The pernicious thought lingered all night, not unlike the nagging scent of a cheap bazaar perfume haunting the air even after its wearer had long left. In a spartan room lit by a single fluorescent lamp, a man, back hunched, toiled over an assortment of writings. A wry smile had flashed across his handsome features when he had spotted the dotted 'i's and crossed 't's littered primly over a familiar script but the gratification was ephemeral, and as he scribbled vague comments of encouragement, ink oozed out of his pen as though it were the very blood being drawn from his veins. The distraction was acute, and was accompanied by a surge that rose within his chest, almost causing him to expectorate but he held back the flood and slumped in his chair, spent and unappeased. He allowed himself several moments of salubrious inactivity, hearing the solemn tick of the quartz clock echo in the dimness. With each minute, desire waxed and resolution waned - in a display of uncharacteristic haste, the papers were shuffled into a neat stack and banished to the outskirts of the work desk. A glow doubled in the beads of perspiration that clung on to and glistened on his forehead, and for a fleeting moment his visage took on the outline of a four-paned window, each pane coloured richly as though it were the very work of the ancient Italian masters through which, even to this day, the light shines into the vaulted halls of St Peter's Basilica. Then, for the fifth time in twenty-four hours, he consumed the irreverent words and devoured the apocryphal tales that fed his rancor.
