Author’s Note:

I’m well aware of the difficulty of the prose of this passage. I understand that the passage may be confusing, that my thoughts seem to jumble together. The reason I decided to do this was that I wanted to create a surreal dreamscape; I wanted to get into the mind of a man who was going mad.

Much of the story was inspired by a literal interpretation of Poe’s lyrics, in which the city comes to life and consumes itself in the raging waters of the sea. I took free license with many of the passages, and Hayden’s story is entirely my creation.

My reasons for writing this piece are private, but I will say that I have often marveled at the ease with which we, as humans, have found in drifting into a life of decadence. In this day and age, when the concept of Evil has been debased by relativism, we often lose ourselves in the vices of here-and-now. I have no intentions making any religious statements, but I believe our souls are a symbol of our conscience. If we destroy one, we do the same to the other…

And now, Poe’s “City in the Sea” in its entirety:

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently -
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free -
Up domes - up spires - up kingly halls -
Up fanes - up Babylon-like walls -
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers -
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye -
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass -
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea -
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave - there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide -
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow -
The hours are breathing faint and low -
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence