Hinterland

19/12/2025 5 min
Hinterland

Listen "Hinterland"

Episode Synopsis

Tick.
Tock.
Cease.
A clockmaker’s palms,
instruments at rest,
No more winding springs for the Empire’s dead chest.
His patriot’s sermon,
a moth-eaten creed,
Now a monologue
in a slow, crimson bleed.
A broken cog.
A frozen dial.
He measured our time
with a ghost of a smile.

Black.
White.
Check.
A park bench at dawn,
a chessboard of frost.
The grandmaster’s gambit,
desperately lost.
His strategy—scars
on a map of the skin—
A final move made
as the shadows moved in.
A pawn removed.
The game is flawed.
He guarded a truth
that was left un-owed.

Cut.
Stitch.
Truth.
You read in the flesh
what the city denied.
A poet of sinew,
with science as guide.
Your light, a cold scalpel
in theatre’s glare,
Dissecting the fever
infecting the air.
A silver flash.
Then, the dark.
You sought the source
and were given its mark.

And the rain…
on the Franz Josef Bridge…
is a prison gate’s song.
The Danube runs thick
with the stories it hides.
It carries the shame
of the old, turning tides.
There’s no washing clean
in this water so black.
No returning from
the long, frozen track.
Of the wire and the silence,
the camp’s bitter bread,
And the ghost of a friend
who is better off dead.
No redemption.
No rising.
Just the weight of the mud,
and the world compromising.

Hunt.
Haunt.
Choose.
The hunter’s coat hangs,
a familiar shape.
But the mirror holds
a stranger’s escape.
The Hinterland’s border
is under the skin—
A no-man’s-land where
all the questions begin.
To wear the mask,
or be the prey?
The line dissolves
at the end of the day.
The final shot…
is a breath let go.
To walk in the shadow
you’ve come to know.

And the rain…
is just rain now.
The bridge…
is just stone.
And the ghost in the alley…
is finally…
alone.