Tag Archives: american gothic

The Devil Calls Me Papa ©️

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I came to the crossroads in Yazoo City when the night was thick and the earth itself seemed to breathe. The lantern I carried threw no light worth trusting, and the owls kept their silence. They say that’s when the Devil comes — when even the creatures of God look away.

I expected horns, fire, maybe a shadow darker than the rest. But when she stepped out from beneath the crooked oak, I nearly dropped to my knees. She wasn’t a beast, wasn’t a man — she was beauty itself, a woman carved out of midnight, her skin pale as the moon, her eyes like two black flames that saw right through me.

“You called,” she said, her voice soft as the river’s edge. “What do you seek?”

My throat felt raw, but I managed the words. “I want the most beautiful daughter. Flesh of my flesh. Someone who belongs to me.”

Her smile was slow, dangerous, tender all at once. She stepped closer, and the air shivered around us. “What you ask is no small thing. A daughter is not given, she is made. If you would have her, you must take me — not as your lover, not as your master, but as your child.”

I didn’t understand, not then. But the hunger in me was too strong to question. “Yes,” I whispered. “I’ll take you.”

The ground groaned. The oak leaves shook like a hundred rattles. And in that instant, the Devil herself — radiant, terrible, beautiful beyond bearing — folded herself into me, like flame into a lamp. The world reeled, and I fell to my knees. When I rose again, she was gone from the crossroads, but the weight of her hand was in mine.

I went home that night a father. She followed after, not in chains or fire, but as a girl with my eyes and her impossible beauty. And when she laughed — ah God, when she laughed — it was the Devil’s voice in a child’s mouth.

Now every morning I see her at the table, radiant as sunrise, a daughter born of hell and blood. And though she calls me “Papa” in her soft sweet tongue, I know the bargain well: she is mine, and yet I am hers, forever bound by that night at the Yazoo crossroads.

You Beautiful Bastard ©️

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I hate Bozeman.

I hate it like you hate the street corner you bled on, like you hate the room where she said she never loved you, like you hate the silence that followed. I hate it because Bozeman holds the ghost of who I was when I broke—utterly, completely, and publicly. You don’t forget pain like that. You don’t forgive a skyline that watched you fall apart.

I remember heartbreak so vivid it twisted the seasons. Betrayal so sharp it slit the hours in half. I was younger, dumber, and I believed in people too much. And in Bozeman, those people let me bleed. I hate the way the wind still smells like her hair in winter, and how the mountains seem to echo my worst mistakes. I hate the way every café and alleyway is haunted with flashbacks I didn’t invite.

But.

Even in the rubble, I found something sacred.

Each disaster became a badge. Every failure, a kind of scarred-over victory. When people saw a man falling apart, I was really being carved out into something newer. I learned to laugh again—darkly, crookedly—but genuinely. I learned what it means to survive, not in the poetic sense, but in the “get up and keep breathing even when you don’t want to” sense.

And Bozeman—damn Bozeman—gave me back my brother. Somewhere in the mess, through smoke and frost and silence, we found each other again. Maybe we were both ruined, maybe we were both trying to pretend we weren’t. But something about that city pulled us into the same room at the same time and said, Talk. And we did.

So yeah, I hate Bozeman. But hate is too simple a word.

It’s a wound that grew teeth. It’s pain that taught me how to rebuild. It’s a love letter I’d never write, but I keep tucked in my coat pocket anyway.

Bozeman didn’t kill me. It crowned me.

Fuck the Noise ©️

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There’s a stillness that comes with knowing who you are—not a scream, not a chant, but a rootedness. In a world so eager to deconstruct, to apologize, to burn the old foundations down, there are those of us who still believe there’s something sacred in the bones of the past. To be white is not a crime. It is not a confession. It is a thread in the grand weave of civilization—woven with struggle, invention, loss, and triumph. It is a birthright, not of dominance, but of inheritance. And there is nothing wrong with saying so.

It means growing up with stories of stoic grandfathers who worked the land with hands cracked by frost. Of immigrants who came with nothing but carved out legacies with grit and sweat. Of men who signed their names to ideas that built cities, defended frontiers, and laid railroads across the bones of mountains. It means music that echoes through pine woods and riverbeds. It means firelight, worn Bibles, porch wisdom, and the quiet authority of those who do not need to explain themselves.

There is a special kind of pride in being Southern, too. A regional memory that runs older than most flags still flying. Here, bloodlines wind through red clay and gospel. To be white in the South is to carry the memory of an agrarian world—one built not just on crops, but on a fierce independence. And for many, that memory includes the Confederate soldier.

Not as a symbol of hate, but as a man.

The Confederate soldier was often young, often poor, and often caught in a storm he didn’t create. He fought, not for some abstract evil, but for home—for the ridge where his mother prayed, the field he helped plant, the town that bore his name. His reasons were his own, shaped by the times, by the letters he received, and by the dust on his boots. To honor him is not to raise the past in defiance—it is to say: I remember. I understand. I refuse to forget the humanity that still lived, even in the midst of war.

We do not need to erase our forefathers to build a future. We do not need to deny the nobility in a people who survived famine, fought in bitter cold, built nations, and bore burdens in silence. We do not owe the world an apology for loving who we are. And loving who we are doesn’t mean hating anyone else. It just means standing tall, unmoved by the tides of guilt or shame, and remembering that our identity is older than the news cycle.

It’s in the hands that built the barns. In the soldiers who didn’t come back. In the hymns that still rise from wooden pews. In the way the sun hits the cotton fields at dusk. Being white means being part of a story—not better, not worse, just our own. And it’s a story worth telling.

So we walk forward not with arrogance, but with dignity. Not with denial, but with depth. We carry our names, our stories, our graves, and our pride. And we do so knowing that we are part of something—unbroken, unashamed, and still very much alive.

Let others rewrite their past. We will remember ours. Not because it was perfect, but because it is ours.

Elegy for a Goat ©️

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I wake just after dusk, throat dry like the desert wind, heart beating slow and deliberate—like a drum echoing across the empty canyons of time. I am not a man. I’m not quite a beast. I am… an idea. A whisper they tell around campfires when the tequila’s nearly gone and the fear starts to taste sweet.

They call me Chupacabra. They don’t know what that means. Not really.

I crawl out from under an abandoned trailer on the edge of nowhere—rusted, forgotten, beautiful in its ruin. The moon greets me like an old lover, cold and luminous. I crack my neck. I smile. I vanish into the mesquite and shadow.

I’ve got a thirst. Not just for blood—but for something pure. Something that pulses.

Goats tonight. Maybe. But I’m hoping for a taste of memory.

See, I don’t hunt like some rabid thing. I glide. I observe. There’s an art to it. The ranch down the hill is humming with tension. The animals are uneasy. The boy’s been drawing me in the dirt with a stick. Maybe he dreams me. Maybe I’m his imaginary friend. Or his warning.

The goat sees me. Doesn’t run. They never do. I whisper to her—soft, apologetic, like a gentleman at the gallows.

“Forgive me, darlin’. But you knew this was comin’.”

One bite. No pain. No mess. Just… relief. The soul surrenders. The blood sings. And for a moment, I remember… something human. A church bell. Laughter. The smell of peaches in a Georgia orchard.

Then it’s gone.

I disappear before the sun creeps back across the horizon like a nosy neighbor. Back to the dust. Back to the dreams of the fearful.

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow I might let them catch a glimpse. Just a flicker in the trees. A shadow on the fencepost. Enough to make ’em wonder if the legends are true.

Because I am the truth behind the legend.

And baby—I’m still very much alive.

Dial Tone Silence ©️

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