Esther Racah Writer & Literary Blogger

Tag: Gothic Imagery

  • Castaway’s Desires

    Castaway’s Desires

    Castaway’s desires enticed me in the long winter nights, when the frozen branches of hollow trees caressed me softly, as they needed to approach my body.

    The scent of burning candles devoured my enthusiasm and reminded me only of my hopeless misery. An everlasting burning desire strove to swallow my heart greedily like an invisible demon.

    My insensitive inertia shattered my soul into pieces and I let the devastation take advantage of me. I was born to dissolve and to perish an infinite number of times in endless ways.

    Frenzy and turmoil were my loyal guides like flaming torches in the deepest darkness, and they offered me their improper wisdom. I felt alive only because I embodied the distress that consumed me, leaving me in flames.

    Indeed, it was true that scorching passion sometimes might have let me fall in love with things that destroyed, and that was what penetrated every part of me.

    I was made of fire and glaze surrounded by the cold mist of my dark chamber where dimly lit candles were my only merriment.

    The sweet screams of the night recalled to me who I really was. Obsession carved my vein instilling a tainted poison instead of blood. I became a creature of the realm of shadows and wraiths.

    I was consumed by my own fantasies and foolish hallucinations. I had become the queen of frenzy among my lost memories of worlds which I once belonged to.

    No mortal entity could see me because I was visible only to creatures of my own. There was no transformation in my staticity.

    I could perceive the manifestation of my own tempest, like a tiny vessel in a stormy sea. Lost in the labyrinth of my dreams and dread, I was unable to discover the existence beyond time.

    The great mystery of seeking my reflection in the immense mirror of life made me realise my nothingness. There was no end and there was no beginning but merely a vague silence clinging to me like luscious ivy.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • Seeking Dreams

    Seeking Dreams

    Seeking dreams in nowhere on a winter night with no stars but only a mystical fog and gloomy clouds. Not even a bird was flying in the leaden and dark sky. Only the clouds were gazing at me like curious observers, and the wind whispered legends of despair to me.

    I signed and dreamed of ocean floors paved with diamonds and stars. I fantasised about mermaids lost in submerged islands, and snow-capped waterfalls on remote cliffs. Time faded away when I was dreaming. Not even the impetuous cold rain could distract me from my nightdreaming.

    Foolishness never abandoned me, while I was consumed by my passionate longings, which brought me to the edge of the universe. Wonderful darkness enticed me, and I summoned my own demons and spirits, surrounded by exquisite midnight flowers.

    Folly and wisdom accompanied me in my everlasting journey to a netherworld descent. Though I have visited heavens and abysses, boundless valleys and inaccessible mountains, I have always ended up at the very same point of origin, namely my archaic abyss of despair.

    Seeking dreams in nowhere on a frosty night with no glimmering lights but only a ghostly haze and dismal shadows. No living creature crept close to me, but only wraiths and eerie ghouls, which kept following me in every abode and realm I dwelled in.

    I foresaw my decay and the obliteration of all my dreams that I had sought for so long in vain. Drowning in the emptiness and losing my heart, became a nightmare of mine under the shape of an incubus visiting my slumber. Arcane verses, evoking a magic spell, were engraved on my soul.

    Scarlet flowers adorned my hair that flowed on my face, while my tears of sorrow soaked the frozen soil. Nightmares and thorns poisoned my never-ending nights, tainting the sky with chaos. Numbed and mesmerised by swirling griefs that never hesitated to tarnish my keenness, I softly succumbed to my unavoidable demise.

    While seeking dreams, I harboured enemies in my soul, fooling myself with obsessions that left indelible marks in my senses. I had to renounce being myself and let the darkness swallow all my desires. In a realm of liminality, I was cast away and compelled to endure agony.

    Abandoned in my dismay, I found no solace. I metamorphosed into sorrow. I became what I had feared the most, the very thing that had damaged my heart. I ended up in loneliness and turmoil, seeing my own reflection staring back at me in fractured and disfigured mirrors.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • The Eleventh Gate

    The Eleventh Gate

    The Eleventh Gate stood in the underworld — silent, unmarked.
    I wandered, neither living nor dead,
    Caught between shadows that whispered secrets I could not grasp,
    Searching for meaning in that endless twilight of souls.

    17:17 appeared to me
    While I was confused by the thoughts that crowded my mind
    And darkened my heart,
    Searching and hoping for a way — for a way out —
    Which did not seem obvious,
    Given that I found myself in the labyrinth of death,
    In a world suspended, beneath that of the mortals.

