Leandro (Prose; Part III)

Then, one ill-fated evening, during the second month of our marriage, Leandro grew ill. Looking rather pale in the face, holding the bed sheets with tremulous hands, he claimed to perceive sounds of livid voices hovering between life and death. What is more, he argued that he saw vague illumination of patterns, ominous creatures, and ill-omened objects that do not even exist in reality. Although I tried to set his mind at rest, with the comfort that all he professed to see were mere phantasms of the mind, the horrified look of his countenance proved to me that my all my efforts to appease him were pointless. Subsequent to his hallucinations, completely bewildered and disoriented was he that he shrieked ferociously and became numb all of a sudden. His face drawn in the vein of the withering rose, his cheeks washed away with rosiness, lips vermilion no more. As the dazzling glow of his verdant eyes faltered, so did he. After a brief moment of stillness, he shuddered amidst a sudden crawling sensation beneath his skin. Shedding tears, I held his hands closer to my chest, for I know that at some point in time, his tormented spirit will spread out its wings and fly away to a land wherein good and evil are evenhanded. I never wanted to let him go, in spite of everything. Yet, before he yielded to Hades' scythe of death, he whispered, "Man is eyes, the rest is only flesh: But the true eyes are those that see the Friend; ... Merge the whole of yourself in your eyes, Go towards the vision, go towards the vision, go towards the vision. Farewell, my love! Thou art my adoration, my idolatry, my foundation, and my... vehement end. Farewell."