Confluence by John C. Mannone

He sits on the banks of the Danube just beyond the confluence of the Brigach and Breg. The Black Forest is tinged purple by the morning. An east wind chills his heart. He pulls a tattered blanket around him, the one he had found on the outskirts of the village.

His haggard face, with four days growth and scarred from the fall, reflects a portrait of his past in the mirror stillness of the blue river. The sun blazing crimson, shimmers the water.

Flames had scoured the upstairs when he jumped. All his body parts were on fire. Even as he hurtled through the night air and plunged into the river, he was thinking about her, and why he had left her alone with him—that monster.

Guilt and rage now course through his veins in torrents; asceticism does not assuage that singeing guilt. He wonders in the lonely hours what he had done wrong. He had worked so hard on his research. His assistant, who perished in the flames, was always kind, though a little bit stupid. He didn’t have the criminal mind, or did he? And what about her? She was just a little girl, a frightened little girl who shouldn’t have screamed. His eyes burning, you can hear him cry out loud, “I am no monster. I was just a doctor trying to help. Just a doctor, like my father, and his.”

His face dissolves into distorted ripples in the stream, merging with haunting legacies for him, and all the Frankensteins.

* First appeared in Insomnia Press, October 2012

John C. Mannone has poetry in Artemis Journal, Poetry South, Blue Fifth Review, Baltimore Review, Pedestal, Pirene’s Fountain, and others. An HWA Horror Scholarship winner (2017), he edits poetry for Abyss & Apex, Silver Blade, and other venues. He’s a retired physics professor living near Chattanooga, TN.  http://jcmannone.wordpress.com.