A Dirge for the Temporal Read Online Free PDF Page A

to leave be. Having punched through the last of them, he found himself and his wagon, in a haze of hot rubber and clutch and brakes, facing Verena. Verena and the akimbo. Would he or would he not come to dinner?
      She did not protest, in spite of her impatient stance, as he dragged his victims one by one back to the stream, where the water accepted them eagerly, instantly sweeping them away. He never looked at them as he did the work. He did not know their nature and did not want to know. To his hands they were cool, moist; it was enough. He glanced once they were in the clutch of the stream, then just for a second, to make sure they obeyed.
      He left the wagon in the middle of the road. It was an admission.
      To be denied no longer, Verena held out her hand to him.
      Inside, at their neatly laid table, the candles provided a scent as well as light, but the light was exclusive and the shapes of their faces drifted radiantly. She made him eat the petals of flowers, drink water from the falls, kiss her face when there wasn’t enough. She was Laura, she said. And Ginger.
      “Once, a long, long time ago,” she recalled, “a stranger ambled in off the Wanderweg . His arrival caused the gears of September to freeze. His presence caused the stream to flow backwards into the wilderness of ice and snow, carrying with it the vitality of our little village at the end of civ ilization. Now you have returned.”
      “Sept is a delightful name for a village.”
      “Your village,” she said. She raised a glass. “Unforsaken.”

Indulgence
    M y mother was a manic-depressive, my father was a circus clown, and I have never suffered for it more than now, nearly twenty years since their departure.
      The hunger-lust, in one form or another, has been around since my adolescence, but the ritual is developed. Things dark or red, sweetly deca dent, satisfy my cravings. Things reminiscent of my deeper moods, things that can be savored by candlelight. You might say I am a sort of vampire for cherry pies and chocolate cakes, Bloody Mary mixes and richly red wines. My mother’s binges, on the other hand, went somewhat beyond the sweet tooth. But I become one with her through abandon not mimicry. Abandon is bliss.
      Abandon is when the curtains are drawn, the candle lit and the feast spread out before me. Only then may I cease to suppress my magnificent appetite. Only then may I fully give over to the voraciousness and sav agery that define my nightly indulgences. But the banquet goes not without its pauses, moments to close the eyes and to relish our finding each other over the chasm, my mother and I, dripping fingers interlocking, feet gingerly balancing on the red polka dots scattered across the whispery white fabric that serves as the bridge.
      I often use my father’s only surviving costume as a tablecloth. The reds have long since bled into one another—thanks to my utter lack of eti quette—but there is some comfort in having the clown suit there, some…sanity. One day I will burn it. One day, when its simple motif is no longer recognizable, I will set the candle flame to its flowery cuffs and listen to the clown scream. As for tonight, I will let it serve the practical purpose. I am hungry, after all, and the shadows are already dancing around me.
  Ah, the rich, the delectable, the sinful and luscious! How I do anticipate these feasts. From the early office hours to the bakery’s last call, it is all I can do to contain myself. You see, my deeper moods have become my shallower moods, abiding, as familiar to me as my own face. And the darks and reds blur my vision with such incessancy that the lenses of my glasses might as well be tainted. The ritual becomes as much a leash as a release, and the world is spared the monster even as the monster suffers.
      Though the only suffering I know now is the oblivious suffering of gluttony.
      But—a syrupy cherry has fallen from my maw. And—I look at it against a