“This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation.”

American journalist and short-story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Bierce’s work blends dark satire and existential cynicism. He is best known for his collection *The Devil’s Dictionary*, a witty and mordant compendium of definitions, and his haunting, often ambiguous short stories.