'To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty'.-Maximilien Robespierre

Purgatory, I am told is a conceptual manifestation of our reflective vision of a pure state of reprobation, where the souls of the dead tarry in uncertainty. The terror of confronting the tendentious four judges, who stared at me with contempt and antipathy, was exceedingly surreal and ineluctable, as the barbigerous criminals were conducted to the horrific corridor of death and oblivion. The wailing and the pleas for mercy are negated, by the sanguiferous stench of death. It is an affreux scene all too common and prolific to witness, with the heap of the deceased corpses that are fed to the mongrels. The heavy drops of the water then begin to echo and echo, above my cell and the beetles fall into the well, like fallen roric drops afterwards. The weary fingers of the imprisoned souls scratch their names constantly, in the eerie cracks of the scribable walls. The eternal darkness that encompasses my dungeon will never escape me or be relentless. Death is the culmination of a never-ending cycle of a repetitive sequence that will not be merciful. Thus, the harsh condemnation and renitence I must endure will serve the purpose of humanity and the zoetic course of my destiny, but know that I was once a son of the deity that had created me in his image.

I can hear the austerulous guards approaching with their methodical footsteps, as the pulsations of my heart increase by the second, and my pulse becomes caprizant. Shortly my solitary cell opens, as I am led through the obscure narrow corridor of death that I cannot obstrigillate autexousiously. There is a faint gleam of light that shines upon the dull oubliette above me and beyond the gates of the Conciergerie that are open.

When you have read the entirety of this factual account, I shall be six feet under and stone dead. My executioner awaits me, as the caws of the noscible raven resound, with the captivated onlookers waiting for the commencement of the gory and funest spectacle. The dreaded sound of the bells of the belfry I can hear, along the procession of my death. The dapocaginous madness of the presage has begun-veritas nunquam perit!

Heretofore of death I can only attest of my own, and the clear vestige of my nepenthean certitude that had emerged, from the gloomy shadow of my viduous soul. Unto the septentrional and opaque corridor of nullibicity I travelled, until my body sojourned, within the horrible blade of the guillotine. There are the brazen fools, who say death is a predilection, but I shall fancy more the sober truth, my death was predestined, as inevitable. I assure you that I did not choose death-merely, it chose me! The reaper of death preferred me, over the million mortals, who had succeeded me. There beneath the soot and grime of the earth lies my headless pallid cadaver. All that remains of me is the spectral guise that haunts, as a bedeviled shadow from the belfry. Each and every day when I bajulated it was to relive the inscrutable occurrence of an unyielding phantasmagoric episode of my predistinguished death of sheer terror that had no surcease. I never broke these heavy manacles of great oppression that bound me, but I would roam the earth, as a sempiternal wanderer of the night in exposure. The eternal breath of the world of mortality and assectation nevermore! Hitherto, you will know of the bold ebony bird of chthonian reverence that had wielded over me illimitable dominion-the Angel of Death.

Hence, allow me to relate to you faithfully, my sombre account willfully. The historic name that I was once christened bears no significance, for it is a hollow attachment predisposed to my benefactor. Therefore, I shall not entertain you in the vappous involution of selfish indulgence and sophistry. The place of my birth does not matter, nor the place of my death-but if you must know, the period I lived was the bouleversement of the French Revolution. I was once a mortal sent to the earth to live, but my life was too dispirited, in the wretched malefaction that consumed me continuously. The ire of heaven I was told struck, when man faltered under the temptation of iniquity, but his salvation was found in belief. This acknowledgement, I must contend to be nothing more than utter fallacy and aberration to disbelievers; although it is the wishful atonement found in the redeemable contrition that bequeaths us, a mitigated abeyance during the height of the tempest that we fear.

