These shiny cobblestones are sweating malignance. A misty fog swirls around dead trees, taunting. It’s ghost fingers beckon me.

Why am I doing this now? Turns out, Prague is more interesting at night. Or so I say to comfort myself.

I’m drawn up the edge of the black alley, hugging the darkness like a rat in the gutter fearfully foraging for it’s justice. Looking over my shoulder every two seconds, I creep in the shadows of acid-stained buttresses. I look up. Tall, bureaucratic walls tower above me. Der Schloss leers, lit like an all-seeing evil eye. My fear is alive; no longer alien to me, it is now embedded in my heart. I emerge, as if from a tunnel. The nightmare pulls me magnetically up to this sinister castle on the hill, illuminated by the glow of a harvest moon and Bohemian gaslight.

As K. would say, “–there is no longer any turning back.”

existential weight

Kafkaesque darkness

heavy on my soul