Venice Days of Yore

Tawal had metamorphosed into his human form before the sun began to bob up from the east. He entwined his body in his arms like the morning warm was glaciating him. He was blanketed in mud though the earth was juiceless. Gently and cautiously, he unfolded himself, observing the habitual brown-brick entourage that surrounded him. The floor of the garden before him had been cooked and the properly squared short fence had fallen over the calendulas in the thick of it. Au naturel, he turned and observed the four-room condo with his arms glued to his body, shivering. He was in his backyard and the hag was coming. He passed through the side wall quickly, tiptoeing with his arms still glued to his arced back. The neighborhood was silent as a cemetery until two chirping birds flew away from the front door. He gaped at the road. He saw an old brown truck booming towards his direction. Carefully, Tawal open the front and sneaked in. The sitting room was just as he left it - neat and dark. The power was gone and only him could fix it. The paper on the dining table attracted him. It was descriptive and persuasive. I am not lost, he thought frowning. Into the air, the pieces of the paper he had frazzled went prodding indicating a marked cognizance of his growing impatience and anger. The young lad quickly bent and picked them up for proper disposal. Having frames on the wall of the house to him was a thing of nothing even though recently, the memories of his parents haunted him unorthodoxly as the rococo pictures in the frames stared him into trepidity. One incarnated his parents conjugal bliss, coupled with the spectral, psychopathic and excessive alleviation they betrayed with their aspects. One mirrored Stella, Tawal's aunt lifting his little body nonchalantly like she had been forced to bear a child. The portraits were average-sized and they parlayed majesty in their own ways but Tawal's sentimentality coloured them antithetically. The hag arrived in her wheel chair. She watched the n***d young man unsurprisedly and grumbled something unnice. She turned her wheelchair afterwards and wheeled into her room. Tawal stared silently. He grabbed the leftover pizza he had abandoned few days ago for consumption. The sudden antsiness in his abdomen prevented him from taking another bite. He dashed to the toilet to empty his bowel. He threw up for minutes before reanimating. Inside the vomitus was a white long tissue that appeared distinct from the other substance. Out of curiosity he dipped his hand into the closet and pulled out a very long feather. I must have encountered something yesterday! I must have have eaten something unhygienic yesterday! Where was I? What is happening to me? He stood closer to the mirror near him. His cartilage had distended. His chest were broader. His hair follicles had developed tremendously and his teeth had grown sharper. He grabbed his towel and entered the bathroom to wash his body. Blood dribbled down his body with the water into the cloaca. Perplexed he was. No bruise surfaced. But there was blood. How? What had happened? He couldn't recall. It was time to meet Mister Parker, he thought. He should know. In the street of Venice, every afternoon, denizens peregrinated disorderly like it is. The market square, the tax collectors, the beggars in corridors and the famous non compos mentis that threw shapes cheerfully in freedom, were all echoes of a classic city. Commodities were economical and taxes were low though payments were received on time. The city was characterized by a servant-lord relationship. You either serve or work as a tyranny. Those who labelled themselves as middle class were considered rebels, mostly in the black community. They called themselves niggas, the revolutionaries, the equalists especially the idealists. What hope would they give the coming generation? The lower class people, the white inhabitants of Venice - the migrants. Some say it was a hurricane. Some say they had seen the day of their judgement. The prophecy stated it was a fallen angel being hunted by a legion. Unluckily, the fallen angel found peace in their city. He decided to stay, unmindful of the consequences of his actions. He thought he was nothing. He thought he was lost. He thought no one would find him. He chose the ways of mankind. He became one of them and he destroyed them. The preacher in the market square preachified once that the angel was a nephalem - half human, half angel. He was sought after and he was the only kind there is. Another of his kind is in Aphna. Though the city has been destroyed and some of his denizens are in Venice, constituting the lower class and beggars on the street. That was the best they could do. Venice was never a home for aliens. Survival was a game and somber drudgery concurrently in this place. Only the skilled was not killed.They enacted the decree the day the chief was robbed in the market. It had happened more than thrice, multiple times, a million times but no one decreed death sentence. When that little white girl from Aphna took the chief's robe, everyone knew the chief had lost his robe. Even the bedlamite. He had removed his trousers, swinging and wheeling it in the air with his left arm like he had found his mind. But no one saw her. She had unknowingly ran into the midst of a pack right inside a corridor. "Who are you? What is your name?" A lady asked smiling neurotically. "Mirabella, Mirabel, Isabella, Isa..." She stuttered. Another barked far from behind, jumping from wall to wall before he finally landed in front of her with his long hair, arms and legs touching the earth. "Which one is..." "Mirabel!" He was interrupted. "How did you get here? What's in your hand?" He snatched the robe from her rudely and began examining the golden stripes and royal paraphernalia compounded by its design. "Get out!" He abruptly pointed to the corridor where she came from. The lady pulled his arms down. "Not like that. She could be useful." "For what? Food?" He shouted again. Mirabel ran out of the tiny lacuna between the walls leaving the darkness behind. Those were a crowd but she could not see nor count. That was her last encounter with werewolves. Not that she had a good perception of them but she knew they were remarkable. Mirabel had sat with one of the beggars to feed. She was an old woman. One from Aphna, the capital city. "Have this," she offered Mirabel a piece of bread. She was always ready to tell tales of wizardary and witchery - her diabolical younger periods. She has only worked as a maid for them - anytime they assembled. They killed her sister and drank her blood. "The priest says she was pure... a virgin. She was quiet. Never sinned. I thought it was a lie. I rarely met her in person. She was not my father's." The old woman spoke haggishly, spurting out brown spit from her decayed teeth. Mirabel cringed as she reeked of cruddy emanation.