"CORRODED"

Octo was in a state of complete self-loathing. It seemed to him, for many months now he was a burden to his family. Yes, a burden, even to them. He ate little and slept through night into day. Every time he looked out his window, made of continuous rainfall, he remembered why he wanted it just that way. So that he alone could always see the world in its eternal maelstrom.
It was more appropriate then ever today. Poor octo would press his tear soaked cheek to the glass and wish to disappear.
His rabbit C.C. would sniff curiously at his weighted heels and look up to him. Through his little oxygen mask, he would breath and glare.
“ What’s wrong with my parent today? What ails him so?” Octo could not answer but go back to bed, and sleep the day away.
He awoke again at noon. His brothers were having fun. Vaughn had captured Emmett again. And they were bickering through the barred walls of Emmett’s cage.
“I have just had it this time!” shouted Vaughn “One slug bug is too many! And they are mine you hear! MINE! You an that wretched Rubella have savored the last of my friends!”
“Yours?!” spat back Emmett “I practically breed them! They come from MY Mine, while you live in your fancy quarters I am exiled to the south wing in all its Corroded glory! Poor Vaughn must eat Venison every night! Well what do you think I have to eat?!”
Octo glided in quietly behind them and watched. His presence went unnoticed, as it often did, until he spoke in his silent and loving manner.
“Vaughn? Emmett is hungry and there is so much deer on the grounds, we could share some most certainly”
The captor and captive stopped their cold war and looked his way. Vaughn in astonished disgust. Emmett at the sight of Octo’s state of teary disarray laughed manically in his face.
“My, even Emmett, who is trapped in a cage is laughing at me” thought poor Octo.
This infuriated him quiet a bit and he grew angry.
“What are you laughing at?! Maniac! Your trapped, Vaughn finally caught you and will probably never let you out! He’ll starve you for eating his pets! That’s what he’ll do!” he stammered.
Emmett Continued to laugh “Ehehehehehe! Oh! I will get out of my cage! I’ll get out! ehehehe but you, you will never get out of YOURS! Eheheheehe!”
Emmett was always disturbingly perceptive.
Defeated and nauseated with fury and sadness Octo returned to his study and slammed the door. He slumped against it and slide down to the floor. Tears swelled silently in his enormous black eyes. No sooner were two shed then a tremendous crash was heard. Emmett had indeed broken free of his cage and he and Vaughn now ran down the hall in maniacal laughter and shouting after one another. Surely destroying the mansion walls along the way.
“I am a joke” Octo thought. “even to my brothers…No one cares to even look my way, Nor will she whom I love return anything….close to love. It is not working…but…” He begin to cry louder “ I’ve tried so very hard. I’ve tried…” trailing off he looked down now to C.C who crept onto his lap. He pet the barely breathing creature. C.C. Licked him through his mask and Octo played with the tubes that attached to his little oxygen tank.
“I’m going now, do you want to come with me C.C?”
The bunny would breath and glare, looking up to his parent and wonder “why?”
Octo went to his desk and retrieved his rice paper and a pen and wrote;

I have thought often of this day. I always imagined something would indeed send me away, as in a final hurrah! of pain. But that is just it you see, today was a day like all the others. Today no one looked at me and smiled, or reached to stoke away some tears. No one spoke nicely to me or asked me how I felt. I Know the mines have changed us all. And coming to live in this house was a mistake. It is not to late for anyone but myself. I know with Vaughn and Emmett’s genius minds, together, you can find a cure for this…malformation that we have become. If only you could work together, as once we all did. Even if to stuff a squirrel or two. Remember those day? I do.

