#gothic-illustration — Public Fediverse posts

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

Avarice

A big red-lettered sign outside the house pronounced it CONDEMNED, and still I ventured across the creaky porch into the dark abyss that lay beyond the doorway.

The sign should have been enough.

The sagging roof should have been enough. The busted windows, the weeds grown waist-high against the steps, the porch boards soft beneath my feet like wet bread. Even the silence should have warned me, that heavy silence of a place no longer waiting to be lived in, but waiting to fall.

Still, I entered.

At first, I told myself I only wanted to look.

I stepped carefully through the doorway, one hand out before me, the other trailing along the wall, my fingers gathering dust as thick as ash. The air inside was stale and sweet with rot. Somewhere in the walls, something skittered. Somewhere above me, a loose shutter tapped in the wind, though no wind seemed able to reach that far into the house.

I walked slowly, carefully, among the rooms, savoring the cobwebbed pleasures each one offered.

In the parlor hung a beautiful chandelier, dimmed by dust but still glittering faintly where the sunlight found it. I stood beneath it for a long moment, imagining it cleaned and lit, imagining its crystals throwing stars across a ceiling that was already splitting.

In the dining room, half-buried beneath a fallen curtain, I found a gold-embossed vase. I turned it in my hands, brushing away the grime with my sleeve. There were cracks in it, but not enough to ruin its beauty. Not enough to keep me from wanting it.

In the kitchen, beside a rusted sink, I found a silver spoon.

I slipped it into my pocket.

That was the first thing I took.

It was so small it hardly seemed to matter. A spoon from a dead house. A little rescued thing. A little reward for courage. No one would miss it. No one could want it now.

And yet, once it was in my pocket, I began to see more.

A brass candlestick. A framed miniature. A blue glass bottle on a windowsill. A cracked mirror whose tarnished edge still caught my reflection and gave it back to me in fragments. Every room offered something. Every corner whispered, take this too.

The house, for all its ruin, was rich with forgotten beauty.

I forgot the sign.

I forgot the porch beneath me, the warning in red letters, the dark mouth of the doorway through which I had entered. I forgot the sky outside and the field beyond and the clean air I had left behind.

There was only the next room.

And the next thing.

And the next.

I began to move faster, less carefully now, my pockets heavy, my arms full. I no longer savored the rooms. I searched them. I pulled open drawers swollen shut with damp. I kicked aside fallen plaster. I tore through the dust as if the house owed me what it had hidden.

Then the house gave a lurch.

It was not a sound at first, but a movement, a deep shudder traveling up through the floorboards and into my bones. The chandelier trembled. The walls groaned. Somewhere above me, a beam cracked like a rifle shot.

I froze.

For one foolish second, I clutched the vase tighter.

Then years of rot began to cascade down around me.

Plaster fell in pale sheets. Wood split. A rain of dust poured from the ceiling, thick and choking. The rooms that had seemed so full of treasure became suddenly full of teeth. The beautiful chandelier swung once, twice, then tore free and crashed behind me in a glittering explosion.

I began to run back through the rooms, oblivious to their ancient beauty in my haste to reach the spot of sunlight that spoke of the doorway and safety.

The vase fell from my hands and shattered.

I did not stop.

The brass candlestick dropped from beneath my arm and rolled away into darkness.

I did not turn.

The spoon in my pocket struck against my thigh with each step, a small, hard reminder of what had first persuaded me that stealing from ruin was not theft.

Beams landed beside me with thundering crashes as I ran, sending up clouds of choking dust. I began to cough uncontrollably, each breath tearing at my throat. My eyes watered. The doorway vanished in a smoky haze.

For a moment I could not see anything.

I stumbled into a wall, felt old nails bite into my palm, and cried out. Something sharp tore across the top of my foot. I kept moving. There was no thought left in me but air, light, escape.

The house groaned again, deeper this time, like some enormous animal folding in upon itself.

I ran toward where I believed the door had been.

Or where I prayed it had been.

Suddenly I burst through its frame and out into the field as the house fell with a great crash behind me.

The sound rolled through the ground and up into my chest. Dust billowed outward, swallowing the porch, the windows, the red-lettered sign, the rooms, the chandelier, the vase, the mirror, the bottle, all the small treasures that had called to me from the dark.

I fell to my knees in the grass and coughed until my ribs ached.

For a long while I could only kneel there, bent over, my hands pressed into the dirt, breathing the open air like a man newly born.

I had escaped certain demise with few scars, save the bloody scratches from nails on my hands and feet.

But they would soon heal.

I told myself that as I stood.

