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Dante

Somewhere beyond the sunny meadows, beyond the ancient forests, tinted by the shadow of the leaves, twigs and branches, beyond the vast open fields and overgrown hills, beyond blindingly sparkling, snow-covered spines and ribs of the mountains, beyond the swamps and smelly tar pits, with myriad tiny creatures gnawing on the bones of fallen animals under the thick, sick mists, beyond the barren plains, ruled by fierce zephyrs, beyond distances and horizons, there was the great sea.

The sea was vast, black and mighty. It rolled its' huge, mountain-sized waves towards the coasts in all directions, slamming them into the rocks with a force of a small earthquake, sending clouds of foam into the salty air.

There, on one such unremarkable barren coast, protruding into the sea was a rusty, moss-covered iron pipe. The black, wild water rushed inside it, pulled by an invisible force, faster than a ray of sunlight, faster than a thunder, cutting corners, falling down, climbing up, hissing, roaring, until abruptly thrown into the open, blinded by a dry, cold white light, into an enormous tank. As it landed, the water was swirled by rotating plates, pushed to the sides and up and down, until the last of it’s salty essence was stripped away. Then through enormous pumps, through smaller, shiny steel pipes, through filters and more chambers the water was rushed to where it was mixed with foul smelling, foul tasting powders, until it couldn’t remember anything anymore, because the water was dead.

But the journey has only just began, through more filters, through more, smaller shiny pipes, away from the plant, and into the vast supply network, the water became the blood that fed the veins and arteries of the City. It was running, now blindly and obediently, through countless pipes, cutting countless corners, passing countless filters, pumps and flow control stations, climbing up one hundred and forty stories, turning left, up again, and finally falling down onto the shoulders of a man, standing with his arms folded, motionless, in a small shower.

Dante was inspecting, quite absently, the way the water was streaming down the curves of the body and onto the floor below. He shook his head a little, and turned the red valve all the way, killing the hot water. He stood there for a minute, enjoying the sensation and gasping frantically for air, then he turned off the water entirely and walked out of the cabin. He liked it like that. He believed it was rejuvenating.

Dante grabbed his towel, and turned around, making sure the fabric covers as much space as possible. He raised his head, and there, in the back wall of the shower cabin, a blue ceramic tile, he saw his own, dim, reflection. Everything from the neck and above was obscured by vapor.

"I am.. faceless!” – Dante thought.

And the sensation of this thought engulfed him completely. The potential of what it could mean, what horizons could it reveal, left him breathless. Dante darted out of the bathroom, leaving the towel float in the puddle on the floor.

He flew through the apartment, leaving wet trail on the expensive carpet, slamming his fist into the upper left button of a retro jukebox as he passed it. A terribly grotesque symphony filled the empty volume of the luxury condo. Dante stopped in front of the enormous wall-window that ran through the entire length of his place.

It was Night. The City was a pile of colored diamonds on black velvet, stretching far beyond the horizon, far beyond imagination.

"I am faceless.” – Dante watched the bright yellow blood, coursing through the streets 140 stories below – "I am all of them, and I am every one of them, I am the embodiment of humanity entire”.

Today he was going to do it.

Dante breathed in, and stopped for a moment, feeling as the dry, heavily conditioned air passed his throat and turned a heavy weight somewhere inside his lower chest.

He turned on his bare heels, and walked slowly to the other side of the living room, towards the small studio kitchen. He barely ever used it before.

On the sleek, shiny surface of the oven he found a lone frying pan. It looked completely new. Dante’s fingers slowly wrapped around the comfortable, rubber handle. He lifted the pan through the air, feeling the small, reassuring weight of the object, calculating subconsciously trajectories and strength, watching the light spots traveling through the black matted surface of the pan.

Dante stopped for a moment, remembering a picture he saw once as a kid, a thousand light years ago, in a history book. A picture of a statue of a naked athlete, all folded up, coiled like a spring, holding a throwing disk. He didn’t realize it back then, but now he shuddered, imagining the power of the throw the statue promised to deliver.

Dante held the pan to the chest, and closed his eyes. He imagined all the strength of his body course to the right hand, folded up, coiled like a spring. He smiled, thinking of all the things he could never do in, or with his life, because he was too lazy, too shy, or just didn’t have enough time. But now, now right here he could at least release the strength of his arm at his own free will, at his own free time. And he did.

The pan flew, rotating in midair, through the apartment, above the expensive, cream-colored carpet, past the retro-style jukebox, past black leather couches and armchairs, past a wall-wide silver TV screen, and finally, in absolute silence, through the section of the wall-window. The sound came to Dante a moment later, as he opened his eyes – a gentle gush of glass shards, collapsing in a sparkling shower, racing 140 stories down with a speeding pan, into the distant oblivion of street lights below.

The wind – a cold, black wind of the Night rushed through the hole, screeching as it hit the broken edges of the glass in the window frame, filling the apartment with wild, expanding roar. Dante walked to the middle of the room, and stood there in awe, overwhelmed by the sensation of the wind wrapping around his naked body, rushing inside his lungs, blasting the dry apartment air out, filling him with myriad smells, sights and experiences of the great City Night.

"I am faceless. I am the embodiment of humanity, I am all and I am every single detail of the all”.

Dante took in all the cold air he could manage to hold, put his left leg in front of the right, leaned forward, and gave a tiny push with the toes of his legs. Surprisingly even for himself, he darted forward with a blinding speed, passing miles and miles of cream-colored carpet, past the towering city of couches, TV and audio sets, towards the gaping black portal of the broken window, into another realm beyond.

He didn’t stop at the edge, where the warm carpet met the cold iron of the eave. Dante went right through, throwing his arms forwards in a dive, his legs held firmly together, releasing all the air burning in his lungs in one, endless scream.

The fierce wind blurred the colored diamonds of the City into speeding comets, burned his eyes, filled his ears, turned the whole world upside down.

With great effort, Dante folded his arms to his chest, closed his eyes, and, as he did so many times this night, released the great strength, stored in every cell of his body, threw his arms backwards, and all of a sudden the apocalypse ended. The chaos of the collapsing, falling world ceased to exist.

Dante was floating through the cold air back up, towards the heavy black shroud of clouds and smog that completely covered the sky, towards this great mirror in which the City was observing itself every Night.

Dante stopped just under the cloud, hanging in the air. The zephyr was messing with his hair, still wet from the shower. He looked down, struggling to find his old building among millions of others just like it, and couldn’t. The City was, once again, just a pile of colored plastics on a black velvet.

Dante turned around, without any trace of sorrow or regret, preparing to cross the black shroud, and meet the moon for the first time in his life, prepared to travel beyond the boundaries of the City and imagination, towards the sunny meadows and ancient forests, that rested peacefully under the shadow of the leaves, twigs and branches.