Goodnight, Mr. Poe

I don’t think my parents really knew what they were doing when they bought me a “children’s edition” of six Poe short stories when I was about nine or ten.  How much of a children’s book is “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” or “The Pit and the Pendulum?”

It led to something of a lifelong obsession.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

I missed his 200th birthday, but on the anniversary of his death, I can bid him in pace requiescat.