For years the inflated populace had resented the privileges enjoyed, by the callous clergy and the nobility. They had stormed the Bastille in Paris, with a ragmatical furore of redoubtable vehemence and cries of justice. It was the triumphant indication of doom that was nigh, and the impassioned call of defiance and grassation of the clamorous bourgeoisie. The majority of the Parisians were directly incited to revolt in rebellion and treachery, as the maddening fervour for change and vengeance had risen to a wild unruly Pandemonium never seen within France before. But through my incontrovertible affirmation, you will be ultimately cognisant of the aftermath of this unimaginable development. The unwelcoming succession of the events that followed, was assiduously recorded, in the memorable words of the narrative attested to the undying madness that transpired in those heartless years of revolution. The transient vagaries of this novaturient revolution was achieved erroneously, through the tenfold splattered blood of the thousand innocent and condemned. I who was no haughty aristocrat or august man of presumption had been selected, by the Barmecidal fate that awaited me with such vileness unforeseen. If this irrational bedlam found in these untoward men and women was not reflective of arrant turpitude, then the representation of the guillotine extended the unparalleled limits of an interminable madhouse.

Remember, I was but only a sanctimonious victim of an implacable presage that obviated my felicity and my hope. If there was an essential need to continue with this story, then it was to divulge my past knowingly. My feckless infancy was reduced only to an immemorial recollection of some memories accountable. My occupations you wonder were numerous, but none of which I had profited exceedingly in pleasure than that of a writer. It was to be as a writer and in death, I would be forever immortalised in this world. A family I had none, except the casual days of affection I was given, by the amorous proclivity of love. Wealth I had none, for my status in society was precluded since my birth so humble in nature. Happiness I had none, for threnodial sorrow and despair prevailed, over the temporary whims of felicity. I was an absolute creation of the venerable maker, who bestowed upon me the privilege of life. And from that life of vacivity, came the ineffable ruthlessness of suffering the consequence of my senseless sins.

Through that circumspection that enabled me to ponder the unfolding events that ensued, I continued my existence in vain. The singularity of life is forever linked to the plurality of mortals that render worship, as the embodiment of faith. It was the nascent purpose that functioned, as a precursor of my destiny that soon was purported, by the primordial fiend of my demise. If there is a singular face of a being synonymous with death, then it is perhaps the Cimmerian bird that reaps the souls therewith.

I was once a man of innate brilliance and from that uncertain path I have trodden, my shadow faltered, within the shade of obscurity I abhorred passionately. My assuetudes and penchants were plentiful, but the festive balls of the lofty aristocrats of the Parisians I had envied. My concupiscence was manifest, with the carnal pleasure I sought and gallivanted voluntarily. All of these things that are deemed unprincipled sins I am guilty of, but can I be blamed for something that was innate and inherent in my natural disposition since birth or did I inherit these impious traits from my tormentor as mentioned?

The presage of the dauntless raven was the continual manifestation of my grim consternation and the ghastly representation of my death. It was the conclusive indication of a destiny predisposed to the course of its action, regardless of my volition and objection. Creation is the universal function of humanity that binds us in the mystery that is life and death, yet the circumference of that mystery remains inexplicable. Facile dreams are the eternal wonder of the palatial world, even though to me they were unattainable and paltry, as a ghostly illusion of particles. Henceforth, the unique gradation of my days of fortune was sealed, by the totality of its lack of repletion. This endeavour such as mine could only be interpreted, as a token reprieve subsequently.

Verily, how often do the days and night differ, when there is only darkness, and no gleam of light? Does the essence of the difference ever become the indifference in alterity? If so, the process of that contingency revolves, around the absolute principles of that theory. Thenceforth, the culprit of my death will be proclaimed the redresser of my ultimate persecution, and hallowed be the name of my redeemer. Can this harsh chastisement serve as a tangible salvation from the original sin? Was my predestined death not just that, or was my death an unprevented murder from the beginning?

It is said that from the beginning, man was created from dust, and the specks of dust we shall become in the hours of such abrupt finality. Does progression then require regression to be logical or does progression only matter, when there is an evident sign of regression? Perhaps, my analysis is a modification of human psychology imposed, by the uncertainty of death. What we do not know, will not harm us, according to man. Nevertheless, what must be known of this eventuality is the inducement that causes death-for we are unwittingly participants in its duplicitous scheme.

