This week has been a week as has every week before it this year except more so. It’s possible back in 2018 we had a week that wasn’t a week extra than a week, but if we did I don’t remember it. Not only has it been a week, but also I’ve suddenly become very busy at work and am likely to remain so until November.

And I do not like this.

Apologies in advance if things show up later or are slimmer than usual. I’ll likely default to slim over delayed, but there you go. It’s a bummer too, because I had plans… ambitions even. All those are on the back-burner for now. Or until I get more people on my patreon, because nothing motivates me more than feeling like I owe people “content”.

On to the story…

“A Dog in Durer’s Etching” by Marco Denevi

This is a story by someone I had never heard of before. From the introduction Denevi appears to have been a favorite of Manguel’s and this story comes from an unsuccessful anthology series Manguel edited. His idea was to give writers a prompt and tell them to write whatever they want on it. Denevi’s story comes from the volume where that Durer print above (The Knight, Death, and the Devil) served as the prompt.

I’ve written about Durer and Weird Knight Shit before and will happily declare that I am a fan of both. I’m also a fan of dense but flash-length, stream of consciousness rambling short stories. And this story delivers that too. It’s a single sentence. A near two thousand-word sentence.

The Knight is returning from the war. Which war? All wars, because every war is the same war when it is lived through. The Knight left home for the war as an innocent youth. He’s now returning a battle-hardened (and psychologically damaged) soldier. But it’s home, and as he rides towards it he reflects on war, and the schemes of princes and popes, and death, and God’s judgment, and the memories flow – memories of carnage, pillaging, and the like. Maybe he’s no longer a man at all but some desiccated husk of calloused flesh withering in a suit of armor. Maybe no man remains at all, and he’s only his armor. He rides on. He muses. He wonders at the webs woven by popes, princes, and emperors, and wonders about God. And then he sees a dog, and he realizes the dog doesn’t see at all the webs that rule its world. It has no way of working out the plots of pope, prince, or emperor. It is free from God’s judgment, but this in no way makes it safe. Or so the Knight muses. The dog does a bit of its own musing. It sees not the Knight, but the Death that rides with the Knight in the form of Plague. It knows this truth that the Knight doesn’t and barks, but the Knight can’t hear Death barking, and only hears the dog.

This isn’t so much a story as a trip. Denevi’s written a story with a virtuoso’s flourish that you read to experience the act of reading it. And I love that.

Next week: another writer I’ve only ever seen in the discount dollar bins.