This bed is a ship

Posts tagged gothic
Chicago Gothic

sidbranca:

copperbadge:

wehaveallgotknives keeps reblogging Australian Gothic posts so I thought I’d try my hand —

CHICAGO GOTHIC

— You have gone to the Bean but you cannot find your reflection. When you do, it winks at you and takes your picture. 

— You are waiting in line at Hot Dougs. The line never ends. The smell of duck fat fries caresses you, then asks you if you think this is the Cubs’ year. 

— You are being followed by a food truck. At every stop, it hawks a different fusion of things that were not meant to be fused. When you tell it to go away, it asks if you have a Belly card. The man inside it mouths “Help me” silently. 

— You can see the Willis Tower in the distance, but you can never reach it. You can only walk in its shadow. 

— After a heavy snowfall, you see signs on the ground warning you of falling ice. The ice that falls is in the shape of a man. 

— The lions at the Art Institute appear one morning in the Field Museum, proudly standing over the skeleton of Sue. They have finally brought down their kill. 

— You visit the Shedd Aquarium, but all the tanks are empty. People wander the darkened halls, asking each other if they’ve seen a shark yet. 

— You have become lost in the Marshall Fields-Macys. As you stand in front of the elevator doors, desperate to reach the ground floor, Marshall Field appears to you as a spectral figure and says, “That’s an express elevator. It doesn’t stop on this floor.” 

— Rahm Emanuel stands on the sidewalk, staring bleakly into the distance. None approach him. He smiles at no one. Slowly you realize that he is watching Bruce Rauner, wherever Bruce Rauner is.

— The downtown Target store has an eerie baroque wrought-iron facade. (Oh wait, this one’s true.)

- The deep dish is deeper than you thought. So very, very deep. You will never reach the bottom. 

- You fall in love. You start to think you might finally find true happiness in partnership with another. You imaging spending the rest of your life with this person. And then, one night, they say the fatal words: “oh, I would never ride the green line”, and you are transformed into a cloud made only of ice and rage, compelled to haunt them forever. 

- You come home to find a cracked plastic lawn chair leaning against the front door of your building. You shrug, blame the intense winter wind, and move it out of the way. You find another in the vestibule. Another on the stairs. You reach the door of your apartment, which is blocked by a pile of milk crates. You push your way through and open the door. Standing there, holding a shovel, surrounded by broken chairs, is a middle-aged woman. “GET OUT,” she hisses. “THIS SPACE BELONGS TO ME NOW.” Her eyes begin to glow red, and a harsh snowy wind forces you backward. “DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIBSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.” 

——

see also: this post about “Midwestern Gothic” 

figured i’d reblog this to my writing tumblr for my little riffs above because why the hell not