Bryony Whitehead whtbry002

The
Fashiona
ble
Goths
‘Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again.’
- Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence

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emo (і΄мəц): stands for emotional kid. An emergent subculture claiming independence
from Gothic or Punk influence. Has been met with disapproval from other subcultures in
the form of emo-haters. An emo kid is expected to accept various philosophies, the most
prominent being bisexuality. Very technologically advanced, this emergent culture
attracts a younger generation. Influences include Punk, Goth and Metal. Dress code is
mainly black with skinny jeans, sneakers, and tight tops for male Emos who are also
expected to be more emotional and accept a feminine side. Females mainly wear short
skirts, striped tops, footless tights and dead straight hair chopped haphazardly at different
lengths, they are also meant to adopt masculine qualities.

* * *

“Is this a fucking emo fashion show?” barks an aggressive male voice at our backs. I can
feel his breath hit the back of my neck with the force of his exclamation. It’s a tall man in
black leather trench coat and enormous black boots, complete with oversized silver
buckles. I smile nervously and quickly elbow my way through the crowd. Shining black
PVC, lace, velvet, leather you name it. The beautiful people are out tonight and they’re
here to celebrate a fetish – Angels and Demons. We’re on the hunt for emo-haters, the
ancient ones whose life-long devotion to Goth, Punk and Metal are finding this new
emerging culture distasteful.

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“Only Goth women wear colour,” is another sneering remark that a diehard Goth guy
aims at us. The two of us are dressed up in clothing typical of the Emo kids. The thrill of
going against the grain is worth the hisses and dark stares. Jared, typical of an Emo guy,
wears dark seventies skinny-leg jeans and tight fitted long-sleeved vest with large black
and red stripes. I’m in a black flared mini-skirt, boots, a white corset and my fringe is
pulled over my right eye. We’re probably wearing way too much colour for this party,
but we’re here to stir up a reaction, not to fit in.

Said to have emerged in the mid-eighties as a sub-genre of punk, emo is meant to be the
more emotional side of the subcultures. Yet, this original emo faded out in the late
nineties and in its place, a new and decidedly more ‘poser’ version has grown. These are
the lucky few white middle class kids who can afford to go out to the malls and buy all
the kit that’ll make them look dark. These poor little privileged children of the suburbs,
with no one to understand their big problems. These are the kids with their lives served
to them on a silver platter. University is theirs for the taking. But besides looking dark,
the consensus among the subcultures is that Emo is pretty shallow. They’ve appropriated
the look, but have no idea what it really means to identify with the subcultures of Goth,
Punk and Metal.

“You know that girl I greeted earlier in the parking lot?” Jared asks me, bringing back
our drinks. I do remember her, we had just parked and were making our way to the
entrance of the club when a girl greeted Jared. He has just bumped into her again, and
from what Jared is saying, she is the emo-hater I am hoping to interview. Danielle makes
her way through the crowd to us and I introduce myself. Her long, dark hair and black
clothing is typical of a serious rock chic. She wears a black leather choker and has several
piercings in the lobes of her ears. We make our way down the stairs to get to somewhere
quieter and decide to convene on the first landing where we’re able to hear each other
reasonably well without needing to yell into each other’s ears. A guy friend of hers tags
along and joins in the conversation. “What is it that gets your back up about emo?” I ask
her. She pulls her head back as if I’ve just opened a can of decaying worms and with a
smirk she says, “This,” and pulls her hair over one eye in an exaggerated side parting and

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laughs. This side parting over one eye is typical of emo kids; it’s the trademark hairdo,
like the mohawk is the signature punk hairdo. When I ask her to elaborate, she answers,
“Because they’re not hardcore. They want to be, but they just aren’t.” I suggest that
defining what emo is, as apposed to what it is not, is a wish-washy version of the real
thing. What is she into? She says she is mainly into hard rock.