    How I found myself in that world, I think I have remembered it:
    that chariot of skeletons and spectres, of demons from the underworld,
    had overwhelmed me and taken me away
    into their grotesque world of nightmares.

    Monsters adorned in sparse and ancient garments
    wore grotesque masks and stared at me with their dead,
    Yet burning eyes,
    as if they could read my heart,
    and they sneered at my fears and weaknesses,
    and at my ethereal, mortal being.

    I had become a captive of that world, a world of shadows and wraiths.
    Subjugated to their power, I could not resist,
    And my steps grew heavier and heavier,
    as if they echoed the weight of my heart,
    which had become a heap of metal shards and thorns.

    Exhausted and bloodless, I surrendered,
    and no longer felt that languid sense of torpor and melancholy.
    Horror and chills had gripped my entire body,
    And the beating of my heart stopped
    like a broken pendulum clock.

    I crossed the Eleventh Gate, seventeen times seventeen,
    And with each passing, a part of my heart fell
    upon the ground made of bones and carcasses and mud and buried souls.
    And thus it was that I collapsed,
    into a terrible slumber.
    Of death.
    Elisabetta

  • Beneath The Hollow Moon

    Beneath The Hollow Moon

    Beneath the hollow moon, I wandered behind shadows
    It seemed like a dream but it felt very tangible
    It was an ethereal feeling mixed with physical perceptions
    In a secret garden made of dead trees and withered blossoms

    The ephemeral veil of the night enveloped me
    I was an invisible creature of the night
    Hiding from mortal sight and dreaming with open eyes
    My visions and hallucinations had become reality

    The haze of darkness cast a spell on me
    Odd spirits offered me to drink from a goblet of poison
    It was a magic potion of oblivion and poison
    Whilst I sipped it, I fell into a deep slumber

    I had forgotten my name and the place where I dwelled
    I had become a ghost and a shadow of the night
    Imperceptible even to the stars and the moon
    I was lost in the labyrinth of my own nightmares

    I waited not for my death because I was no longer a mortal
    The sorrow and distress of the human world didn’t touch me anymore
    I was the darkness and the night
    Empowered but still a captive of this arcane underworld

    Every part of my incorporeal body belonged to this dungeon of royal decadence
    A victim of haunting eerie dreams, I had no other place where to go
    It didn’t matter how long I could have screamed my memories
    Nothing changed, and my fate stayed unaffected

    I had traded my freedom for a kingdom of death and ethereal phantasmagoria
    Beneath the hollow moon, I wandered endlessly
    Seeking my lost heart in the maze of resentment and silver coffrets full of secrets
    And each sigh of mine transformed into a raven rose.

    A heart full of sorrow and a crown of black roses on my head
    Nothing else.
    Elisabetta

  • Cobwebs

    Cobwebs

    Cobwebs thrived insidious in every corner of forgotten halls,
    Where whispers lingered, faint and cold,
    The cobwebs twisted like ancient scrolls,
    An embroidery of tales untold.

    Each thread, a relic of decay,
    Suspended in eternal night,
    A brittle web where shadows played,
    Draped in the moon’s forsaken light.

    Once, the halls had seen great feasts,
    Mirths, songs, and countless guests,
    But now, the echoes only wept,
    For those who’ve long been laid to rest.

    Beneath the veil of dust and slime,
    Laid remnants of another time,
    A fractured mirror on the wall,
    Reflected a world about to fall.

    The spiders weaved their endless art,
    Tracing webs through every part,
    Of chandeliers, once grand, now dim,
    Their crystals cracked, their edges grim.

    Each web they spun was cold and delicate,
    A silver thread of death’s design,
    It snaked along the wooden floors,
    And curls beneath the decaying doors.

    There were no footprints to hear,
    No living soul had ventured near,
    But something swirled within the gloom,
    A presence sensed, yet not in view.

    The atmosphere was overwhelmed with silent dread,
    As if the house itself was dead,
    Yet, breathed a life long since concealed,
    Beneath the webs that now congealed.

    In cobwebs, memories were spun,
    Of days long lost, of deeds undone,
    And as the wind began to moan,
    It echoed the cries of the unknown.

    The windows rattled in the night,
    Their panes were opaque with age and blight,
    The webs quiver, stretch, and sway,
    As if they lived, as if they played.

