Silmo's arm was stretched to its limit by Siva, who was climbing the stairs with superhuman speed. As he was dragged by Siva he couldn't help but notice that the floor was a bit wet, with some water spots still on the ground reflecting the artificial light.
In the blink of an eye, he found himself on the second floor, in the wall in front of the stairs there was a wide window covered with a dark green blanket, the opposite wall was identical only with a blanket with purple and pink patterns.
To his right, there was an apartment's door semi-open, but all he could see was a white wall, to his left instead he saw another semi-open door and next to it, at the right angle of the landing, an old woman was sitting with her back leaning against the wall with a blue bucket between her feet and a mop cloth was held by a veiny, wrinkled arm, it was reddish and there was a pinkish stain tending to red underneath it.
The elderly woman was wearing a white tracksuit that was a little too small for her and had her eyes closed as if she were sleeping, he could clearly see her chest swelling and deflating with effort. Her thick white hair clinging to her forehead while the rest fell behind her back. What amazed him most was a part of the tattoo sticking out from her chest and going up to the beginning of her neck, it was only visible due to the fact that her head was turned upward. His eyes were fixed on her while walking slowly guided by Siva.
<
As he looked at her, undecided about what to do, the old lady slowly opened her brown eyes and emitted a faint sound similar to a moan.
"Oh, Siva, always so energic." She scanned Silmo from top to bottom. "And who is he?" She asked with a faint voice.
Silmo was about to introduce himself, but Siva was faster. "He's a survivor I've found." the position of Siva's feet, pointed towards the stairs, betrayed her will to reach the Decision-making-room as soon as possible.
The old lady simply emitted a soft sound of approval. She had her eyes fixed on Silmo, yet he sensed that she wasn't actually looking at him. Silmo freed himself from the tight grip of Siva and took some steps towards the old lady careful not to get too close so as not to frighten her.
"Hello, my name's Silmo. Nice to meet you." Said in the most gentle way possible. He even brought his right hand forward for a handshake, but seeing the weariness in her hands pulled it back, as he pulled it back he noticed that the water inside the bucket was reddish.
<
"Oh, I'm glad that..." She talked slowly wasting all the air on a few words only to take deep breaths later. "You managed to survive in this disaster." Her chest decompressed and swelled so much that it creeps Silmo out.
"Come on we have to go." The high-pitched voice of Siva echoed in the landing. Silmo turned to her, she was looking at him at the beginning of the stairs.
"We don't need to rush. I want to know everyone, you said you would introduce me to everyone." He turned again towards the old lady who was slowly trying to sit in a most comfortable way, leaving behind Siva's lament.
"Did you clean the whole floor? Shouldn't you rest a bit?"
"But I am resting." She said as soon as she was comfortable. She was still leaning against the wall, but now she was more upright. She leaned the mop against the wall, and both hands fell on her skinny thighs. "I cleaned the first and second floors. It was a little too much for me. But a clean environment means a clean mind. Too bad I realized it so late." There was a moment of silence, where Siva hoped so hard to move on, yet all of her hope was destroyed the moment the old lady spoke again. She was looking down at the bucket as if she were in another place in her mind.
"When my daughter was younger, she always told me I was too messy. But i didn't listen to her and, for a long time I remained that way." She was still looking at the reddish water as if she was seeing her past in there.
"it was just dirt or blood, you should have rested instead of straining. Your breathing sounds a little too labored." Silmo wasn't sure what he should do if she felt too sick, he was just standing still hoping for the best.
"And being a dead weight? Never again... I was already useless to my daughter." She spoke slowly and softly, almost as if she didn't want to be heard.
"I, we old geezers should help more than ever." after a small pause she continued talking, her eyes fixed on the ground.
"Especially now, many are injured to save us. Yet many would rather sit around bitching and cry for the mess than get off their damn asses." As she spoke, her anger grew, and some spit flew directly onto his clothes. Silmo could see her eyes bright with a new and forceful light disappearing quickly as it appeared, once again she leaned back, resting her entire body and her head, returning to fill the landing with his labored breaths.
Silmo looked at her speechless, almost scared, he looked around just to see the landing have another two semi-open doors all alike and placed at the same location as the first two he saw, as if the landing was mirrored.
<
"Can we go now?" Asked impatient Siva while she was leaning on the staircase banister, her arms and face resting against it.
"One moment." He said without even giving her a glance. "What happened here? Why is there so much blood?" He pointed at the bucket.
"Oh Lord..." The face of the old lady darkened, her breaths became deeper, just as her exhalations became longer. She ran a hand over her forehead, moving all the sweat-stained hair to one side and then placed his hand back on his thigh drying it.
"A huge animal attacked us..." her voice was cracked, her hands were shaking like she was cold, her eyes flicked from side to side across the room and never stopped for more than an instant on Silmo.
