Gothic Short Stories

Tom skimmed through the woods like a cat along the prostrate trunks of trees. He was startled by the sudden screaming of the bittern. He heard the quacking of a wild ducks, rising on the wing from some solitary

She checked the shoebox beneath her bed every night, just to make sure her hidden world was still thriving. And it always was the same as she left it night before, as if time stopped without her presence. Miniscule vines crawled up the cardboard insides of the box, searching for the sky. Trees, the largest ones as thick as her thumb, rooted in the thin bottom of the box. She had created the forest, and as a god wanted something to rule.

They opened with a wheeze, and Alan stepped out of the bus. A quiet whistle accompanied the breeze, which was causing the gum trees to casually sway, the leaves occasionally swishing quickly, with a gust. Alan walked along the pavement, stepping around potholes. His grandma's farm was unmistakeable.

I lugged the last bags upstairs. Three flights of stairs. Stair after stair, it felt as if I was walking into hell. I basically was. A new hell of a new town, new place, new house.

Morning bell. Five chimes blurred together, a lost chorus that shook the madhouse and unsettled dust in its rafters. The deranged exiles wailed in response, their voices climbing, louder and louder, until the final strike broke into a crashing wave. Deep ocean. That was that.

His eyes widened as he stared at the grass a couple meters from his feet. Painfully slowly, he edged away from the reeds slowly gaining speed until he was running at breakneck pace back towards us. “Leopard frog!” The hoarse shout rang across the backyard. An eerie silence fell over the lawn as my eyes frantically darted between my friends, broken only by the frantic sound of feet slamming into the ground.

Aaron Kassel dashed through the treeline into an open field. He stood there momentarily catching his breath, before continuing up the slight incline in front of him. The air was crisp and sweet, nothing like it was in the real world. As Aaron reached the crest of the hill he could see a great castle in the distance, its flags fluttered in the breeze and a great horn sounded. The drawbridge of the castle slowly opened to make a passage across the chasm.

Melinda picks the word “tree.” Annoyed, she goes to pick a new word, but is stopped by her art teacher. Melinda struggles with her project, unable to make her trees look alive and un-child like. “I can see it in my head: a strong oak tree with a wide scarred trunk and thousands of leaves reaching to the sun…. I can’t bring it to

During the time that Melinda is working on her artwork she has been talking to old friends trying to fix her relationships. “My last tree looked like it had died from some fungal infection - not the effect I wanted at all. ”(92). Melinda is already starting to grow in many ways, in her artwork, and her personal life. Her artwork is improving and she is learning to make her tree have meaning behind it.

Ultimately, as time passes, Melinda begins to draw trees that were living, thriving, and healthy. Even with her teacher constantly criticizing her artwork can

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writer of all time, as he was one of the first writers to explore darker themes through literature such as death and revenge. He has revolutionized the gothic genre for years to come. Throughout the many gothic works of Edgar Allan Poe including, The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, and many more; Poe gives a unsettling tone which defines most of his writing. Poe tries to do this through incorporating specific literary techniques like erie imagery and cryptic diction.

Godwin, “turned to the gothic and reinvested it with a power that would render his work influential to later writers in the genre as Charles Brockden Brown, Percy Shelley, Charles Robert Maturin ,and his daughter Marry Shelley” . 45 It is impossible to talk about early gothic novels without mentioning Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), or The Modern Prometheus for it creates anew turn in gothic fiction. Frankenstein is an idealistic scientist believes that he has discovered the secret of life, but he loses control over his experiment. The gothic, in general, tends to break the crucial bounders between life and death, and interested in certain issues – bringing dead to life, obtaining immortality, living as ghost after death, these theme

The stones around the one she was sitting on jumped, and the weeping willow next to the pond’s leaves leapt up and fell down as soon as it had jumped. A feeling of anxiety bubbled in her chest, but she held her

There was no chattering or chirping of birds; no growling of bears and no chuckling of contented otters; instead, the clearing lay desolate and still, as though it never wished to be turned into day. The only occupants were rodents and spiders who had set their home in the dank, forgotten shack. From its base, dead, brown grass reached out, all the way to the edge of the tree-line, unable to survive in the perished, infertile soil that made up the foundations of the house. Bird houses and feeders swung still from the once growing apple trees, in the back garden, consigned to a life of

It drifted slowly toward the ground where it lay upon the damp dirt for an age while the sun and moon chased each other across the skies bearing witness, with an inability to help. Abruptly a swift wind swept across the ground. Blackened and bruised, the petal arose, slowly gaining height, struggling to stay aloft. A fresh burst of warm air, rocketed beneath the petal, and it soared. Trees became blades of grass as the petal defied all previous boundaries to its existence.