Exangel

by Rogan Kelly.

Years later, I learned Castelnuovo was a ghost town and not the bustling mountainside village that resides in my memory.

The hilltop déjà vu never happened; I did not kiss Valentina behind the cabin. I did not wake in a field of cows, nor drink grappa with her husband—his threat to kill if I did not leave town. The blade at my throat, its serrated teeth first pulled then broke my skin where I still have the scar that turns red, hot to touch, when I lie, is just a story I tell. The blood trickled and tripped the tops of my shoes as he pressed me against the lamppost in the old broken piazza, above the new one where an Italian cover band from Roma sang Bon Jovi, It’s My Life. Widows and widowers sadly strolled the old grounds, their shadows strayed from the gaslight while the young danced below aglow and bright under a moonless sky.

I spoke no Italian beyond simple greetings and goodbyes. Everything was conveyed with my eyes and absurd rooster strut. Valentina wept when Vito snuck me out the window, the Swiss dog barked, the cousin’s car backfired, its headlights stretched and strained down the mountain, hungry to illuminate something. The light only cast upon an ever-growing dark.

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