Gothikana

by RuNyx

here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there, and nothing more. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. —Bram Stoker, Dracula

We are each our own devil and we make this world our hell. —Oscar Wilde, The Duchess of Padua

Books had become her refuge, especially books with men—humans, shapeshifters, or aliens—who fell in love hard and claimed their women, body and soul. Those were her favorite.

That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die. —H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

Beautiful in the way pain was beautiful, because it tugged at the chest and made something visceral come alive in the stomach and caused blood to simmer in the veins. Enchanting in the way she imagined dark magic was, because it twisted the air around it and warped the mind and overpowered the senses. Haunting in the way only very few living things could be, because it sent a shiver down the spine and cloaked itself in the darkness and fed on the energy around them.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. —Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious but still a truthful interpreter—in the eye. —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

He smelled like burning wood and heady brandy, the kind her mama had made her sip during cold winters. He smelled of dangerous adventures and coming home, of heartache and nostalgia.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. —Edgar Allan Poe, letter to G. W. Eveleth

“You might be a luring siren but I’m no ordinary sailor. I’m a mad pirate and I’m trying to resist your call. If I land on your shores, I will plunder and take away everything worth having. Be very careful giving me those eyes.”

Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. —Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“The idea emerged in the Late Middle Ages. The idea that there is universality in death, that regardless of who you are in your life or your station or how much you possess, you will have to dance with death in the end. Kind of beautiful, if macabre, isn’t it?”

“Death is fascinating. It’s the only inevitability of life, but one that most people spend their lives trying to outrun.

Silences were comfortable, but most people didn’t feel that way. She was realizing that most people had an unnecessary need to fill silences, a need she didn’t share. It made people uncomfortable around her, adding even more to her oddities.

“This is lust,” she whispered, trying to validate it, excuse it. “No, Corvina.” The side of his lips twitched. “I’ve known lust. This is something worse. This is a barbaric need to possess, to eliminate, to own. This is madness.” Madness.

“If this is madness,” she whispered almost against his lips, “drown me in it.”

“If this is madness,” he told her, echoing her words against her lips, “I’ve already descended too far.”

Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do. —William Shakespeare, As You Like It

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn. —Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

But he that dares not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rose. —Anne Brontë, “The Narrow Way”

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. —Albert Einstein

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. —Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII”

“I’m in your head, in your blood, in your very veins. I’ve claimed you before anything else ever could. Your body, your heart, your mind, your fucking soul, it’s all mine. Your hunger is mine to feed, your madness is mine to tame. Do you feel that?”

“You see me.” Her lips trembled, the realization that this man saw her, truly saw her, and still watched her with that look in his eyes making something inside her shift. “I see you.” His silver gaze seared her. “I’ve always seen you.”

Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! —Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“You’re taking all of my firsts, Mr. Deverell,” she whispered quietly as a confession. His arm tightened. “I will take all your lasts, too, Miss Clemm. Mark my words.”

“This will last until the day the roses on my grave stop sharing roots with the roses on yours,” he declared. “I will have you even in death, little witch. I am your beast. I am your madness. And you, you’re my afterlife.”

It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright. —Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. —Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

I will not let you go into the unknown alone. “Dracula,”

“You’re the mountain I build my castle on, brick by brick,” she whispered to him, her eyes stinging. “You stand, I soar. You crack, I crumble.”

But to die as lovers may—to die together, so that they may live together. —Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“Little witch.” He kissed her softly. “You’ll leave me when the roots of the roses on your grave…” “Leave the roots of the roses on yours,” she completed, having heard it multiple times over the course of the months, taking a deep breath.

Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either. —Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla