Imagine yourself sitting in an empty room. In the silence, you would probably feel uncomfortable and uneasy about what is happening, just as if something bad was about to happen (remembering the lyrics of a song by Steve Lacy). The tension would probably remind you of a suspense situation presented in Hitchcock’s cinematography. However, instead of being the all-knowing viewer watching characters having a date and being unaware of the noiseless bomb under their dinner table, you have become that character yourself. Now it is you who is intently looked at by an invisible figure: destiny, fate, or, being as precise as possible, grim fatum, personified by the artist’s imagination. 

It may be Hellenic Moira Atropos, waiting for your time to come. She already has her long thin scissors at the ready, anticipating the sound of tearing mortal life thread. The cut is inevitable, the end is predestined, and there is no use of hoping to escape this fate. Though invisible, Atropos is the most taciturn Moira; her omnipresence is physically tangible. Bet, those goosebumps on your hands remind you of a needle shot.

You also might have some experience in chess. If so, you remember that whatever you do, even if you just sit in silence and do not touch a piece, the move will be made by the end of your sixty seconds.  And even if your chessmen are white, even if you make the first move, if destiny decides, you will lose the set the same way one brave Knight lost the game to Death. 

Finally, it could be a morose male figure sitting behind you and your loved one. The man would not interrupt your dance or break the tender tête-à-tête. Nevertheless, a subtle sense of the intangible touch of his long thin fingers adorned with silver rings would follow your every move. The scalding cold of his rings perfectly rhymes with the frigidity of his gaze, as both of them are totally indifferent to your warm and passionate souls. Finally, it may be that Tarkovsky was right, and all the metals were initially created just for a razor-handed madman to hold behind us.