His cape afloat behind him, the man stumbled down the street a mumbling, incoherent hulk. He didn’t know what time it was though the autumn evening allowed just enough moonlight for him to see.
His head ached and his chest burned-or was it the other way around?
Usually his body, containing a given amount of absinthe, reacted so sweetly. Thus, he concluded, he was not full of the drink. and why he had not taken a carriage home, he didn’t know. Why had he made the supreme error of walking on legs as uncooperative as the laces on a woman’s corset?
He decided to sit on the curb for just a moment before laboring on. In response, his stomach revolted and sent out an abundance of foodstuffs eaten hours before. He felt better. Try as he might though, he could not stand.
A blurry someone approached him, saying something he couldn’t understand. He fainted again and began to commune with the occupants of his expansive and tortured dreams.
He vowed to never leave them.
The October 10, 1849 issue of the Baltimore Clipper newspaper devoted an entire column to the death of the writer Edgar Allan Poe who had been found unconscious on the sidewalk days before.
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Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin
Previously Published in Doorknobs and Bodypaint
Photograph by: José A. Warletta
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)
