Leaves fell from the trees as if the world were suddenly shedding its skin. They gently twirled from the sky by lack of a breeze and covered the streets and corpses.
He wondered whether the Angels were also draining the trees from their energy, or whether he had simply forgotten it was autumn. He flicked his tongue. The air tasted like copper.
Alexander barked. He'd been so urgent that they moved on before, why suddenly stop? But Death's legs, or poor excuse for legs for that matter, crudely drawn from imagination, simply stopped.
Death was trying to bite his own nails, except they were made of stone. "Is that what I do now?" he asked and scoffed at himself in disbelief.
He faced the cobblestone street. Bodies of dogs, cats and birds littered the streets. To the Angels they were only eyes that needed to be closed. So many eyes. They didn't care for the animals. They wanted the humans. Their faith. Their life. Their reality.
He looked up the road toward the basilica, his words turning to ash in his mouth. He lost his train of thought and turned around.
"Did you know," he told Alexander, and the dog's little ears perked up. "there's actually a place called Trouble? It's in America. At least, I think it's in America. If I were a betting man…"
He stopped.
"Am I?"
Alexander barked impatiently.
"I mean, what if I lose?" Death went on. "What if I actually lose this time? It could happen. It has happened. So what if this is it? The real thing? The end of all things? It sure seems like it. Who am I to argue against it? Who am I? Who do I need to be?"
Death doesn't judge. It reaps. And it waits for no man.
"If I had a real body I'd actually be shaking right now…" He turned down his hood. "Is this what it's like to be mortal? All that self-doubt. I don't like it."
He tried to bite his nails again, when a leaf struck his face. He looked up, surprised, and watched it fall down to the floor. Why did he always get so easily distracted?
"It's time I face the choir invisible…" he spoke, as he turned up his hood again and gripped his scythe, taking his first steps towards certain doom.
"Bite the dust. Climb the stairway to heaven. Shuffle off this mortal coil."
He smiled, stepping over the bodies of the scavenger dogs without looking down.
"I'll knock on heaven's door. Pay my debts," he said. "I'm going home."
White faces emerged from the shadows. The looks on their faces were excruciating. Caught at their worst moment in their life, and notwithstanding their last, they stood immortalized as a testament to the power of the Angels.
Most of them were soldiers. Clara recognized their uniforms and pompous attire. The Swiss soldiers of the Pope's personal guard were writhing in pain on the floor, forever screaming at invisible evil.
Whenever they tried to flee, there'd they be. The statues surrounded them. The horror carved into their faces.
"Don't touch them!" the gambler cried out. "Don't touch the statues!"
Clara already knew that. The stranger had lunged into their midst with such speed there was no doubt in her mind the Angels had sent him here. Oh yes, sent. Something in her mind was drawing her to this place and she didn't understand why. Clara only knew it made her feel unpleasant and cold.
She started to realize, as their fear of the statues lead them deeper and deeper into the basilica's square, that they no longer had any choice. As she saw the gambler panic and scramble backwards from statue to statue closer and closer to his doom, she knew they weren't being guided. They were being hounded. Into a pen. Like cattle. And fear was the shepherd's dog herding and keeping them in line.
"Maybe it's time you opened your eyes again, Mike," Clara said, her own words getting caught in the back of her own throat.
"I can't," Michelangelo said. "That's what the Angel wants. I can still feel it in my head. Whispering to me."
"Are you insane?!" the gambler cried out. "Open your eyes, man! Anyone of these statues could be an Angel!"
"Or everyone," Clara added under her breath, ominously. She didn't want to upset the others, but she checked every statue before moving on, keeping her fear in check.
"This way."
Clara tugged at Michelangelo's tunic and nodded to the gambler to follow her.
There was a small side street hidden in the shadows that lead away from the square. Problem was, it was blocked by statues. There were so many of them; they seemed to have been caught while rushing through, some kind of attack gone wrong.
"We can't go through there!"
"That's exactly what they want you to think," Clara said. "Except maybe we can slip through. Come on."
Clara saw the game the Angels were playing and refused to play.
The openings were narrow. Sometimes the soldiers stood very close together, other times apart, and some sat kneeling with their hands clutching their hearts when they died.
"I can't see!" Michelangelo cried out. "Help me."
Clara told him to keep close and to duck. He felt his way from statue to statue, carefully stepping over the feet of the dying soldiers without tripping over them. Then he felt a lance prick his abdomen and he carefully retreated.
