Smoking in the rain, under a huge umbrella, catching up with old friends though I have no clue who they are!! None of their faces I recall… So I am wondering what am I doing here?

Fast-forward… I found myself in a house watching the people in it move like puppets on strings.. Ooohhh… I get it!! Its a marionette show. In a room, I watched the shadows stretch till the parody of a travesty played itself out to its tragic end…

Turned around and saw others watching the same show through a broken window pane… ran up to them, beating at the window frantically asking them to let me out… But they skittered away like skittish mice while the puppets behind me laughed and then I realized its just another dream the boogieman planted in my head..

Oh ye faithless chicken shit!! You brought me to The Harlot’s House!! My muse giggled like a little girl, madness ringing like silent bells and sang this song about Jezebel

THE HARLOT’S HOUSE
by: Oscar Wilde

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot’s house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play,
The “Treues Liebes Herz” of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin,
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons,
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.

They took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed,
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette,
Came out, and smoked its cigarette,
Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,”The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.”
But she–she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in..
Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.

…But I made the puppets fall, one by one… like cadavers thrown from the top of the tower… like leaves in autumn once they have out-lived their usefulness. Fall, puppets, fall…. And I looked to the boogieman and wondered if he liked my answer to his prank.

The beast was here all along…