Danielle’s guy friend introduces himself as Chris. He comments that emo is definitely
new to South Africa and that it is part of the alternative culture that has been adopted by
the younger generation. I’ve noticed tonight, and many times before tonight that the
following of the subcultures are mostly white people from the middle class. I ask Chris
whether he thinks this is because white kids are beginning to react to their circumstance
as white people in South Africa. Again his answer is a ‘definitely’. As young white
people, this generation needs to reinvent its identity. It must pay for the sins of its fathers
and also find its own way in life. Perhaps one way of doing this is to adopt the principles
of emotional gothic culture. By doing that, kids are able to identify with a bigger cause,
which is one of reflective sorrow for the world. This sorrow indulges the most depressed
teenager’s need for sadness and allows that sadness to be worn on the outside in the form
of an outfit, a hairdo and a couple of scars. Superficial? Perhaps.

It’s not going to happen. Chris has an awesome mohawk tonight. It’s not a ‘careful my
mohawk, it might poke out your eye’ kind of style, but more understated with far less gel.
A Metal head with long black hair and crazy eyes comes up the stairs and comments on
it, “Hey dude, new hairdo. Much better than the one you had before,” Chris just smiles
and blushes raising a hand to brush through his stripe of hair self-consciously. I look on
at Danielle and Chris: These are the emo-haters? More like emo-grumblers. Where is the
aggression? What happened to weeding out the bad ones?

Looking at the crowd tonight, it would seem Cape Town’s underground originals: the
Goths, the Punks and the Metal heads are fading out, becoming as acceptable and laughed
at as being hippy is. Watch out everyone, here comes the new popular culture! Anyone is
invited, as long as you wear some make-up and dye your hair! Before long, the true

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subculture will be a shadow of its former self. Emo-hating is rife on the internet, there are
many websites that encourage hatred of this new offshoot of subculture. On The Doors’
website, a rock club in Johannesburg, there is a chat room in which members violently
slate emo. They suggest that if they were to see an Emo in the street, they’d quite readily
inflict bodily harm on them. On Facebook, a group called the Anti Emo Federation (AEF)
actively discusses and encourage hatred of Emos. Not all of the Emo-haters are from
alternative culture. They have posted some disturbing cartoons on their website that
deride the Emo principles of bisexuality, reflection, the way that they dress and wear
there hair. Even so, Emo is taking over, and whether it is good or bad, we have to wonder
why it is emerging.

* * *

Friday night, the night before the fetish party, we make our way to a small bar called
Hectic on Hope in Gardens. Every Friday night, Hectic opens its upstairs section to all
those who are in love with the night. At eleven thirty we arrive outside the pub. The street
is almost deserted bar one or two cars. There are no car-guards in sight and the doors to
Hectic on Hope look firmly shut. My heart sinks. If I don’t get a shot at seeing EVOL
tonight, I won’t be able to get an idea of what gives this once-a-week club legendary
status. Those from the underworld, or at least those that I have spoken to, swear it’s one
of the definitive haunts in Cape Town. With a sigh I decide to at least get out of the car
and find out if I’m missing something. As we walk closer, I can see a warm glow of light
from one of the downstairs windows, but the windows upstairs are pitch black. We walk
up steps on the side of the building and to my delight and relief, there at the door is a
women waiting with a cash box. We pay the small entrance fee, a mere fifteen rand and
make our way across the black and white-tiled dance floor to the bar.

EVOL is ‘love’ spelled backwards. On the black dance floor, on the furthest wall, the
phrase ‘Oh god’s love’ is twisted to read ‘Evol dog ho’, upstairs on painted on the DJ box
is the word ‘dog’ which, if read backwards, is ‘god’. This strange sublimation, this
twisting the expected unexpectedly seems to be EVOL’s overall theme. As we journey

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over that dance floor, I can see a couple collapsed on coaches in what looks like a
separate chill area. The area is illuminated with purple fluorescent light. That couple
looks perfectly content and I envy them, thinking of the times when I’ve felt that way and
have been able to lie back and relax and be completely happy with my life as it is. We
walk past them and from the sickly sweet blue cloud that hangs over them, I realize their
content is marijuana-induced. Although I’m sure that EVOL wouldn’t encourage this in
their club, it is definitely a place where drugs may very well be found.