I told myself that as I brushed the dust from my clothes.

I told myself that as I looked once more at the heap of timber and plaster and ruin that had almost become my grave.

Then I felt the weight still in my pocket.

My fingers went to it before I could stop them.

The silver spoon was bent now, scratched and blackened, but it was still there.

I drew it out and held it in my bleeding hand.

Behind me, the condemned house settled into silence.

Before me, the field opened wide and clean beneath the sun.

I should have thrown the spoon into the wreckage.

I should have left it there with the rot and the dust and the red-lettered warning.

Instead, I wiped it on my sleeve and slipped it back into my pocket.

After all, it was only a small thing.

Originally written June 16, 1987, expanded June 2026

DeadHead

The seat beside him was supposed to be empty.

The man in the pilot’s uniform took the empty seat beside me just as they closed the cabin door, and for one impossible second I thought he was the person I had killed.

Not because of his face.

His face was wrong. Too narrow. Too pale. Clean-shaven where Gordon had worn a short beard to hide the scar under his chin. The man beside me had no scar, no beard, no blood on his shirt, no look of surprise frozen forever in the dark pupils of his eyes.

But he had Gordon’s stillness.

That was what made my hands tighten on the armrests. The same awful quiet. The same way of occupying space as if the world had already happened and he was merely waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

He placed a black leather flight bag under the seat in front of him, buckled his belt, and turned to me with a small, tired smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “Almost missed it.”

I nodded because nodding was easier than speaking. My mouth had gone dry the moment he sat down.

Outside the oval window, rain slipped in bright threads down the glass. Blue runway lights blurred and trembled in the dark. Somewhere beneath my feet, engines groaned awake, deep and animal, and the plane gave a little shudder.

The man looked past me toward the window.

“Bad night to fly,” he said.

I forced myself to breathe.

“Are you flying the plane?”

He smiled again, but this time it seemed to arrive a second too late.

“Not this one.”

His uniform was dark navy, almost black in the cabin light. Four silver stripes on the sleeves. Wings pinned above the breast pocket. He looked like every pilot I had ever seen coming through terminals with coffee in one hand and the secret knowledge of weather in the other.

And still, for half a second, some ugly little part of me wondered how he had gotten there.

Not into the seat.

Into the uniform.

The thought came and went so quickly I almost missed it. But he didn’t. I knew he didn’t. His eyes shifted toward me, calm and dark and unreadable, and I felt suddenly exposed, as if the cabin lights had brightened just over my row.

I looked away first.

There was something wrong with him.

Maybe it was the rain.

Maybe it was the fact that no one had checked his ticket.

Maybe it was because the seat beside me had been empty all through boarding. I had watched it, prayed over it, guarded it like a miracle. No one beside me meant no questions. No accidental touches. No one noticing the mud on my cuffs or the bandage wrapped too tightly around my left hand.

No one leaning close enough to smell the smoke in my coat.

“I’m deadheading,” he said.

Read the rest of the story on Medium

Cenotaph

A Tale of Love Beyond the Tomb

I went each evening to the tomb because the dead had no one else.

It stood beyond the last lamps of the village, where the road narrowed into a path and the path, in time, surrendered itself to nettles, thorns, and the pale roots of ancient trees. There the hill rose like the back of some buried beast, and in its side, half-swallowed by ivy and weather, was the stone door behind which my beloved lay.

No name remained upon the lintel. The rain had taken it. Or the years. Or perhaps those who had carved it had done so lightly, as if afraid that naming the dead too deeply would make death more permanent. But I knew the place. I knew the stone. I knew the silence that gathered before it like a servant waiting for orders.

I had seen the black carriage pass beneath the sycamores. I had heard the bell. I had stood among the mourners while the wind pressed their coats against their bodies and made their veils tremble like wings. I had watched the door sealed with mortar. I had watched the priest lower his head. I had watched the others turn away.

Afterward, when they returned to their bread, their fires, their sleep, I remained.

Then I came the next evening.

And the next.

And in this way the years began.

I brought what the seasons allowed. In spring, violets. In summer, white roses stolen from the wall of the abandoned rectory. In autumn, red leaves that looked already wounded. In winter, when the earth refused all tenderness, I brought my breath cupped in my hands, warming nothing.

I never came armed.

This was often remarked upon in the village, though never to my face. The road was lonely. Wolves had once been seen in the upper wood. Worse than wolves, it was said, were the men who slept in the ruined mill and came out at dusk with knives beneath their coats. But I carried no pistol, no blade, no staff. I carried only the small candle I lit upon the lowest step.

