Rehearsals for Oblivion (Act 1)

Given the distraction of supervising the builders (overgrown children with power tools), I ordered and read another book of short stories on my favourite subject The King In Yellow (me).

This was a much richer set of stories than in “A Season in Carcosa“.

The stories reference oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey, Gehenna, WW2.

Have you ever seen a flower drip blood, or watched the sky grow black and rained dead fish ?

Broadalbin (by John Scott Tynes) in particular reminds me of the Angel episode Are you now or ever been, set in a weird hotel.

People come here when they’re looking for something. For some of us, it takes a while to find it.

Melonia.

I spotted a scarecrow, it was a bulky, low figure whose assemblage of rags flapped in the wind.

Eerily, we’ll have scarecrows in the AVBCW game on the 8th March…so maybe a SAN test for all the players who have heard of the King In Yellow ?
😉

Also it includes “The Adventure of the Yellow Sign” featuring Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson, and of course Holmes has read (part of) the iconic play and keeps it next to de Quincy’s “Confessions of an English Opium Eater“.

Helpfully (?) translations into several more foreign languages are provided for the title of the play.

Gaze not too long on the Pallid Mask,
Or the Yellow King, for mercy ask.

This is a must have book.