At the bar, I order our drinks and lean over the high bar counter to speak (no, yell over
the boom-boom of the music) to the bar lady. Does she know anything about alternative
culture? Does the word ‘emo’ conjure up any comments, memories, images? She smiles
in an ‘I’d like to help you but I’ve got no clue what you’re talking about’ way, and
suggests that I speak to Wentsel, the disc jockey on the second dance floor since he is
bound to know more. She directs me passed the fluorescent lights and couches that float
in clouds of blue haze, (the music gets softer here), down some stairs (two beats compete
with each other, there is not one song, but two fighting one another) and passed three
foosball machines into darkness. The seventies guitar riff that is squealing through the
speakers echoes in this garage-like place. In an eerie red light that bathes the DJ cage,
Wentsel is choosing songs. I introduce my cause and myself but Wentsel seems to regard
me with a measure of suspicion. Before I’m finished trying to explain myself, he stops
me and suggests I speak to his girlfriend and her friend who are sitting just outside. I
thank him and turn to go, but as I do, I see relief spread across his face.

His girlfriend and her friend are much more game to chat about alternative culture than
Wentsel was, and we sit talking about what it means to both of them. For Jeanine,
ascribing to just one subculture seems impractical; she enjoys aspects of all of them and
doesn’t feel that because she’ll listen to punk or Goth, she has to dress like one too. Her
dark make-up, piercings and sleek black bob make her distinctly alternative, but not
distinctly Gothic or Punk or Metal. Joné’s response is similar. With her blonde hair and
petit nose ring, she is also alternative. I ask them to describe emo to me. They look at
each other and roll their eyes heavenwards and Joné says, “It’s the fashionable Goth.” An

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interesting label, one that brings with it much controversy. Firstly, no self-respecting
Goth would dress up to be fashionable, and to say that Goth is fashionable is to imply that
it’s not serious about itself. That, of course, can’t be the case, since Goth epitomizes
seriousness.

Jared and I move back up to that first dance floor. By now the blue haze has cleared and
Jared and I sit on one of the couches under the fluorescent light and wait for a crowd to
start building up. On one of the walls, many posters are pasted, imitating an Andy
Warhol-style silk screen. The posters are of alternative archetypes. A women in a corset,
heavy make-up, staring questioningly right at me. A middle-aged man, wearing a
bloodied t-shirt, laughing a Buddha laugh, head thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut and
his hand clasped on each thigh. A younger guy wears a paper bag over his head. A sad
face is drawn on the bag and I wonder if this is the emo archetype. The tortured, faceless
one whose depression leaves him without an identity or unable to choose one….

I recognize very little of the music coming from the DJ booth upstairs. Most of the songs
have an eighties synth-style sound to them, or a strong seventies rock sound. All of it has
a really fun, crazy vibe that is not dark at all. The dance floor is lit up by colourful lights
that scoot across the floor in dazzling formations. People are arriving and slowly begin to
fill up the dance floor. I find it difficult to tell the difference between male and female
since both are wearing skinny jeans, sneakers and striped or checked shirts. Androgyny
reigns; the more female the guys are, the more male the girls are, all the better. Their
dancing consists of jumping, hopping and ‘flying’, arms outspread across the entire dance
floor. You need a lot of space on the dance floor to do that, only the subcultures would
invent a dance like that. Even when EVOL is full, there are nice airy gaps between
dancers. I’ve read somewhere that a dance like that is meant to express euphoria: Let’s
open wings and go flying around the dance floor.

Wherever I go, Emo is described as the ‘fashionable’, the ‘poser’, the ‘shallow’. Do these
people know what they’re talking about, or are they missing something important about
emotional kids?

