Autoscopy

By MJ. Dally

Prince Thani walked into my room, marmoreal and naked, through my wall mirror. He looked blank

and distraught under the blue light of the night and its droning silence. He walked past me like a

ghost and out my chambers to the congealed sapphire lake. He began immersing himself. I tailed

him past the rotting heap of abandoned teak chairs on the courtyard and sat upon a boulder on

the grey shore. The moon is a steadfast totem.

“What is wrong, my Prince?”

“My blue eyed lion is dead. So is my griffin. My Djinns have forsaken me after I took the Sheikh’s

medicines.

Our city’s walls are softer than the termites that crawled down the magnetic mountain. Our

underground river is turning to blood secretly. I’m dead inside.”

“What about Sirat Baybars, lord? Do the tales not inspire you anymore?”

“Nothing does. I won’t be the Sultan my people deserve.”

Prince Thani’s head bobbed in the water lightly.

“But Lord,” I began. “The people love you. They anticipate your reign. None believes you are ill.

None doubts your valiance. Your sorrows shall pass.”

“I am unsure now. My sorrow is the kind that would accompany me to the hereafter. It’s a disease

that rose from no suffering, but is the suffering itself.”

“You still have the moon.”

“Yes!”. Prince Thani finally smiled unto the thick water. He then looked up at me and asked;

“Which of us is the real me anyway?”

By MJ. Dally