A Dirge for the Temporal Read Online Free PDF

brief, very brief patch of white, watching it saturate like ink, like blood, the ridiculously virginal bit of fabric. Now the flicker of the candle…the flicker, flicker, moth wings...
      You bitch, you bitch, you BITCH! I have watched you deteriorate to this state, throwing your black shadow over our home, devouring everything in sight, for the last time!
      Ah, Daddy, home from work at last, still in his clown costume…
      I’ve had damn well enough. Do you understand me, you bitch? ENOUGH!
      …wielding his bottle of bourbon like a club.
      There! How’d that feel? Still hungry, you?
      Now like a knife.
      I’m going to take you apart like a chicken!
      Daddy, home and screaming. Must be in that sort of black mood Mommy gets.
      The tablecloth’s motif is scarcely discernible, I notice. The polka dots are no longer distinguishable from the rest of it, the entire garment now saturated by the ritual syrup. I should do the baptism tonight. Baptize. Uncle Trace used that word after they took Daddy, naked and screaming, away. The costume—my god, we’ll have to baptize it with gasoline and a match. Uncle Trace is my mother’s side.
      Like a chicken! Know why? Cause I can’t help it, that’s why! I’m famished! Ravenous as a wild dog!
      Now like a fork. A dinner fork.
  The candle flame to the tablecloth’s flowery cuffs and listen to the clown scream. This time in pain. And not the sort that a painted tear and a bottle of cheap bourbon describe.

The Shades of New Geneva
    F unny, they had built the great triangular Prism in the center of New Geneva as a symbol of what they called “unity in diversity.” Now the dispersed bands of light melted into the miasma enveloping the city, creating a spectral stew. Like the population itself. Like the streets of the dreadful place.
      As he stood looking down into the valley of the city, Lane didn’t want to go back in there. He would never speak those words to Leah, who stood tautly beside him, her temporarily concrete-colored eyes refusing to reflect the weird lights below. She had lost something to New Geneva, something intrinsic, and she had finally summoned the courage to go searching for it. He would not compromise that. The strange silence surrounding their merged roads, an infection of which she was the source, must end. The possibility of leaving her had long since evaporated. She had infected him too thoroughly.
      He glanced at her, finding that she had fixed on a point beyond the valley, in the direction of the sea. He followed her gaze to a motley object sewn into the deceptively clear fabric of the morning sky. It was a hot air balloon, and moving towards the basin, as if to enhance its navigator’s high with the toxic vapors of the city. The French Alps to the north and the Mediterranean to the south, New Geneva had once been a favorite destination for adventurers and their colorful toys. Not anymore. If pleasure was the function of this vehicle, then it was piloted by either a fool or a madman.
  “Come,” he said, motioning her ahead of him. She led the way down the path with a sureness to her light step, the familiarity its own brand of homecoming. They wouldn’t be giving her a parade in New Geneva. They might toss her a dwarf or a senseless riddle, ogle her with swollen tongues and drunken serenades. They might even allow her to pop off a few shots at the rats, or pose for the spiegel , or partake of the âme , but they wouldn’t be giving her a parade. New Geneva took more than New Geneva gave. Lane knew because he had been here multiple times on business. Lane knew because Leah knew; she had been a citizen.
      As they descended, the city’s structures sank into its miasmal aura, leaving only the Prism itself, filtering the rising sun into the chaos over which it stood sentinel. The hot air balloon grew, letters beginning to take shape out of its stripes. As the city welcomed them, so did the obsolete advertisement: unity in