The Masque of the Red Death

From The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe (1842).

Podcast performed by Jessica Harmon

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 pores, 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...

...And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darknes and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Soundtrack:

Sergei Prokofiev, "Romeo and Juliet - Suite No. 1, Op. 64a: Masks"

Sergei Prokofiev, "Romeo and Juliet - Suite No. 2 Op. 64 - Montagues and Capulets (Dance of the Knights)"

Ratatat, "17 Years"

Evanescence, "Haunted"

Linkin Park, "In the End"