Death Of Siyosa
Bergamo, where daylight could never quite wash away the city’s secrets.
A woman in heels and white gloves emerged from a tower’s glass doors, her emerald ring was gleaming in the sun as she pulls out a pair of dark shades from her purse, slipping them on swiftly. Her dark hair was neatly pinned back.
With a fitted black pencil skirt and silk blouse, her stride was sharp, practiced. Heels clicking against stone as she scans the crowd.
Around her, life moved with rhythm--vendors shouting in Italian, a passing cyclist ringing his bell, pigeons scattering from the plaza. Even the man in a navy suit weaving through the crowd.
The woman noticed everything. The girl in the orange cardigan and jean shorts, bun slicked tight. The elderly man in gray, walking slower but always forward. The young man in casual clothes, too casual maybe.
She stopped mid-stride, the faintest tremor crossing her face. Each one edging closer. Her head turned left, then right.
Something was wrong.
The crowd thinned around her, the woman took a slow step back, every nerve awake. Her eyes darted through the reflections on the nearby glass--four shadows circling. The man in the suit stopped first, his expression unreadable. The young woman with the cardigan drifted closer from the left, her hands tucked behind her. The casual one had vanished into the clusters of pedestrians.
“Not here,” the woman whispered under her breath. Her heels turned sharply, carrying her away fast until she collided with someone solid. The scent of cedar and cold air hit her first. Then she looked up.
“Ben?” She breathed, confusion and disbelief bleeding through her composure.
“Goodbye, Siyosa,” the old man said, his tone feigning kindness but cruel in disguise.“Whoever that was.”
The motion was quick, smooth--the wooden stake slipped through her abdomen with a sound too soft for what it was. A strangled gasp escaped her lips as her body arched.
Panic sets in the world around her. Shouts, gasps, the scrape of shoes against cobblestone. Siyosa turned, her emerald ring caught the light as her hand hovered around her wound, trembling. Desperate to move, but another figure was already there, the young man in casual clothes--his strike clean, merciless. The second stake pierced through her heart.
Her body jerked, breath caught halfway to a scream. She collapsed onto her knees then the stone beneath her. Her eyes flickered upward to the hazy Italian sky. A single tear slipped from her left eye, carving a clean path down her cheek. The last trace of life unmasking itself as grief.
Around her, the city stood still. Bergamo’s sun kept shining.
The man in the navy suit stepped forward, brushing aside her fallen shades.
Her light brown eyes stared blankly, the spark gone. Then, without a warning, a thin trail of black smoke leaked from her mouth and eyes, curling upward, twisting against the light as it shot into the sky like a shadow escaping the flesh.
The pedestrians murmured in commotion, unaware that something ancient beneath their glowing streets has been reborn.
