Regional Gothic - Tumblr Posts
Kowloon Tong Gothic
(from some of my experiences)
- The sun comes out in winter, but no matter how hard it glares into your eyes, it’s still cold when you walk outside.
- Kindergarten, Kindergarten, Park, Alleyway. Kindergarten, Kindergarten, Park, Alleyway. The red brick roads are an endless cycle.
- Where are you? The alleyways all look the same. You’re either 1 block or 1 mile away from home.
- Construction workers have shut down an area in the sidewalk for construction. You swear they weren’t here yesterday.
- Frogs croak in the ponds in the park. You can’t see any frogs.
- Lotus flowers bloom in the pond. This year, their annual pink had blossomed into blood red.
- There is no fourth floor, there is no fourth floor. It doesn’t exist.
- Dog walkers take the same path everyday. You swear they all have the same 2 golden retrievers.
- Carcasses of frogs line the dark roads at night. You swear someone had dumped them there.
- There are bones hidden all over the grass in the park. Birds, rats, maybe a rabbit. You take photos, morbidly curious.
- One day, you found a tooth. No more bones, just teeth. You miss the bones.
- As a child, you read a picture book of a child who lived near the woods. The vibrant pictures and imagination of the author sparked your interest in art. You ask the bookstores for it, you scour every book website for its title. You are afraid that one day, you will forget it, only knowing that some book of unknown context sparked your interest in art.
- The colourful math textbooks are always on sale. You wonder who is stocking the shelves. They are a different color each day.
- Your evergreen houseplant has attracted an army of ants. You live on the 10th floor.
- You bought Shudder on your Apple TV one night to watch a horror movie. Waking up the next morning, it is gone. You then realise that Shudder was never available in Hong Kong.
Coastal Florida High School Gothic
There are tourists covering the streets. Their bodies are lying there, but they do not decompose. They never decompose. Not until summer comes. Then they vanish. You are late to class because you ran over one. Your teacher yells at you, but makes no sound.
You are sitting in algebra. There is a faint humming coming from..somewhere. you ignore it. You always ignore it. You turn to page 394 in your textbook and pretend to pay attention. You don’t want to learn about slope again. You have learned about slope seven times in the past three years.
You say the pledge of allegiance every morning. You salute the flag outside the window. There is no flag inside in your homeroom. You do not meet the eyes of the thing on top of the flagpole.
The air conditioning isn’t working. It’s 97 degrees. Your friend says she’s cold. You hand her your jacket and wonder if anything is real.
People are giving presentations again. They are always giving presentations. You never give presentations, though. Not after you accidentally cut your hand in Engineering and bled on the table. There is another presentation tomorrow. You nod. Tomorrow looks like it will be the same as today.
Your friends are all the same people. They look different, but inside they are the same. You wonder if you too are the same.
You vaguely remember middle school. You were different back then, you think. But it is better now. It has to be better. Everyone knows that 7th grade is the worst year. Were you ever in seventh grade? You don’t remember. You feel like you should remember.
The snowbirds are back. You ignore them and their bleating calls. They are liars and should never be heeded. The bright feathers sticking out of their hats do not entice you. You know not to go near them. You have been told this by person after person. They will go away when May comes. They always leave by May.
There is a girl in your Government class that you do not like. She is always around. She sits by you and your friends at lunch. You secretly believe that they all think a different friend likes her. You don’t believe any of them actually likes her. You will never tell her to go away because you will feel bad. She is always near you even though you only have two classes with her, Government and that weird in-between space that happens precisely at 11:48 am on Tuesdays.
You and your friends screw around on the school iPads’ cameras. You never look at the pictures. You know they are not what they seem.
The window in your History class is fake. You do not know how you know, but it is definitely fake. You wonder what would happen if you opened it and stuck you head through. You never do.
You can’t go to the bathroom until the first person comes back. The first person never came back. Neither did the third or fourth or fifth or so on. But whoever went last is always the first. You do not believe anyone other than you remembers the others. You sit patiently, tapping away at your keyboard as you write meaningless gibberish.
You go to the beach one day. There is an essay due again. There is always an essay due. You sit looking at the waves stained by red tide and wonder what would happen if you dared to enter into their foaming depths. You turn back to the computer sitting on your laps. It is gone. In its place is a drink with an umbrella in it. You do not want the drink. You feel compelled to take a sip. It’s orange juice mixed with sea spray. You drink the whole glass.
There is a woman in black at the edge of the town, standing just off the side of the road.
The Sun is everywhere, bleaches everything that it touches, like this world is a scattering of bones turning ever paler under its gaze. But the woman stands, still as a mesa, her cloak defiantly still against any clawing desert winds.
Her wide hat plunges her face into shadow completely. You see no features— nothing except staring, golden eyes.
Watching.
This rifle was the Devil’s favorite. He slew legions of angels with it in the War of Heaven, hungry golden bullets that could crack universes and turn concepts into meaningless bundled words. It is beautiful. Metal so black it’s almost blue, refined onyx overlaid with silver, ivory.
You pulled it from dead hands. Victorious.
It feels perfect— familiar. Like an old friend. The sinking Sun descends and throws warm red light over everything, drowns this world in blood.
Somewhere deep down inside, you can’t help but feel that this weapon, this rifle— has been waiting for you.
It’s such a beautiful town. You’ve been driving for so long. Endless, parched desert stretching in every direction. A cratered, monotone landscape changed only by distant table mountains that seem impossible, purple smudged mirages. They’re not real, you tell yourself, driving on a thin asphalt ribbon to nowhere. Not real.
It’s such a beautiful town. You’ve been driving for days. It comes up out of the desert floor like manna from Heaven, like a miracle. Quaint little homes and businesses, all draped in familiar Americana, red and white and blue everywhere. Signs smile with the words “Open For Business!”— it’s wonderful.
It’s a beautiful town.
You’ve been driving for.. how long has it b—-
You pass carefully cultivated parks so green they seem like dreams. Like a fantasy oasis. Homely baseball diamond, football field. Neighborhoods that should be filled. Alive.
Where is everyone?
What’s happening?
It’s a beautiful town.
You’ve been driving for so long.
Road after road after road.
Avenue after avenue.
Empty homes. Empty parks. Nothing but silence.
It’s a beautiful town.
You dig. You’ve been digging a long time. A featureless blue sky sprawls, staring down at you. It scorns you white-hot sunlight, painful and scorching. Judgmental as long vanished gods.
You’re dirty. Dust on clothes that in another world, another time, were expensive, implication of status. Now they’re just a shell. A hollow you live inside of.
Digging. Digging. Digging. A shadow crosses the sky on huge wings, plunges you into darkness for just a heartbeat. There’s blood under your fingernails. You swore you scrubbed and scrubbed, you were careless this time, so careless—
It’s done. Another doll in the dirt.
Dusk comes and chases the Sun over the horizon to usher in perpetual, desert midnight. Cold, unblinking stars manifest in silence. You numbly climb into your car beneath them. Driving away from this, from the thing you broke.
She’s there by the side of the road. Bloodied. Gazing at you.
Every mile is accompanied by that face.
No other cars. No gas station light, no haven town.
Just a cracked, porcelain face and bottomless, black eyes.
Eden, North Carolina. 35mm film. K.A. LuxHill336
deer doily
Lesha Gubchenko