Table of Contents

• Home
• Introduction
• Where Goths Come From - Neef
• The Watcher - Hobbes
• The Resurrection Shuffle - Barbarella
• Cassandra - Cosey Mo
• Drunken Old Bastard - Sandro
• Alcohol - Trayce
• Shadows - Entrippy
• Entropy - Kage-Ryu
• Is There A Point - Trajik
• Whispers - Kitsune
• Confessional - Sandro
• Garden - Entrippy
• Radio - Cam
• Cold Spell - Nikolai
• Slices - Neef
• A Bottle of Something Strong - Jraff
• The Light Fades - Tim
• Rain - Tim
• Self Help - Gothic Gallae
• Cato - Trajik
• Addiction/Fragment - Trayce
• Heal Thyself - Nikolai
• Shattered - Hobbes
• Travelling Song - Solitaire
• Distance - Stranger
• Legacy - Stranger

Tim is by turns a pro computer geek, poet, philosopher, role-player and cook. What he is mostly though, is a dabbler.

The Light Fades

I'm sitting here watching the light slowly being sucked from the room. At this time of the evening, I sit and watch the day concede it's territory ritualistically to the dark.

Regardless of whether this is the way the world works, or if this is a result of my perception, on evenings like this, I watch the light die in discrete shades of grey that are being pulled from the corners of the ceiling like some uncoiling blanket, bringing the white walls into accordance with the night sky.

The glass of gin and tonic on the table in front of me loses it's crystal clarity, becoming muted and submitting to the evening tide with numb acceptance. In contrast, the fading of day is matched by the dull sulphurous glow of street lights outside. A barely audible click and buzz in anticipation of incandesence.

It's a little like watching someone find the dimmer switch for the sky and slowly turn the light off in tiny, steady steps. Each heartbeat, I watch the room turn a little more grey. Until the apartments across the road from me get harder to see, the cars start driving with their lights on.

In the years that I have been watching the day leave my window, I have never been able to discern the point where the night truly begins. There is no borderline I have found between night and day. You could say that it's evening, but the evening itself is made of the end of one state and the beginning of another. It is easier perhaps to simply wave behind myself and say that it had already happened when the sky is black. Once I accept that it's not getting any darker. It's at about this time that I become more aware of the things that surround me. Electronic things that I could not imagine living my life without and do not think of whilst living my life. Unimportant conveniences that flash enough combined illumination to give a dim reflection on the pane of glass I'm looking through. A reflection of a blank wall and a blank stare that has been here so many times.

When I was younger, I would sit in the house, and experience the silence. I lived in the country, with a family that was far more active than I was. This meant that it wasn't unusal to find myself alone for long stretches at a time.

Evenings in the country, presuming you live in the right places, away from major roads and other constant signs of life, let you experience the silence. More than the absence of noise, it was the removal of the outside world from the senses. At times like this evening, where the light would succumb to the lack of it, the sound would become more subdued until there was nothing to listen for. The smell of grass and fresh air didn't go away so much as it paused and it's stillness removed it from your nostrils. This stillness moved to the body which lost itself in the lack of input that was created between movement and touch. To this day, my mouth still goes dry at the thought of willingly breaking this blank invocation. Resisting the pull towards the summoned shift in tide.

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