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* * *

I must speak to a real Emo, so Mel - a friend of mine - suggests I meet her good friend
Kélene who she is sure must be a real Emo. Mel’s relationship with Kélene is an unlikely
one. They met in ‘clinic’, a safe haven where people unable to cope with life can take
time out. When I meet Mel and Kélene, they tell me how they met over a pair of nail
scissors and cigarettes (both items illegal in clinic). They both agree it was love at first
sight. Kélene is a self-proclaimed lesbian, while Mel has always thought if herself as
heterosexual, until she met Kélene. Both sport dark hair that falls past their shoulders,
both wear black and both have scars all over their wrists. Kélene is seventeen and Mel is
twenty-three, but their age discrepancy is not felt in any obvious way.

The three of us have arranged to meet and chat about Emo, so Sunday morning at eleven
I’m outside a glass box – the smoking section at a coffee shop – in a large shopping
centre. I struggle to open the door because the handle has collapsed, but finally after
some firm coaxing, it opens and I stumble inside this quarantined, climate-controlled
‘smoking room’. This is the glass cage where all the rebels, all the ‘I don’t care about
lung cancer and emphysema’ people can puff away at their nicotinned brand of choice
and sip on some caffeine.

Here sit the irresponsible parents puffing at their Gauloises while a toddler plays on the
floor with his hand-me-down dinky cars. Here sit the unhappy couple, the crusty old man
reading his newspaper and in the darkest corner, under the TV sit the pretty young dark
ones. Together they murmur and croon to one another. Mel and Kélene haven’t yet seen
me. They talk to one another animatedly and touch each other tenderly. As I walk up to
the table, Kélene, who is about seventeen lifts her big bright eyes up at me. She wears a
large black and grey striped zip-up sweater and sips tentatively at a black cup of coffee.
With cigarette in hand, glasses framing her make-upped eyes, her hair pulled back in a
messy pony-tail and her fringe parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears, she greats
me with a casual wave of her hand, sizing me up from her little patch of the booth we sit

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in. I feel her eyes picking at me, at my appearance, at my gestures. From the animated
conversation she was having with Mel earlier, Kélene now falls into silence. I get the
feeling that although she is quite keen to tell me her story, she is also suspicious of my
intruder-like formality. Shy at first, Kélene doesn’t say much and instead, Mel and I fill
the silence with meaningless small talk.

Once I’ve fortified myself with a sip of coffee, I turn to this young and cautious looking
girl and ask her, “You’re matriculating this year right?” Yes, she is. I wonder what she
will be doing once she is done with highschool. That seems an easy question, she’ll go to
college to study photography. We start to chat about her compositions. Mel proudly tells
me of the incredible sensitivity that Kélene shows in her work, touching Kélene on her
knee. Kélene is particularly concerned with photographing everyday stuff, “the stuff that
most people wouldn’t even think twice about,” Mel adds. Mel’s favourite one is of a line
for a stop sign repainted on the tarmac. She comments how Kélene has really thought
about the lighting and how the photograph captures the texture of the road, so that even
though it’s a picture with essentially no foreground or background – just one depth – the
texture that is captured makes the piece come alive. Like Emo culture, her own work is
emergent, young, experimental. Why capture every day things though? “Because we take
them for granted, because every little bit counts. Nothing is too small to go unnoticed,”
Kélene offers.

Today, right now, as we are around this table, it is all about Kélene. She is the one who
brought us together and that brings the light into her eyes. She could be just another
matric pupil trying to break out of highchool. To many, she is just another kid trying to
finish school, but her identity reaches further than that and being someone who is unable
to ignore the world’s pain makes her identify with Emo culture. Someone sensitive
enough to recognize the difficulties of reality. At her age, Kélene should be obsessed with
matric holiday and her boyfriend, not pain and depression.

We all go through feelings of rebelliousness when we’re younger right? Right. But the
question to ask yourself is how far did that so-called rebelliousness reach? Did a skollie

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cigarette behind the bicycle shed send your heart thumping with euphoric bursts of
adrenaline? Or was that the least of the deeds you did or thought of doing? At Kélene’s
school there is major drug abuse. Kids smoke marijuana on the field; tik-users take hits in
vacant classrooms. “Do you do drugs?” I ask her. “Yes, I smoke marijuana now and
again, and I’ve done tik once.” Her attitude is that life is meant to be experienced for
what it is and part of life is drugs. Kélene’s philosophy is, “Life sucks and I know it, but
I’m going to face that without turning a blind eye to any of it”. So instead of trying to
look on the bright side, she deals with it all head on. Like there are no tomorrows. It’s
living life to it’s fullest, which from an Emo’s point of view, is pretty fucking empty.

