Threnody
Photoshop CS

"In the first year of my death you brought me roses every day,
Hourly compensating for your bombazine with a new bouquet.
Now my headstone sits forgotten in this graveyard overgrown.
Do not bring me flowers, love, my flesh will grow its own.

I give myself to roses, from toes to ears to thighs.
The lilies take my fingers and the grasses have my eyes.
My old songs hover restlessly; my odes these roots invite;
My phantom tongue still wags though my phantom limbs won't write..."

And continue that ad nauseam.

Timofey Gafkovich was a writer and a (bad) poet, but not one of any special talent-- or so he thought. It turns out that the novel he had been toiling over at night for the previous five years was so absolutely brilliant that, when he at last worked up the courage to show it to a publisher, the publisher decided he wanted it for himself. Everyone has at some point read a book that they wished they had written, but this dastardly man decided to make that envious wish a reality. He was already seeing Timofey's young wife behind Timofey's young back and together, the two of them plotted the author's death.

However, neither realised that Timofey had sold his soul to a gypsy years ago. He was cruelly murdered but his soul remained. Bound to the living world, he watched his wife wed the publisher, the publisher publish his novel, and the both of them grow fat and rich off the profits.

There is, alas, no happy end to this tale. Timofey wanders the world still as a morose wraith, often evanescing in a boyish form as a reflection of his uncertainty (and in an attempt to win sympathy). He's a roleplaying character of mine and a longtime companion and servant of my necromancer. He also was loosely inspired by a character in some of Karen Elizabeth Gordon's grammar books.