The Imitator

Sometimes I go for a walk, and I let myself get lost, I let myself be carried away by certain patterns hidden in the tiles or shadows that the sunset began to leave me like signs drawn on marble facades or unknown brick walls, just where the day dies, there where the last dying flashes of light merge with the spectral blue of the night; my busy legs, prey to an understandable stiffness after toiling for hours on cobbled streets, finally succumbed to exhaustion and I was forced to find a comfortable spot to lay on; a wooden bench, as if sheltered by the dim light of a lantern that seemed to come from another era brought the much needed rest I was aching for. Under that dirty amber light my clothes seemed to blend seamlessly into the surroundings, and that feeling brought peace to me .

It was at that moment when the real and the dreamlike started to become indistinguishable and it is difficult for me (no matter how much I regret it) to deny or rationalize what I have seen while I was laying (half asleep or not) on that small wooden bench under the strange amber light of the revealing lantern: in a clearing in the dark and no more than two meters away from my position, I thought I could make out a faint glow at the foot of one of the numerous trees that inhabited the park, as if it were a controlled fire; out of curiosity and with feline stealth I approached the place in question and, as soon as I managed to visualize a clear panorama of the nightmarish spectacle that was taking place there, I froze: indescribable sensations of visceral horror and disgust goaded my senses while, paradoxically, as I watched with captive fascination among the zigzag of small red flames, vibrant and organic, with a life of their own, how the most obscene of ritual sacrifices was carried out. I will describe in as much detail as possible what I set out to forget about that night: let the reader understand that, as I realized at that moment, there are certain tangible aberrations that slip at will through a thin layer or threshold that well it could be a tear in the fabric of space-time or a door to a dimension of unspeakable logical and moral contradictions, of which no one who wants to keep their mental health even minimally intact and functional should know about.

The structure was mounted in a circular arrangement; in the center of it, an effigy of no more than eight inches long in diameter, in the shape of a star polyhedron and with a semi-transparent, pink and gelatinous texture, was erected, floating on the flames almost half a meter from them and rotating fixed in place around different direction axes, alternating every few seconds and randomly between them; its vertices and edges were writhing to the sound of the unintelligible short and repetitive chants pronounced by anthropomorphic beings bathed in a red fluid similar in color to blood, with a head identical in shape to the abomination they seemed to venerate as a pagan god, outlining the circular structure around it that gave some sort of geometric sense to the aforementioned ensemble; with each chant, which varied in intensity and duration (but not in form or rhythm), the central figure reconfigured its topology in such a way as to expose different human faces (yes, human faces) on each of its numerous polygonal faces which would acquire monstrous reliefs of smiling and turning faces, more and more formed, more and more nourished by skin and blood, muscle and bone tissue, as it drained the vital fluids of the creature inserted in the sacrificial altar through a sort of geometric umbilical cord: the connecting stalk formed by a vertex shot at full speed towards and through the fragile and crystalline skull, moments before.

Once the creature had been consumed (like the flames), the effigy, which once had the shape of a stellated dodecahedron, now had lower limbs, upper limbs, and a torso, crowned by a hideous head as a clumsy imitation of human head, as if it were a half-finished sculpture; it stood now on its still malformed legs, so once it descended and its feet touched the ground, I could see that its size had expanded considerably, reaching to a height of at least one meter long.

The tiny, bloody worshippers, as if noticing my presence, in unison displayed a glowing yellow facet projecting it towards me out of their polygonal heads, alerting the imitator, who, through a horizontal gap in his face, uttered a barely audible infrasonic sound that chilled my blood and released me from my state of stupefied immobility; while I ran with all my strength in the opposite direction to that, I could still hear in the distance those nightmarish screams that sought to transfigure themselves into sounds of a human voice, perhaps even language.

For weeks I heard transitional phonemes in my nightmares; my unconscious did not give me respite even during the hours of sleep: it had (had it, had I?) proposed itself to imagine and visualize the process of transformation of the imitator out of sheer curiosity; to know what human form he would have at that time: if he would be equal to me because mine was the first human face that he witnessed after his conversion. Of all the hyphoteses I formulated, this is the one that brings me closer to an act of contrition.

In recent days I only go for a walk to specific and nearby places, when the sun is high and the shadows have not yet had the opportunity to leave me any trace drawn on tiles, facades or walls.