Poe's Nightmares

The Complex Labyrinth Of The Heart

Lucius Blackthorne strode through the cobblestone streets, his ebony cloak billowing behind him like a gathering storm cloud. The townsfolk shrank from his path, knowing well the tempest that raged within his tortured soul.

He came to the wrought iron gates of Ravenswood Manor, his ancestral estate that loomed atop a jagged cliff. Beyond lay the garden maze where he had lost himself for days after Lenore, his beloved, had forsaken him. A year had passed but the wound still festered.

Lucius entered the sprawling hedge labyrinth, its twists and turns a mirror to his own convoluted heart. He placed one gloved hand on the golden locket that hung from his neck, the only token he had left of her. Lenore's miniature portrait was encased inside, her piercing emerald eyes forever frozen in time.

"Why did you betray me?" he seethed bitterly. "I would have given you everything - my name, my fortune, the very blood from my veins!"

Only the susurrus of the wind answered his lament as it sighed through the rustling leaves. He squeezed the locket until its edges bit into his palm. The physical pain was a welcome distraction from the ceaseless anguish that gnawed at his insides.

According to rumor, Lenore had eloped with a penniless minstrel, a mere boy with a handsome face. The thought of that whelp caressing her porcelain skin, unraveling the raven tresses that were rightfully his to touch, made Lucius tremble with rage. At night, visions of the lovers entwined in ecstasy would jolt him from his fevered dreams.

"I will find you," he vowed, his voice echoing coldly off the labyrinth's mossy walls. "And I will make you rue the day you dared spurn me." 

He ventured deeper into the maze, its shadows thickening like a noxious miasma. Lucius felt the tendrils of madness begin to enshroud his mind once more. Memories of Lenore swirled and eddied - her ruby lips curving in a demure smile as he slipped a rose into her hair, her tinkling laughter as they waltzed across the ballroom, the heady scent of her perfume when he had first stolen a forbidden kiss.

Then the twisted visions came, unbidden - Lenore gasping in terror, her ivory neck marred by cruel purple fingerprints as Lucius' hands gripped her throat. The light fading from her emerald eyes as he squeezed the very life from her body. Only then would she truly belong to him for all eternity...

"No!" Lucius collapsed to his knees on the damp earth, tearing at his raven hair. He would never harm her, despite the poison of hatred that now corroded his once pure love. Even through the haze of his obsession, he still yearned to protect her, to possess her.

He knew not how long he remained there, lost in the labyrinth of his own fetid heart. The sun dipped below the horizon, and a ghostly moon soon haunted the night sky. Lucius laughed - a strangled, maniacal sound that belonged to the demons that surely lived in the shadows of his mind.

In the distance, he spied a flicker of movement in the gloom. A silhouette emerged from the darkened hedge passages. His laughter died on his lips. He blinked, thinking this a figment, one of the many phantasms that frequented his brain. But the figure drew closer, and the dim moonlight illuminated her face.

It was Lenore.

She stepped toward him cautiously, her tattered gossamer gown fluttering in the breeze. Her raven hair was loose and tangled, her eyes wide with trepidation.

"Why have you come?" Lucius whispered. "To torment me? To drive the last vestige of sanity from my mind?"

"No, my love," she replied softly. "I have returned... for you."

She held out one trembling hand - an offering, a supplication. Lucius stared at it, scarcely daring to believe this was real. A part of him yearned to enfold her in his arms, to feel the warmth of her body against his once more. But another, more insidious feeling began to take hold.

Lenore had come back to him - but why? What of her minstrel lover? What right did she have to waltz back into his life after shattering his heart into a thousand cutting shards?  The hurt, the betrayal, the jealousy simmered in his blood until it reached a churning boil. His fingers twitched.

"My love-" she began.

Lucius lunged forward and wrapped his hands around her slender throat, a red fury descending over his vision.
Lenore gasped, eyes bulging in shock as his grip tightened. She clawed weakly at his iron grasp, but he only squeezed harder, watching in fascination as her skin turned a mottled shade of purple. Petal-shaped bruises blossomed beneath his fingertips.

Then, with a final rattling breath, Lenore went limp. Her glassy eyes stared vacantly at the uncaring stars above. A pure, terrible silence settled over the labyrinth. Lucius released her and she crumpled to the ground, a broken porcelain doll. He threw his head back and unleashed a piercing howl of anguish, a sound to make the devil himself quake with fear.

But the worst torment was still to come, he realized as the haze of madness cleared. An eternity yawned before him, empty and bleak, devoid of light or hope. For the true labyrinth was not one of dense looming hedges, but that of the human heart - and Lucius knew he would be forever lost in its darkened passages, haunted by the spectre of the woman he had loved and destroyed.

Epilogue

The townsfolk spoke of that fateful night in hushed whispers, their faces pale with horror. They had discovered Lenore's lifeless body at the center of the Ravenswood Manor labyrinth, her porcelain neck mottled with the cruel fingerprints of her murderer. Lucius Blackthorne was found crouched over her corpse, his eyes vacant and his hands still wrapped around her throat.

The constables had dragged him away in shackles, his anguished howls piercing the still night air. The trial was a mere formality, for his guilt was as plain as the blood that stained his hands. The judge sentenced him to the gallows, declaring him a blight upon society that must be extinguished.

As the hangman's noose tightened around his neck, Lucius felt a flicker of relief amid the icy tendrils of fear. Perhaps in death, he would finally be free of the labyrinth of his own twisted heart. As the floor dropped out beneath him and the darkness closed in, his last thought was of Lenore - not as she had been in those final horrific moments, but resplendent and pure, her emerald eyes sparkling with love. Then, like a candle flame snuffed out by a final breath, Lucius Blackthorne was no more.