Falling into decay, I forgot the real darkness of my former life; oh what a marvellous descent into madness. I held the knowledge of the oak tree and I had the crescent moon forever above my eyes, a remembrance of the yore. But now, I can inhale the scent of opium once again, yes, the decadence of our time in it's finest final act. A painting watches me through the hall, alongside the pale orbits and the moans of hallucination. The portrait has it's stares bleeding while murmuring: 'You are possessed by these very walls and shall never flee. Welcome back to the shadows'.
I lost myself alongside the margins of the Styx again; what a dreadful tragedy, what a graceful delight. I lost the thread of our gods' loom while marking my voyage through the riverside. But, the Styx was merely another narrow lane of London in the year of 1891, and the demons, oh frightening forms that haunted me, were solely everyone I once knew. Perhaps it was just a hallucination, a dream with forms more real than reality, caused by the effect of the opium flowing through my veins. Isn't it so gentle the sound that comes from the graves? Isn't it so gentle the way I lay down upon the grass? Isn't it warming you, the world on flames? I taste the ashes of your body, I taste the ashes of my undeath.
Upon my feet again, I cleaned the dust of my black gown with my own hands and walked myself away to the door. It has been a lovely catastrophe, indeed, the terror of misconception. Putting my head out of the door, the cold soft wind and the mist of the East End welcomed me once again; it was time to go home.
YOU ARE READING
eighteen ninety-one
Historical Fiction"eighteen ninety-one" is the real declaration of anguish, a cry for a time not lived, a desire to escape the real world. ~ As the tale begins, there's a young lady who is at one of the many opium dens of th...