The arrivance of death could not be truncated, and the quatervois was, when I perceived the prospection of human malevolence to be inextricable and insoluble. It occurred afterwards, before the obtenebrated hour of my demise was presupposed. Death, I could not procrastinate the inevitable hour of my execution. If the soul traversed the luctation of my body, then the incompossible protension of that journey into the afterworld would overcome the most supraliminal state of human psychomacy. Appersonation had begun to cause desperation within me, as I felt the ceaseless despair demonstrated, in my eyes and my mien. To describe death, it is analogous to the delusions of the brain that cause a thymopathy.

The mind is not empty and the incondite voices are not silent, but the unintentional silence is the most pitiless form of a fathomless death and condemnation that is worse than thlipsis. Silence is what slowly accompanies the soul after death forcefully within inconcinnity. Therefore, the hour of death has no definite anachronism or amorphousness-for it is the intolerable compulsion to count the minutes and seconds of its phtartic consecution and pragonnade. I obtestate that death will never be lenient in its discretion, and what follows only time will reveal eventually.

It is like the sand that pours from the hourglass, and the time elapsed that swiftly preoccupies our unvarying trepidations, as does the sway of the pendulum that gradually descends. It is like the horrid tick-tock of the giant clock in the hall, whose mechanical hands move by the second, or the coming of tomorrow that will witness the sun in the day and the moon in the night. Our sanity is judged by the factual actions and not by the evolution of our thoughts merely. Consequently, we are inclined to submit to the prohibitive side of our tentative disposition. How often are we presented with a horrendous situation, where we hear exclusively the beating of our hearts, the ullagones of our voices, before our hearts stop beating, and our voices become taciturn?

I cannot juxtapose the breath of life, for the sepulchre of death. This unexplained and pure contradiction is a discernible paradox of the world we dwell in. It is not just or unjust, instead, it is transparent and a veritable contrast. I shall attempt to convince you again that my death was concluded and to expound on the nature of its unfortunate occurrence. I remembered clearly how my last days on the earth had betided, and how my last breath alive was taken from me, without my actual consent.

It was during my last week that I recall so vividly and so ghastly, the timely abatement of my life. The trammels of murk did not pervade, over my path determined, and the consequential events of my death concluded my telluric existence. The raven perched on the window of my cell with iron bars had sealed my fate and condemned me to the persecution of the lore of history I ejurated. Its granular impression was a prompt that was overshadowed, by the wedge-shaped tail of the corvid. In the process of the continual phantasmagoria that haunted me quotidianly, I had envisaged the sequence of my death that started from my cell. I first had suffered emotionally then mentally, and at last physically, until I yielded to the full maturity of the execution of my death.

A horrible accusation had befallen me, with such a dauntless capacity and injustice. I had been accused of promulgating a philosophy that was based on analytical methods that were inflammatory in Paris, and I was incapacitated of my free will and imprisoned for the crime of being apathetic to the revolution. I was sentenced to fulfill the destiny I had not wanted or had chosen. My desperate entreatment was deafened, by the caws of the reaper of souls.

Every day for months, that horrifying dream consumed my mind, like a blazing flame uncontrollable. I had envisioned me standing before a throng of spectators surrounded by the mist, as a surreal raven flew from the bough of a tree, on to the top of the tormenting guillotine, with a posture of gallantry and predominance. Thereafter, I saw my body in the stocks under the sharp blade of the sanguinary contrivance and was unable to escape my executioner. Every time, I awoke from my nightmare drenched in a heavy perspiration, and my thoughts became bleary and incomplete. This presage resulted in being recurring and authentic, whilst I was in my cell. The unpredictable nature of its direful influence upon me was substantive, as the Angel of Death who hovered over me.

