#gothicwriting

I cannot find it in my heart

To leave this place in which they stay

And to the living world depart

But such as this is a funny thing!

For even though below me, death

The world above is bright and new

And green, and life, and calm, and breath

For a graveyard is a.. wistful place.

You step inside, and solemnity

Takes over, just a little while

Before you grasp the soft beauty

For those beneath you have carried on

To which, where place you cannot tell

But left behind are marks of life

That lived and loved, and laughed, and fell.

-Rumor has it that if you stomp really hard in the middle of the night, you can hear it echo through the vacant ground beneath you

-Don’t stay to long by the waters edge. Why do I want to jump in? It’s freezing. You walk away shivering, feeling colder than you were before

-If you lay down in the wet grass, and look up at the vast blue sky, the pines swaying in the wind, it will swollow you whole

Your mother: she’s there but not really, you ask her questions you know the answer to just to hear her shrill voice tell you no, she’s says your needy but your always alone.

Your father: the gap between love and abuse, the reason your so damn deaf to love, you don’t believe her when she says I love you.

You: a mutant of them, not passive nor aggressive, kind and moldable like putty.

Your lover: the bear you met in the woods once, only listens to himself sing, cries your name in the shower.

Miss Sanchez was deeply affected by the carefully crafted simplicity of Abigail's story, and its unwavering focus on the nameless and voiceless protagonist's sense of confinement.

She woke up to the sound of the piano keys being played softly from her father’s room. She checked her clock: 11:56, 17/05/2020. She sighed. Every morning Leila was greeted by the same scent of vanilla and orange, the same beige walls encircling her.

She kicked off the covers and quickly changed into a silk floral dress that had been placed on the end of her bed. After finding it, she slipped on her ballerina shoes and walked soundlessly out of the room and through the same corridor, passed the same family heirloom paintings, and into the same kitchen. She closed the door behind her quietly, leaving her and her mother inside. She sat down without a word, her mum doing the same, and they ate the English breakfast in front of them.

Snapping back into reality, Leila took the last bit of her egg and left the room silently, leaving the plate on the table. Opening the back door behind her, she stepped outside, and then closed the door behind her and started slowly strolling passed the hiragana flowers. She was deep in her thoughts when she noticed darkness engulfing the sky. Leila made her way back into the house.

Walking, walking, walking through the corridor, passed her ancestors’ paintings – she got distracted studying their soulless faces - she felt a broad shoulder push into her. Father, she thought, and turned around to look at him. He kept his head looking forward, his arms moving in sync with his legs. He acted as if nothing had happened, as if Leila wasn’t there. She walked to her room, picking up her pace, with her head hung low. As soon as she walked in, she shut the door behind her, her breath becoming heavy and unsteady. Leila sat on the end of her bed, anxious thoughts buffeting into her head and consuming her. No matter how hard I try, time won’t move any faster. She was stuck on the fence separating life and death and no matter how hard she tried to pick one side, time was holding her down.

A man’s deep voice replayed in her head. ‘Tomorrow won’t come until you disappear.’ What did that even mean? Leila felt like all the negative emotions had taken over her. She was trapped, trapped in time, trapped in this routine, trapped in these walls…

Eventually she calmed down, kicking off her shoes, not bothering to change into her night clothes. Leila took one more deep breath before tucking herself in and closing her eyes slowly.

Ms Halnan, Rashida's teacher, commended the student writer on the Bradbury-style quickened pace she creates in this extract from her gothic-inspired story. It's great when our students take inspiration from the writers we study and apply it in their own work!

It took Shelly a while to realise that she was heading towards a fairly large house that was obscured behind a layer of fog. The cold fog made Shelly start to shake uncontrollably, making it even harder for her to see through all the mist.