This character driven film paints a psychological portrait of the great American writer Edgar Allan Poe, exploring the extraordinary life experiences that shaped his fascinating imagination. By weaving through the ethnography of Poe's dreams and nightmares, particularly the dying moments of himself and his loved ones, a complex plot line of past and present intermingles while Poe hovers near death in his hospital bed. We open with Poe lying unconscious in an alleyway in Baltimore. It is October 3, 1849 and the Congressional elections have just ended, and Poe has been discarded into the alley, after being used by a press gang to cast multiple false ballots for a crooked political campaign. Poe is discovered by his cousin Neilson and brought to Washington College Hospital where he remains until his death five days later, which is the focus of the story. In the hospital, Poe floats in and out of consciousness.