Spiegel became my epiphany of Poe’s bone-chilling narration. I discovered that he kept a diary in my desk. He had neatly handwritten foreign scribbles and sketched drawings of mystical creatures and malignant children. As a last resort, succumbing to my madness, I decided to leave him a note, I opened his diary, scribbled today’s date and some greetings and an over-polite invite for the fiend to show up! I woke up the day after and found a reply in the same page! I was disappointed when I read Spiegel’s lines:

“Down he sank in a chair—ran his hands through his hair—

And chanted in mimsiest tones

Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,

While he rattled a couple of bones. 

…

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,

In the midst of his laughter and glee,

He had softly and suddenly vanished away–

For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”

Non-sense, how cryptic! 

After two months of confusion and desperate attempts to find out that Spiegel’s identity, I decided to rid myself of him forever. Throughout our interesting acquaintance, I realized how much he liked to eat apples; he leaves a pile of cores carelessly on the table every morning, utterly disturbing my obsessive compulsive disorder and my stressful mysophobia. With rat poison and my fullest killer intent, I poisoned the apples one by one, like a witch so fearful smiled as my deed was done, and, merry and content, I slept!

In what felt like consciousness splashed onto me in a blink, I sprang awake , not where I slept but facing the rising sun within the window across from a kitchen chair — one I was seated upon. A bitten apple was reclining on the table with the traces of fingers that gripped so hard. My chest exceedingly transformed into a burning oven. My limbs were quaking and my vision grew dimmer as my thoughts paced endlessly. Flashes of a stranger’s memory were scattering around like paper and folding away into books that plunge deep into my mind. The ever torn fabric of my memory started to recollect forming a thin tight line. My consciousness slowly faded with the gradual realization of who Sie Spiegel was; as a ill smile malignantly drew itself upon my lips. With that very smile, I sank into the deepest of sleep.

. . .

February 15th, 2007

YI
You’re not serious when you’re seventeen.
-One fine evening, tired of beers and lemonade,
The noisy cafes with their dazzling gleam!
-You walk below like-trees’ green on the Parade.

The limes smell so good on fine June evenings!
                       The air’s so sweet somtimes you close your eyes:
                    The wind, full of sounds -the town’s nearby-
                    Blows the smell of beer, and the scent of vines..

II
                    - Then you make out a little tiny tatter
                    Of sombre azure framed by a twig of night,
                    Pierced by a fatal star, it melts, after
                    Soft tremblings, tiny and perfectly white…

                    June night! And Seventeen! – You get tipsy.
                    The sap’s champagne and blurs every feature…
                    You wander: you feel a kiss on your lips
                    That quivers there, like a tiny creature…

III
Your mad heart goes Crusoeing the romances,
-Where in the pale lamp’s glare your eyes follow
A young girl going by with sweet little glances
Below the gloom of her father’s stiffened collar..

And because she finds you immensely naive
As by, in her little ankle boots, she trips
She turns away alertly with a quick shrug
- And a cavatina dies away on your lips..

You’re in love. Taken till the month of August.
You’re in love. – Your sonnets make her smile.
All your friends have gone: you’re in bad taste.
- Then the adored, one evening, deigns to write!

That evening.. you return to the cafes gleam,
You call out for beer or lemonade…
- You’re not serious when you’re seventeen
And the lime-trees are green on the Parade.

– Arthur Rimbaud