My name is P. Culiar. I live with my family ´the Circus´ in the outlands of the Wandering Marshes in the west. If you’ve ever heard of it you’d know that it’s a shapeless land with mouldy brown tussocks and soiled water. All sky here is clouded white and it runs over the edges of the world like mucus mist from where the Circus is resting.
I have never travelled near the edges, for I have not dared, but those who have, say that you can see light from the sun roaming from beneath the flat.
If you’ve ever heard of it, you’ll pray you’ll never come here.
Gliding pale and naked, the Marshes sometimes get passed through by cities, fleeting silently, overroaming the shadow from which their memory has slipped though time.
That time is when we keep our performances. For an empty crowd - benches lying restless, waiting, for whatever never comes.
Life, what is life. Everlasting neverlasting sneaking creeping moaning life. Drenched in the smear of the marshes breath.
I have friends, you see. Faces, nonefigured, lying within whispers beneath the thickness which surrounds me. They speak to me, and I speak to them. Mostly, I ignore them, but when I do they grasp for me with their white, clawing hands. Have you ever tried ignoring that which screams in your own consciousness? Sometimes it’s easy, other times not so.
Time. Dissecting time, disinfecting time. That’s what we do here. Running from it, chasing it, dreading it, fearing it’s nurturing fingers. Hating it.
Today the sky is clothed in a yellowish gloom. There’s no escaping it. I’m loving it. Headless Male is taking an expedition towards the edges. I’m not coming, so Headless Male will be going alone save for his weather-torn accordion. I watch him as his figure bumps of along the tussocks and slowly fades in to the distance followed by the melancholy tunes of his accordion. On the tenth day of the seventh week the little freckle that remains of him eventually is consumed by the mist and the dry song that could still be heard dies away. He will not be coming back. In seventythree years the folk at the circus will start wondering where he went. It will take another twohundred before anyone will seriously be thinking of looking for him. He will not be coming back. I didn’t bother to tell him.
Mother and her precious Creature is practising ballet over the sink-hole. My dad fell in there once. He ever watches them through the glossy surface as they swirl in their eternal intoxication. Sometimes I stand by the sink-hole to watch him too. He returns my empty stare with those eyes, pleading, sometimes crying. I watch him.
I turn my gaze towards the east, along the lane where Headless Male went on the seventeenth week. Something is moving nauseously in the hazy distance. As it is growing nearer it reveals a great emptiness which slugs up all the marshes and the dim light surrounding it. A city.
It's gliding aimingly towards the spot where I'm standing. All I have to do is wait for it.
On the forty-fourth day of forty-eighth week I step on to a cobblestoned street in the outskirts of the city. As my feet trudges on, the naked, pillar-high facedes close up around me. And so does the silence. No voices, no gurgling from the swamps and no mumbling or buzzing from the Feet-Keckers that lurk by the tussocks. Dead silence, save for a melancholy tune that descends from the roofs. I look up and see Two-Faced Male sitting on a rooftop ahead, playing his weather-torn accordion. I nod once, he nods back, part his dry lips and from his throat raises a song, ancient as the very lips from which the tale is told.
I lower my gaze towards the western blocks. The sun is already nibbling on the outskirts of the city and the tary mist has started to lick the cobblestones. We are near the end of the Wandering Marshes.
I have never travelled near the edges. It will take seventythree years before the folk at the circus will start wondering where I went, and another twohundred before anyone will be thinking about looking for me.
I look up at Two-Faced Male. He has turned silent.
I have never travelled near the edges, for I have not dared, but those who have, say that you can see light from the sun roaming from beneath the flat.
If you’ve ever heard of it, you’ll pray you’ll never come here.
Gliding pale and naked, the Marshes sometimes get passed through by cities, fleeting silently, overroaming the shadow from which their memory has slipped though time.
That time is when we keep our performances. For an empty crowd - benches lying restless, waiting, for whatever never comes.
Life, what is life. Everlasting neverlasting sneaking creeping moaning life. Drenched in the smear of the marshes breath.
I have friends, you see. Faces, nonefigured, lying within whispers beneath the thickness which surrounds me. They speak to me, and I speak to them. Mostly, I ignore them, but when I do they grasp for me with their white, clawing hands. Have you ever tried ignoring that which screams in your own consciousness? Sometimes it’s easy, other times not so.
Time. Dissecting time, disinfecting time. That’s what we do here. Running from it, chasing it, dreading it, fearing it’s nurturing fingers. Hating it.
Today the sky is clothed in a yellowish gloom. There’s no escaping it. I’m loving it. Headless Male is taking an expedition towards the edges. I’m not coming, so Headless Male will be going alone save for his weather-torn accordion. I watch him as his figure bumps of along the tussocks and slowly fades in to the distance followed by the melancholy tunes of his accordion. On the tenth day of the seventh week the little freckle that remains of him eventually is consumed by the mist and the dry song that could still be heard dies away. He will not be coming back. In seventythree years the folk at the circus will start wondering where he went. It will take another twohundred before anyone will seriously be thinking of looking for him. He will not be coming back. I didn’t bother to tell him.
Mother and her precious Creature is practising ballet over the sink-hole. My dad fell in there once. He ever watches them through the glossy surface as they swirl in their eternal intoxication. Sometimes I stand by the sink-hole to watch him too. He returns my empty stare with those eyes, pleading, sometimes crying. I watch him.
I turn my gaze towards the east, along the lane where Headless Male went on the seventeenth week. Something is moving nauseously in the hazy distance. As it is growing nearer it reveals a great emptiness which slugs up all the marshes and the dim light surrounding it. A city.
It's gliding aimingly towards the spot where I'm standing. All I have to do is wait for it.
On the forty-fourth day of forty-eighth week I step on to a cobblestoned street in the outskirts of the city. As my feet trudges on, the naked, pillar-high facedes close up around me. And so does the silence. No voices, no gurgling from the swamps and no mumbling or buzzing from the Feet-Keckers that lurk by the tussocks. Dead silence, save for a melancholy tune that descends from the roofs. I look up and see Two-Faced Male sitting on a rooftop ahead, playing his weather-torn accordion. I nod once, he nods back, part his dry lips and from his throat raises a song, ancient as the very lips from which the tale is told.
I lower my gaze towards the western blocks. The sun is already nibbling on the outskirts of the city and the tary mist has started to lick the cobblestones. We are near the end of the Wandering Marshes.
I have never travelled near the edges. It will take seventythree years before the folk at the circus will start wondering where I went, and another twohundred before anyone will be thinking about looking for me.
I look up at Two-Faced Male. He has turned silent.
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