I do not know why I refused protection. Perhaps because grief itself had rendered me defenseless. Perhaps because one does not visit the beloved as though entering battle. Perhaps because I believed, with a conviction I never spoke aloud, that no evil thing would dare approach a tomb already so well attended.

At the stone door I always said the same words.

“I have come.”

Nothing more.

It seemed enough.

In the beginning I wept. Later I spoke. Later still I sat in silence until the candle guttered and the darkness of the wood became one with the darkness of the tomb. There were evenings when I told small things: that the baker’s daughter had married the cooper’s son; that lightning had struck the church spire but spared the bell; that the old dog who used to follow the funeral processions had died beneath the market table; that the village had forgotten certain songs.

There were other evenings when I confessed what I dared not tell the living: that I had grown envious of those whose dead were buried in the churchyard, near bells, near footsteps, near the innocent disturbances of children; that I sometimes feared the face within the tomb had altered beyond recognition; that I could no longer remember the exact sound of the voice I had loved, only the wound it left by ceasing.

Still I came.

The villagers first pitied me. Then they avoided me. Finally they made of my devotion a superstition.

Mothers frightened their children with me. Do not linger after dusk, they said, or you will see the mourner on the hill. Young men, drunk on harvest ale, dared one another to follow me, but none came farther than the black pond where the reeds whispered without wind. Once I found a crude figure made of straw hanging from a branch near the path. It wore a scrap of mourning cloth. I took it down, carried it to the tomb, and burned it in my candle flame.

The smoke drifted beneath the door.

That was the first time I thought I heard movement within.

It was faint. So faint that a sensible mind would have named it settling stone, or a root shifting in the earth, or the sigh of air through cracks. But grief does not possess a sensible mind. Grief has ears everywhere. Grief hears the dead turning over beneath the world.

I placed my palm against the door.

The stone was cold.

“I have come,” I whispered.

From within there came nothing.

Yet after that night, the tomb seemed changed.

Not opened. Not visibly disturbed. But alert. The ivy appeared to have loosened its grip around the lintel. The candle flame bent toward the door though no wind touched it. The flowers I laid upon the step vanished by morning, though no animal tracks marked the earth.

At first I thought the villagers had stolen them to mock me. But who among them would climb that path before dawn? Who would dare lay fingers upon offerings given to the dead? No. Something received them.

This knowledge, if knowledge it was, neither comforted nor terrified me. It merely deepened the ritual. I brought better flowers. I trimmed the candle wick. I brushed dead leaves from the threshold. I spoke less and listened more.

Years passed.

The village altered as villages do, by slow betrayals. The mill collapsed inward. The inn changed hands. Children became adults and looked at me with the same uneasy curiosity their parents once had. The priest died and was replaced by a younger man with pale eyes and clean hands. He once stopped me near the church gate and asked, gently, whether I thought my nightly pilgrimage was good for my soul.

“For my soul?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I looked past him to the churchyard, where the dead lay safely labeled beneath crosses and stones, each one accounted for, each one furnished with a place among the living.

“My soul,” I said, “is not buried here.”

He did not trouble me again.

There were nights when I almost believed the tomb loved me in return.

In rain, the threshold remained strangely dry. In winter, no snow gathered against the door. Once, when fever shook me so violently that I could scarcely climb the hill, I found the stone warm beneath my hand. Another night, upon arriving late, I discovered my candle already lit.

I knelt before it a long while.

I told no one.

For who could have understood? Those who have never loved the silent dead think silence is empty. They do not know how crowded it is. They do not know the multitude that gathers in one withheld word, one vanished face, one unopened door.

My body failed before my devotion did.

First the breath. Then the knees. Then the hands, which trembled so badly that I spilled wax upon the stone. I began to leave earlier each evening and return later, for the path grew longer though the hill did not move. Some nights I slept beside the tomb, waking before dawn with frost in my hair and my cheek against the step.

It was then that the dreams began.

I dreamed I stood inside the tomb. Not outside, not kneeling at the threshold, but within. The chamber was larger than it could possibly be, descending far beneath the hill by corridors of black stone. Niches lined the walls, and in each niche lay something I had lost: a child’s shoe; a broken instrument; a letter never sent; a lock of hair; a bowl of soup cooling beside an empty chair; a song I had once intended to write; a prayer abandoned halfway through because no answer came.

At the end of the corridor was a door.

Behind it, someone breathed.

I would wake with soil beneath my fingernails.

The last evening came in November.