I cannot for the sake of me wish to disclose the hour of my death, except that it befell, when the raven cawed before me. It is the lord of the instrument of demise and the nightly keeper of the earth, who reigns without interregnum. To this fiend, I did not bow in reverence, nor avowed the sympathy of my repentance. Why did I need to surrender to the purpose of my defeat willingly, when I was daring enough to confront my foe? Despite this, I was doomed to feel the horror of the guillotine's wrath. Must man die, to be born again, but not in the womb of the flesh, instead, in the hollow vessel of his soul?

Would my life have been restored or spared in the end, if I accepted the reality of my fate? From this terrible fact I had to resign myself, to the cruelty of that admission. If I was a cold-blooded murderer, I would have understood my fate, but my condemnation was exacted, by the depravity imposed of the commonalty. If my reality was dictated by the pages of my journal that contained the purity of my contemplation at will, then my motive for reproach would have precluded my death and had known my innocence.

However, it is not I whose throne is the earth, and who deems the grievous sentence upon fellow man. I was a sackless man interposed and exposed to the vagary of the maddened populace of frenzy that delighted, with my death. It is a death once more that was not of my natural selection. I had pondered the concept of the body resurrecting as a logical possibility, and did the body cease to function after death. If I was destined to die, could my soul resurrect and never truly perish?

Then if you must know, how my days of that last week were spent, they were at a variance indifferent and expected. During the day I listened to the horrendous clamour of the prisoners, and at night I drifted in my thoughts endlessly. And from those imprescriptible thoughts, I wrote what was to be a journal, which was my own and riveting. It is an attestation of an attainment I saw of its fatal completion. When my hour of death would arrive, who would bury me beneath the sod? Who would write my epitaph and sing my divine eulogy? Would my paean be rejoiceful-or would it be too elegiac, like a threnody of a fallen compositor of the days of yore?

Oh, the beginning of the Romanticism was the epoch of splendid art and regalia, where the kings and queens of Europe lavished immensely. However, I did not lavish so prodigally in my life, like the kings and queens. Instead, my life was full of misfortunes and insufficiencies of which I never surpassed. The years of my life were sequestered and pessundated, by the insurmountable uncertainties of my necessities, and indifferent and vile were the characteristics of my oppressor. The main thoroughfares of the cities in Europe I had visited extemporaneously, as an itinerant man of art and circumlocution, but my good fortune would be a respite solely to sojourn a time. I sought prosperity and prominence, but I never could clasp the motive of its negation, except that I was not born a divine martyr from providence.

It was written by the ingenious sages that the Angel of Death would appear and seek the souls of the reprobates first. It was the scourge of God named by detractors, who said it feasted upon the bodies of the guillotine and rotting flesh of the torsos. Of the fiend I can proclaim there is no covenant to be agreed-for commiseration is as foreign to this fiend, as deliverance. The Angel of Death was never conceived to perform any other duty that was not reaping the souls of defunction, and the presage befell upon every one whose death was apparent. I was selected to die, beneath the guillotine so impigrously. My malefactor bore no malevolence towards me-for its task was inevitable. The populace were the judges, and the Angel of Death was my prosecutor. Devil or daemon the raven was not in the end, but a herald of the presage that condemned me to the bells of the belfry and the blade of the guillotine. The Angel of Death had professed no recognition, beyond the lordly title that it was declared. I was extremely mindful of the aberrant caws of the master of dominance who waited, for my nameless soul to succumb. The eerie sound of the fiend I heard abruptly contributed, to the peculiar effects of its morbidity. None was as ever lethiferous, as the Angel of Death-for its shadow was always present. To and fro it sought to reap the unfaust souls, through the remotest areas of the earth. I who was never entitled to the privilege of mortality had seen my life tumbled, within the dissolution of my hallucinatory confinement.

