byChrisWhite – 2025
A Gothic Fiction piece, with a word county of 633 words. It’s a loose adaptation of a Poe story I read as a kid, but I’ve changed and overhauled it to my own liking. Hoping you haven’t just eaten.
The wall gave easily, as though the mortar were a mix of ash and the stones had been waiting, no, yearning, to rest. The tap of my boot upon the plaster was meant to mock, to gloat over the workmanship of my concealment, and yet when the officers turned toward the sound, when the third strike echoed with that hollow timbre, like tapping the lid of a tomb, I felt the marrow in my bones stir as a section gave way and crashed to the floor.
They pried at the wall, hurriedly, the tallest of them first, his gloved fingers curling into the wound I had sealed with my own trembling hands not four nights past. The bricks wept dust onto their dark uniforms. When they came away, the stench poured out in such a torrent that the youngest man retched into his handkerchief and the lantern dimmed as though the very flame of it recoiled.
The corpse stood there in its shallow niche, or perhaps knelt, spine bent sideways, and arms twisted like boughs in winter wind. Her nightdress, once white, had stained to the color of old yolk and river silt. The face, what remained, was turned upward in a grin wide as damnation. Her eyes were gone, or taken, and in their place, two soft pits of rot.
But it was not her face that made the older man fall to his knees. It was the infant, my own child, God curse it, curled to her breast like a leech, suckling still. A small hand clutched the blue nipple, the lips worked in dumb instinct, and the babe’s skin gleamed pale and fat in the lantern’s light, as though it had not missed a single meal since the hour of her death.
And on her shoulder, perched like a crown, a calico cat, its eyes twin shards of green fire, its mouth agape in a howl that had no end. It had not starved. No. It had also fed. On blood and eyes and breast, on silence and guilt.
The officers stumbled backward, calling for the constable, for light, for God Himself. But time was not on their side; there was more yet.
The bed, in the room above, lay unmade. Beside it, slumped half-naked in the chair where I’d left him, was the boy, her boy, her sweet-voiced suitor who’d played the piano in the parlor. His throat was blistered and black, a broken whiskey glass still in his hand, the last drops soaking into the oriental rug beneath. The vial lay atop her dresser, open, half full still, the label worn by sweat but legible all the same: belladonna. I’d not seen it before. It had not been mine.
And so, the story changed, though no one spoke it aloud.
She had killed him first. Or tried. She had poured her poison into his drink and perhaps, when he stumbled and swore to God, and clutched his bludgeoned belly, she laughed. Perhaps he struck her in rage, maybe he meant only to shame her. Or perhaps, I killed her all the same, not knowing she had already cast her spell, not knowing that death was dancing in every room of this house long before my hands closed round her throat.
The ruined cat watched me now. It blinked once, then again. Slow. Knowing.
I stepped backwards into the shadow, but there was no escaping what was still blooming in the wall. The babe still fed. The corpse still smiled. The house, my house, groaned in its bones and drank in the judgment of every brick laid in rage.
There would be no trial. No need of it.
I had lived in hell already. I had built it stone by stone.
Ramblings & Revelations 
Responses
Very well told. The description created a most authentic visual.
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Thank you Violet!
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Dark — very dark. And I had just eaten and will go to bed soon and hope to supress the dark and live another day in the light.
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Sorry, I did warn everyone. “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the beddybugs bite.”
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So creepy!
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You’re welcome.
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A gruesome crime.
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A creepy good time by all.
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Yeeks. I won’t try to ponder on this too hard!
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Haha, no; you probably don’t want to go there. It’s a pretty dark place. I’ve been reading Empire of the Summer Moon, a history of the Comanche tribe, and it’s taken my imagination to some grim territory. Good practice, though, at least if you’re writing fiction. Thanks for reading it.
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Wow, I just started listening to Empire of the Summer Moon on my library app yesterday! Doing some research on American Indians.
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Oh, just get ready.
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Dear Chris
Your posts are trail blazers. I like them a lot.
Thanks for liking my post,’None’. 🙏❤️💓💗💖
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Veerites,
Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your patronage and kind words. You likely wouldn’t know this, but I’m also a lifelong musician. I respect your passion for both music and writing, my own artistic passions.
Despite its length, this blog reads very much like a conversation, one held over many cups of tea, it’s half memoir, half defense of an old friend whose greatness is misunderstood by those too quick to judge.
It reminded me of many conversations I held with my mother, also a musician, in trying to convince her of the value of ‘my’ adolescent music preferences. The writing is loose and long, yes, and that’s its charm. You don’t write a lengthy blog for vanity; you come to this place for love. And there’s real love in these lines: “for Pu La, for the stories he told, for the music that outlives its singers, and for the kind of wisdom that shows up wearing oil-stained clothes and ordering mutton on a train.”
It seems you’re wrestling with something personal: perhaps a quiet war between what we’re told to admire and what we love despite the rules, despite the cultural influences abroad. Somewhere between the Abhangs and the railway compartments, between Karim Khan Saheb and Siddharud Swamy, between stale bouquets and old Parsis with soft eyes and sharp tongues, this becomes far more than a blog. It becomes your personal testimony. A witness statement. An elegy for the kind of spiritual equality we only find in music.
Its a blog written in detail. It’s not tidy. It’s not brief. But like Peston Kaka himself, it holds something rare: a full heart and a fearless mind.
Thank you for your love of music, and for spreading your wisdom across cultures and miles and the seas of our shared identities.
Chris
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Thanks Chris?
Thanks Rub ?
Thanks who?
I
Thanking who?
Veerites?
Rys ?
Papa?
A Castaway?
Raosaheb?
Chitale Master?
Antu Barwa or
पेस्तनजी?
Life is less mysterious than this reply.
This evening seems like When the Bell Tolls in Country Church Yard
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Thanks for dropping by. Your writings are inspiring and motivates me to write better ❤️😁
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Thank you, what a lovely thing to say. I look forward to discovering more of your musings as well. We all have things to say, don’t we? So glad you’re sharing your thoughts and experiences with the rest of us, as I certainly find my own inspirations in what you’re writing about and, how you’re expressing those thoughts. It’s hard for us to recognize the value in what we’re doing. At least to others. We can’t know that. So trust me, I’m learning from you just as you may be learning from me. Thanks again for your kindness.
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