Go back to the future, the fall

Posted On April 17, 2022

Only now, that I fall from the clouds, I understand the real meaning of my life. It isn’t just a shape, but it is a shape of life, alive, this fall. I’m a comet, a message, an epiphany that won’t ever be recorded in any storybooks.

A fall from the past

Where I come from, we sanctify the past, load it on our shoulders, and carry it in long processions. Our past is a world of saints, sailors and even poets. We watch that with devotion, lighting up big candles and dedicating songs and litanies to the holy past.

The Past

I would have never thought about going back to the past, floating on air; that air can transform into the wind like a light, and I’m a shadow sliding sideways. I feel like the past forgot about me, but I know it couldn’t do it even if it wanted to: for the people from the past, I don’t even exist. I’m a story still to be told, and I fall.

At least I don’t feel lonely surrounded by this crowd of women and men, children, elderly. Their eyes look where their dreams will disappear, and their ears listen to the whistle of the wind while they’re falling. Someone took a few months, while others tried for years to have a simple chance to be here now, in the past. They climbed the ivory steps with their families, in their hands a few pieces of luggage, in front of them a gate suspended in thin air.

“The hill has always been there.”

Someone said.

“That hill wasn’t there once. They built it afterwards. If you’re thinking about assembling the gate on top of it, our people will fall for about 30 meters.”

The elderly answered.

Though no one listens to the elderly, we listen to them exclusively when they speak about the good old days; otherwise, we treat them as fools.

‘We have enough problems without your warnings’, we told them, laughing at their backs. All things considered, they were right, this hill wasn’t there; they built it thinking that was the right time to have a cliff to make sacrifices to the gods. They thought that was enough to re-establish peace and a balance. They were right. Somehow we are the sacrifice of more than 100 years of wrong choices and short-sighted visions. This fall is just the start and no one will carry the memory of this massacre, so it will happen again, endlessly.

The air transforms us, flows inside, and swells our chests with pride. Now, the air cuts our faces and closes our eyes, a wind of wind that doesn’t stop our fall but change into blades. Finally, I can see the ground if I open my eyes slightly. There’s a city, far away, the countryside and then a glade with red soil. At first glance is a pile of trash, but looking closely, I notice there are bodies there, fall-mates, flies without wings like me.

Now the air is not that cold anymore, I can open a bit more my eyes and I hope in a miracle; maybe one of those saints we were so devoted to will come and save us. I can see our shadows now, points to link together to make a constellation, a shape, an animal.

That colossal sign of earth and blood, air and water is ready to disappear on this pile of limbs, hair and clothes left to be rotten; a never-ending future will continue to fall forever from this invisible hill.
Would I decide otherwise if I knew before this was the outcome? Would I stop this endless massacre, this fall to hell?

Yes, it’s the answer. I would have definitely done the same. This was the only hope, the only way I could wish to escape that future without a future.

I can feel someone shooting at us, the bullets passing over my head with a hissing sound. I’m close to the ground, close enough to read something they wrote for us:

“Go back to the future”

‘Too late’, I think while I dissolve into nothing.

This is the end of the first part, continue to read the rest of Go back to the future, written by Daniele Frau and illustrated by Gabriele Manca, Dmq Productions. All the rights for the story and the illustrations are kept by the respective owners.

Continue to read the next part, Discover Villa Clichy!

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