Metal Man

Chapter 3: I play with a poisonous snake

The room was dark. 

So dark. 

But something- many things- were glowing, if very faintly...

I peered at one of the small dots of light. Our hotel room was dark, so what was it? 

I flicked on the light switch. "Why do you have to look at your phone in the dark?" I said. The hotel room light flickered once, and then illuminated the room. I peered at what had been a light. It was the center of a small flower on our wall. Huh. I shrugged and turned away. 

"It's good luck," said Aunt Elisa. I sighed. She eagerly checked her phone, but wilted in disappointment. "No reply." she said. I told you so, I thought.

"But he'll reply soon enough," she said, perking up slightly. "And then we'll sit at a cafe and talk about what happened over the years. And then we'll take her home."

You've got to admire her spirit. I mean, she's been searching for something utterly hopeless for years now and still has hope. She has a lot of persistence.

She set the phone down and flipped through a guidebook. "While we're waiting," she said. We'll be "waiting" for years at this point, I countered in my head. "We could make a trip to the Coliseum."

"Isn't that the place that's supposed to be really great?" I said, remembering my last conversation with Joel. I wondered what he was doing now. It was probably eight a.m. there, so he was most likely doing something extra for the ranch. That's just how Joel was.

She nodded. "It's hundreds of thousands of years old. It's supposed to be amazing."

"I don't care what we do. We're leaving in five days, right?"

"Yes." Five more days, and I'm outta here.

My stomach roared. "I'm starved. What's for lunch?"

"How about we go out to that restaurant around the corner?"

"But all they've got is croissants, croissants, and more croissants. I'm sick and tired of croissants."

"There's soup."

"There is?"

"Yes, Rosemarie. They've got squash and thyme soup."

"Can't we just order pizza? The Italians are famous for it, right?"

"The Italians are also famous for the Italian Mafia. Not all famous things are good."

"But pizza is."

"How do we know that? We're in another country. We don't know what their pizza tastes like."

"This is exactly why I'm proposing tasting it before we leave."

"Fine. You can get your pizza and then we'll walk over to the restaurant and I can get my soup."

"Fine."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"This is it." said Aunt Elisa. "The Coliseum."

Even though it was half-ruined, it was still an impressive sight. My mind was still processing that the thing had survived for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. I stood on my tiptoes to see above the heads of the humongous crowd of tourists. People and animals fought and died here, thousands of years ago, I thought.