Gothic

I.

It’s midnight and the snow is falling, heavily,

so I take a walk through my neighborhood

and marvel at the beauty around me.

The trees are blanketed on every branch,

the roofs of houses cloaked in ermine.

I walk a little farther than I normally do,

despite the burden of my heavy boots.

Turns out, down the road is a church I never knew.

It stands vigilant in the cold, drawn and quiet

in the night. A wreath hangs on its front door.

Next door, the gates to a cemetery stand wide open,

and who am I to refuse an invitation?

The sky is light enough to read by,

courtesy of all the city lights,

and choke-thick with the falling snow,

so I stride past the gates amid the falling flakes.

Inside, I’m amazed by the wide-open spaces,

a whole town’s worth of future burial plots.

So ambitious, this cemetery.

Headstones are scattered here and there,

squatting amongst snow-buried evergreen bushes.

I walk through fields and fields of white,

the trees’ dark silhouettes ringing a perimeter,

old snow crunching beneath my boots,

and hear the whispers of the dead call to me on the wind.

The dead are so lonely, and long for the heat

of my body to warm them on such a night.

Perhaps they could be my love, they whisper,

lost among the throes of time?

I pass the tombs of richer dead, and smell the scent

of decay brush my face on the breeze.

Their doors stand open to the night,

inviting me to join their ranks.

The otherworldliness of the night is getting to me.

I walk on to a secluded corner and find myself

before an altar, with benches and standing stones

memorializing the bishops of this diocese.

On my way back, beneath some branches scattered in a

pile, a little light so red glows brightly,

buried beneath the fallen snow. I leave it be.

I stop to read a headstone, brushing snow away,

and a bony hand breaks through the soil,

grabbing at my pant leg. I scream and kick it away,

and flee the churchyard for the living world.

II.

I cross the street and enter a neighborhood

I’ve never seen before. I walk through street

on street of houses, admiring some of those I pass.

That’s a nice one. Ooh, that’s a nice one too.

Outside a house, a man who is shoveling out his

driveway stops to watch as I walk by.

“Hey there,” he calls. I give a wave in reply.

“It’s a cold night. Fancy coming inside for a cup of tea?”

Against my better judgment, I agree,

desperate for some familiar comfort now.

I follow him up the driveway to the front door,

and he insists on letting me go first.

He locks the door behind him, then guides me to the kitchen,

and busies himself with preparing a special brew.

We settle at the table, and he serves me a cup.

Watches me drink over the rim of his own.

I’m thinking the tea tasted funny when my vision swims,

my head goes dim, and I pass out.

He doesn’t know he got the dosage wrong,

that I’m resistant to medication, and I wake up during.

I put up a struggle, and I have to be bludgeoned

to quiet back down again. Before the dawn

I disappear into a dark-colored trash bag,

stored in the garage where his family isn’t allowed,

and the next night I’m disposed of safely,

his wife and children none the wiser.

I live such a secluded life that it’s several weeks

before I’m noticed missing and a search is put out.

My beautiful wool peacoat, scarf, and glasses are

never found, cut up and disposed of in the dump.

All that is found is security footage of me leaving

my building in the middle of night, for reasons unknown.

A few months or maybe years after the trail has

gone cold, bits of my pelvis are found in the woods,

along with a finger bone and a bit of ankle.

They bear marks of being sawed, are identified

as mine by DNA analysis. In such a quiet state

as mine, my remains make headlines, but my family

is left with more questions than answers.

My perpetrator is never discovered.

Many questions go unanswered.

Author's Note

Published by Levitate Magazine, Issue #8, May 2024 (page 123)
https://levitatemagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/levitate-book-issue-8-final-galleys.pdf