In limine mortis E-Book

Consuelo Pinna

• Herausgeber: Argentodorato Editore
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Elisabetta, tired and unsatisfied, decides to give a twist to her life trusting in a spiritual teacher, but right at the dawn of this new beginning, during the practice of a walked meditation, Elisabetta is suddenly hit by an illness and collapses to the ground unconscious. While a passer-by tries the reanimation, her spirit leaves her body and begins a painful and invisible alongside her loved ones, saddened by her premature passing.
Everything seems cruelly unavoidable and Elisabetta witnesses helpless at the organization of a funeral that disapproves in every detail. Only the arrival of the mysterious Cristal seems to give a new perspective to what is happening to her.

Leseprobe

Consuelo Pinna

In limine mortis

1st edition may 2021 - ISBN: 9791280273086

ebook edition june 2024

Author’s reference:

[email protected]

All rights reserved

Argentodorato Editore

Via Lucrezia Borgia 13/a

44121 Ferrara

[email protected]

www.argentodorato.it

Editorial coordination: ELEONORA BELLETTI

Cover image: CORRADINO JANIGRO

This novel is a work of fantasy. Characters and situations are author’s inventions. Any analogy with facts, events, places and people alive or passed away is purely coincidental.

UUID: cfcb643e-09a0-4258-ad54-d3dd33571f6e

This ebook was created with StreetLib Writehttps://writeapp.io

Table of contents

CADUCITY

RETURN TO THE ORIGINS

LOST FRIENDS

FAMILY REUNITED

MERCEDES OR MASERATI?

FUNERAL WAKE

THE WATERFALL

PRAYER

REFUSAL

THE FAREWELL

CRISTAL

BORDER LAND

BETWEEN REALITY AND ILLUSION

A NEW LIFE

ETERNAL BECOMING

THE SLOW FLOWING OF EXISTANCE

THE FUNERAL

ARIANNA

A NEW BODY

THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY

Credits

CADUCITY

When I was little I used to follow dad in his evenings walks, observing the plants, imagining the gnomes and the elves that populate the undergrowth: I wished to lose myself in that magic world where I would have played for hours, maybe for entire days. In my mind I chased these little creatures and they would smile at me before disappearing in the darkness.

Today, as back then, the trail climbs up the hill, the vegetation has swallowed it making an emerald-coloured tunnel, the few hours ago fallen rain has covered of small drops the lentic leaves. A few, crossed by the sunlight, have become minuscule rainbows. The scent of wet

soil accompanies me through the climb. Secular yew trees stand out in height, as sentinels put to guard the forest. Majestic trees, with their bark coarsened by the ages and grooved by dark red scars; they also call them death trees due to the poisonous toxin contained in their leaves.

The chatter of the sparrows has made my steps carefree, increasing the effects of the activity that I have undertaken for some time now: the walked meditation. At little more than thirty years I have restarted all over from the beginning and in the end it did not seem to me that bad, the new beginnings create high expectations and a lot of positive energy. «The problem, my friend» encouraged me Arianna «is the fear: it is necessary to keep it at bay otherwise it will enter under the skin, as it happens with the water that finds all the fissures, big and small.»

Many are assaulted by anxiety at the prospective of solitude, they do not tolerate the noise of thoughts that agitates in the head. The auto analysis forces a merciless confront with the person that someone is in reality; sometimes it results dreadful, we are forced to look away, ignoring the pain and preferring a life of light thoughtlessness. Nevertheless, I have chosen to face the problems directly, in the awareness that escaping is equivalent to the devaluation of our talent, to the suppression of our identity, if not even to a bleak interior death. I do not want all of this. I will find myself again, I will learn to love myself. Immersed in this wonderful nature, where everything seems unaltered by centuries, I feel calm and at peace with myself.

I accelerate the pace and pass the wood, the trees give place to the myrtle bushes. I stop at the top of the hill, where I catch the last flashes of the autumn sun. Before it sets it colours the light blue sky with a thousand pastel shades. The lights of the city turn on one by one, they seem to sprout like mushrooms by the always darker earth.

I breathe badly, I feel nauseous.

The twenty years’ resistance is by now a far away memory, each further step costs me effort, I bring my hand to the chest.

I do not feel well. Something is wrong for sure, perhaps I have a bit of flu.

On the way back I come across a young

couple. The girl, with the cheeks full of freckles, looks at me with affection and asks me: «Ma’am, are you ok?». I do not have the strength for an answer, it seems that the tongue wants to negate me the expression of thoughts.

My pace becomes always more uncertain, I drag the legs as if I had two boulders attached to my ankles.

I cannot breathe.

At the end of the descent I fall on the knees, I raise the eyes at the sky in sign of surrender, everything around me swirls chaotically.

The world falls in the darkness, I only feel the gravel that scratches my face, at the height of the right cheekbone.

