The Outsider

looks back upon

stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my blackest convulsion of despair and realization. The nightmare was quick to come, for as I entered, there occurred immediately one of the most terrifying demonstrations I had ever conceived.

My mind, stunned and chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for light; and not even the fantastic wonder which had happened could stay my course. I neither knew nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic; but was determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost. I knew not who I was or what I was, or what my surroundings might be; though as I continued to stumble along I became conscious of a kind of fearsome latent memory that made my progress not wholly fortuitous.

Most demoniacal of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and grotesquely unbelievable.

And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding day.

I felt conscious of youth because I remembered so little.

To me there was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strewed some of the stone crypts deep down among the foundations.

and would longingly picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forests.

I know that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid; yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage.

To me there was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strewed some of the stone crypts deep down among the foundations.