in the agenda looked a lot the thing Samantha and I had been scared of the whole time. Horror crawled through my veins like poison and exerted some numbing influence on all of my organs. Because after the big savior had given the bitter medicine of healing the world to his followers, he wanted to give his soul a treat and put on some old record. This was the overture of the literal saber rattling.
»Dear friends, we want to turn to the actual reason of our meeting«, he said and raised the sparkling saber. The reflection of the thousand candle flames that emerged from it shortly blinded my eyes. The pitiful guys inside the cage, who had kept quite until now, got nervous again and began to meow pathetically, as there didn’t seem to be any doubt about what was going to happen to them.
»These creatures are valuable vessels in which affiliated souls live. It needs the ritual that they can get in touch with us. Let us open our hearts and let them inside, hoping that they will open for us too. Let the freeing of the souls begin!«
The batmen found this tremendously splendid, as they were able to devote themselves to this cozy necromancy than being dragged down by their master’s mysterious suggestions, which actually promised some rather comfortless future. Immediately another Latin tune was struck up fervently, which now sounded a couple of shades darker though. The dark sound was the final signal for me to finally give birth to a clever idea and get to work. If I didn’t want to attend a massacre, I really needed to do something soon. Samantha also piped up with a similar request.
»Francis, Francis, I beg you, if you don’t want Rome to remain in your memory as the most terrible sight in your life, you need to perform an even bigger miracle as these murderers are about to! Hurry! In here’s a real bad atmosphere, and I’m afraid it’s about to explode into a gush of blood!«
And as if this begging needed some more graphic underlining, I saw how the master turned his back to the audience, walked towards the cage and swang the saber dramatically. Okay, I was to perform a miracle on the spot. The only problem was that in contrary to the master I didn’t have any connection to the ether and astral level so I could accomplish this. The horror, which had silently been lurking in the depths of my mind, now rose with decimal power. I began to shiver, and inside the chaos in my skull fractures of Samantha’s words resounded in what seemed to be an infinite loop. »... bad atmosphere ... wonder ... gush of blood ...« I believed to hear again and again as I stared into my fellow sufferer’s sad eyes, idle and like crystallized. The master’s hand grabbed the bars of the cage.
In my head a single phrase resounded: »... bad atmosphere ... bad atmosphere ... bad atmosphere ...« These two words rotated in my mind like the inside of a spin top, where it endlessly multiplied and interfered through an overwound segmentation. They had turned into a mantra, a repetitious prayer in which content played a far less role than the calming act of praying itself.
It might have gone on like that forever, endless droning and frozen in fear, until the prisoners’ ears would have been »deseeded«. But then something yelled inside me: »If there’s bad atmosphere, then open the damn windows!« I furrowed my brow. Shortly after, I got the message. Yes, it was true, when there was bad atmosphere, one should let in fresh air. From there it was a short walk to suit the action to the word.
»Francis, you really need to ...« I heard Samantha shout another time, and I knew immediately that she was gaping in astonishment. She had turned away from the frightening scene to face me, and so in the middle of her sentence she had noticed that I wasn’t sitting next to her on the balustrade anymore. Because I was already on my way to the cable control.
»Follow me, Samantha!« I yelled without looking back. »I need your help.«
»But what are you doing?« she shouted breathlessly. »Isn’t it too late already?«
»No. It won’t be too late until you feel somehow strange and the thermometer tells you that your body has been brought down to room temperature!«
The construction on the wall looked pretty much like the rolled out inner workings of