Thread by @MattCarr55

‘THE 'RED DEATH' had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal: the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution.’

‘But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated…’

‘…he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.’

‘This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron.’

‘The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.’

‘The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad.’

‘There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.’

‘But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock.’

‘And thus…it happened…that before the last echoes of the last chime had …sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before.’

‘When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image …he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste, but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

Who dares? he demanded hoarsely.’

‘It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all.’

‘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.’

THE END

Apologies to Edgar Allan Poe #JohnsonOutToday #ToryPartyGames #Cheeseandwine #JohnsonMustResign

@threadreaderapp please unroll