“There’s a difference between emo kids and emo people,” she states matter-of-factly. I
wonder how that is so, since they both sound like the same thing to me. “Emo-kids are
the ones who go out and buy all the stuff and get dressed all in black, but they don’t know
what it’s like to feel depro or they don’t really care.” ‘Depro’ is the slang for ‘depressed’
so I learn, and there is a lot of depro if you are an emo person. Kélene’s story isn’t
unique, but her life has been a tumultuous roller-coaster ride of reflection and turmoil
which she is often unable to deal with. She struggles with an eating disorder and cuts
herself on her arms and legs. Inner-turmoil made physical. There is a sense of
achievement for her, as if she finally released the incredible uneasiness that is life.

I can deal with the idea that reality is overbearing, I can even deal with the idea that being
positive is merely a way of trying to escape from that reality. If reality is so overbearing,
why live through it? Why this boring sense of resignation that seems to rule Emo
philosophy? Surely that attitude only perpetuates the problem, sending one’s life into a
monotonous cycle of self-mutilation and blood loss? It is human nature to fight against
the unpleasant. Are you more likely to be Emo if you’ve gone through major trauma as a
child? I ask Kélene to describe her relationship with parents. “I hate my dad.” She says,
accentuating the ‘t’ in ‘hate’. Fine, any teenager could feel that way about their parents.
“Do you want to know how my dad deals with the fact that I have an eating disorder? He
tells me to eat healthy and exercise often.” She rolls her eyes, “When I decided to tell my
mom that I have an eating disorder, we were standing chatting in the kitchen. And she

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was really supportive at first and then all of a sudden she started screaming at me and told
me I was just being a drama queen. That’s the relationship I have with my parents.”

So, many of us have a bad relationship with our parents and we have to learn to live with
that behind a smile. Emos seem to enjoy wallowing in despair over things like that. It’s
Mel’s turn to offer an answer. She shakes her head and remarks, “It’s accepting reality
for what it really is, without trying to cover that up with a lie.” Taking on a positive
attitude is the equivalent of being in denial about how bad reality is. “Emo is not allowing
denial,” Mel clarifies. That’s why, when reality gets overbearing and when it’s so beyond
comprehension that they cannot feel it anymore, cutting, or slashing at their own flesh is
one way to manifest the pain physically. Kélene pulls her sweater off of her left shoulder
and there on her bicep are dark scars, the kind that mean that the cuts were more like
deep slashes than superficial scratches. Her left arm is a patchwork of this dark scar
tissue. Her mum has bought her tissue-oil which is meant to help the scars heal, but
Kélene will hear none of it. They are her scars and she’ll be damned if she is going to
have them fade. Perhaps they are a memory, a trophy to show that she has suffered some
of the pain of reality.

* * *

“Not all of us cut ourselves, ” Stef’n tells me. Going through some photos on his
computer, we come across pictures of his own bleeding wrists. The blood in the pictures
is luminous red, fresh from its vessel. “These are pictures that very few people have
seen.” Stef’n is a Goth and also the manager and DJ of the only Goth club in Cape Town,
Gotham. The cutting is common to Emo and Goth, as it is with Punk. We need only
remember Sid Vicious from Sex Pistols and his cutting frenzies on stage. Perhaps the
subcultures choose to cut for different reasons, but it exists in each all the same. I know
that for Kélene, cutting is a way to bring reality closer. For Stef’n, pain seems to indulge
a major Gothic philosophy: that pain is part of pleasure. Sensuality incorporates pain and
this is how cutting comes to form part of Gothic hedonism.