"it destroyed everything... light went off immediately... but i could feel blood on me" her breath shortened and spoke faster. "my ears were ringing, yet i could heard people scream or begging for help... i didn't saw what happened next. i remember just a gunshot and the earth trembled... it's still lying there."
Silmo was still silently frozen there, looking at her, her face was covered in sweat, her laboured breath had worsened and filled the landing, which was silence as a crypt. The fear in her eyes, the drops of sweat, which spawned in her forehead and, those which weren't caught by her hair, went all of the way down to her chin, her chest expanding and contracting at a rapid pace made everything feels unnatural. Something inside him was telling him to say something, to reassure her, to help her in some way. Yet he stand still there looking at her.
Another sound took his space in the landing, Silmo turned to it and saw Siva walking in front of the stairs taking long strides and tapping the floor each time with the toe of his little boots, she was looking around, first the ceiling, the bizzare blanket, the floor and lastly Silmo, but as soon as she saw that he was looking at her she looked away.
From what little he saw, she had the same face as when he met her. The face of someone who struggled to hide her real emotion behind a mask of indifference. Her eyes were shiny with tear that she refused to let fall, her little red nose and tight mouth fighting to release at least one breath.
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A heavy sigh of relief came from the old lady, not even allowing him the luxury of being able to think, he turned to her. She had leaned her back against the wall, effectively resuming the same position as when he saw her, only now both forearms were resting on her thighs, with her hands barely touching and the tattoo on her chest that resurfaced.
"Hey kiddo... sorry but I want to..." There was a long pause, at first he thought it was to catch her breath, however, after two deep breaths, she still didn't spoke, the worst thoughts took over. Her eyes were closed and the mouth was constantly open to take deep breathes. "Being alone now." those word, for a short moment, were the best words he listened in his entire life.
"Are you okay?" Silmo was so relieved that he spoke without a thought, but, finally, he gave voice to the thoughts that filled his head.
"yeah... yeah. i'm more tough than you think." a small and tired laugh came out of her lips. "Don't worry... focus on being helpful... unlike the others."
<
"Well, good rest then, see you later" he said it with the most gentle tone possible. he turned back to Siva, leaving behind the labored breathes.
"i'm done Siva, we can go."
Siva turned to him, the eyes were red, but no longer shiny, she took a bit of time to put a fake smile on her face. Her mood had changed drammatically. She would have been enthusiastic to go, yet now she was just standing there, looking at him.
"Finally. Now come on we need to hurry." her voice was not like before. It lacking of any happiness and emotion. She tried to give nothing away, to smile as much as she could and raise the tone of his voice, but she failed miserably. Every part of her face betrayed a sadness of her own and a mind that wanted to wander elsewhere.
She took his arm and started to drag him upstairs.
"Do you want to tell me why you cried?" He said as he pulled his hand toward himself, forcing Siva to stop and look at him.
"I didn't cry." Her response was so aggressive that it stunned Silmo a little.
"But... your eyes are red." he took a small pause to ponder his next words, but Siva didn’t even give him time to think.
"I just have a dust allergy." She was looking at everything except to him.
her reaction reminded him how he behaved, he was so much better at hiding it, yet he knows how difficult and painful that was, how it changed him.
"You're strong." Those few words, full of pity, changed her, she opened wider her eyes in disbelief.
"I can only imagine how difficult it was for you. And it's more than okay to cry. You don't have to hide it." He said with a calm tone, almost whispering. He even lowered himself to match her height and stroked her head, mussing up her hair.
In a blink of an eye, a train of memories passed in his mind. Each of them was a memory of him who would have wanted to cry towards someone but refused to do it. He was such an hypocrite, advise something that he did not do, He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried in front of someone.
<
"I can't cry. You said that I'm the beacon of happiness, if I cry I'm not happy." She was struggling to keep every tears in her eyes. "you said that." those word were filled with sadness as if it was his fault.
With a heavy sigh that moved some of her hair, Silmo pushed those memories away to focus better on her. "A happy man can cry sometimes. It makes him stronger, it makes him grow." He stood up ready to go, convinced that he had calmed her down. He didn’t expect to pull out a certain gem, and he was really proud of himself.
"But if someone cries he can't be happy." responded the girl almost sobbing.
Silmo looked at her sad face, as if she was guilty of something, her big blue eyes and contracted eyebrows, but the thing that made him most tender was her little red nose, from which a little mucus was slowly dripping.
"one does not exclude the other. you too Siva, you were happy and soon after sad I guess." He said confidently. suddently a sound of a door opening resounded, it coming from the hallway.
<
"hey Siva, why don't we talk while you take me into that room?" he didn't even bother to know if she agreed or not and started to climb the stairs. Siva, who was using his sleeves to clean his nose, followed right after.
