Page 289 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

I was fortunate, however, that my next destination was
one of the more dream-haunted locations of the world,
playing to the calm timbre of forfeited confidences in
solidity and sanity. Willard, a place of glittering madness,
a jewel tucked into the throat of a corpse. It would be my
temporary reprieve, and hopefully, my redemption.
Cutting in half my swelling disgust at my reincarnation
was the most recent entry into my journal, the words of
my greatest adversary—Jack Lantern. There was a guiding
light to his logic, if only the dim foxfire of a darkened
swamp, doubtful and misleading. But at the very least, his
paradigm was cogent and internally consistent, if ultimately
incorrect—despite the alleged scrutiny leveled at my
exposed dreams. There was value in delusion, especially if it
should have absolutely no part in logic or material truth—a
waking dream in many respects.
The Soul Carver had peered too long into the eyes of the
White Mother, convincing himself of the bottomlessness of
her kingdom, that only masks could make the world suitable
for living. I am not a mask, Jack—I am fire. I will set this
corpse-world aflame upon the pyre of my art, or I will die
trying, very likely at the glimmering edges of your own
exquisite knives.

But first, there was the wonderful Mister Hide, that
connoisseur of swapped skins, reflector of inner truths via
the display of their more honest exteriors. Again, and to
import a fraction of my criticism of poor Jack Lantern—
there is little use for truth in graveyards. The only truths that
lurk there consist of the certainty of death and the
displacement of dream. All else, as they say, is mere window
dressing. Even if that dressing were made from the most
skilled fashioning of once-living tissue.
Despite a certain contempt of self, I was grateful for
having dealt a decisive blow against the Mistress of Corpses,
felling her miserable son. But there was much more work to
292 | Mark Anzalone