    What secrets did these tendrils keep,
    In endless folds, in shadows deep?
    What stories hanged in each fine thread,
    Woven by the long-forgotten dead?

    The webs grew thick with dust and time,
    A maze of sorrow, dread, and swine,
    And as the darkness swallowed everything whole,
    It feasted upon the weary souls.

    Since, in the end, what stretched ahead,
    But tangled webs and lives long dead,
    In every corner, every seam,
    The cobwebs spun a timeless dream.
    Esther Elizabeth Racah

  • A Night of Illusions

    A Night of Illusions

    A night of illusions and dreams in the realm of nowhere,
    Where shadows crept, and whispers filled the still, damp air.
    The moon hung low, a pale ghost in the starry sky,
    Casting spectral light on graves long and dry.

    Winds howled like banshees through trees long dead,
    Their gnarled branches reached, filled with dread.
    Crimson leaves scattered in the night,
    Cloaked in darkness, absent of light.

    A night of illusions, where reality frayed,
    Through twisted paths, a figure strayed.
    Each step grew heavier, like feet carved from stone,
    The ground below whined, archaic and cold as bone.

    Eyes glowed from hollows, hidden in the darkness,
    Watching every move, waiting to strike, heartless.
    A chill crept down each spine, freezing all breath,
    The air was thick with decay, the scent of death.

    In the distance, a chapel, broken and bleak,
    Its doors cracked open with a hollow creak.
    It beckoned, its silence heavy with dread,
    Inside, only wails of the forsaken dead.

    Candles flickered, faint embers on the wall,
    Casting eerie shadows, giants dark and tall.
    The silence screamed louder than any sound,
    As knees touched the cold, stone ground.

    The wind seemed to whisper a forgotten name,
    A soul trapped forever in a cold, endless flame.
    Cobwebs clung to the altar, brittle and old,
    Where stories of sorrow and death had been told.

    Mysterious figures appeared, cloaked in tattered black,
    Their hollow gaze stared a shadow at the back.
    They beckoned forward into the abyss,
    Promising solace with ghostly grimaces.

    A night of illusions and nightmares, an entranced and silent visitation,
    As mist gathered thickly, a mournful pall.
    Deeper ghouls went through crypts of stone,
    Where no heart had beat, no seed had been sown.

    A voice whispered, soft and clear,
    “Welcome to your fate; you belong here.”
    Esther Elizabeth Racah

  • Dreadful Dreams

    Dreadful Dreams

    Dreadful dreams in darkness brewed,
    The world outside in silence stewed.
    A chill hung thick as whispers weaved,
    Through hollow halls, where none believed.

    A castle loomed, its walls decayed,
    Where time had stopped and light delayed.
    Through labyrinths that none had known,
    They wandered there, each one alone.

    Figures rose from meadows like thorns,
    With eyes that bled and voices steeped,
    In sorrows long since left unsaid,
    Now, pulling dreamers to the dead.

    Dreadful dreams, where shadows crept,
    Beneath their lids, no restful sleep.
    The night grew cold, the visions swayed,
    In twisted forms, the mind was betrayed.

    No way to flee, no path to run,
    For night devoured every sun.
    The walls grew impenetrable, the air was poison,
    And trapped everyone in an endless prison.

    In the silence, whispers of fright,
    Haunted souls wander, lost from sight.
    Each gust a toil, each step a plight,
    As darkness consumed every fading light.

    Dreadful dreams, where mirrors cracked,
    And whispers from the void slammed.
    A thousand clouds lost in space,
    All seeking what they couldn’t chase.

    Souls entwined with endless fear,
    Never to wake, forever near.
    The moon, once full, was now cracked and pale,
    Its silver light began to fail.

    And as the fading shades crept,
    The dreamers into silence wept.
    The night consumed all hopes and screams,
    And left them bound to dreadful dreams.

    Dreadful dreams wandered like shades of night,
    Whispered softly beneath dark skies.
    Each dwelling became a fearsome sight,
    As shadows moved in the dimming light.

    Desires entwined with seizing dread,
    Wandering everywhere, but hope had fled.
    Each secret carried tales of woe,
    As spectres flickered, fast and slow.

    In the gloom, no spark remained,
    No bright memory could have been preserved.
    The dreamers sought the light once more,
    But shadows beckoned from the shore.

    Dreadful dreams chased every fleeting glow,
    Finding themselves in depths below.
    With every instant, the darkness grew,
    A truth obscured, a world askew.
    Esther Elizabeth Racah

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