5. Dante
DANTE
I've allocated enough time to this absurdity. I straighten my coat, square my shoulders, and begin walking. If this city has malfunctioned, I'll navigate my way to functional sectors through systematic exploration.
The watch is broken, that much is clear. Probably stopped from the impact when I fell even though it looks perfect. Simple mechanical failure. Everything else can be explained through logical analysis once I reach familiar territory.
I walk three blocks north, my footsteps swallowed by the unnatural silence. The buildings remain hollow shells, but I maintain my pace. Movement equals progress. Progress equals solutions.
When I turn the corner onto what should be Fifth Avenue, there he is again. Standing beneath another streetlight, curls glowing gold. The only color in the stark expanse.
“Nice evening,” he says, as if we haven’t spoken already.
I don't respond. Coincidence. Manhattan isn't that large when you strip away the crowds. I continue walking.
Two more blocks. Another turn. There he is again, leaning against a lamppost, that same unhurried smile.
"Lovely weather for a walk," he comments.
My jaw tightens, but I press forward. Statistical anomaly. Nothing more.
Third corner. Fourth. Each time I round another intersection, expecting different scenery, different faces, different anything, I find him. Waiting. Smiling. Acting as though his presence is perfectly reasonable.
"Why are you always here?" I finally growl, my carefully maintained composure fracturing.
“Isn’t a man allowed to walk around the city?”
"Why are you the only man doing so? Every corner, you're always standing there."
His lips part, then press back together before he speaks. "You remember me."
The words carry an odd weight, as if remembering him is some kind of achievement. I shove my hands into my pockets and walk on. This is lunacy.
"Wait." He hurries to stride beside me, matching my pace despite his unhurried demeanor. The contradiction irritates me. Everything about him suggests leisure, yet he moves with perfect efficiency when needed. "I don't mean to be confusing."
My steps halt abruptly, and he stops just as suddenly. "You have been nothing but nonsensical and confusing since we met."
"Which was when?"
I narrow my eyes, staring him down. He raises his hands in a gesture of innocence—bare hands, I notice for the first time.
Long, smooth fingers, neatly trimmed nails that catch the distant streetlight and seem to glow golden at the edges.
Perhaps I’m noticing him simply because he's the only thing in this entire city with color or life.
"Why are your hands bare?" The question emerges before I can stop it. "You'll freeze in this weather."
He examines his hands, turning them over with the meticulous attention of a researcher. When he looks up again, those ancient eyes meet mine. "What weather?"
Frustration flares, and I throw my arms out. "It's Christmas Eve. It's frigid out here."
But even as the words leave my mouth, I realize they're incorrect. It isn't frigid. Nor is it warm. The air carries no temperature at all. There’s a complete absence of thermal sensation that my mind has been filling in with expectation. If anything, it's nothing. A void where weather should exist.
His gaze sweeps the charcoal-drawn buildings, their substance more suggestion than reality. "Christmas Eve, yet there are no decorations."
“The one benefit of the evening. I hate Christmas."
This snaps his attention back to me with laser focus. "Truly? Why?"
"It's frivolous. Besides, just open your eyes, there are decorations everywh—" I turn to point at the usual holiday excess, only to realize he's correct. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed, but there isn't a single holiday ornament in sight.
No lingering menorahs, no oversized Christmas trees, no tacky inflatable decorations cluttering storefronts.
Only dark streets stretching endlessly ahead.
I take a single step forward. No sound registers. Again.
The urge to check my watch rises, but I push the thought down. I know what it will display. Instead, I release a breath that should escape as fog in the cold air. It doesn't. With trembling fingers, I reach for the pulse at my neck. Nothing. Again, nothing.
The swallow feels difficult, mechanical. His words echo through my consciousness. You're dead.
When I turn back, the man stands exactly as before. His expression now holds something I recognize as sorrow, genuine regret that’s visible in the sweep of wrinkles across his brow, the way his shoulders curve inward slightly.
"Who are you?" The question emerges with sudden urgency.
"Ah, yes, that's a fine starting point." He grins, dimples appearing once more. The ease with which he transitions between complex emotions would make him useless in trading—too transparent, too genuine for profitable negotiation. "I'm Virgil."
I thrust my hands into my pockets to resist checking for my nonexistent pulse again. "Like the poet?"
At this, he chuckles. "Not like the poet. The poet himself."
Another puff of breath emerges without creating the expected cloud and fails to interact with the environment as physics demands. "You're telling me that I've died and I'm now talking with an ancient Greek poet?"
"Well, no." His eyes twinkle with insufferable mirth. "Roman, actually. A few dozen centuries ago, I would have found that slip deeply offensive. Time has a way of softening things, though.”
A scoff escapes as I turn and resume my endless trudge down the street.
He follows. There are no audible footsteps, but somehow his presence registers behind me.
He's correct, of course. Virgil wasn’t Greek.
He was, in fact, Roman. He worked for… Augustus?
Or was it another emperor? One of them, certainly.
The poet who stitched Rome’s myths into a single epic.
