‘Tis a cautionary tale I have to tell. 

Oh misery. Oh woe. 

Of woe and misery I speak.

Ne’er a more wretched creature than I could be made to endure such a beautiful morn as this. Tis this truly the light, come at last to dispel the darkness of this long and enervated night? Alas! This loathsome, beautifully vexatious blaze dost pierce mine eyes as penance for enterprises I indulged throughout the night.

I beseech thee night, come back! Come back and cast upon me again thine shadows, dispel this light which illuminates my gloom with ray upon ray of golden glare upon my solecism, upon my sin. Let it leave me till the morrow – let me linger still beneath thine darkened shroud. Let tarry the sun, and the birds of song, let them tarry too, for I, wretched beast I have become, am weary.

I must make haste to close the windows and draw the shades, and beneath cascade of curtain, dispel this morn mine eyes cannot yet be made behold, and sleep, sleep until this melancholy and madness takes leave of me. Sleep, sleep. Sleep until the morrow.

Twas mine own folly. Twas mine own lamentable vice which left me in this state. I own this misfortune, indeed, it twas I, welcomed it with open arms, unconcerned with repercussion of mine own action. If blame be assigned, I bear sole burden of it. If my machinations be damned, so damn them. I knew better, and better I chose not. Fie!

Throughout the longsome night, the bells tolled with each hour, beseeching me to quit the obsession and pay them heed. I did not, holding fast to my indefatigable resolve, if not quickening it, to ignore my sensibilities and feed the hunger I could not seem to sate.

It began in innocent effort to abate a tedium birthed by the boredom of a restlessness I found myself unable to quell. I chanced upon a singular activity to pass the time I’d begun to despise and despair of, then grew from that accursed remedy, a desire, a rapacious longing, increased with each passing hour, to indulge this delight regardless of all rational inclinations to abdicate myself from the thing I discerned to be draining me of thought and vitality and constitution, accounting for my now fearsome countenance as I pen these words to the page before me.

Oh, dearest stranger, and oh, thine most especial of friends, lend your sensibilities to these words I’ve imparted, lest ye arrive at a fate such as mine, make no vigil of a Netflix original . . .

© Crystal R. Cook