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“Darkness can be so exquisitely beautiful,” Stef’n says to me. It’s his mantra, his life
philosophy. There is much beauty to be found in the darkness. I arrive outside a house in
Greenpoint as the sun is going down. From the look of things, the front of the house was
painted a long time ago, but the old paint gives the place a look of authentic neglect, as if
the vampires were actually living behind that door. I get out my car and walk up the front
steps to ring the doorbell. I reach for the brass knocker, looking forward to the brass-
against-brass clang that will awaken the vampires. But there on the side of the door is an
electric buzzer. I pull myself out of my reverie and press it. A muffled phony bell ring
echoes behind the door. Soft footfalls on wood, that dull clunk, clunk noise come closer
and closer. Someone inside has heard me. A latch is unlocked, the door handle turns and
there Stef’n is, cat clasped to his breast, a German Shepherd-cross behind him, ready to
greet me. “Come in, ” he lisps from behind his many piercings, “Would you like to go out
or should we stay here?” I opt for staying here. I want to see him where he is most
comfortable and that, he later tells me is amongst his family and in this house.

The family he speaks of is not the one he grew up with. In fact his mother and father
never knew that Stef’n was a Goth until recently. His adopted family is the Gothic
community in Cape Town and their house of worship is Gotham, a tiny club tucked away
in Observatory. “I’m older than you think I am. I went to the army when you still had to.
I was finished school in the eighties,” Stef’n confesses to me in his soft Afrikaans accent.
With dead straight black hair, both ear lobes carrying various pieces of silver and
eyebrows shaved off, Stef’n is himself a true Goth. I’ve come here to hear his opinion on
Emo as well as to learn what it is that defines Gothic culture. Perhaps if understand that, I
might begin to understand where Emo comes from. His reaction to my question, “Define
Goth,” is a nervous tucking of black hair behind an ear, holding his arms close to him and
saying politely, “Rather ask me specific questions, it is very hard to define what Goth is.”
But, throughout the interview, Stef’n keeps adding to a list of things that define Gothic
culture. According to him, many Goths have had something sad happen to them, they
don’t necessarily want to be filled with sadness, but they are. You can be Goth whether
you dress up or not. You can tell a lot about someone by looking into their eyes, in fact,
Stef’n is adamant that you can tell if someone is Goth by looking deep into their eyes.

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“I have social disorder,” Stef’n frankly states, his hands clasped and his shoulders
slouched facing his glowing computer screen. He is happier spending days on end in his
room than he ever would be venturing out into public. He can’t stand walking amongst
strangers; he is an outcast by choice. So how has he been able to run a club – a place
where you necessarily come into contact with strangers – for so many years? Stef’n
doesn’t skip a beat, it’s because those who visit the club are his family, and that makes
being around many people bearable for him.

“Most Goths think that they are really ugly. I know I do and I know that a lot of other
Goths do too. Although they shouldn’t.” Bad self-image means that a Gothic beauty
regime costs a pretty penny. There is no price too high for perfection. The gorgeous
corseted girls spend a lot of money on their outfits and appearances. Their hair is black,
no bodily hair is allowed, so hair removal is necessary and they pierce their bodies often.
Make-up can only be the best quality, especially when you wear it every day. All of this
is expensive to upkeep. In Stef’n’s case, it costs three thousand five hundred rand to get
his hair to be as dead straight and black as it is. Granted, he only visits a hairdresser once
a year, but even then, I would choke at a bill of R 3500. How different is it really between
the Goth’s cost of looking beautiful and the image-conscious Emos? The difference I see
in this is perhaps a preference for certain styles and trends, but certainly no difference in
principal.

Well then, what does Stef’n think defines Emo’s? “They don’t really love the darkness,
not the way that Goths do anyway,” and that’s why there is antagonism towards Emos. I
see many parallels between those who call themselves Emo and those who call
themselves Goths.

