The morning sun fought its way past dark clouds on the horizon to find the rain-soaked Floating City settled a little lower in the water and the Moor Otello marching up and down by the ocean’s edge, ranting and grasping at the chill empty air about him. He had left his palazzo at an early hour, unable to abide the look of Disdemona’s peacefully sleeping form. The way she lay there, her hair spread across their pillow, filled him with both longing and hate.
He had felt certain that if he looked into her eyes deeply enough he would see the deceit there, but all he saw was the familiar dark eyes that he had once thought more beautiful than a precious jewel. She was beyond his understanding to be able to hide her lusts for the captain so well. He could not stay in the bedchamber with her, not knowing if the captain had lain there in that very bed with her. Had kissed her and stroked her long dark hair. Had lain his head upon that pillow beside her. Had looked into those dark eyes as he took her.
Surely he would be able to see some remnant of that in her eyes. But she was too able at hiding her deceits.
The thought of her giving her body to another man filled his guts with sickness. He found her very touch abhorrent now. He wanted to vomit the feeling of it out of him. But he felt his anger and grief and pain so great that no purging could ever rid his body of it. It infused every piece of his body. It was in his fingertips and in his stomach and behind his eyelids and running through his arms and legs. He even felt it in his bones.
And yet, and yet, the sight of her lying there so peacefully in the bed, also made him want to reach out and touch her. To hold her again. To feel that which he had always felt when he held her. That feeling of safety and security. His one safe place.
She had robbed him of even that. He turned and looked into the rising sun, and sank to his knees, tears filling his eyes. How could a man endure such pain and still live? he wondered. What torture could possibly compare to this feeling of a dark worm eating one’s insides out, starting at the heart?
He leaned forward until his head touched the ground and he pressed his hands to his head, squeezing it tightly as if it might somehow rid him of the pain and turmoil that filled him. He, who had once been charged with keeping the city’s peace, now a violent battleground himself.
He slowly climbed to his feet and turned to look at the Floating City that some considered the most beautiful city in the civilized world. He saw the morning sun illuminating its golden domes and tiled roofs. Saw the way the water of her canals turned to silver and yet he found it ugly. This city who had once counted on him to defend it. This city he had once felt could be his home. This city who he once felt would love him as he loved it.
This city that had also betrayed him.
He would rather rip his head from his own shoulders and cast it into the sea like a cannonball than do what he knew he needed to now do to free himself of this agony. And then Otello opened his lungs and screamed – a beast-like, grief-filled roar that echoed over the city as the dark clouds engulfed the sun again.