Party ghosts. Long dead bodies arranged around a table covered in birthday decoration as fossilized as the corpses propped up in their chairs. Party hats covered in dust with tattered streamers rippling in fetid currents of air trapped in the room from a long, long time ago.
A bite of birthday cake now would taste of despair, would taste of loneliness; a grasping at happiness by a man so isolated, in so much pain that death was a longed for release. "It won't hurt anymore; I promise, it won't hurt."
The trickle of fresh blood is the only bright color.