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Brutus 17 - Judgment

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:53:00 -0500

Five grizzled judges entered the dim chamber. Single file their hooded robes dragged the floor. With hunching backs and moving slowly, they limped on two legs or on canes. Lanterns flickered their twisted figures about the large room. They clambered past the curtained stage, up the stairs of the judges’ platform, and into their ornate seats. With hidden countenances and silent mouths they waited for the two bailiffs to pull at the ropes, raise the stage curtain, and reveal yet another hooded figure.

“Sirs. In secret conference we have determined the temple girl’s guilt,” spoke a young man’s voice. “Because she is unmarried and with child, having conceived while in service to the gods, as two priests have avowed upon seal, death by exposure is required.”

“Unless she offers a sign,” one of the five hoarsely spoke, as he raised a dark sleeve to reveal a bony finger.

“Yes. Unless she offers a sign.”

“Bring her forward.”

The two bailiffs bowed, clicked their heels and disappeared into the shadows beyond the raised curtain. A large door creaked open and slammed shut. Chains rattled until the bailiffs returned with the gaunt figure of a tall girl. She wore shackles around her ankles and a sullied temple robe hung from her emaciated body. Her matted, black hair concealed her down turned face, but did not cover her swollen belly.

“We did not order this girl be starved. She is nothing but bone with child.”

“She refuses to eat,” explained the young voice. He then he turned to her and spoke,

“Girl for your iniquity, you have been condemned to death by exposure. However, the Laws provide that should you offer a sign, the penalty may be mitigated.”

“A sign?” whispered Gayla.

“Yes, a sign. For instance, should a raven appear, fly down and land upon your shoulder, or should a holy voice speak in your defense from vacant air, the Court may be convinced you should not be exposed.”

Gayla slowly nodded, raised her head and moved her hair aside to reveal her unaffected face. Though it was nothing more than skin and skull, her beauty had somehow remained. Her weakened thighs trembled as she began to lower her body to the floor. The bailiffs assisted. Each took an arm and helped her to her knees. Gayla clasped her hands in prayer and her hair fell back over her face as she bowed.

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor,
Exhale the answers to our prayers,
Offer our devout ears the rustling leaves,
The whispering wind,
Amen.”

The chamber remained silent. Motionless.

The bailiffs glanced to one another with softened countenances.

Hooded face turned to hooded face and heads shook.

“There is no sign,” spoke a stoic, old voice.

“Agreed. There is no sign.”

“Agreed.”

“Aye.”

And so Gayla, gravid of belly and too weak to stand, was gently helped to her feet by the two bailiffs and led back to prison.

The bailiffs went to a tavern for ale. Both were filled with sorrow at their table and they didn’t clank their mugs together, as they always had before, before taking a swill.

“I don’t know about you, but there was something about that girl. I felt it in my belly when she prayed. Or maybe it was her face? It just doesn’t seem right, her being condemned and all.”

“I know what you mean. It probably was a priest that knocked her up. No other men could have gotten to her in the temple. She was so young, and beautiful.”

“The judges didn’t seem to care. They never do. Maybe it’s because they don’t have to show their faces.”

“I know. We did. We couldn’t hide from her. We didn’t get to hide in robes and be the Law instead of men. We had to be men.”

“I’m never going to forget her face.”

“I know. I know. Me either. I wish we got to wear hoods too. Be something else when being part of somebody dying.”

“Barmaid! Two more of your darkest in your biggest bowls! Swine need to swill!”

Brutus 16 - Gestation

Wed, 28 May 2008 06:54:00 -0500

The land thawed. Row after row, Claytus continued singing as he guided the ox. The ox always seemed to be smiling, especially when he strained against leather strap and steel buckle, leaving upturned soil in his wake. As the soil turned, those with life mourned the death brought by the terrible chill that had swept the land. As the pillars of smoke rose skyward from the smoldering, piled up corpses, tears soaked the ground and lament filled the air. In seeking balance, freshly planted seed began to dream of birth from death, from darkness into light. Hope to grasp living days from the depths of earth’s stillness.

As the moons passed, one after another, days mulling into night and back again, the seed continued growing. It sprouted limbs and a head the size of a plumb. He began making his presence known to his child-mother, for her bleeding stopped and her sickness started.

Gayla whispered and cried into her pillow each night,

“Caelum, why? Why? WHY!”

“It can’t be! Please make it not so.”

“This can’t be happening to me! It cannot be!”

