There's no omen more ominous to me, as an artist, than Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa, looming over the proceedings.

I had a recurring nightmare as a child, after first laying eyes on a high quality print of the painting, wherein the image itself would show up just before the most traumatic portions of the night terrors.

The smell of a corpse, before you find it.

An atmospheric comment on what Jenny's just uncovered, in what I think of as her safe place in the home she shares with Jim. The room almost cocooning her from the hand at the reader's throat. I like to think Jim is hiding there because he feels the same unease I felt during those nightmares. And from himself and the path he's chosen.

What hope for a self-doomed man?