Jake & Dinos Chapman

Writing on what my doctor tells me is my deathbed, my most hideous fear is that the man is wrong.

When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim’s body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep.

When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed.

There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear.

The horrible conclusion which had been gradually intruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty.

My memories are very confused.

May the merciful gods, if indeed there may be such, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of man devises, can keep me from the chasm of sleep.

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.

Into the north window of my chamber glows the pole star with uncanny light. All through the long hellish hours of blackness it shines there.

In the valley of Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for its light with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great upas-tree.

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authority of my narrative.

In my tortured ears there sounds increasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound.

I was far from home and the spell of the eastern sea was upon me.

I know I’m more nervous than when you last saw me, but you don’t need to hold a clinic over it.

I have seen the universe yawning where the black planets roll without aim, where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.