The fates run a bar

The three fates run a bar in Bologna's central station, on the underground floor in between the 16th and the 17th track. Clotho, with round, South American face, a band-aid over her right eyebrow, Lachesis blonde and motherly, Atropos skinny as a thread, looking like an escapee high school girl that regularly skips lunch and P.E. class.

If they serve you coffee, you'll surely die,

Wait - this can't be right.

Allow me to rephrase.

Clotho, beautiful, lively, a glint in her pupils, Lachesis' hands that probably smell of bread, Atropos who listens to obscure prog-rock bands that never went past the 90s. I am served a 1,40 espresso in a paper cup that tastes like shit. The coffee, I mean, not the cup - if you eat the cup, you'll surely die.

Today is a bad day and the first of the new year, one new year at least. Bologna's train station is bustling with people running as usual, making sense of the criss-crossing pathways and the everchanging orange lights announcing delayed trains and switched platforms.

My coffee tastes like machine spit. A 1,40 euros coffee has no right tasting this bad, and my mind is equally repulsive today, the contents festering with wounds old and new.

Atropos is talking to Lachesis, she's like "I started going to the gym." Her spindly body surely doesn't show it.

"You're out of your mind," Lachesis says. Then to me: "Around forty-four years ago, a terror attack killed eighty-five people here at the station."

"Two hundred more were injured," Atropos is quick to add.

Forty-four, eigthy-five, two o-o. Seems like a secret code, some sort of hidden message to latch on.

Let's rewind. I'm doing poorly today. Must've looked at the trains, must've thought; I wouldn't mind a bomb attack, must've thought my chances were pretty good. How many people are at the station right now? Five hundred, six hundred? Switching trains, waiting, reading the signs. Maybe more.

If 85 random blokes were to just fucking disappear in a blast, I'd have a good chance to survive. Or I'd have a good chance to win a ticket at the bomb lottery.

As I get off my previous train I think that if the bomb were to go off, I wouldn't feel the heat, wouldn't hear the blast. Maybe just a great ball of fire, and a split second for my mind to go "that's it", and then nothing.

Wait - this can't be right.

The three Moirai spin fate behind the counter of a coffee shop in Bologna's central station, on the underground floor in between the 16th and the 17th track. Clotho the ever-blossoming, with the mischievous smile, Clotho that spins the thread. I want to have her, I want to pin her down on a mattress and study each micro-expression of her face as she climaxes.

This can't -

Atropos is the one to cut the thread. Wikipedia kindly informs me she represents the inevitability of Death, as if - as if, I wasn't brought up in this culture, I wasn't raised with those myths. People fear Death, and that's it, but I can also see she has a kind smile and one really has to wonder. What's bad in cutting life short?

She didn't put it there to begin with.

"This coffee was ass." I say this respectfully. Lachesis, the allotter, in between those youngish impish colleagues, looks wiser, wiser beyond her years. "This coffee was ass, like, it tasted of literal donkey. And butt."

"It won't be in your system for long," she consoles me. "Word is you've got a fast metabolism for coffee and depression."

Maybe I do. I throw the paper cup on a recycling bin on my way to platform 16th alongside my dreams of taking Clotho. Clotho the cruel, bringing untold billions of people who won't amount to much and will have the same, usual issues, the same, petty and inescapable existential questions. She must have screamed once or twice in her very, very long life, she must have gone "I cannot take it anymore!". Birthing new life every other minute like some queen ant.

There must be a reason my mind often wanders in dark places. Eventually I board the train on platform 16th and I have the worst company of all: happy people all around me. It's a new year of sorts. I realize there isn't gonna be any terror attack.

It's just another run-of-the-mill day in a run-of-the-mill life. My tongue is bitter with the ghost of bad coffee and this is the last time I'll tell this story. Then it will be forgotten, hopefully, forever. Like those three women, three regular women, running a coffee joint.

This has to be right, because I know of no other way.