The tall, thin figure wears funeral garments marked with blood and a mask that resembles a corpse with the disease's characteristic red stains.

He stands out even in the gaudily dressed crowd because he is dressed as the Red Death. All the apartments are crowded except for the seventh, and the ball continues until the stroke of midnight.Īt midnight, when the clock strikes twelve times, a masked figure appears whose costume arouses emotions in the crowd that range from surprise and disapproval to terror. The masqueraders' costumes are similarly wild, almost to the point of grotesqueness, and the party is described as 'a multitude of dreams,' despite the regular interruption of the gaiety by the ebony clock. Other than the unnerving seventh room, the ball is boldly and wildly decorated in a way that hints at Prospero's potential madness.

In this apartment is also a giant ebony clock, whose pendulum swings ominously and whose hourly ringing is so disturbing that it invariably disconcerts the musicians, dancers, and other revelers, causing everyone to pause until the chimes fade away, at which point everyone nervously resumes their actions. The lights shining through the window from the corridors creates such a ghastly effect in this room that most of the guests avoid the room altogether. The seventh room, however, is slightly different in that although the dominant color is black, the windows are blood red. Each room features a different color, which matches the color of the window: the first room is blue, the second purple, the third green, the fourth orange, the fifth white, and the sixth violet. Instead of having the suite form one long hall, Prospero has the apartments segregated by sharp turns, and tall stained glass windows on each side of the room look out into the surrounding corridor. He stocks the abbey with enough food to survive and leaves the surrounding country to its fate while holding wild parties within the building.Īfter five or six months, Prospero decides to hold a grand masked ball, which he holds in the seven rooms of an imperial suite. Although the disease is running rampant through his country, Prince Prospero remains oddly happy and carefree and invites a thousand of his healthy noble friends to join him in hiding from the disease in his abbey, which he then locks away from the outside world. The contagion causes death within thirty minutes of infection, and consequently any sign of the red stain on a man causes him to be shunned by the populace.

The 'Red Death' of the title is described as a particularly lethal disease whose symptoms include sharp pains, dizziness, profuse bleeding, and red stains on the bodies and faces of the victims.

The masque of the red death short story