"But Daddy told me to always be happy, to make others happy. You said that too. I can't cry." Now she was cleaning her cheeks from the tears that were too much to hold for her little, yet big, eyes.
"Everyone can cry, don't forget that. Cry and then you can be happier than before." He said as he climbed the last step to the second floor.
The third landing was exactly the same as the previous one, with small but important differences. The different colors of the blankets covering the windows: the one close to Silmo and Siva had some fishes drawn on a dark blue background, and the other one was just a dark red blanket.
The landing was empty, except for the two of them.
At the wide-opened door to his left he could hear a constant whispering. From where he stood he could see a part of a living room, though most of his view was blocked by a wall painted in overlapping waves of different shades of yellow. The warm hallway light made the colors even more vibrant.
At the end of the hallway, there was a giant painting to which he paid no attention at all.
He saw two old men kneeling on a large carpet with intricate patterns, the wall behind them had the same pattern as the previous one. One skin and bone with long whitish hairs, the other one much fatter, had only a few hairs still holding on, with a belly so wide that he held his hands crossed over it.
The whispers were too faint and jumbled to understand clearly, and Silmo was sure there were more people inside.
"But I have to be happy." the little girl, still sobbing, kept talking; unaware that Silmo wasn't listening.
He stopped for half a second, enough time to let her go on, then moved to her right and approached the door. As soon as he put his head far enough into the hallway to hear better, the little girl sniffled up, the sound was faint, but loud enough that Silmo could not hear what they were saying.
Suddenly a word, mixed in with the others, stood out to him although it was a part of a jumble of sounds, he was sure he had heard that word countless times before, yet he could not decipher it.
"Dad told me to not remember that, to not say it or everyone would be sad." the little girl was still talking, slowly and faintly, between sniffles.
Silmo turned his head towards Siva, she was looking at the ground and, one small step after another, she was getting away from him.
<
> thought while looking at her. His eyes softened, an inexplicable but familiar weight collapsed on his shoulders, forcing him to lower his gaze. <
But before he went near her he turned one last time, one last hope to hear that word again, to cast it back from oblivion. He didn't want to look at anything in particular, so he stared at the end of the hallway, where there was the giant painting and his eyes widened and the lungs forgot how to breathe.
The painting was one of the hundreds of thousands of copies of a famous painting called “The Drop of Creation”.
In the original work, the central element was pure white drop. But in this copy the drop was blood-red. Around it spiraled multiple golden circles, growing increasingly blurred the farther they spread, almost forming a glowing crown around the drop.
Directly below it stood a humanoid figure, with the same color as the dirt over which, like a statue on a pedestal, it was hunched over, folded into itself in a posture reminiscent of prayer. Much like the old men Silmo had seen earlier.
The figure was smooth and featureless, in stark contrast to the rugged terrain around it. It was bald, all the proportions were correct, but there was no definition of muscles or bones, not even fingernails. The most disturbing thing to look at was the face: beautiful in form, but lifeless. It was empty, hollow and without any expression. Its mouth was slightly opened and its eyes were fixed on the ground nearby. The iris was only distinguishable because it was a slightly darker shade.
The entire lower part of the painting was shrouded in shadow, growing darker the closer it got to the base. In contrast, the upper section grew brighter, with the blood-red drop at the very center of the white and gold light.
As he stared at the painting, the jumble of sounds finally took shape: "Zelyr."
An ancient and holy word meaning: “Messiah”.
He pushed the thoughts aside and went back to Siva, now with an idea of what they had been saying.
Silmo only stroked her head not knowing what exactly she had said and looked at her sadly, while they were walking through the landing, barely illuminated by the apartment hallway's light and some light that came out from the semi-open doors.
The little girl just looked up at him, she was crying, her big blue eyes had turned red, her mouth was clamped tighter than before so as not to let out any kind of moan, her red cheeks were wet with rivers of tears. At that sight his heart skipped some beats, he had wanted to say something to her. No, he should have.
No matter how much he tried, how much he forced himself to think about a proper answer, yet he couldn't think of anything, as if his mind had become blocked because of all the information he received in such a short time. He had to block his own thoughts and growing questions each time until it blocked his brain. All that was too much for him but he didn't realize it.
He lowered himself to her level and then he hugged her, caressing her head.
"it's going to be alright. Don't cry.". he hated those stock phrases, he swore to never use them, yet he couldn't think at anything except that blatant lie that even he didn't believe. The only thing he wanted was to be alone with his thoughts, and if she burst into tears it would be impossible.
Luckily, she just buried her face in his hoodie jacket and stood there for a few seconds, then pulled away, pulled up with her nose one last time, wiped her tears with her hands, and looked at him.
A forced smile appeared on her face. "Come on, let's go," she said with a fake laugh, then took Silmo’s hand and dragged him up the stairs.