again. He keeps asking. You realise you are not even in the down under.

- One premier falls on her own sword. The lies were revealed. She wasn’t fair dinkum. They replace her with another. There’s plenty of swords to go about.

[korvidian]

more south-east queensland gothic:

you see a tourist walk into the gold shell sculpture at the top of queen street mall. three very different tourists exit and scatter quickly.

new fake-grass chairs have been erected in south bank. one of them weeps softly whenever people sit on it.

the happy bus driver smiles at you as you hop on. when you get off at your stop he gives you the stuffed animal you won at the ekka when you were seven that you left on the train home.

as you walk along the great court at UQ the statues have progressively more and more eyes.

there is a door in the back of your pantry in the student house you rent. from the outside there should be nothing there. sometimes you hear scratching from the other side when you try to find the good flavour of instant noodles in the back.

fortitude valley station. it is after midnight. a train dripping with blood, none of the lights on, pulls up on the other side of the platform and leaves. ‘that must be the ferny grove line’ someone remarks nearby.

the cashier at the gas station asks if you want to buy any pingas from him. you laugh. he hisses and scatters a handful of buttons on the table and disappears into a room marked ‘employees only’.

several mounted police officers are arrested after public discovers their horses were poorly disguised motorcycles. a bikie gang adopts the cycles, feeding a skittish one a lump of sugar to keep it calm.

possums mate on the fence behind your house. you become more and more disturbed as one possum asks ‘daddy’ for ‘cummies’.

coles’ ‘down, down, prices are down’ ad plays on repeat in their store. a shadowy staircase leading into unknown depths in aisle 5 has a red and white cardboard arrow pointing down. ‘prices! down! D E S C E N D’ it reads.

‘If the Leader of the Opposition wants to see me outside the chamber, I will whisper in her ear quietly the Name of the Nameless City… To do that I will need the King in Yellow—at least two volumes’ scoffs Campbell Newman, his maw distending grotesquely in the direction of the Opposition Leader.

ibis swoop down from the sky, swarming a young child. their cries sound suspiciously close to ‘finally the atrocities of our forefathers were subject to have been avenged’.

clive palmer visits Brisbane and announces his intention to continue his anachronistic revivals by this time constructing an exact copy of the Big Bang at the Palmer Coolum Resort.

you pass outside the batman building. you hear a gentle weeping from within.

[heartlites]

( more ) kentucky gothic

it is autumn, winter will be here soon. the fog has settled in as if it is part of the grass beneath it. it seems far away but when you approach it, it escapes you. oh, no. it is coming. it is coming and you are being taken by the sky upon the ground and you will no longer see, all will be white. 

there is something almost romantic about all the cracked tiles in gas station bathrooms, if it were not disgusting to look at. 

school is not school, it is a performance. the teachers have mastered the art of acting while we children must learn, and it seems we are bad at this, as we stuff out mouths with tobacco and come back to these brick-built hell holes hungover. 

riding through the countryside and you find yourself wondering if all this land is flat, and soon after you find yourself wondering if all there is here is small mountains. it is an endless cycle. 

there are corn stalks on both sides of the highway, there is nothing beyond them. it is home. 

is it chilling and terrifying to see that outside of the main five skyscraper premises of louisville, it looks like the rest of the city have not aged or changed since the 80s. it is home, it is like this. do not question its decay. 

there are songs on the radio; sometimes you hear pieces of the modern era flash through static, but to no avail. the country songs blare through even louder and you forget what you heard. what was it? i don’t know. we must not divert from the disgustingly ragged voices of old white man and acoustic guitars. 

why does the water taste so old? “because of all the limestone,” they tell us.

how terrifying to think that our wealth is born from two seconds on a dirt race track which thousands come to see. in an instant fate is decided, and we let it be decided by the likes of thoroughbreds. i am not sure why we place so much faith in them. 

there’s a faint taste of bourbon, always. 

[andrexi1]

one day you walk home in Queensland. when you get to your house you notice it’s not your house. “all houses look the same” says the man on the corner. you keep walking trying to find where home is. there is only the same street and the same man. the streetlights are never on.

[philcollinstarzan]

georgia gothic

• it was snowing yesterday. the trees are on fire today. it was raining five minutes ago. you can’t remember your name.

• you can’t find the place footloose remake was filmed, even though you live right by it. it was just there. the locals see you and go inside.

• your neighbor waves to you as you drive by. your neighbor waves to you as you drive by. your neighbor waves and waves and waves.

• you’ve been in traffic for an hour. three days. a week. the road opens up and swallows cars whole. you can’t see.

• a mosquito bites you. you look down and the bite is as big as your hand. you look away and back again and it’s gone.

• the old baptist church on the corner is gone. you don’t remember it ever being there. nobody talks about it.

• your friend says “meet me at the waffle house”. you forget to ask which one. it doesn’t matter.

• you read a bumper sticker. “I love Jesus”. there’s another one. and another one. the whole car is “I love Jesus” bumper stickers.

• a woman smiles while saying “I’ll pray for you”. the smile is stretched too wide. her teeth are too sharp. you don’t think she’ll be praying.

• a northerner comes down to visit the coca cola factory. they burst into flames on arrival. an old man appears. “god damn yankees”

[panatheism]

Greek Gothic

Your keys were here just a second ago. You put them down on the table, turned your back for a moment, and now they’re gone. “The house spirits don’t want you to leave,” your mother says. “Leave out some honey for them. Maybe you can negotiate.” You do as you’re told, before they take something more precious from you.

You’re walking back from the olive grove along the dusty road that leads to the village proper. The sun is setting and the warm breeze rustles the reeds beside you. The rustling continues when the wind stops. You feel their gaze on you and look over to see them: black figures with no discernible features, watching without eyes from their place among the tall grasses. Never play in the reeds, you were always cautioned. Now you know why.

Tourists ignore the ruins behind your home. They aren’t beautiful, not preserved or retouched like the Acropolis. They are bitter reminders of a fallen civilization, smashed into the earth by hundreds of invaders over time. This temple is scarred and desecrated. The air sparks with the anger of the ancient gods.

Fresh spring water trickles down the mountain, chittering and babbling. You stop to take a drink and notice a small child playing nearby. The child beckons you to follow it up the stream, and you do, until the creek gets wider and deeper and the rocks become treacherous and you realize there was no child. You’re knee-deep and alone.

The caves are a shelter, you’ve always been told. The caves are where your ancestors hid from the Turks, where brave priests preserved our language and traditions by teaching them to daring children in the middle of the night. When the moon rises, you can still hear their whispering. 

The parties run late. The music echoes from the town center as you leave the orange glow of the festival behind, chased by drunken British schoolboys on their spring break. You weave through the twisting alleys of the village until you reach the sea. The Aegean is a friend. She will gladly swallow them. 

A deep melancholy has taken you. Your body is weak right down to your bones. Your grandmother, dressed all in black, gives you a necklace bearing a bright blue eye. She spits on you, then gathers the women in the garden for murmured prayers. Together, they chase away the Evil Eye. 

Families huddle in the cement skeleton of an unfinished construction project, making a post-apocalyptic city out of a forgotten foreign investment. A message has been spray-painted onto the crumbling wall: “ΔΕΝ ΠΑΡΑΔΙΔΟΝΤΑΙ ΠΟΤΕ”. Never surrender.