About body and soul
— Read the previous paragraph–
Such an healthy man
How could you possibly expect from an healthy, powerful, strong man to die without showing any sign of it? Time decides to stop in an human existence, and doing so chooses smoothly every small details, never explaining them to mortals- or immortals. A soul is an immortal being, out of time. If it’s going to disappear in a certain time and place is just to be ready to reappear in another one.
An immortal being
Maybe a soul is just a table prepared to serve nothing, but a kind of nothing which spread in concentric waves, going to the centre instead of spreading out along the surface. Those waves are meant to go to the centre of the pond of immortality, digging to find some air in which breathe a moment and come again to reality. At the bottom, the pond is not even realising what’s happening in the surface. Peaceful, calm, without any interest on this small superficial revolution called life.
A small drop of oil
So, as a small drop of oil learns fast it has to float to survive in a glass of water, as well humans try to understand souls. They want to be part of it, to understand it, taking souls into pieces and closing themselves inside after they reassemble them. They want to float in a soul to find themselves part of it.
The main difference between humans and animals in fact is not the brain. Furthermore, humans don’t have any clue what their souls really are. They can just use them as a child uses a light box. Too low to understand its full potential, charmed by it but not ready to catch its essence. Animals, full of that alma which justify them in the world, are souls themselves. They are pure beings, in the world but without being the world, mortals without any claim to be anything else. In the end, between whom study souls to understand them and whom is barely searching his souls there’s not such a difference.
Animatology
Animatologists usually speaks about a well, somewhere in a forest previously a desert or a desert that was a mountain before. Here is where all the animals go after their passage through existence. Believe it or not, but the truth is no one has ever extracted a soul from an animal. It would be as asking a dead man to give us death.
The force of animals
We can close them in cages, let them suffer and kill them as long as we want, but that pure souls would be only skin and flesh. Do whatever you want, but that souls would never be used as they were simple camping lamps. For long time the science of souls decided animals were inferior beings, lacking soul. Quite an assumption, as it is to say that a portion of the world is the world itself. In this case, a small part of a souls is a piece of a complex, even dangerous, puzzle.
The eye of immortality
The animal an eye watching itself without need of any mirror. Then that idea of the well of the souls, a mystery never solved, more and more a new paradise for new believer. Between those, we cannot count this dead body, laying down on top of a metal desk of an obituary.
Death, such a make up artist
In such a white room and laying over such an anonymous table, we could say he’s an ordinary old man. Squared face, white hairs pulled back, round cheeks and dark eyes circled in black. The last detail has been added by the death itself, a yellowish make up added to his skin. S. looks away, in a world of concentric circles, without noticing the loud steps of a woman’s shoes approaching, as well as the air moved by her white coat. The shoes hammer the floor to suddenly stop, in their wine red, at the feet of the bed.
Human reality
Apparently humans here clear their throat in order to catch the attention. When, as in this case, the first time doesn’t work well, they can clear their throat even two, three times. And so at the final third attempt
Ahem
That dead eyes slowly become more and more alive, putting their focus on reality.
I’m Doctor M. I will take care of your father and I will be your assistant in the extraction procedure of the soul. On the record, you confirm me you Mr. S. are the rightful and only owner of the previously mentioned soul?
Bureaucracy pantomime
As part of a never ending play, the words went out all at once. Nothing more and nothing less than the bureaucracy pantomime, with its roles, pre- arranged questions and answers, plus a cold respect for death masked as a regular procedure. Oh how humans like procedures! Almost as much as S., as a great salesman, doesn’t like to use unnecessary words or gestures. Why waste your time choosing the right words outside the working hours?
Yes, it’s me
The voice seems to be still at the margins of reality, submerged in a mental diary without lines. A white sheet full of messages, unexpressed thoughts going in every directions without a logic.
You have my deepest condolences. When you feel ready, we would proceed with the extraction process. Usually I work only with soul- less beings, but taken the importance of the person concerned, they asked me to make an exeption
No exception, Miss.
Mrs., please
The voice drop again, flat, from the margins of reality. An horizontal line ready to become a small arch and spill outside the glass. Now it’s full reality
Mrs. M. I’m going to ask you to leave me now and let me work
But the Commissioner said…
Mrs. M.
It’s linguistics, babe
This time the same word seems to have a complete different meaning, from the common use and from the way has been used just few seconds before. Like passing the nails across a chalkboard. A sudden stop, not threatening as an exclamation point, but not as friendly as a crosswalk.
Out, in the world
The door shuts taking with it the red shoes, and the white coat, leaving the two men one in front of the other. Ironically, the dead man has inside more soul than the alive one, his son. The water comes to his original horizontal line, filling the mind with flat thoughts and mist.
Inside, outside the world
Dad, this death doesn’t make any sense. Why you had to sacrifice yourself, if in the end you couldn’t find your own soul? How many stupid misunderstanding, what a waste of time and energies. This insane existence must finish like that, with me ready to extract the same soul I give to you as a gift for Christmas. Your soul.
The procedure
While the words still echoed inside his head, S. cover his hands with black gloves, the hands open the small briefcase and take out
– the device
– tongs to keep the hands open
– black shiny paperboard to check the colour
– a document folder to sign
This story will be published once per week only, with all rights reserved for the story and its translations by Flyingstories.org and in the person of Daniele Frau.
All the graphics are handmade and designed with different techniques by Gabriele Manca, DMQ productions, who reserves all rights.
All English articles published in Souls (alive) proofread by Elisabeth Corcoran
