Infernal Revolutions Read Online Free

which by now was crawling specklike up a distant hill. Mincing along amidst the glorious scenery of the Downs, I had a brief moment of ecstasy before my pumps started to bite, and ‘twas back once more to the mundane miseries of life. Malodorous Summer! I thought to myself, Evil Afternoon! Who in their right mind could love life? What was it but a rotting pile of corpses? Or a candlelit gallery of grinning skulls? To the satisfaction of my poetic self, other images of what exactly life was started to queue up in my brain. Pleasingly, none of them were complimentary, meaning that my
Night Thoughts
were starting to move again. Elated in my misery, I could not wait to get back to my garret and give the living the hammering they deserved. The most determined macaroni on the turnpike that afternoon, I vowed to show them all – one way or another, sooner or later – exactly what stuff I was made of.

2
    The Rescue

    I awoke the next morning determined to spend the day as if the events at Philpott Hall had never happened. I washed, attended to my toilet, and made myself a large dish of tea. Then, in skull cap and morning gown, I hobbled over to my table, sat down, and sifted through my papers. Lurking somewhere beneath a strewn pile of poetry books and tattered old copies of the
Sussex Weekly Advertiser
were my
Night Thoughts
. I found them, shook off a dusting of biscuit crumbs, and read from where I’d left off the night before.

    Alas, Fortunato, the world is not for the likes of you and me
    Its odious stink makes cadavers of roses smell.
    The sun (dread luminary!) lightens only the mood of fools
    Who bask like drowsy bees in its killing rays.
    Deluded mortals! Unhappy wretches! Fatal disposition!
    Life is a hideous Monster that devours those who praise it.
    I picked up my pen, dabbed it in my inkwell, and set to with a vengeance.

    Wrap yourselves instead in the shroud-like majesty of the sable senses
    Seek solace at the arboreal throne of the screech owl
    Loiter palely in the Ballrooms of the Dead
    And make sombre obeisance to the grandeur of the Ebon King!

    Here the flame of inspiration flickered, sputtered, and then went out completely, leaving me in darkness yet again. Morbidly aware of the need to push on, I tried to force out words and images using brain power alone, but the utter gibberish that resulted was so abhorrent to me that I had to stop. Feeling the vapours coming on, I tossed my pen on the table, got up, and stuck my head out of the open window, there to look down with gloomy horror on the passing populace of Brighthelmstone. They were a scurvy lot, and not much interested in poetry by the looks of it. But then I knew no-one who was, so what was the point of my existence? Why not pack it all in and try to be brainlessly happy? Why not, indeed, marry Amanda Philpott, and use her money to drink, whore and gamble my life away, like any other rogue?
    Resolution broken now, I allowed the rest of my mother’s arguments to come flooding in. I had to consider what to do anyway, for ‘twas clear that I could not finish my poem before my father evicted me from my garret. Trying to apply reason rather than emotion to the problem, I concluded that it was after all a straight choice between Grub Street and Philpott Hall. One course of action was morally clean and physically dirty: the other was physically clean and morally dirty. I knew which course I wanted to take, but was I strong enough mentally to endure the hardship of Grub Street? Had I the talent, the dedication, the education? The first two were doubtful enough, but the third was a definite handicap, for my schooling had taken place at home, under the tutelage of Dr Werner Habel-Schnelling, one of the Hanover crowd who had come over in the wake of Georges Ein, Zwei und Drei. Apparently Dr Werner (as I called him to save time) had a step-cousin who knew someone who knew the King’s mother, a fact that squashed itself onto his visiting card