The Stairs in the Park

The Stairs in the Park

The set of stairs looked innocent enough as I approached them. I was taking a short cut through the park, on the way back to my hotel, and I needed to head that way. Two stone pillars, at the very top, flanked either side of this leafy portal at the head of the stairs. It was the quiet that first gave me pause. Usually birds cheeped and flew in an out of the park area, nesting, feeding and carrying on as they usually do. But today, there wasn’t a peep or a sight of one of the feathered friends.

In point of fact, it was the complete absence of any sounds from the surrounding area that drew my attention. There were none, except for those emanating from the portal at the top of the stairs. The stone pillars framed an opening from which a quiet sounding lilt, of some type of music, was drifting down to me. It seemed a little odd to me, but then I had never before been in this park or indeed this city before, so maybe this was just the way thing are done here. I couldn’t quite make out the rhythm of the piece, but it had a siren’s allure that drew me closer and closer until I was standing on the first step of the ladder-like escalier, looking upward, ears straining to make out what I was hearing.

And then my nose caught the faint scent of jasmine wafting down the stairs. That must be some place up ahead, I mused, as my feet found the next step and the next, senses alert for whatever came next.
The soft sibilance of blended esses whispered quietly in my ear and I heard the words

” Yessss, come ahead and have accesssss.”
It was enough to give me a start and stop me in my tracks. I knew if I was watching this in a movie I would be hollering out,
“noooo, go back down, don’t do it!”

But this wasn’t a movie and I am an adult with full possession of my faculties, I intoned to myself. Whatever it is that lies up ahead is soon going to get my full attention. With that, I resolutely trod the steps upward until my line of sight came even with the top of the rise and I looked through the stone portals into a bewildering mélange of soft pastels that made up a delightful garden. The scents of oleander and lilac now mingled with Jasmine and my eyes and nose and ears were caressed with the full melody of sights and sound that lay before me. All I had to do was cross that last threshold, walk between the stone portals and I would be wrapped in sensual bliss.

I started ahead. It was the loose shoelace that saved me. It caught beneath my other shoe and made me stumble on the last step, causing me to lean heavily against the stone portal to catch my balance. As I did this, an electrical shock ran up along my arm and the wonderful visage of soft colors and delicious scents morphed into the waiting maws of a very large carnivore of sufficient size and un-nerving appearance to make me holler out in fright.

“Jumping jiminy, what the heck is that? “ I uttered in shocked fascination.
The visage was not too happy about having his pleasant outer appearance disturbed and advanced towards me menacingly. That was all I needed to see. I ran back down the set of stairs as fast as my balance and wobbly legs could carry me.

At the bottom, I looked over my shoulder expecting to see the veritable hounds of hell pursuing be, but there was the calm silence of nothing staring back at me. The stairs looked the same as they had when I first approached them. But now of course I saw them in a different way.
“Could I really have just seen what I did at the top of the stairs?” I said softly to myself. “Or is this as Ebenezer Scrooge had said, in “The Christmas Carol,” ‘more the stuff of undigested beef than spirit?’

“ I don’t know” was my answer. “And I don’t intend to find out either.” I set off briskly down the boulevard looking for a way around the stairs to be on my way and back to my hotel. Some things are better left unexplored and unexplained, I reasoned.

“And some parks and some cities are never going to see me again either,” I said with quiet determination.
-30-
(770 words)
Joseph Xavier Martin