The Revelation
He was no longer thinking. His eyes were an empty room and his heart was beginning to grow cold. Numb. He picked himself up, struggled and stumbled as his blood started to circulate again, bringing life into his lifeless body. He stood upright before her photograph again, forlorn. God would not answer him. And why should He even? This was a retribution of sorts. Hail, he who gives and takes away. No, this was reality; he had to face up to it, live with it. Death is after all an inevitable truth of life; where there is a beginning, there will be an end. With that reconciliation, he turned to leave the cavernous inner courts, his eyes on the dusty boards. There was no point being here any longer.
It was then, out of the corner of his sight, that he caught a silhouette in the half-light of a familiar frame watching him from the back of the rows of benches. Apparently not everyone had left as he entered the wake. He lifted his head to catch his features but at that same moment the figure darted away to his left, down the corridor. It intrigued him, and sadness left him momentarily as he wondered who it might have been.
“Hey!” He croaked. But the footsteps that led away picked up pace upon his calling. Why would anyone run from him? Curiosity carried his legs and soon he was thundering down the wide corridors the figure had disappeared into. He could hear him; he was closing the distance steadily. He took a right down another corridor, trailing close behind into a stairwell that spiraled down to a courtyard. He was inches away and breathing heavily, his legs were beginning to feel the entirety of his weight. The slim and tall figure of a man slightly limping was now making a break across the courtyard for the gates. He would surely lose him now. But just as he thought so, the figure threw himself upon the wooden gates only to find a dead end.
My god, what a chase. He came to a stop a few feet away from the slender and suspiciously familiar mystery man, and readied himself in case he were to escape yet again.
“Who the heck are you really? What’s there to run from?” Gibbans was heaving, both hands on his knees, drenched in perspiration. But the man did not flinch, his back towards Gibbans.
“You think this is funny huh?” fuck he thought. Gibbans wasn’t exactly a very slim man. Over the years, his exquisite taste for heavenly delicacies and over indulgence was really putting a toll on him now.
“Turn around for pete’s sake and let’s see that face of yours!”
Already the new moon was coming out, revealing itself as the mantel of night drabs itself around the tender evening light. Hesitantly, yet slowly, the man turned to reveal himself – legs, body and finally face. It took him a moment to realize, for he was perhaps uncertain of what his eyes were telling him, but he did and it struck him as an impossibility. He gasped and stumbled back at such a revelation. It was illogical. He was dreaming or hallucinating. His eyes bore open wide in horror and amazement. For there in the pale moonlight, in plain truth, he could not deny that he was staring at himself, Gibbans only 10 years younger.
