The Power of Gothic

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The Power of Gothic: Jack the Slayer
It was one evening when the darkness was entering the mountain region. As for Jack, it was a time to prepare dinner as he waits for his father to arrive from the town down the ridge. Normally, his father would come home drunk at the late hours of the night. Jack had become accustomed to it, especially, after knowing that any cry for the old timer to change will yield no peace in the house. And like any other night, Jack was only interested in doing what is acceptable in his father’s house, including cooking and doing laundry.
After a long conversation with himself in the kitchen, Jack was finally done with the cooking. He heads to the couch to watch TV and perhaps wait for the old man. Unlike other nights, the old man was heard ringing the doorbell early. Like all other nights, however, the old-timer was drunk, staggering, and weak. Jack went straight to answer the door and maybe assist his father to his rocking chair.
“Why do you always put door’s chain locked this early, huh?” The old man asked upon seeing Jack approach. Jack went for his father’s hand as a gesture to help him only to receive hard and hurtful push against the side wall.
“Answer my question first, young man. Why do you lock me outside so early every night?”
“It is already dark outside, father” Jack answered in pain, as he felt the pain on his side of the head where a lump was already forming. He felt the anger creep inside him but walked to the kitchen for a bag of ice to cool his pain.

His father went to the locker and relaxed there with his pack of bottles brought from town. He sat down and opened one, took a sip and head to the kitchen. At this time, Jack’s tears were rolling down his cheeks as pain and anger continued to rise. He, however, managed to pretend he is alright when the old man entered the kitchen.
The old man was staggering, and his hands were shaking in weakness as he lifted a plate to serve himself some food. By accident, the plate fell and shattered on the floor. “Oops! Collect those pieces son” He said to Jack who obediently kneeled to do so. Then he remembered the night he collected the pieces of broken plates and mugs, the night his mother died. He felt his teeth and fists clenching as overwhelming anger and fear began to interrupt his breath and self-control.
On the night his mother died, Jack was watching TV, but the noise of his mother and father’s arguments and cursing dominated his ears. Then suddenly a quiet atmosphere filled the house for a moment followed by his father’s loud cry.
“Oh my God! Oh no no no! … What did I do?” Jack heard his father sobs.
He ran rushed to the kitchen only to find his mother lying helpless on the floor and blood gushing out from her neck. He tried to hold the pressure at her neck, but she was already gone. He felt a sad feeling’s wipe on his face, and tears forming in his eyes. Tear drops broke free and rolled down his cheeks, as tens others followed in an unbroken stream. He sat there on the floor holding her in his laps, calling out “mama” as many times as he could, and crying out so loud that he could hear the howls of the night anymore.
His father had reached the kitchen knife and slit her throat as a butcher draws at an aggressive bull. The night became Jack’s dark night of the soul. The night he lost the meaning and purpose of life at the loss of the dearest person in his life (Moore 2). To him, she was not only the provider but also a protector. As a result, everything about his father changed entirely. Jack saw his father as a violent beast who can only be tamed through his compliance. However, Jack was no more an innocent soul. Just like Frankenstein, his father’s actions had created an angry animal inside him. Whose hatred and range against him was building up every day.
Notably, on this night that he felt so different that anger was already accumulating in him close enough to exploding and destroying everything around him. He felt his anger and desire for violence against this evil man, his father, transcend from hell to purgatory and back to hell (“9 Circles of Hell (Dante’s Inferno) – History Lists” 4). Finally, it won the best part of him and unleashed itself. In a quarter of a second, Jack stood up from the floor where he was collecting shreds of plates, reached a kitchen knife that was stuck in a rack. He glared at his father angrily, jumped at him, and swung the knife a couple of times before it landed on his chest. His father tried to support himself in pain as he dropped down on the floor. The first glimpse of the blade in the father’s body, with him struggling for breath and blood streaming out gave Jack a panic. He screamed out of fear and yelled for help.
Neighbors came running, and someone managed to call the police and an ambulance. But it was too late. His father had already lost his breath. Even the police could not comprehend what happened. Jack himself had acted not to know what happened and reported that he had found his father dead and called for help. In his mind, however, everything was clear. Although it was sad and painful losing his father, he somehow felt as good as a slave whose chains have been broken. The sense of freedom, however, scared him since he could not differentiate his violent actions from those of his father. Deep inside, he felt as if he was just another version of his father whose causative element was his mother’s death. It broke him, and his humanity and what he had become became a mystery. Similarly, the events of that night were a mystery. No one understood things that transpired that night except Jack. But after a few months of interrogations and speculations, the police concluded that it was it was Jack who killed his father, but the real story remained unknown.
Works Cited
“9 Circles of Hell (Dante’s Inferno) – History Lists”. Historylists.Org, 2016, http://historylists.org/art/9-circles-of-hell-dates-inferno.html. Accessed 16 May 2018.
Moore, Thomas. “A Dark Night of the Soul and the Discovery of Meaning.” Kosmos Journal, 2015, https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/a-dark-night-of-the-soul-and-the-discovery-of-meaning/. Accessed 16 May 2018.