I go, breath spent and dying
Into the world next
In which I hope will not await me
With the pain and the suffering
I have sustained here
At the hands
Of those I love



Octo put down his pen and went towards his closet, stopping first at the window of rain. For once he thought to turn it off, end the glamour that trickled down its glass. He wondered if he did, would he see the sun? Or would there be darkness and rain still? Perhaps, he thought, if the sun were shining, feeling the warmth on his face would dry his tears. He waved his hand over the window. The glamour sizzled and seized but no sunshine awaited him. It was raining outside. The window was no different.
In his closet he gathered the rope and tied it around the high beam of his study. He kissed C.C goodbye and made his noose. He faced the chair toward the massive window. For the first and last time he saw the real rain fall. He Spoke;

“Illusion or reality, My world has stayed the same,
I was nothing to anyone…anyway. I fall now with the rain”

Octo kicked the chair out from under him and hung. The noose tightened around his neck and he was paralyzed with fear and choking. He hung there gasping for air as the body instinctively will do, whether the heart wants air or not. He soon calmed to the point where death was accepted and eyes bulging, took his last glance out into the world.
Then silence. Blackness. A crack and a fall. He lay breathing again on the floor. His thoughts in time grew clear and he realized the beam had broken. The beam had broken because Vaughn must have known what he was going to do…No…the beam had broken because Vaughn had sawn it through. It was another trap set for Emmett who was known to spy on them by crawling through the ceiling like the toxic rat he had become.
No one knew he lay there, No one cared what the thunderous crash was. He lay on the floor in silence, save for the rainfall. The real rainfall. Then he heard a crinkling of paper. C.C was eating his suicide note.

An Article on Gothic parenting.

“BE GOTH…..OR ELSE”


By: Dani Alienna


We are seeing a new era of the rebel. They dress in jeans and plain tee shirts. They go to school, do their homework and hang out with their friends. Their rooms are painted white and they stick to their summer reading lists. Nothing about them screams danger, beware, or run, They are children of Goths….
The first time I ever laid eyes on a “Goth” I was strangely enough at the beach. It was in Point Pleasant N.J. My family rented out a summer home there every year and it was there upon the boardwalk a group of Goth kids would hang about on a bench. Everyone was terrified of them. They stirred up mixed emotions in the passing sun-tanned wholesome families night after night. Fear, anger, hatred, lust. I was enthralled. I loved the reaction they were getting from those around them. I wanted to be just like them. I was 8.
Having had adopted the gothic lifestyle internally and externally for my entire adult life thus far, I can honestly say It has been a loving and rewarding experience that I have fully come to appreciate and respect. From the 8 year old on the beach, then staring star eyed and wondered, to the adult I am today, I have always had to defend, explain, and fight for my freedom to be such an extreme individual. I was taunted, punished, provoked, hit, criticized, ridiculed and very much an outcast my whole young adult life. I found comfort in my fellow Goths and discovered a world of those like me where I was accepted.
Today however, Goth has become a mostly acceptable form of fashion and culture. Books explain in detail to parents every aspect of clothing down to the Egyptian eyeliner patterns. Movies make the vampire a sex symbol to even the most common of mothers of the gothic teenager. It seems all is accepted and forgiven and the years before us spent in anguished misunderstanding have now paved the way for the next generation to freely stand in the dark.
This raises an all important question. What now will the future of the gothic generations bring? Very recently I have been seeing something about the streets of New York. It is something I never expected or thought much about before. Gothic Babies. Beautiful pale parents walking down the streets of the east village, black baby strollers afoot. Drabbed inside, pale as their parents and chubby, infants sucking on a fang pacifier. Their clothes are black, Their booties are lace. It can be an adorable site if one tends to favor this lifestyle.
Often The parents Decorate the child’s room with images of bats, snakes, and pumpkins. A lighter side of gothic parenting can be a mix of happy and Gothic images such as smiling cartoons, Gothic children or things one would find in the comic stores like pink bears with bloody claws. To an infant of two or three this can all be very charming and innocent.. It hurts no one if your three year old has a Mohawk or if your baby girl is walking around in black and white stripped stockings. But what happens when the child enters pre-school? Is it still appropriate to be sending Bela junior off to the playground with his little spiked boots and vinyl lunchbox?
Parents have been imposing the images of themselves on their children for as long as time. Parents have children, Those children then rebel and become known as misfits or delinquents. Now we are asking our children to BE the rebels, misfits, and delinquents. Is it fair of us as gothic parents to assume our children’s identity before they themselves can develop it on their own? Just as we were setting ourselves up to be picked on and taunted, are we are now setting THEM up in return to be picked on and taunted? The difference is; we were asking for it. They are not. It is one thing to do your own choosing, pick a certain identity and run with it. Then you may defend that identity proudly and know what your are getting yourself into. Know where the blows will lie when they hit you in your pierced cheek. All this is acceptable to you because it is your decision. This is who you are. Who you decided to be, and you are willing to fight for it. So why is this a decision we are making FOR our children? And if so…are we no better then the parents before who told US who to be and told US what to wear? Why now would we in turn tell our children what to wear, who to be? Dare we say to them “ Be Goth or else?” Isn’t the very foundation of Goth formed on the total and complete freedom of expression and creativity? In that case a child dressed in khakis and a polo shirt he picked out for himself is more GOTH then the ten year old in mourning wear because his parents told him to dress that way.
I firmly believe just as we longed to spread our youthful wings and fly away from our nest, so will the generation after us. To take away the choice of our children and force them to be “like us” would whole-heartily go against everything “GOTH” stands for. It is a decision every alternative parent will have to make not just the Goths. Whether you be a rocker, emo, cyber or punk, If you have children they will choose a path, and it will either be yours, or you should hope, their OWN.

