It was late on an absinthe night. The liquid madness of the poets had once again denied me absolution but freed me briefly--and shamelessly--from the humdrum prison of my stoic, babbitt facade. I had bidden farewell, as best I remember, to my cabal of debased druggards and found myself winding a novel and twisted way home.

I drifted drunkenly through the shadowy human detritus, madly chortling at their adherence to buildings and doorframes, as if they were soapy scum on fenland waters. Distracted by my conceit, I peregrinated through too many wrong turns and arrived lost in the ghetto's southern maze. Panic struck as I grew aware of the foulest odor I had ever drawn. A noxious effluvium so vile I brought my shirt to my face and uselessly fanned the air, all the while spinning in sad, trapped circles.

A feckless grimalkin, hirsute and inimical, detached from the dark and came to jape at me, as if I were a kobold attempting some feeble feat of legerdemain. Maladroit from my long swig of nepenthe, I nevertheless delivered a sublimely obsequious philippic, quasi-complimenting her refulgent wit. A fateful action, to be sure.

In somber response to my sonorous pronouncements, she dispelled her worldly visage and allowed me to gaze upon her true form--that of a horrifying, twisted witch. Her every feature grew distended, distorted, and inhuman. Cackling madly at my unfeigned terror, she began casting some vile enchantment upon me.

Desperately desiring talaria to speed my escape, I fled through back alleys, ululating a cry for aid. Her menacing, vulpine form stalked me, pouring from shadow to shadow until she had trapped me at the docks.