There amidst the paravail miscreants and demigods waits the nubivagant Angel of Death. If there was visibly an infandous Abaddon, beyond that achromatic gloom that pervaded over the aimless madness of this world that was substantially seen in provocation, then my horrified eyes bore witness to the actual existence of untamed terror. The unspeakable presage aforementioned was to serve the forbidding purpose of the finality of my death. The abode of my last days was never to be eschewed, as was the indelible place of my execution. Therefore, what was to be remembered, and what should be known about me does not concern me. What has been lived in my life, I have since disclosed. But if there was, something I have omitted of my admission, then you will hark to the minacious words I professed. My immortal destiny was to be procured, and out of a thousand souls, I was chosen for this one purpose. I perceived more at every corner of my cell the presence of my persecutor, and the strong gale that blew the echoes of its caws.

In the confines of my cell, I often heard the bells of the belfry and wondered if my hour of death was imminent. I thought of the array of angels, who could succour me in my hour of need, but if my guardian angel was not to come, then my sin would be too impardonable that no concession would be granted meritorious. The consummation of the soul was behoveful, amidst my lack of strength. I was becoming mindful of the sequences of events unfolding even more. My mind began to gravitate to the severity of the events, as my body began to falter, under the pressure of the madness that encompassed me afterwards.

Thereby, upon one normal day of the week that had no relevancy, except that it will be remembered as the day of my death, I met my executioner and the reaper of my soul averse to my certitude. Upon that dreaded day I was to be executed, under the calamitous sequence of the presage that tormented me in nightmares. I was taken to the guillotine in a tumbril that was drawn by a horse, as I was driven to my horrific execution. I was then standing, before my foreseeable executioner and the bardocucullus magistrates. The winds had brushed my face, with a powerful grasp subaerially. The square was occupied by the blood-thirsty commoners, who cheered my imminent execution, as the sounds of the beating drums resounded, with an intense vibration. From behind me, I heard the loud singular reverberation of the raven's caw, amidst the crowd I saw gathered. It was a cacophony that no man should bear at his hour of death.

There upon the stench of the guillotine dripping from the effluent pool of blood, stood the bold ebony bird of dominion-the Angel of Death. Its guise was exactly the same that I had dreamt a thousand times tofore. I remembered poignantly its piercing eyes, its black feather pinions, its sharp beak and talons. It was the stately appearance of the raven that was bidden to this momentous occasion deliberately. It stared at me, with such a commanding gaze, as time froze from that moment. I knew then that the hour of my announced death had arrived suddenly, and I was nequient to prevent it.

Anon, I had sensed a cataleptic horror of my surcease seize my heart, as the veins of my heart constricted, like a vengeful serpent. I saw the towering apparatus of the guillotine that was placed on top of a singular scaffolding. The weighted and angled blade was raised to the top and suspended momentarily. It was then that I was strapped and secured with wooden stocks at the bottom of the frame of the guillotine. My neck was positioned directly, below the harrowing blade. I took my last respiration within the earth and nevermore was I to see another day again, as the blade of steel fell upon my neck quickly, decapitating my head that fell into a basket below.

None would be so cruel than the bold ebony bird of dominion that was not swayed by my requestion to live. Redemption had once been a prohibitive thought, but it is said that through death, the human soul is redeemable in the prebition of that soul. If I have achieved this then, have I triumphed over my worthy adversary, with no need to be pudified?

At gradual intervals, I began to sense the presence of the Angel of Death no more, and my soul had not yet been forsaken and accurst. I was reborn in spirit in patration, as the avatar of the presage had begun to fly away, into the hypenemious surge of the tempest, beyond the Plutonian blood of the guillotine. The supernal seraphim of yore rose, over the stench of death, from the square of the multitude. The engulfing murk of ere had been covered, by the light of a blest dawn, when I arose, from my nightly slumber unto the heavenly breath that had emerged out of the bloodshed. And the goblets of wine and virginal maidens were manifest. The ominous boundary between life and death opens and then closes, before the temerarious raven and the loud bells of the belfry. I had to die as an anonymuncule, for my name to be immortalised in grandeur. Hallowed be the name that the beholder of my lonely epitaph will remember always, a brilliant writer who died as a miserable wretch and was executed in the French Revolution. I was the irredivivus man that felt the ghastly blade of the guillotine.