Torment

FORTHCOMING

It was a sleepless night but it was not dark. The high latitudes of summer made the clouds in Florence Italy still visible. Layers after layers of the atmospheric masses glimmered sporadically in different hues of blue. There were times that Homer Santos El Salvador would prefer to be in Sicily. However, he was also aware that the absence of his daughter would be a different case if ever he were in Palermo. And he always loved Florence anyway. Leaning on the side of the open balcony door, Homer took a sip of his red wine. The bittersweet spasm floated on his tongue for a while before flowing through his throat with a warm raucous sensation across his guttural. If not for his daughter not liking the extremities of tourism, he already predicted that he probably bought a property and lived in the area.

Homer sighed and clasped his hand around the wineglass. He closed his eyes. He breathed and let the fresh air filled his lungs. To sense every molecule reach his cell, to hear the thumping of his heartbeat, and to feel the soft breeze of summer touch his tanned skin. For a moment he relished the temporary tranquillity of the current atmosphere, only focusing on his calm breathings, only listening on the blurred noise of the city in front of him. But his mind was too clouded. It kept prolonging vast amounts of inferiority and doubts relentlessly. Not longer than a minute his eyes fluttered.

The mighty second of peacefulness immediately vanished. His senses gathered back together with the sight of the beautiful city of Florence. He stared at the dome of Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore towered among the other ancient structures. The vivacity of the lights from the immaculate cathedral and from each building shone in perfection. He could hear the bustling of the cars and the noise from the crowd louder. Behind him, he recognised Handel's opera composition of Piangero la Sorte Mia playing on the recorder inside. Staring at the city, with his eyes wandering all over the infrastructures, at least he was delighted to hear such glorious music in his ears.

"You're leaving?" It was rather a statement than a question when Homer heard his companion's voice from the inside. He exhaled deeply and finished his wine but didn't turn around neither did he answered her question. From afar he heard his companion getting out of the bath, the water droplets striking the meticulous Florentine renaissance tiles. He took his time not to say anything and just focused his eyes on the city.

Although the city shone in its own spontaneity of bright visible lights, no matter how beautiful it might seem Homer's thoughts were somewhere else. He didn't even know for how long his visions for light could last. Homer had been a warrior for a very long time. After suffering and dying and living and being resurrected for the second time, only darkness was all he could see. It had been too long already. Homer knew he could never be save in the darkness by anyone else.

Again, he closed his eyes to feel the vibration of the violin's string, the echo of the harpsichord and the supprano's voice from the background. Homer even heard other people's breathings, those who walked along the streets, the expanding and shrinking of their lungs, accompanied by the laughter of their hissing demons of vanity and greed and sins. It was almost infuriating to have a sense of it but deep down he understood that those were the things that created people as actual human beings. It was not their love for each other. It was not faith. It was not sympathy either. It was their sins.

Homer had witnessed the best of minds of his generation been destroyed by madness, those who were starving always desperate, men and women naked, dragging themselves at dawn to gain for a bit of fortune. He had seen people deprived with their own rights burning for the ancient heavenly connection to their faith but led to the starry dynamo of their sins because they simply had no choice; who poverty itself pounded their young souls in the cruel world they were living in. Who bared their brains and hearts for prayer to the gods and angels but still staggered with the humps of toils along the pathway of their journeys. And thinking about the people that would soon surround him if he ever left Italy, who passed with high degrees and intellect, who were blinded by the shimmering radiance of money and glory, who had been hallucinated by their desperate longings for fame, he could not be less anguish about the unjust, almost disbelieving reality.