Free A Dirge for the Temporal by Darren Speegle

“The illusion that surrounds the instrument in your hand, the blood stain on your shoe.”
      I would not deign to cast a downward glance. “Yeah…”
      “The illusion that killing does not exalt you, that blood does not darken the mystery of you.”
      “But blood always darkens the mys—”
      I felt the pain in a long swift angle, the warm fluid swell beneath my tee shirt, the foulness of the air as I sought to have more of it in my lungs suddenly.
      “It will require some nipping and tucking,” said the surgeon, “but I think you will be our magician. For here in Amber you cannot escape your illusions.”

Merging Tableaux

    E veryone has at least one scene that they cannot erase from memory, a fragment of the past that affected them so profoundly it now occupies a permanent place in their consciousness. I have two such scenes, one overlapping the other, textures blending without diminishing the shocking vibrancy of the details. The motion of surplus body fat, the smells of carnal appetite gathering in the air, the duet of bestial fulfillment and malignant laughter, the splatter of poppies.
      If I had let the past remain where it belonged, I never would have known the second tableau. No matter the catalyst, returning after nearly two decades had the flavor of psychosis. The demons had been at rest for a considerable while when unexpected contact from across space and time reawakened them. I’ve no doubt that had I but ignored the call, they would have lain still again, grotesque but inanimate, like poor Dirk. Alas, I boarded a plane within the week, shying away from the stewardess during the twelve-hour flight because of her dark, reminiscent eyes.
      Visually, nothing had changed, as nothing ever does over there. As I turned onto Salmstrasse , driving slowly in order to fully savor the impressions, I could see the Rothaus was still intact, though its paint had faded to a brownish red. In the fields behind the durable three-story structure poppies appeared, wild red-orange blooms peeping out of high grass, just as they had that spring of eighteen years before. The barn emerged from its hiding place, the surrounding weeds touched by a breeze, breaths and moans, the restless limbs of the chestnut tree.
  The yard was in a state of low maintenance, a tractor perhaps hav ing swept through once or twice since winter. I pulled into the drive, its ruptured paving stones flanked by Brennessel —burn nettles—already abuzz with insects, and this only the first week of June. I’d come straight from the airport in the rental, and had to grope around for the right controls before separating myself from the compact. The house looked vacant except for the curtains in the second-floor windows. But they might have been relics, their patterns formed by cobwebs behind the grimy glass. Outside the tableau itself, I couldn’t remember such particulars.
      Poppies bright as blood, foliage sharp as jagged glass recalled an artist’s sudden, revelatory strokes, while the odors were no less direct in their assault upon my senses. Resin, earth, grass, rotting boards. Sweat. Metal. The ting of copper in the ears, on the tongue. I reached out and touched the side of the barn. Moist, always moist, as if it retained every sin ever committed. I heard, felt activity around my shoe, looked down to freeze the image—not of the snake wriggling out from under the weeds, but rather the bizarre American icon that was my tennis shoe, its bright white laces interweaving with the blades of vegetation. I held that frame for long seconds.
      Yes, here I was, back on foreign soil, which I had so longed to leave as a teenager. And approaching the exact spot which had changed my every perception of who and what I was, and where I fit in the global career path my parents had chosen. As I stepped around the side of the barn, I suddenly didn’t want to see the spot again, though I knew that in the immediate sense I would simply be looking