Noise of footsteps that come close. Strong hands that grab me, they turn me shoulders to the ground, and shake me with vigour like I was a doll.

«Ma’am, ma’am, can you hear me?»

«But what’s wrong with you, today? Why do they all address me calling me ma’am? Do I really look that old?»

This man, after having lifted my chin with two fingers, moves the face closer to my nose.

I would like to push him away, useless attempt. The arms stopped obeying to my commands.

I breathe the stinging scent of a second-rate aftershave. I hear a background murmuring.

The guy that looms over me detaches himself and screams like there was an emergency: «I think she is in cardiac arrest! Call 118!» Pointed to a runner that passes by him.

“Oh no! No, my friend. I know what you are about to do, you cannot uncover my chest with these huge breasts that I have… Perhaps there will even be the usual group of curious that looks. I do not fell that bed, really, let us wait the 118…”, I murmur within me, in a kind of flow of consciousness that crosses me, even if I am not sure of these thoughts. “I tell you to wait, put down my t-shirt… There! Now I really feel embarrassed.”

Two wrinkled hand push my sternum in a rhythmic way, they seem like the hands of my grandmother that kneads the bread.

The dark around me starts to clear up. I see bright profiles that dance, they take me by hand, they lift me as if my body was lacking gravity. I remain suspended in mid-air. I observe my hands as if I only saw them now for the first time. They are transparent and surrounded by a luminous aura, all my body seems to emanate light. The light wind bring to my nostrils a scent of roses.

The guy that does not stop to count calls me back to reality. An imprecation climbs up from the stomach, when I see my body lying on the ground.

Then I understand.

I will not die like this for sure.

I have a lot of matters left at half, I even activated the washing machine before this walk, the clothes are waiting for me to hang them.

I will get back in my body, immediately!

An old man with his hands crossed behind his back looks at my lifeless body. I put myself in front of him, I repeatedly pass the hand in front of his eyes but he does not see it. I look like Patrick Swayze in Ghost. Then I get near his ear and scream: «Hey grandpa, have they already closed all the construction sites? Go away, stop looking at me!»

He agitates a hand like a fly was bothering him.

“So, is this how one person dies?”, I think.

I do not know exactly from where it comes from, but a celestial chant makes me euphoric and my soul is conquered by the peace and the serenity that I had looked for a long time. Meanwhile, a very strong light attracts me. I extend the arm to touch it, the hand becomes one with it. I do not want to accept the evidence, I retract the arm, fixated on the possibility of a U-turn. I remain near my body, the medic of the 118, bent on it, gets ready to insert a bit upper the wrist a venous catheter; so the morning thoughts come back to my mind, when I daydreamed in a confused way the so called ‘turning point’… And there it is what the future has reserved for me.

Coming to the hospital together with my body, holed up in a corner I notice its proximity to a table full of surgical instruments, including a saw for amputation which steel blade, gives me the impression of having been catapulted inside the horror Saw: the doctor that took charge of me is the riddler and I am the poor victim. Holding the scalpel with the left hand, he performs an incision at the height of the frontal lobe while whistling Perfect Day by Lou Reed. He displays the same calmness as my father has when delighting with bricolage. Then, it passes in front of me that movie, when, at the first scene, you can hear the recorded voice of Jonathan Kramer that says: «You have done nothing but watch others living their lives. Today you will observe your agony or you will start to live.»

The surgeon, after a few hours, makes with needle and thread a rough embroider on the skull and walks away. It is really too much. I bring the right hand to the mouth to suffocate the sense of nausea that climbs up from the throat. I go outside this horror room. Even the waiting room, with its yellow and brown streaked white walls, just chipped on the roof, smells of death.

Firstly, my parents arrived. They cross the narrow hallway like they were two athletes who were competing for the podium. Pale in the face, the eyes opened wide by the terror.

My mother knocks on the door, a gloomy sound propagates to all the ambient making it even more spectral.

The Director of the Operative Unit, with the impassive face of someone who has seen more than enough parents in tears, accompanies mom and dad in what I think to be an Intensive care unit. My body, by now lifeless, lies motionless on a small bed. My father’s scream, in this late autumn evening, confirms my identity.

I get close to them in the hope that they could feel my hug. “I know, I understand you, you just lost you best daughter.” Mine, however, are weightless words, they barely resonate in the mind of a pure sore spirit.

That who is by now no longer my brother Giacomo bursts into the room, out of breath. He starts off with the most obvious possible words, reiterating that he rushed here ignoring all the traffic lights and their attempts to obstruct him.

Dad barely lifts an eyebrow. His lips remain shut, after the agonizing scream it seems that from them it will not come out any other sound.

«Don’t worry dad, I have used uncle’s car. The traffic tickets will arrive to him.»