Obscurity, The Thirty-First Chapter
In which we spend a sleepless night in the company of those left behind by the widow.
e last read The Thirtieth Chapter—in which the Comte met his end at last. If you have recently joined us, start with The Prologue.
On the night of the Comte’s murder, there were three members of society for whom sleep would not come.
The first was the child, who watched from his window as the moon grew so large it might have eaten every star in the sky for supper. It hung, suspended amidst twinkling raindrops, dripping its glow down to the world down below, as the boy kept guard over the night and the miscreants who dwelt in it.
Night after night he kept his eyes trained on deep recesses the light could not reach, pockets unseen by that celestial stardust. And in those darkened corners, unlit by the moon's rays, the child bore witness to God’s most vile creatures, those who had been shut off from the light as prisoners doomed to the deepest dungeon floors—who wept at their own indiscretions, their tears sparkling from their eyes, as they at last touched the twilight.
The captain had regaled the child with stories of the Chateau D’If, and the boy could see it in his dreams. Far from the shores of civilization, adrift in an unforgiving sea, their deviant demeaners shackling them to their god forsaken cells, tormented souls dwelt in a dungeon more deleterious than most—its recesses haunted by the sinking sins of their pasts, it’s ceilings dripping with their despair. No longer able to see the light, their eyes became blind, so accustom had they become to their darkness.
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