All day the sky had lowered until it seemed the world was trapped beneath a lid of iron. Crows gathered on the church roof. The air smelled of rain and extinguished lamps. Villagers later said they watched me pass and knew something final moved beside me, though I walked alone.

I carried no flowers. None remained. I carried no candle either, for my hands could no longer shield the flame.

I climbed slowly.

The black pond gave back no reflection. The trees did not stir. Even the brambles seemed to withdraw from the path, as though making way for what had already been decided.

When I reached the tomb, the door stood open.

Not wide. Only a little. Enough for the dark to show itself.

I was not afraid.

Or if I was, fear had become indistinguishable from longing.

For many years I had spoken through stone. Now the stone had answered.

I pressed my shoulder to the door. It yielded with a sound like a breath being taken after long restraint. The darkness inside was complete, yet not hostile. It surrounded me with the intimacy of closed eyes.

I stepped in.

The chamber was smaller than my dreams. Bare walls. Low ceiling. A shelf cut into the rock. Earth beneath my feet. The air held no corruption, no sweetness of decay, no ancient bitterness of sealed flesh. It was cold and pure.

I reached toward the shelf.

My hand found nothing.

I searched the chamber wall to wall. My fingers swept stone, dust, root, emptiness. There was no coffin. No shroud. No bone. No ring. No remnant of the beloved body to which I had given my years.

Nothing.

Only then did I understand what the word meant.

Not tomb.

Not grave.

Cenotaph.

The realization did not strike like lightning. It opened beneath me like a floor giving way.

All those evenings. All those flowers. All those whispered reports from the world. All the candles. All the kneeling. All the weather endured. All the love poured through stone into a chamber that had never held the dead.

I laughed then.

The sound horrified me.

It rose from my chest like something winged and wounded. I laughed until I could not breathe, and then the laughter broke apart and became weeping. I lowered myself to the floor and pressed my forehead to the dust.

“Not here,” I said.

The words seemed to pass through the chamber and into some deeper hollow beneath the hill.

“Not here.”

And then, after a long while, I felt beneath my hands what I had never felt outside the door.

Warmth.

It came not from the shelf, nor from the walls, nor from any body hidden there. It came from the earth itself, faint but living, as though all the years of attendance had gathered under the stone and kindled there.

My eyes adjusted.

Upon the empty shelf lay the flowers.

All of them.

The violets. The roses. The cedar. The red leaves. The pitiful winter twigs. The offerings of every season lay in a heap of impossible preservation, neither dead nor alive, neither fresh nor withered. Each retained the form of the day I had brought it. Each remembered my hand.

The tomb had been empty.

But it had not been indifferent.

I understood then—not with the mind, which is always late to mercy, but with the ruined heart—that I had not kept vigil over bones. I had kept vigil over faithfulness itself. I had honored the absent. I had loved without proof. I had returned to the place that could not answer until the returning became its own reply.

The beloved was not there.

Yet love had been there.

And perhaps love, having nowhere else to lay its head, had made of that emptiness a dwelling.

At dawn they found the tomb open.

They found the flowers.

They found my coat folded on the threshold and my shoes placed neatly beside the stone, as though I had entered some house where footwear was not permitted.

They did not find me.

Some said I had wandered into the wood and died beneath leaves. Some said I had thrown myself into the black pond, though the pond gave up nothing. Some said the devil had taken me, for the villagers preferred damnation to mystery.

But the young priest, older by then and less certain, stood a long while before the open chamber. He saw the flowers. He saw the two dark impressions in the dust where knees had rested. He touched the stone shelf and drew back his hand.

It was warm.

After that, the path changed.

Not all at once. Gothic mercies do not hurry. But the brambles loosened. The pond cleared. In spring, flowers grew thick around the tomb, though none had ever rooted there before. Those who grieved without graves began to come: mothers whose sons were lost at sea; wives whose husbands vanished in war; children who remembered faces no one else would name; old men mourning the selves they had outlived.

They came ashamed at first.

Then less so.

Each stood before the empty chamber and whispered into it what I had whispered for years.

“I have come.”

And though no corpse rested there, and though no voice replied, many left with lighter steps.

For the tomb held no body.

It held attendance.

It held the honor of loving what could not be recovered.

It held the terrible mercy of absence made holy by return.

And beneath the stone, where no beloved had ever lain, something like a heart continued to keep warm.

The First Green Thorn

I returned
expecting only stone.

The same arch.
The same hollow.
The same bouquet
browned at the edges
like a prayer
left too long
in the weather.

I had learned
the discipline of kneeling.

I had learned
how to make peace
with the wrong place.

There is a strange holiness
in returning
to what cannot answer.

