The wick of the candle buried itself as the sun labored down the pale-lit mauve sky. His clothes were frayed and unspooled. Papers lay scattered on the desktop and floor. The lamp fixtures were dim and sootstained. The table lamp was preserved to him only. Beasts of the night would visit among idle law with bane laid down-upon him. The house bled out into the void, the dormant hollow eyes; down upon the crude and easy floorboards the watchers watched as the moon shone in the windowpane.
The creaking of the chair grew louder when his spine rose in the night and then slumped into thought. He found that peculiar stroke of melancholy that one gets in dreams in which they can’t wake.
Out shut the candle. Now, in the dark of the room, all they could see was him—sitting there with his head down and warm, wearing his holepoked coat. The Tapered Man, they called him.
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Francisco Goya, 1799
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