"We're almost there!" Clara said, looking back to how the gambler was progressing through this small maze of mangled and thrashing limbs, like a forest of marble.
Michelangelo reached out to the nearest statue and felt a cold shoulder. It didn't seem to have any hardened ruffles or other wrinkles uniforms usually made, until he felt his way into the neck area. The face was even colder.
He felt drawn to it somehow…
The gambler screamed, and Michelangelo retracted his hand from the Angel's face, but before he could even draw breath he felt a sudden surge beam through every essence of his body. Like extreme goosebumps in a blizzard that made him forget how to breathe. He was spinning, lightheaded, his eyes wide open in shock, until he touched the ground, falling, and hitting rock. He felt as if he had just emerged from a freezing ice cold river unscathed and dry.
Michelangelo pressed himself against the cold stones, a man suddenly woken up and realizing he was still stuck inside the nightmare.
The Angel whispered when a figure emerged from one of the mausoleums, hooded and cloaked, holding a candle to light his way. His murmurings echoed through the darkened tunnels; tunnels cut off from the sun for centuries.
"Where am I?" Michelangelo asked. "Who are you?"
"You!" the old man in the hood cried out, his barely used voice croaking and sore. The light of the candle exposed his crooked teeth, brown, rotting and receding.
"You're exactly where you are supposed to be." The old man's hands were shaking. Was he laughing? Michelangelo could not see his eyes. "Your coming was foretold."
"What do you mean? I just got here."
"Your fate was set in stone before you were even born! We are all part of a bigger plan beyond our comprehension!"
As the old man moved closer, Michelangelo could see the shadows had played a trick on him. He did not see any eyes, because the old man had none. They had been surgically removed.
"Beyond sight!" the old man exclaimed. "Beyond sound! The angels will return. The trumpet will sound and the skies will open. It will be the End of Days!"
"Where am I?" Michelangelo asked again, but the old man merely laughed.
"We bathe in light!"
"You are mad! Barking mad!" He grabbed the candle from the old man's hand and ran down the ancient street of mausoleums. Shadows moved around him.
"You cannot escape your fate!" the old man yelled after him. "It is your destiny!"
There was only darkness now, and ancient stone, in the ancient necropolis beneath the old basilica.
Tunnels of crafted stone marked the endings of this cemetery beneath the temple, where popes of old and pagans alike were buried in secret and ceremony. They say a man called Peter was buried there among the stones, but Michelangelo did not know. He had no idea where he was, and if he did, he wouldn't have believed it.
He thought he saw statues, but it could have been his mind playing tricks on him. In his haste, the shadows parted before him only to close around him as he passed by. There were tables and runes that could've been part of tombs. Michelangelo didn't stop to check.
His fear had given him a jolt of adrenaline and renewed energy. Purpose. Except he wasn't sure whether it was his survival instinct kicking in, or the Angel whispering to him that he was making the right choice…
The tunnels narrowed as he turned a corner and exited into a room of stairs. Without hesitation, he chose to go up, where the space narrowed even more, and he found a hatch above his head, blocking his way. He carefully lifted the heavy stone and nudged it from its place. As he slid it aside, he heard voices close by.
"They are our creation! As we are God's!"
Michelangelo stopped to listen, until he saw the immense canopy overhead and realized where he had been taken. He was inside the basilica now. Sunlight still beamed against the windows. Was it morning already? Yet it didn't feel like morning, but evening instead.
"We are the brush and the canvas. The chisel and the stone. Art is an extension of our soul!"
As he climbed up into the main hall, he rose up beside the altar, candle in hand. The scorching fat was slowly dripping on to his hand.
Michelangelo recognized the dark robes of the cardinals and their hats. Then he saw the Pope.
"We shall all be remembered! We shall all live forever!"
"As statues?"
"As children of God!"
The friar paused and looked up at the altar. Seeing the look of surprise on his face, the Pope turned around to see what he'd seen. His eyes widened in shock. The friar stood dumbstruck and the cardinals hit the floor and bowed. Michelangelo didn't know why they were all looking at him so strange.
"God will provide…" the Pope muttered, and swallowed. Sometimes having one's faith proven right isn't as good as you think it might be.
Golden wings rose up from behind Michelangelo's back. A sword appeared from thin air within his hands, the same shade of shining silver as the halo that sparkled above his head like fire trapped in ice.
"You cannot escape your fate!" the old man had cried out. "You cannot escape your destiny!"
Michelangelo remembered. As he looked up, he saw eleven Angels standing on the second floor balcony, beaming with pride.