The mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.

Red by Mike Bennett. 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 pause with dissolution.

The scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon the face of the victim,

were the pest ban 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 the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.

When his dominions were half depopulated,

he summoned to his presence, a thousand hail 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 courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and messy hammers

and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses

of despair or frenzy from within. The Abbey was amply provisioned. With such

precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. the external world could take care of itself.

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 improvisatory, there were ballet dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty, there was wine.

All these and security were within. Without was the red death.

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