The title of his epic hovers just out of reach, something beginning with an A.
My mind scrapes for it the way fingers fumble for a coin dropped between floorboards.
The only aspects of Roman history that interested me in college were the empire's mechanics: the rise, systematic expansion, and the inevitable, devastating collapse.
"Running from this doesn't make it disappear," the man calling himself Virgil says.
"I think you're delusional. Or I am."
"Perhaps we all are, to some extent."
The casual philosophical deflection irritates me enough that I whirl around, ending face-to-face with him. Close enough that I should feel his breath and detect his body heat. I would if natural law operated normally here. But, of course, it doesn’t. I step back.
"You have to be a neurological artifact,” I say. “Comas can cause vivid hallucinations. The brain misfires—neurochemistry, memory reconstruction, things like that. I watched a documentary once. That explains this entire scenario.”
Virgil nods along with genuine interest. "That does sound logical. Can you explain what a coma is, though? That particular term is unfamiliar."
“It’s a protective response,” I say. “The brain shuts things down when the damage gets too severe—injury, oxygen deprivation, shock. It suspends consciousness before the system completely fails. Cortical activity drops and—”
My explanation halts mid-sentence. Virgil absorbs every word with scholarly intensity, leaning forward, fingers twitching as though reaching for a pen to record my explanation. Or would it have been a quill? My Roman history is hazier than I would have anticipated.
"If you're a construct of my mind, how do you not possess my knowledge base?"
Virgil shrugs with maddening casualness. "Perhaps the question is the problem."
Another sigh escapes as I shove my hands deeper into my pockets and resume walking, slower this time. Slow enough for him to stride alongside me. Snow drifts like ash from bruise-blue skies, and the silent city carries endlessly forward.
"I'm a man of logic, Virgil. And you don't make sense."
He nods as if this is perfectly reasonable. “All right. What sort of explanation would your logic sign off on, then?”
We turn a corner. Lights are still darkened, windows still empty. "If you're a Roman poet, why are you speaking modern English and wearing cashmere?"
His face lights up as he runs his hands down the sweater.
"Are you a fan as well? Softer than lamb's wool, they tell me.
" He chuckles, glancing at an abandoned halal cart but not slowing his pace.
"I died over two thousand mortal years ago by my last count, and I've encountered more people than memory can catalog since then.
Along the way, I've absorbed their cultures, cuisines, clothing, and languages.
Words have always been my particular talent.
It's amusing how some writers struggle with second languages while others, like me, absorb the nuances and rhythms naturally.
Take Akkadian, for instance. In that language, they emphasize the final syllable of compound verbs, creating this musical quality that—"
"I don't know that language."
"What's that?"
"I've never heard of Akkadian.” The name stirs something faint, an echo from a college lecture, maybe, but I’m certain I’ve never heard anyone speak to the sound of the language.
My chest tightens as if my heart’s racing, only to remind me there’s no heartbeat to quicken.
The realization knocks loose the question before I can stop it.
“How does a figment of my imagination possess knowledge I lack? "
Virgil's expression softens. We've slowed to barely more than a stroll. Which is something I've never done on these streets, though it's slowly sinking in that perhaps I've never walked these particular streets before at all.
"Maybe it's because I'm not a product of your imagination."
"Far easier to believe that than accepting some famous dead Roman poet has decided to have a nice chat with me after my supposed death."
"I never claimed it was a pleasant chat, but I'm glad that's your interpretation."
I cut my eyes toward him, but he only chuckles and continues walking, hands folded neatly behind his back, the gesture oddly formal for a deserted street.
There's something infuriating about this man. He’s exactly the type who could have sidled up to an emperor, used cunning and charm to secure a place in a powerful, disciplined ruler's court.
We turn another corner, and my feet stop moving entirely.
Before us stands a massive Christmas tree. Dark, sparsely adorned with broken bulbs that catch no light. At its peak, a star flickers intermittently like a failing neon sign, the kind that draws insects to their doom.
"Where did that come from?" Virgil opens his mouth to answer me, but I cut him off. "And don't tell me to ask better questions."
"I shall remain quiet, then." He maintains silence for perhaps thirty seconds before breaking his vow. "Have you ever heard of the stages of grief? A woman I met here told me about them once. I believe the—ah, hmm—is it the fourth or fifth stage that's acceptance?"
"It's the fifth."
The answer emerges automatically from the memory of a hospital chaplain's brochure at my father's death.
He'd offered prayers and counsel. The pamphlet earned a quick skim before I slid it into my briefcase and thanked him.
Support wasn't necessary. I was already at acceptance. The other stages held no appeal.
Virgil reaches out to touch a Christmas ornament, his movements slow and deliberate, as though hoping not to knock it loose. Or perhaps hoping he will. It doesn't respond to his touch at all, as if it’s completely immovable.
"That's right. Fifth. The final stage." His voice carries centuries of weight. "You may not accept where you are until you process things for a while first."
"And where, precisely, am I?"
He looks back, his eyes returning to that dark, depthless quality. "You're in hell."