Happy World Goth Day - and happy birthday to me! What a fitting coincidence.
I’m very much back in the writing game - my first non-Substack short story is going to be posted as part of a competition this weekend, and I’ll share the link with you once it’s up! - and I thought I’d bring down the mood by writing this slightly sad little story. Don’t worry, it’s still Gothic, and yes, bodies still mingle in it, too.
Theirs was a toxic love, but their lips sucked at the poison cocktail they were creating as a newborn sucks on the nipple of its mother.
Would it be that we could only blame Gothic literature for how this ends.
Oh, to betray.
To cause agony to each other.
To search in each other for a love that will most certainly end in doom.
The marks of a great story.
One for the ages.
That is what they both longed for.
Now, today, the survivor regrets having ever had that thought.
Set the scene of their first fateful encounter.
A cum-stained darkroom in a shabby gay bar in the alley of an ancient city forcefully turned modern.
Gently, they caress each other’s bodies.
Lips brush across skin, nipples.
They are merely following the directions of the musical theatre song traveling across the corner where the bar is, together with the sliver of light that gives the faintest luminance to their eyes.
It is in that moment that those bodies writhing around them, progressing much faster in their act of love, can see that the couple is doomed.
As the clock strikes four, and dawn approaches, the lights of the darkroom turn on.
As their craving for each other becomes too intense, only heightened by a few quick glances at each other’s bare bodies, they leave the bar together.
Not even the rising sun could break the curse that lies upon their romance as they travel towards it in a shabby cab, whose driver tells them that his card reader is broken and he’d only accept cash.
No other payment method possible.
Down in the basement of the house owned by the grandparents of the fair-haired man they sneak.
“Don’t worry, they’re deaf.”
Whether the fact that both of them are men and this, today, is still very much taboo in some parts of the world, fuels the fire of their romance must be decided by the reader alone, but as the narrator of this tragic love story, I need to gently remind them that, in Gothic stories, even misunderstood characters are ones that many people gladly root for.
The scent of green tea of the first flush and cigarettes draws our focus back onto the narrative, where we find a dark-haired man bound to a St. Andrew’s cross, his buttocks to our side.
Smack.
Only gentle are the whacks the faux-leathered whip deals out.
It was the wish of the submissive one to try this out when he saw the apparature as the lights went on in this forsaken basement.
Neither of them ever realized that, from the very beginning, they both were master and slave.
A Wartenberg wheel traces the spine of the one bound to the cross.
As it pierces skin, the other one approaches, his tongue lapping up the few drops of blood escaping from it.
He leans in for a kiss to share blood and saliva with his lover.
The whip rises for a few inches, as if lifted by the wind.
And falls.
As more of their bodily fluids mix when they kiss goodbye, they both know that, no, this is not destined to be a one-time thing.
They’ll blindly let fate lead them to their doom.
The darkness in each other’s eyes as they take one last look at each other before they’ll meet again tonight should’ve been a warning.
Silently, in their mind only, they both thank Emily Brontë for subliminally convincing them both that danger can be attractive.
Mere weeks later, their relationship has progressed into something much more stable, for they only let their pain roam free when they are playing in the basement.
They fall for each other so quickly that, at the annual Pride Parade, they do not even glance at the hairy chests of the group of bears walking next to them, but only focus on each other’s hands.
Hold on tight to each other, dear lovers, for soon, all must fall apart.
They do not mind the fleeting glances of the man dressed in a sweaty, too-tight t-shirt, nor do they notice how, while screaming his obscenities, he runs his hands through his oily hair and then proceeds to scratch his balls.
Their attention is caught by the speech given by a drag queen, the fringes of her dress hanging down her side loosely, about the past trials of queer people still not over today, at the height of the parade.
However, as proud as they are to have marched together, something inside of them has been roused, and they need their release.
Sweet oblivion.
As all Gothic stories must do, our narrative now comes full circle.
If, to you, it seems as if someone had tugged at the corner of our circle and slightly altered its shape - chapeau.
The bass dictates the rhythm of the thrusts as they try out the swing in the run-down bar in which they’d met.
They had gotten there early, for there are things in that bar they’d been wanting to try for a long time, but had been too shy for when they first laid their eyes upon each other.
The whip they are using ignores the dominant man’s movements.
Yet another sign which they should’ve taken more seriously.
A sign that something bad was about to happen, and things will go awry.
Someone knocks at the door of their cubicle.
A whip hits the wooden barrier, and a shivering voice unfolds.
“RUN”, is all they can make out.
They look for confirmation in each other’s eyes, but when the shots begin, they pay no heed anymore to their clothes, and, stark naked, adhere to the command.
Over writhing bodies on the floor they run, desperately trying to find out where the shots are coming from.
With merely a handful of other men, they make it outside, struggling for breath as they stand on the pavement.
“We need to split”, they decide in unison, as the bass dies down with one more shot.
After a quick embrace and a peck on the lips, one turns left and one turns right.
They glance at each other once more as the door to the bar swings open and the greasy-haired man from the parade emerges with a gun in his hand.
The voice from before again.
“Run!”
Where is it coming from?
Their final look into each other’s eyes still has not broken as, teary-eyed, they both make a start, in hopes of raising their chances that at least one of them will make it out alive.
As the first shot rings to the right, they both halt, slowly turning around.
Would that they had been given the gift of seeing each other’s face once more, but the bullet’s path is blocked by the drag queen they’d seen at the parade.
The Voice.
She opens her mouth, and in it, catches the bullet.
Doom is upon as, for now, as the figure fades, only the fringes of her outfit remaining, a second bullet travels through the night air, to the left, with no drag queen left to save the fallen one, crashing to the ground as an angel does from heaven.
Thus concludes our tragic story already, which, had it taken place in a Gothic castle, with a bit of luck, might have seen the return of the lovers’ spectre at a window as the wind whips a tree’s branches against it.
Instead, his spirit rises from the pool of blood and brains in which his body lies, melts into the pavement, and this accursed love affair has ended.
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