The Court of Midnight by Mark Samuels

 “new quests for nothing”

The writer Melchior — having lost “a position of great respect and status in society” and beset, along with other artists and writers, by lunar fever — comes to the Court of Midnight with his English gin so as to follow up the promise of a doctor called Dr Prozess. Including a striking scene with Melchior’s friend Santon finally falling by the wayside, and we realise the dreadful diminuendo involved, as, one by one, the residue of us thinkers and artists and poets wanes…

My extrapolation of this provoking work –
We sense that our own preciously mannered masque alongside these gifted words is one of realising that the process is of a tontine not of a deadly attrition. And the writing here is writer Melchior’s pitch for such a prize. While the rest of us wait in great suspense for our own telegrams of a hopeful process of procession or a doomful moon’s precession (sic).

A court or a court’s court?

(A story in UNCERTAINTIES Vol. 2 – Swan River Press 2016)