Death comes for everyone. Riches and power and noble birth mean little to the cold embrace of the grave. In death all are equal, and none can escape its touch.

First published in 1842, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" is a Gothic fiction that relates the tale of a horrible plague and a group of wealthy nobles' doomed attempt to escape from this dreaded disease. Of course, trying to hide from death is impossible, and the end is never in question, for as the final line of the short story states - And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.