I’m currently at a conference, and I’ll get to talk about my Gothic research today! In the meantime, while I’m caffeinating, I thought I’d share another story with you.
This one appeared a few weeks ago as part of Crystal Lake Publishing’s Shallow Waters competition in a slightly different version. I highly recommend checking out their Patreon! Lots of great stories and useful information for both authors and readers on there.
I’m so happy to be able to share this with you all! It means the world to me that this story made it into the competition. While it didn’t win, people read it, and I’m proud of myself for slowly putting myself out there.
Every time I publish something, I lay bare my heart a bit. I’m plucking at another heartstring of mine every time I write another line, and every time I click that “publish now” button, the readership becomes the orchestra that plays a symphony on them.
Read on, and maybe, at the end, you’ll want to lay bare your heart too, and share your secrets with us.
Here’s one of mine: For now, I’m just happy to be back in a city where I know I can be my authentic self - that weird gay Gothic who’s longing for a little bit of love and acceptance even though he’d never admit that elsewhere.
Before from dust you came, you were merely a cell, and, as fate would have it, in that time so many eons ago, the decision as to what it is that will return you to dust once more had already been made.
Now, as the rivers watered by the sins you have committed cease to rush through the wrinkles on your skin, and become frozen by my dear companion, whom you may know by the name of Rigor Mortis, when the hooded people break those stiff and crumbling bones of yours so that your body can fit into the wooden casket you chose for yourself when you received your diagnosis (rosewood, please, it brings out your eyes), that is when I enter your life once more.
There’s one last sparkle in your eyes before the doors to your soul shall be shut forevermore.
Let me slam it gently.
I can see recognition attaching itself to your brain like a leech. Those bloodsuckers were used for centuries in my profession. I refuse to give them up now.
Watch this one now as it hungers for your blood.
Release your memories into its ever growing body, getting fatter and fatter, approaching the moment in which it bursts into a neutron star collision, and the thoughts that you have been hiding for all your life spread through the night sky in a golden waltz of shooting stars.
Right at this moment, when the weight on your shoulders has shifted to those of the undertakers, is when I reveal my face to you.
You’ve seen this face before. Don’t you remember me, my darling?
I am one of those shadows that crept along your bedroom walls when you were a child, sobbing and calling out for your parents, in vain, for the first time.
They had left you on your own, now that you were “old enough”.
Dare to ask yourself whether anyone can ever be grown enough for what you must face now.
It is the one question that not even I myself can answer, but I will do my best.
To the best of your knowledge, and just if it’s no bother, please, doctor.
As in the oath I swore to Apollo, to Asclepius, to Hygieia, to Panacea and all the other gods and goddesses that reside just outside the borders of our realm, I shall enter your body and heal what is broken.
I shall fill the cracks left behind by what you encountered with the balm of Gilead before I return you to Mother Earth.
Allow it to happen.
It will attract the worms and make them creep through you more quickly.
I know that you resent your body, so let them aid you in your process of decomposition.
Hush.
Hear me whisper my prayers into your ear. I shall call on any god or goddess that you want me to.
Let my steady voice calm your body.
Futile to attempt to shiver when you’re trapped in that stiff shell.
Let your heartbeat start to cease as the carriage with your corpse is slowing down.
The door opens.
Feel the gentle night wind wipe away the kiss of every lover you’ve ever taken as she sweeps across your body that is no longer capable of trembling, for my companion’s hold on you is much too strong.
His hands grasp your wrists. They strap you to the gurney on which they carry your corpse.
Do you remember that time before the veil began to cloud your sight, when you stayed up all night with only the moon as your witness, ingesting story after story as if they were nigh junk food that was the only nourishment your soul craved?
Stories of people dying, and coming back to life. And dying again.
Cutting into flesh, so that they themselves could thrive.
Do you remember how, in your favourite one - you read it when you were thirteen - it was revealed to you that the dead travel fast?
Just like in that story, we’ve come to a halt and you’ve arrived at your final destination.
Before the gravedigger lifts his shovel, my nails scratch away those layers of dust on your crumbling brain. I know why you let it lie there for so long.
It was comforting, like the polka dotted blanket of your early years, for it hid every trauma thrust upon your soul when you were merely a child.
