The scarred land groaned beneath Ilona’s feet. Wisps of grass brushed her ankles like the caressing fingers of the dead who had not come far, not far at all.
We’re forever trapped inside this place.
She waded across to the crooked huts. The charred ribcages of what used to be and she glanced up at the bird’s nest perched atop the collapsed roof’s gable, the cracked shingles a mosaic of green and yellow lichen. The entrance stood wide open, a gaping maw exposing dark, inscrutable innards. The sickly, stinging stench of rotting wood made Ilona catch her breath. Within the darkness, what looked like the shape of a woman stood.
I built this house with blood and sweat, love and dreams. Within the blink of an eye, it was gone.
The wind sighed against Ilona’s neck. Unseen life rustled within the overgrown grass, the only inhabitants courageous enough to live in this cemetery of unfulfilled dreams.
Sacrificed for those of distant tyrants.
Their salvation their lack of understanding of what dreaming meant. Of what it means to lose the world you’ve known.
Remade in the shape of distant tyrants.
The wind ceased as if to catch its breath. A shadow crossed the sky to taint the sun. The shape of a woman in the window shuddered. A day, and my old world was gone.
Ilona shielded her eyes from the blinding light. Shrieks within the rising wind. Her heart, not yet still.
Dariusz Targański
ist das Pseudonym von Dariusz Schimankowitz, geb. 1994 in Bremen. Er studierte Anglistik/Amerikanistik und Modernes Japan in Düsseldorf und absolvierte einen Master im Creative Writing an der Edinburgh Napier University, wo er sich auf Science-Fiction, Fantasy und Graphic Novels spezialisierte. Er lebt in Bremen und arbeitet als freier Autor, Übersetzer und Lektor.
