The angels of retribution came and encircled me in my sleep last night. "Shall we start the torture?" they said among themselves. "No, he is yet sleeping," they said, and they swam through the air, encircling me, cutting patterns in the space about my bed. "Shall we, shall we, shall we torture him now?" "No, he is yet sleeping: let him wake when he wakes, and then we shall torture him." The angels of retribution come and carry my soul down into hell daily, and I live out my days in the burning dark passageways & mineshafts under the earth, listening to demons beating drums, listening to demons & devils make the apartment creak. Oh but I was yet sleeping, I had yet a small space of peace; and so they would not wake me, but would let me wake when I should wake--and then it would be down under the earth with me, with the rest of my self-torturing hermits, all of us lonesome, none of us reaching out to another. Oh but I was yet in the small confused land of dreams, and I wandered through the confused land of dreams for a small space, and awoke with a cloudy head. And the angels of retribution said among themselves, "Look now, he is awake: the one who has lost his soul in this life, and has betrayed himself in this life, and is to suffer the tortures of hell in this life--this one is awake, shall we take him away on the Bones Train? Shall he ride the Bones Train among the dead, and be in living death among the dead?" And they gathered me up and took me by my shoulders, and I felt myself slipping away--and suddenly I sat up, and said, "No!"--but it was too late. And so I paced and paced the length and breadth of my apartment, and my day was slow and my footsteps were slow; and I worked my way lazily through my period of mourning, as a worm lazily gnaws an apple. Such were we all at the end of days; such was the price we all paid for our sins & transgressions; such was the terror & madness I had been through and would go through daily, as I paced the length and breadth of my apartment, weeping now and now, and now too empty to weep, and weeping now and now again.