“Lumpkin”

On top Of a pumpkin hill, All Hallows Eve
The sun slowly set in a bright orange gleam

Everywhere you looked, children ran about
Looking for the perfect pumpkin to carve inside out

“I found a great one!” yelled one little child
“This one is better!” said a boy running wild

Every pumpkin was chosen that was seen in sight
To be part of this magic Halloween night

The sky began to dim, the sun no longer shone
But there was still one pumpkin left, and he was all alone

His surface wasn’t smooth, and his lines were all wrong
He looked more like an orange piece of corn

Two girls ran over to see this lone pumpkin
And he smiled till one shouted “ That pumpkin is a Lumpkin!”

“I’m just as good as those other ones! Why wasn’t I picked?!”
Then he saw his reflection in a nearby puddle making him very, very sick.

Night turned to day and still the Lumpkin sat
His only friend was a ratty black cat

Night came again and still he waited
And waited and waited and waited and waited

“Oh well!” he cried “I give up hope!”
“No one wants me, I’m a pumpkin joke!”

He fell asleep under the moon close to midnight
Until he awoke with a startling fright

Two witched grew near and Lumpkin grew scared
He his in the grass and pretended he was not there

But, they saw him anyway and shouted “This is the one!”
“We will enter HIM in the contest. Now this will be fun!”

“Oh NO!” Lumpkin thought “They will make fun of me too!”
“and enter me in the contest because I am so ugly! Boo Hoo!”

At the ball witches gathered from all over the world
Each one has a pumpkin to make your blood curl

Green ones and black ones Lumpkin saw them all
But Thought “I am still the ugliest at the ball”

With a tear Lumpkin sighed, now everyone will laugh and stare
At the ugliest pumpkin they will cackle and glare

Sure enough the two witches won who found Lumpkin alone
And they received the prize pumpkin cup made of graveyard stone

As they held Lumpkin up high, above all with his prize
They announced why he won, with a surprise he realized

“FIRST PRIZE TO THE WINNER: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PUMPKIN
ANY WITCH HAS EVER SEEN, ON THIS MOST MAGICAL HALLOWEEN”

Aug 1, 2010

There is something changing in me. I fear the loss of my humanity. Before, where I was angry, fighting for all things, including myself… I feel now that fire consuming me instead. And all the pain spent fighting against the world has just resulted in my isolation. Here shall I quote how “all true artists are alone“? I really have begin to wonder at that concept. Could a torture soul know love…be loved? Or do they only know their own suffering.
If a choice was there given unto them…Life in the stars light…alone, angry and bereft of the tenderness of one souls touch alone…would it really be chosen. But what artist does have a choice? They are driven by their passion, and what passion it is…and that responsibility to the art drives those around them away…leaving them standing alone…loved by all…but there alone. What price are we willing to pay for our art? I would like to think the artist should sacrifice EVERYTHING, including themselves to the higher form of their creative duty. I just fear we lose much in it. Perhaps then what we gain in retrospect is worth it…to some…not all. To myself? I don’t know. I know where I wish to go, none would follow…