There is a strange faith
in speaking
to silence
until silence becomes
less empty.

But this morning,
at the foot of the cenotaph,
where the rain had gathered
in the crack
between two stones,

something had risen.

Not a flower.

Not yet.

Only a thorned green stem,
small enough
to be missed
by anyone
who came looking
for a miracle.

It leaned toward the light
with the awkward courage
of a thing
that had not been told
it was impossible.

I almost wept
from fear.

Grief I knew.
Absence I knew.
The old wound
had become a room
I could enter
without striking a match.

But life—
life arriving
without permission,
life answering
when I had stopped
asking,
life wearing thorns
before blossoms—

this was a more terrible mercy.

For if something grows here,
then I must change.

If the stone has cracked,
then I cannot spend forever
calling it final.

If roots have found me,
if green has entered
the vocabulary of my mourning,
then perhaps I have been wrong
about the dead.

Perhaps not all that is buried
is finished.

Perhaps not all that is empty
is abandoned.

Perhaps the former self
does not return
as the boy who believed,
but as the wound
that has learned
to shelter a seed.

I touched the stem
and blood rose
from my finger.

So this, too,
is resurrection:

not the absence of pain,
but pain made porous
to light.

Not the grave undone
all at once,
but a thorn
breaking through stone,

a small green alphabet
beginning again

where the epitaph
ran out of words.

The Cenotaph Triad

The Cenotaph

The Roots Beneath the Stone

The First Green Thorn

The Root Beneath the Stone

I thought the stone was final.

I thought the name carved there
was the last word
the earth would allow.

I thought absence
had a kind of authority,
as if an empty place
could speak with the voice of God
and say,
No farther.

But last night,
beneath the monument,
something moved.

Not the dead.
Not the lost.
Not the boy exactly,
nor the song,
nor the face before sorrow
taught it its new expression.

Something thinner than memory,
but stronger than grief.

A root.

Pale as a finger
beneath the dark soil,
blindly seeking
what the heart had forgotten
how to want.

It did not knock.
It did not rise
with trumpets or thunder.
It did not roll the stone away.

It only pressed
against the underside
of what I had mistaken
for an ending.

All these years
I had been kneeling
before emptiness,
bringing flowers
to a place
that could not receive them.

But perhaps the flowers knew
what I did not.

Perhaps their stems,
cut and dying,
were still fluent
in the old language of return.

Perhaps every grief
I laid down there
became compost.

Perhaps every tear
sank farther
than my prayers.

Perhaps the thing I mourned
was not buried elsewhere
after all,
but traveling underground,
passing through houses
that no longer stand,
fields grown over
with strange weeds,
the silence after a voice
has vanished.

I wanted resurrection
to arrive upright,
whole,
recognizable.

I wanted the former self
to come walking back
wearing the same face,
carrying the same bright belief,
singing the song
exactly as it was
before the world interrupted.

But roots do not return
as branches.

Seeds do not rise
as seeds.

What comes back
comes changed,
darkened by earth,
fed by what has fallen,
tender where it once was proud.

So I will come again
to the cenotaph.

I will bring flowers.

I will kneel.

But I will listen now
not for the dead
inside the stone,
not for the old name
to answer me,

but for the small green pressure
beneath everything,

the mercy
working in secret,

the hidden life
that does not ask
whether the grave was marked correctly,

only whether there is still
somewhere in me

a little soil

left open.

The Cenotaph Triad

The Cenotaph

The Roots Beneath the Stone

The First Green Thorn

Dialogue: The Unarmed Prophet and the Armed World

A conversation between Girolamo Savonarola and Niccolò Machiavelli

Florence. Night. The Piazza della Signoria is empty, though the stones still remember fire. The ghost of Girolamo Savonarola stands near the place where he was hanged and burned. Niccolò Machiavelli enters, older now, carrying a manuscript beneath his arm.

SAVONAROLA:
You return to the place of ashes, Messer Niccolò.

MACHIAVELLI:
Florence has many places of ashes, Fra Girolamo. Yours is only the most famous.

SAVONAROLA:
And you have made use of it.

MACHIAVELLI:
I made use of what happened. That is not the same as rejoicing in it.

SAVONAROLA:
You wrote that I was ruined because I was unarmed.

MACHIAVELLI:
Were you not?

SAVONAROLA:
I preached repentance. I called a city to righteousness. I turned hearts toward God.

MACHIAVELLI:
For a time.

SAVONAROLA:
Truth is not false because men grow tired of it.

Read the full Dialogue at PeaceGrooves.