Gather ’round my children
I’ve a tale to tell
like our fathers used to sing:
“Dont dig a grave
for the other man–
lest you yourself fall in”
cpe

A short version of The Masque of the Red Death
by
Edgar Allan Poe

[It was a plague:]
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous…. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores… The scarlet stains upon the… face of the victim, were the [marks] which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men.

And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were… incidents of half an hour.

But the Fop Prince Thought Welding a Wall Shut Would Protect Him and his Cohort
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless… 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.

…A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and… welded the bolts [shut]. [So there was no means for any to enter the abbey, nor leave it.

The abbey was amply provisioned [with everything the royals needed, they thinking they had taken all ] precautions [to] bid defiance to contagion.

The external world could take care of itself.

The Prince Did Not Care About the Helpless and Instead Held Parties and Celebrations in a Sealed Abbey

In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. 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. All these and security were within. [Only outside the walls] was the “Red Death”. [Inside were only pleasures.]

It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion– while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad– that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade… [held in seven chambers,] the windows were of stained glass whose colour varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened.

… in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room.

The Seventh Chamber with the Omen of the Gonging Clock
…But [in the last chamber, the seventh one … the] black chamber, the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme/ [It] produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this [seventh] apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. … when the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound …of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause momentarily in their performance, to harken to the sound…

The waltzers ceased their evolutions. There was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company. And, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, …the giddiest grew pale. The more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation.

But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly. The musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion.

[But] then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace 3,600 seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar… There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were 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.

To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these —the dreams— writhed in and about taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, …there strikes the ebony clock… And then, for a moment [again], all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand.

But the echoes of the chime die away —…and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever…

The Stranger at the Masquerade Party Wearing the Masque of Red Death
But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes;

and the blackness of the sable drapery apalls; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears –they who indulged in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But the 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 then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept in, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled.

And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly 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.

And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.

…In truth the masquerade licence of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum. …

Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

…The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around.

But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

After First Ignoring Death, the Prince is Outraged that Death Dares to Enter His Private Sealed-in Chambers. The Prince pursues Death to Kill It

When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) 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 of the courtiers who stood near him—”who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise from the battlements!”

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly, for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker.

…none …put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince’s person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls,

[the red splotched masked stranger] made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple—through the purple to the green—through the green to the orange—through this again to the white—and even thence to the violet, without a movement …made to arrest him.

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.

He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet [black] apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer.

There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero.

The Revelers Think They Too Can Vanquish Death and Throw Themselves into the Black Chamber to lay Hands on Death– and Find That The Perpetrator of death is Invisible

Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding [that under the] corpse-like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, [there was no one that could be seen].

And [thus] 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 [each died] in the despairing posture of his fall.

And the life of the ebony clock went [silent] with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And [in the sealed abbey] Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

____________
CODA

The Masque of Red Death, features a gonging Death Clock which is ignored time and again, the clock having given twelve chances to awaken the royals from their drug-like gayity and their anesthetized-response re concern for others.

Thus, the wealthy ignore utterly the Spirit of Death hulking through the chambers amid the revelers; Death being splattered with the signs of the Red plague going unobserved amongst them, even up close.

Yet the royalty gather openly by invitation to their own ‘protected’ dances. And all the royalty is still without care. For weren’t they the elite, weren’t they the clever, weren’t they the bravest of brave, weren’t they the insulated by their wealth, relationships, their brotherhood and sisterhood, their say-so power of ordaining anything they wanted at the drop of a sash?

And wasnt the Red Death only for the great unwashed, the ‘not to be bothered with’. Certainly a disease ‘of the subhuman masses’ that was ‘the less fortunate’s own fault’ could not touch those born into incomparable riches –who ironically grasped and held power in a death grip.

The hubris of the abbey’s celebrating occupants, is perhaps a story for most any time there are dictators who loathe the needful, the desperate, and turn away to revel whilst locking themselves away into an insular gathering without heed, vapidly thinking building and welding walls shut will somehow keep them safe– because they say so… because, not that they are invincible, but because as it is told in many a fairytale, that they think they arte higher than Creator,

So it goes. And has gone.
Let us still pray.

————
Image by DDP ©2020, all rights reserved, here with permission