Ensnared by winter

  

A picturesque prospect, dredged from the obtuse rendering of the winter fog, subduing the dynasty of anonymous similes, to silent avowal. It is so rare that the haze of unquenched longing, is dismantled from the dewed scales of dreary forlornness, for that indulging acquisition of artistic ripening. The woodlot is wondrously tranquil in the obsidian hemorrhage of the nightfall, and in the noon, it glimmers in the mystic frost of the Nordic climate. I have only a vague memory of the scene, for I have not ventured these particular pastures since, the seasons of yore, when visiting a kinsman. I cannot however, forget the sublimely elongated altitude of that spire, towering from the rhapsodized echelon of a leviathan edifice somewhere in the North. It belongs to a man, an acquaintance of mine, named, Victor Netherhaven. There is a phlegmatic redundancy of sorts, in that perfunctory husbandry of salvageable memory, which is the common vice of such bland reminiscence, for I have no conduct of rapport whatsoever with the lord. I only know him through his letters, which are spared, in the expense of a succinct prosaic economy. There has been a delay in my travels, but I shall soon meet him in those walls, perhaps to further our converse on desultory discussions, and thus extract an indelible hue of his semblance from the designated rendezvous.

I have alighted from a carriage, a minuscule mileage from the edifice, consumed by loathing apathy. My solivagant compass has directed me, to the snow clad walls of the fabric. There is a man, who ambulates towards me, in an effort of enjoined reception. He escorts me into the hallway of the structure but, eerily upon reaching the furthest end of narrow passage, the epiphany that his presence has lost its terrestrial tethering to my proximity, wrings me of all composure. I gasp, as I inhale that disgraceful miasm of hygienic absence, and the utter festering of carcass. Alas, the grand parlor is decadent! It is not long before I notice, that I am alone save for the grotesque rodents wandering about in savage earnest. A piece of paper, falls from the roof, an uncanny distance from my footing. I attend to it, and in the signature handwriting of the lord, it reads,

"There is no way out"