Note from the author
Dearest Readers,
The original intent underlying this humble exercise was the creation of twenty six gothic tales within these pages, one per day, mutually bound together by a common demonic theme, each narrative to begin with a successive letter of the alphabet. Further, every tale was to be constrained in length by a mystical curse that required its fictional author to pen only tales containing precisely two hundred words. No more, no less.
Within this mystical framework, should said author lose focus and stray from this strict injunction, inadvertently penning a tale that contained an incorrect quantity of words, then the insidious curse would immediately take effect, the poor wretched soul thereby finding himself doomed.
Which, dearest readers, would mean no more stories.
Ironically, the selfsame error that precipitated the premature demise of our esteemed yet unfortunate narrator was the inclusion of a certain word not generally associated with mystical beings, nor with demonology in general.
It is a further irony that this apparently innocuous utterance, closing as it does both this series and its fictional author’s life, was intended to serve as both title and initial word of the very next tale in this series.
Oops.