| It was in the autumn, one of those rare warm autumn days where the streets are quiet and the fallen leaves play tag around your ankles, and I had found myself here again in this city on the river. Upon my most recent arrival in New Orleans, a sense of intolerable despair permeated my soul. I say intolerable; for the feeling was devoid of the comforting, often poetic, sentiment, with which my mind usually translates even the most unsympathetic displays of the bleak or appalling. It was a gnawing utter depression of the soul that had begun to grow in the pit of my stomach, a feeling of despair not unlike that of the waking-dream of one not far removed from the intoxication of ecstasy. The garish glow of the sun whitewashed the homes around me, and was quickly giving rise to a minute throbbing behind my left eye. The scent of fallen leaves, and discarded dreams hung in the air, giving the oak shaded street even more of a sense of lonliness that it normally possessed. No more than three months ago I had stood here beside Theron, at the corner of Prytania and St. Ann with far different emotions than those that now plagued me. I remember, how should I forget, the warmth of his flesh, the lies, and the genius and guile of death as it stalked me. ....... [ data transmission suddenly terminated ]
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