The Grey Painting / Contract With M

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This is my pathology
my final, dark deceit
this is my undoing-
My conversation piece.

so don your mask, oh fickle fate
let us see the face you choose
dim the lights, let loose the hellfire
sparkle endless, let us cruise

from the bar to the gates.
there's a knock at the door
Faust and Hedon smile from the corner
as we leave the swirling floor

Through the ruby gateway,
There's light and yet, frightened, we
run from room to glance into the chamber
but within looms dancing spiders labour
We ride or dive and the pattern begins-

again.

It's another late night
we're watching everything wasting away
and scrawling pieces of something
bigger than we'll ever be
on little scraps of paper.
The scrawled concepts,
every now and again
whisper; like we do
some kind of moonlit mantra.

and back to the beginning again,
we set out for heaven
see the light going in circles
and he murmurs across,
prescibing our damnation:

"Excessive desire to see things in colour,
Terminal loss of apathy, emotional overload..
another case of severe normality, here;
in the one place one would expect it.
Unsurprising, isn't it. May I offer you an apple?"

he smiles and beckons us towards the dark
and in my heart I know the truth
and catagorise everything I'm about to lose
We wander towards the masquerade.

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cookies to anyone who can tell me the significance of the title(s).