THE CITY OF THE SNAKE

He felt the same excitement as he did back then. It was certainly a big thing to see a giant yellow snake with a whole town on top of it approaching you. It came from afar, tearing the sky in waves, looking at you with its cold eyes. It looked like a postmodern snail popping out of an unspeakable nightmare. The street was empty. Everyone was screaming and running away from the threat but Jack, with his heart beating like a drum and his breath coming with difficulty, was standing still staring at it, outside his book store, on Booksider str. He stood like he had to welcome it. The more it got close, the more it lowered its spiral body and he could see better the grey buildings and the signs of an unknown city in all the maps. The more it lowered and got closer to him, despite the generalized panic and hysteria that surrounded him, as if the world had officially come to an end, he just grabbed the skin of the snake close to the tail and began to climb. In his fifties the urge of the adventurer gold – digger awoke with the desire to conquer the moving unknown city. 

Two years had passed since that day. Jack wandered around the city, listened to her, smelled her, and searched her like a lover over a new body. He learned the brightest and darkest spots of her, reached the last dead end. Overwhelmed by her power and mystery, he let her pull him deeper inside herself and her secrets. She always gave him the reason and the cause to fall in love all over again and to keep the spark alive. He sneaked in the empty offices of the dusty companies, he sat on the deserted stools of the quiet bars and he slept in the unmade beds of the lonely apartments. He wandered in a ghost town once inhabited, left with that memory of that sensation. He was alone but he experienced the presence of someone else during his walks many times. No matter how much he searched for him, he never found him behind the lit windows and the roofs of the deserted hotels. Whoever was travelling with him, he did not leave traces behind him, apart from bright marks, like a passing firefly.

All this time the snake flew high and gave him all sorts of landscapes. Stormy seas, rice fields as far as he could see, fields that looked like green mosaics, cities full of pollution. But today it flew too low over a deserted area. It was as if he reached an empty spot of the globe, a blank piece of paper. The excitement of the past hit him again. Today he would abandon the city of the snake without a second though, just like he had once climbed upon it. He felt that this would be his last day on it. And maybe the snake had already sensed it and flew low enough to make it easier for him. Just like the serpent was completing its transformation, Jack was completing his own. Iridescent flakes of its old skin had already started to fall off and scatter in the morning mist. His host was changing and for the first time the silent man felt it. He was now certain that the one he was looking for all this time was none other than himself. Now he felt that the lights that were lit at various parts of the city were his thoughts about his life, about his own past. He tried to understand him and love him. Once the light was a bit stronger, he would jump. If he would ask himself, he would not be certain whether he was leaving on his own will or the city of the snake was making him go.