the spiral staircase 


I undertook the ascent with difficulty, more and more tired all the time, up the great spiral staircase which endlessly climbed up until you couldn’t see, just as it disappeared down in the depths below, so far below where who knows when I started to climb.

...I grabbed the handle and, on opening, the door showed me a green pasture in which you could hear the chimes of the sheep’s bells and the musical notes coming from a guitar played by a girl who then raised her eyes towards me, with something in her eyes which could well be fear. 

Labyrinths

I undertook the ascent with difficulty, more and more tired all the time, up the great spiral staircase which endlessly climbed up until you couldn’t see, just as it disappeared down in the depths below, so far below where who knows when I started to climb.

I stopped to catch my breath, and then the fear gripped me. I had to reach the next Door, I must not stop. So I continued climbing up the steps, panting, up one step and then another, dragging my legs, these ever heavier, more and more an increasing weight of flesh almost dead, almost alive.

I finally arrived at the next Door. Maybe this would be the last one, the final one, the one which would free me from the interminable spiral. Maybe it was only a painted door and I would struggle in vain to open it. Maybe who knows what, maybe death and nothingness behind the door, some sort of rest in any event.

I grabbed the handle and, on opening, the door showed me a green pasture in which you could hear the chimes of the sheep’s bells and the musical notes coming from a guitar played by a girl who then raised her eyes towards me, with something in her eyes which could well be fear. A brown slender girl, who slowly puts the guitar aside with her eyes fixed in me as I come closer, a sort of pleading in her eyes, and then she stood up.

It was then that she uttered the word, the one which had to be the key to the true Door.

It was then that the sky clouded over and the wind started to howl and the rain started to fall over the now naked ground and the girl, now a horrible mask covered in filthy torn black rags, opened her arms.

And then I found myself, still shaking, again in the Staircase, alone for ever, for the centuries of centuries, obliged to endlessly climb the steps which will take me to another Door, or perhaps nowhere. 

Posted: Tue - May 4, 2004 at 12:39 PM          

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