Dusk and Her Embrace
Yorgos Dalman

Agonizing heat. And I can’t adjust the lenses of my spyglass. A massive plain lay before me with spots of dying grass and sand. Further ahead is a dried up riverbed. Beneath my feet the soil cracks open. The earth is a Jigsaw puzzle.

I see a herd of elephants. Meager, skinny. They have torn off the trunks. They have cut off the ears and tusks with machetes and chainsaws. Ripped out eyeballs. The dark holes stare at the sand.

It’s the mind of the sand. The brain candy. An absurdist natural disaster. I feel the decay and hear the screaming corpses. I see ghosts and the darkness.

Sunlight creeps in like liquid snakes. Rays of poison. Did they call it sweet wine of nature? My spine falls out ...

The beasts in the brown haze don’t move. Nothing moves.

The wind is senile.

I can feel the breath in my throat.

Beside me is a white, shiny, marble wash-bowl tangled in a barbed wire fence. There is a mirror. There is a ledge. There is a broken, empty spyglass and a straight razor.

The razor is marked with blood. The barbed wire forms a perfect square. No entrance. Huis clos.

Water drips from the faucet into the sink. A loud, dry bang ...

... a foul thickness. Grotesque. Unspeakable ...

I cover my mouth and nose with my hand and step back.

A bird lands on the lip of the sink. It snaps at the water drops.

I laugh. My ribs pierce the flesh of my stomach ...

The bird twitches, squawks, and flies away.

I bite my upper lip. Another loud, dry bang ... I look at the elephants with the spyglass. The herd seems to evaporate in the heat. A scorching gust of wind summons the dust. The dark holes overflow ...

The cadaver breaks with a sigh.

Yorgos Dalman (1973) lives in Holland, Europe.