She knew Caelum couldn’t hear her pleas, though a part of Him remained within her since that night. IT, he, a bastard, continued taking shape, filling her womb, drinking the last of her youth and purity straight from her porcelain navel. A son.

On heavy feet, Gayla continued climbing the rebuilt spire each evening. She kept tending the altar fire in that desecrated place. There she always felt faint and angry as the dusk turned to darkness. As she poured hecatombs with shaking hands, her offered words to Him were not prayers. They were curses.

“Caelum, you wretch! Why? Why! Why did you defile me? Why did you have to thrust your dripping phallus in my dirt? What will I do when the priests discover my purity’s loss? You swine!”

No immortal ears heard her words as her delicate hands worked in tremors, as the swine blood continued flowing, burning into smoke and rising into the air – an offering to a murdered father. All the while the son continued partaking of the uncooked blood of his father’s killer, the life in his mother’s veins. Nourishment blessed with salty spite.

More moons came and went, and the signs of Gayla’s gravidity were reflected in her sisters’ mutterings and whispers.

“Just look at her. She’s getting fat.”

“She eats like a pig.”

Silently, Gayla swore to herself in her fright,

“I cannot be discovered by the priests. What will become of me? I’ll be put to the whip, hanged or stoned, or worse! I’ll starve the child from me!”

And her fright became hatred as her tears melted into greater spite. First it was hatred for Caelum, and then it became hatred for her son as well.

“How dare he do this to me! How dare THEY do this to me! I’m just a girl!”

She refused to eat another bite.

“Aren’t you hungry, sister?” the other girls began to ask as the days passed.

“Are you sick to your stomach?”

They were beginning to notice her frailness, as her cheeks became hollow, her eyes dark, and her breasts flattened.

“Something is terribly wrong with Gayla,” they whispered.

Her famine failed to starve the child. Once her blood ran dry and her smooth, girlish curves melted into jaggedness, he began sucking the very gristle from her bones.

“I’ll show you!” she seethed each morning, as she squatted in the latrine and gritted her teeth without success.

“Get out of me!” she raged.

In her dreams she would sneak into the woods and vomit the child’s stillborn flesh from her body. Leave it for the wolves and worms.

In the end, her skull began to shine straight through her face, and her bony knees and thighs became too weak to climb the temple’s spire. Yet her stomach had finally grown to the size that it belied the secret her famine had tried to conceal, or to kill.

The final night of Gayla’s stay at the temple, as she lay awake and waiting in the darkness of her chamber, the priests and the soldiers came.

“Take this whore away!” demanded a priest from the shadows.

She did not resist as the men roughly handled her weakened body. She did not mutter a word as they locked and bruised her wrists and ankles into chains and carried her away to prison.

Brutus 15 - The Freeze

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:32:00 -0600

With knees trembling and torn, Gayla descended the spire. Naked, she crept through the temple's shadows and narrow hallways, her tiptoes seeking safety. The echoing voices of chanting priests were missing for the first time, but from behind many doors, the muffled whimpers of her sacred sisters could be heard.

"Caelum, please do not leave us. Take back your holy seat between the milky pillars."

"Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky..."

"We beg of thee to keep giving light to the blinking stars and glimmering moons."

Undetected, Gayla escaped to her chamber, sponged off what she could into her washbasin, and poured the filthy water away. As tears streaked over her face, she kept her silence. Not knowing what else to do, she covered her body in sacred garments and crawled into her blankets to hide.

Though it was the season of tilling and planting the rows, a great freeze immediately overtook the land and lasted three days and nights. Rivers became ice, livestock froze in the fields, many men and women died in their beds, and the streets were void of life.

"I think the shit's frozen in my belly!" trembled the Shoemaker to his wife from beneath his blankets.

"Don't talk like that!" shook his wife. "Put another log on the fire before my tits turn blue and fall off!"

"What must we do?" shivered one High Priest to the other. "What must we say?"

"Caelum is angry," said the other as he warmed his hands over the glowing altar fire. "There must be greater tithing. When He is appeased, we will point out the new place He has taken in the sky. Any bright star."

"There will likely be a sparse harvest."

"Those suffering hunger will give more to the temple."

When the freeze ended and the land thawed, aged Claytus buckled up his boots and returned to the fields with his old ox, plow, and new seed.

He stroked the animal's wide head. "I'm glad I didn't lose you to the cold, my loyal friend. By many years you've outlived my wife!" he chuckled. "Let's give this planting another chance."

