She walks in beauty, like the night..., the beginning of a poem most thought of as being written about a woman; but he knew better. This knowledge always had the power to make him smile knowing that this poem like so many others, were about his perfectly chiseled features, his long and curly, almost black head of hair, his heat-filled dark brown gaze. He was in fact, the most beautiful creature ever created.
In what would ordinarily have been a cold room, made entirely of marble; he leaned back in a hammock strung from the ceiling. He sipped from a glass of red wine in the hot and burning room.
Usually poetry, books took him away from the acrid smell of smoke, the cries of countless souls that occupied his home, the blaze of the never ending heat that accompanied him wherever in his vast mansion, he decided to go.
Today or was it tonight, he could never tell the difference, but in this moment when he could not focus on what he was reading long enough to spill himself, he threw his book into the grand fire. He knew that he would regret it later but right now he needed release!
He knew he wasn't going to find it in his home. Although he had sexual servants at his beck and call, some of the most beautiful women ever born, the restlessness he was feeling had little to do with wanting sex and everything to do with feeding his soul.
Most people thought he didn't have one; most people were wrong. It had been too long since he'd breathed in anything other than stale black air. He would have laughed at himself if it weren't so depressing, Satan suffocating in hell.
