Locked gates surround the children to keep their grubby hands from the candied apples that hang low from tired trees on the hillock beside the red running river. These children are translucent creatures and gather around the hem of my robes to feed and beg for their sustenance. As I bend to scatter their grainy meal across the stones the dangling jeweled ear wraps calm my hypothalamus and protected cerebellum from the electronic noise that is issued without end from the greedy babies who are ensalved by the evil mind controllers of the technological zombie.

Do not kiss my ear or whisper nonsense into my ears. I decorate the folds of my auricle with the miniature forms of bats and snakes and skulls and cats to suit my whims and hungers. I am constantly craving many things and the sounds of the wind and the rain and thunder are magical vibrations that ring the hollow bells that reside in the belfry of my midnight mass. Monoliths placed ins semi-circles around sacred ground used in Pagan rites of passage mimic the adornments of my body. Every draping of skin is a canvas to be painted in a masterpiece of inks and diamonds and thorns and needles.

The Gothic labyrinth is an impossible navigation for those of you who live in the mundane world of daily slavery for the dollars that you've been chasing and teased into torment with. I have heard the truth and the antennae that brings in the coded howls and moans from the darkest depths of my netherworld are amplified through my earrings and catch the wind like a black pirate sail to carry me further into the dark world I inhabit.