"It has been five years. Five miserable years locked up inside the cells of an asylum whose name I am yet to learn. Padded walls caress my head during my occasional fits of violence. And I write these words under the supervision of my therapists, who supposed it would improve my sanity to recount in written form my distressing memories." Within these pages lies a series of gothic-themed short stories all steeped in pure, crystalline melancholy. What else, after all, is a commoner, more primal feeling than relentless gloom and despair? Whether lost in a cemetery, on an endless ocean or in a town of hostility, it is always desolation that guides the astray. For mankind has been orphaned by the cosmic skies, and melancholy is infinitely closer to orphan hearts.