Well...
if it isn't my good friend,The Poet.
I can't say I'm surprised to find you here.
Whose grave are you visiting today?
Who's there?
Weeping at the same grave over again?
Why didn't you choose any of the others?
Ligeia, Annabel?
Or perhaps Berenice?
So sure Virginia was going to be the pick
for today's tortured journey.
There's no denying your affection for her.
What was that poem of yours?
"It was many and many a year ago
"That a maiden there lived whom you may know
"And this maiden she lived with no other thought...
"Than to love and be loved by me."
What am I doing?
I recite poetry with a statue!
I must be drunk.
Or mad.
Or both.
I am hallucinating.
Should I answer this one with another of your stanzas?
"All that we see or seem
"ls but a dream within a dream..."
Still you have no clue to who I am.
I am your shadow, your soul.
The object of your obsession.
Are you mad?
My obsession?
Recognize me now, Poe?
Are you feeling lonely?
Longing again for the departed?
Silence!
I came here for solitude.
Not loneliness.
Always obsessed with the dead.
A great subject for your writings.
It is not obsession
but rather inspiration which drives my writing.
I wouldn't define it that way.
Remember Roderick Usher?
His compulsive obsession for his departed sister Madeline
caused such a nervous agitation
that it lead him to an early demise.
It was brotherly love, not obsession.
Obsession, superstition,
unrequited love.
Who do you want to convince?
It was a magical place that filled my childhood
with visions to stir the imagination.
And now, during the whole
of a dull, dark,and soundless day
in the autumn of another year,
I was alone, passing through
a singularly dreary tract of country;
and at length found myself
within reach of the melancholy House of Usher.
I know not how it was,but with my first glimpse
of the house after so long,
an unexpected sense of insufferable gloom
pervaded my spirit.
What was it?
What unnerved me so
in the contemplation of the House of Usher?
Its proprietor, Roderick Usher,
had been one of my boon companions in boyhood;
but many years had elapsed since our last meeting.
His letter, however,
had lately reached me in a distant part
of the country.
I scanned more narrowly
the real aspect of the building.
Its principal feature
seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity.
The writer spoke of acute bodily illness,
of a mental disorder which oppressed him,
and brought an earnest desire to see me,
as his best,and indeed his only
personal friend, in an attempt
to alleviate some of his malady;
and I, accordingly,
obeyed forthwith
what I still considered a very singular
and haunting summons.
I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe.
Frederick!
My dear friend,
I have after all this time
been waiting for your arrival!
I at first thought it to be
an overdone cordiality.
It was with difficulty that I could bring myself
to admit the identity of the man being before me
with the companion of my early boyhood.
He entered into what he conceived to be
the nature of his malady.
The most insipid food was alone endurable.
The odors of all flowers proved oppressive;
his eyes were tortured by even a faint light.
And there were but peculiar sounds
which inspired him with horror.
I began to question my worthiness
of being present for my friend,
who now existed in a world of which I held no key.
I shall perish!
I dread the events of the future!
I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive
when I must abandon
life and reason together,
in some struggle
with the grim phantasm...
...fear.
But what do you fear, Roderick?
I must know what is it that torments
your every moment.
I admit that
much of the peculiar gloom which afflicts me could be traced
to a severe and long continued illness.
I speak of my tenderly beloved sister, Madeline.
My sole companion for so many long years,
my last
and only relative on earth.
Roderick spoke with such bitterness,
which made me shudder.