The Trick

He paused, taking a moment to observe an early portrait of two men (one with his arm around the other), a lithograph of the human skeletal system, and on the mantle next to a pair of scissors was what appeared to be a collection of doll heads suspended from a series of strings. However, the most curious thing of all was the box of prosthetic eyes that he found while prying through this stranger's medicine cabinet.

~Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

James Waterman

Softly humming nocturnes by Frederick Chopin, he found his greatest comfort in a cup of tea and a visit with the headstone of James Waterman.

~Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

Dignitas

Consumed with grief and tortured by her mental illness, she made her way to Zurich.

~Rodin Shaw Cole

Mousetrap

Before yielding to plague, Kevin being curious for the macabre, took a shining to a vintage mousetrap discovered in the basement, placing it on the mantel next to a pair of Japanese pruning shears.

~Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

The Fly

Stupid fly. Fly into the flame and die.

~ Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

Pistachios

Keith always kept a container of pistachios inside of his Jack Spade. Leaving the Athenaeum one Monday in the late afternoon, he lingered in the Granary feeding squirrels in the shadows cast by the raking sun. After suffering a bite to the hand from a rabid squirrel he walked home to prepare dinner for his boyfriend, ignoring his malaise. He experienced bouts with mania before expiring from a terrible fever that Columbus Day Weekend.

~Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

The Flea Market

After a long walk through the Ramble, Keith stopped at a flea market on the Upper West Side. He came away with two antique bottles recovered from a landfill. He filled the one marked "Ferro-China Anti Malanno" full of Virginia Gentleman and Limonata, drinking it before bed and never waking up.

~Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009