The Western Gate

The hotel room we had booked in Florence had its own private terrace, at night after the wandering and the browsing of boutiques, fashion houses and of course the glory of Florence I would sit on the low wall and just look out towards the city. The rooftops of Florence lay before like a carpet, the white wash walls of houses cluttered- snow blinding at times depending where the sun rose in the sky.
To the right I saw upon one of the rooftops the whirling of an air conditioning box and and there in the adjacent window a lonely figure eyed me.

It were a form dressed in a huge whitened shroud and the face itself a deathly pale, to the extent I assumed at it first it were wearing a blank white mask, staring at me, the figure remained motionless- a ghastly aboding spectre.

I motioned somewhat for the figure to move, first ducking behind the column on the terrace and then re-appearing like a jack-in-the-box but still the figure stood- it were alike the many sculptures I had seen littered about the squares and museums of Florence~ teasing those watching eyes who feel the sense of ‘history’.

Again I moved in strange ways to create reaction, as one would mock cruelly somebody you wanted to illicit anger from, but the ghostly figure was non-responsive.
At once the bells in the tower of the church to my left rang.
And at that moment the crooked hand upon the bodach pointed towards it, a grotesque gnarled finger.

It pointed to the direction of the sound of doom. And, yes, like Jack-in-the-box, I were but a puppet now, trapped in the confines and at the mercy of the phantom’s authority, the fate’s arbiter, that ghastly judge in absolute dominium. I was frozen, not just in fear but the very sinews of every muscle in my body were pulled taut before fossilising, and I were as stone there, upon that terrace, my vision overlooking the rooftops of Florence with a facial expression of agony and bewilderment.
Such a fool as I to mock and jest in the playground of the artisans and wise, the temples of the priests, poets and songsters, to hope, indeed to believe I have the right to mock them, that they should recognize and witness my presence, acknowledge it. I am but a fool, and more’s the pity knows such that I am, I have returned to clay, am cast as marble, my final moment forever chiselled into my being, the one who lived in pain, the one who does not understand, the one who jeered and were not respectful, who refused to simply bow and salute, he that were cast- it is now finished, and cast out.
– – –

Finis.