* * *

Emo-haters are all around us at this fetish party, and yet we join them, dancing amongst
them as an Emo couple. They move provocatively, slowly, snake-like, moving their

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drapes of clothing with a swoosh of air. The cage dancers show the white of their eyes
and the crowd seethes against itself in a tangle of black. Stef’n is DJing tonight and he
has chosen a great song, Sisters of Mercy’s song ‘Vision thing’. As the crowd grows, I
am forced against a beautiful Goth woman and for a moment I see the archetypes of
Gothic and Emo culture meshing without choice. The world grows smaller and the luxury
of denial gets more difficult when the thing you want to dislike is in your face every day.
Like it or not, Emo is growing at a huge rate. Yes, the wolves and vampires have a new
cousin they must learn to live with. Emo is here to stay.

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Epilogue

My journey has led me to places beyond the black curtains and I see a vision. In the
vision, a beautiful Gothic maiden reaches her pale and delicate hand out to a little boy
huddled in a corner. The boy’s hair is black and it covers his face in a swish of black. He
lifts his eyes up to this dark siren and they fill with tears of gratitude. The tears stream
down his face as he takes hold of her outstretched hand and he lifts him gently to his feet.
Together they look up to the horizon and see the black sun trying in vain to arouse itself.
The Gothic maiden lets out a piercing scream that echoes all the way to that horizon, it
reaches the sun and for a moment, the darkness beats against their skin, warming them to
their cold bones. And then the sun seems to collapse, exhausted from that one last effort.

Both boy and maiden look at each other in despair. Their future is dying as they look on.
Suddenly, the boy’s streaming tears stop and he looks down at his feet. Beneath the dark
underbrush, he sees coiled a snake as if dormant. Without thinking twice, he seizes its
head. The snake arches its body in alarm, flashes of blue light come from its mouth and
with its head in his one hand and the hand of the maiden in his other, the boy runs to the
sun. First slowly, gently, making sure that the maiden does not lose her footing. She sees
the determined look he gives to the sun and understands. She must run with him, for her
life. The snake keeps uncoiling as if an endless serpent lies beneath that dark underbrush.
The boy and maiden run, chasing the dark sun’s dying rays. They reach the edge of the
world, and only pausing to let the maiden’ hand go, the boy leaps up, up to the sun. The
wind of change carries him and the ever-uncoiling snake, to the sun’s edge. With a blow
of such might that the earth is shaken, the boy lifts the blue flashing snake above his head

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and plugs this life source deep into the sun. In an instance, the sun darkens further, and
the boy feels hopelessness creep into his bones. He begins to fall backwards to earth. His
body comes crashing down beside the maiden and she falls to him in the greatest despair.
In her crying she does not see the sun blooming new life. Behind her tears she starts to
see the boy stirring, his blue lips becoming red once more. Slowly, his breathing becomes
full, the sun warms their skin and the boy with the black fringe is able to sit up. The sun,
the earth and the Gothic maiden all thank him for his courage.

Word count without Epilogue: 5082

Word count with Epilogue: 5562

16
Bryony Whitehead whtbry002

Sources

Danielle
Cell: 083 599 5039
Email: anime_geko@yahoo.com

Chris Beukes
Cell: 072179 5517
Email: razorrabbits@gmail.com

Joné Geldenhuys
Cell: 079 139 2562

Jeanine De Goede
Cell: 072 134 2470

Alex Montgomery
Cell: 082 505 2617
Email: alex@montgomery.co.za

Emma Withers
Cell: 076 227 0843
Email: ewithers@gmail.com

Margie Serdyn
Cell: 083 652 6340

17
Bryony Whitehead whtbry002

Mon Cheri Fourie

Cell: 082 669 9555

Mel Stockland
Cell: 084 833 9400
Email: cheetah_d@hotmail.com

Kélene Poyurs
Cell: 076 220 0874
Email: the.cardenal@gmail.com

Stef’n
Cell: 082 429 5033
Email: bluminstrel@gmail.com

18
Bryony Whitehead whtbry002

References

Anti Emo Federation

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2455416083, 27/05/2007

Andy Radin, What the heck is emo anyway?

http://www.fourfa.com/index.html, 19/05/2007
The Doors Night Club, http://thedoorsnightclub.co.za/xoops/modules/newbb/,
19/05/2007

19