6 Days

The Macabre Ride of Chadgar Allan Poe.

True! I am nervous--dreadfully nervous I was, and am--but why will you call me mad? Observe how calmly, how reasonably, how inutterably awesomely I utter this ditty.

I went to school yesterday on a bicycle dressed as a dead writer from the 19th century. I had shorn my barb into a fey, wee little 'stache, scraped a razor cross my cheek for the first time in years. Yes, I drew some blood. But I was undeterred. I was to teach "The Tell-Tale Heart" that day, and I would be in character. My wife, who was not uncongenial to my plans, loaned me a grey scarf whose silken lustre approached the Oriental. I secured my French cuffs with knotted links, threw on my velvet tunic, hopped on my veloped, and was off. The air was of much such an air as befits All Hallow's Eve: cold, crisp, cutting. A skein of frost began to encrust my upper lip's hirsuteness. My cheeks faded to a more than unearthly wanness. My fingerless gloves did little to keep my fingers warm. I edged to the brink of the tarn they call "Jamaica Pond" to behold, reflected on its muddy surface, a moustachioed man on a bicycle wearing a scarf. If there were any fissures in his mien, they were only barely perceptible.