As it clears away, remember now with me the first time that you fell and scraped the skin on your knees. That piercing pain as the minuscule stone is torn out of your skin.
Your mother soaked the wound in sugar and honey, summoning those insects that, to this day, send shivers down your spine, in order to cover the dust and gravel in your young body that now is nothing but a corpse.
Does it hurt to hear that word again and again, when they speak of you?
Too often you have wondered what it would feel like to be what you are now.
But you’re not a mere shell. No, nothing so simple.
You must remain in there, until I set you free.
You have been waiting a long time for the answer to that question.
Too many sleepless nights in which the craving inside of you became tangible, nigh strong enough to make you cut even deeper.
To release even more of that crimson liquid. A wine to feed the God of Desperation.
Your tongue, limp from the alcohol, lapped at the wound, drinking it up in hopes of erasing any trace of what you’d done, just like the creatures in those stories you loved to read.
But no longer will you be the reader, for you shall become part of my ever growing archive.
Another note, filed away amongst all the others I have operated on.
Data that I will use to heal others.
First, however, you must be patient, for always, there is waiting involved. Remember that I work alone.
As with everyone who has gone before you, I write down the story that your body reveals to me, and pass it on not only to those few lives that you managed to leave your heart print on, but also to the next person on my list, in a cycle that will only end when it is my turn to end up on the operating table.
I wet my thumb and clean those stuffed ears of yours. Hear the smack as I lick from my fingers the earwax that got caught in those gentle hairs.
I want you to hear me as I play for you one final time that song you danced to when you first realized that you were in love, and that your heart was not yours alone.
You have given it away too many times.
Everyone you’ve ever let it touch broke off a part of it, took it with them. And you? You don’t even remember all those bodies that melted into yours. Too addicted was your soul to those touches that proved that people wanted you.
Soon, it shall be my turn to caress that pulsating organ that mere minutes ago ceased to beat.
Move now towards the light, for that is where my operating room lies.
Rest your body on the cold metal before I hand you over to the earth, to be recycled for all eternity.
Before the maggots gulp on the putrid juices flowing from your body once your body becomes as soft as jelly, I must commit my own act of release.
With my obsidian blade, I cut away the cataracts and lift the veil from your eyes.
I pluck them out and suck on them as a child greedily devouring a lollipop, so that I can see you as you once saw yourself. Plop.
I’ll allow you one more memory before the operation begins.
Choose wisely.
Make it a good one. Play for me its ballad on the strings of your heart.
I am a merciful surgeon, for before I make my cut, I sever the nerves that connect your brain to your body.
The time has come.
Time for me to cut deeper than anyone’s ever cut into you.
You can’t hide from the pain that is meant for you, not anymore.
For what happens next, you need to be clean and hairless.
I must pluck out those few hairs on your chest that your body has not rejected yet because of the therapy.
I am sorry for having to add to your pain at this point of the journey.
The moonlight hits my obsidian blade, and I make my cut.
If I want to consume all that you have hidden from the world, I must lay bare your heart.
Swaying softly to the rhythm of the cicadas outside the window fashioned out of a one-way mirror, I hold the organ in my hand.
When I am certain that it is empty, that not a single beat is left in it as I open and close my wrist, as I play with it as with a bouncy ball, I crush it, and pronounce you dead.
Bronte Rowan is a Gothic horror author interested in reading and writing Gothic texts about silenced voices and how, within these narratives, othered characters hold the power to threaten patriarchal and heteronormative power structures. His aim is to unsilence the voices.
He holds a master’s degree in literature and focused on the Gothic during the final years of his studies.
His current research focuses on vampire and witch mythology throughout history, in hopes of not only being able to use them in his non-fiction projects, but to also include them in his own fiction.
Under the guidance of his Horror Writers Association mentor Joe Mynhardt from Crystal Lake Publishing, he is currently working on his first novel. Expect Gothic prose, dark academia, mythology from all corners of the world, and an abundance of queer themes.
Bronte Rowan is currently the chair of the HWA’s UK chapter.
You can find his free short stories and poems and soon, his further ventures into academia and news about his longer fiction on his Substack, www.bronterowan.com.
Find me on my socials here: https://linktr.ee/bronterowan and, most importantly, don’t forget to