This work was created in the period of the Covid 19 Pandemic 2020 onwards. As many writers, scientists, politicians, journalists and even modern philosophers were trying to wrap their understanding around the fear and anxiety that came with a frightening global phenomenon, I felt that in its history, literature had given us some insight into plagues and viruses in its past through horror writing. Poe, with his ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ came most to mind. And more recently, Stephen King, with his psychological works, though not about viruses, still packing a punch in what befuddles and frightens us from the collision of Nature and the Supernatural.

Thus I chose to give the virus character. A punk teenager coming into his own, raising hell and creating havoc. An entity that was, and still is, elusive, in determining the effects of. Certainly in the early phases the outcome of its power could not be predicted. Thus the text took on a relationship to form and variation. As the virus shifted and grew variations and modifications to
itself, so the text began changing form in its narrative: from prose to theatrical tableaus to theatrical dialogue to poetry, the text kept growing and changing as a foundational metaphor to the changing nature of the virus. And the question remains by the end of the text as to whether the virus’ nature will ever be resolved?

Along with the text, the illustrations are a fusion of Gothic (almost Goyaesque 19th century rendering) and more contemporary, popular horror illustrations. A bit of the old and a bit of the modern. There is also a slight stylistic reference to Luigi Pirandello’s ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ towards story’s end.