This article examines the relationship between space, memory, and the effects of Brazil's military dictatorship (1964–1985) presented in Luis Fernando Veríssimo's 2004 short story, A mancha (‘The Stain’). Although simple in structure, the narrative touches upon complex themes in postdictatorship: engaging with past trauma and political differences that cut across family relationships, conflicting notions of betrayal, the urban processes associated with capitalism, and the commodification of memory itself. I argue that the ‘stain’ traced in A mancha goes beyond the normalised rhetoric of postdictatorial memory, as the narrative both maintains and traces marginalised subjectivities of postdictatorship through its engagement with material and discursive spatial production in Brazil.