And so the two went to work. Worn and wrinkled they both were, gray with years, but still having broad shoulders and strong backs.

Claytus sang as he tilled the earth, his plow guided straight and churning it up into rows.

"Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky.
Once shining forth from your throne
Between the milky pillars.
You have become the Four Winds
And are among us, down below.
The air we breathe
Always with us.
Thank you for the sacrifice
Of Heaven and Sky.
Praise the firmament's dark places.
Amen."

Brutus 14 - The Farmer's Song

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:30:00 -0600

As he tills the earth, plow guided straight and churning it up into rows, the broad back of an old ox rippling under the sun, moving slowly but never pausing in rhythm, the old farmer sings, and he still sings today, wherever you might find him, wherever the fields are being prepared for yet another season’s birth and growth.

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky.
Once shining forth from your throne
Between the milky pillars.
You have become the Four Winds
And are among us, down below.
The air we breathe
Always with us.
Thank you for the sacrifice
Of Heaven and Sky.
Praise the firmament’s dark places.
Amen.”

Whenever the plow turns up the rows for the season’s birth and growth, the exposed richness, the blackness of the soil, manifests the dust of many things crumbled, joined together, and offered to the earth. It is the feathers and hollow bones of birds that have fallen from the heights. It is the excrement of beasts and what the fishes eat, scattered by the farmer’s hand, stirred into the fields.

So he sings as he tills the earth, his plow guided straight and churning it up into rows. The broad back of an old ox is rippling under the sun, moving slowly but never pausing in rhythm.

Brutus 13 - Regret

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:29:00 -0600

With night growing old, and glinting dawn yawning and verging to peek open her eyes, Gayla and her lover were still perched high above the city. Leaning against the altar to keep from falling over from weakness, she sobbed and shook. Her naked, blood-dirtied body was tied into a ball, arms wrapping shins, knees to breasts, matted hair hanging and concealing her countenance.

He just lay there, cooing, and satisfied:

“Goo goo. Gah gah.”

“What have I done!” she cried.

Mustering the strength, she untied. On trembling limbs she crawled to the edge of the open platform, stretched out her neck, and looked up past the stone canopy’s edge, into the firmament. The clouds were gone, and all the countless stars seemed brighter than before, but for one of them.

“Caelum, where are you?”

I’ve never been good at finding him up there without looking twice, but I know he’s the brightest star. He shines forth between the milky pillars, and there they are, the milky pillars, right up there. But there is only darkness where He once sat upon his throne.

“Caelum?”

Once more she batted her eyes and looked up. He still wasn’t there. The pillars still stood, but the throne between them was empty.

I must be dreaming. The ceremonial smoke I inhaled before coming up here has given me temporary madness. It must have.

Gayla sighed, took a few breaths, and rattled her head to come to her senses. No one but me is up here. It’s only me. I just need some rest. A cloud or dust must be covering Him up, up there. He is still sitting on his throne. He has to be. Caelum is still up there, watching over us. But he was still missing when she looked up again, and there were no clouds or dust.

She closed her eyes tightly and spun around. I’m alone up here. I am alone.

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

He was still there, jerkily kicking his feet and clenched fists.

“Goo goo. Gah gah.”

“It can’t be true!” she swore as she reached down between her thighs to confirm her purity, but she was opened up, torn, bleeding, seeping his lust.

Gayla was unable to cry any more. She just sat there, staring at him with the emptiness of regret trying to claw out from her bowels. Regret, hatred, loss of piety, no longer pure. Cursed? She didn’t care. It was too late.

“I’m still so young. Now I’ve lost everything.”

“Curse you Caelum. Curse you!”

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.

“Goo goo. Gah gah.”

There was no way out. Whether or not she had given herself to Him, this was the answer to her prayers and sacrifice, or to the prayers and sacrifices of the priests, of men. Either way, the Lord of the Sky had now abandoned the night, and perhaps every night to come, whether it was folly or intentional abandonment. He was no longer on his throne, between the milky pillars. She was no longer a virgin.

“I’m only a girl! Curse you Caelum. Curse you!”

With unshaken resolve and strong knees, Gayla stood tall, and she was taller than most men. She walked over to him, cleared her throat, leaned over, and spat in his face.

“Bastard.”

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.

She grabbed him by the ankles and began dragging him across the platform floor, tearing his naked back across the stone, leaving a trail of glistening blood.

“Gah! Gah!” he cried.

With little effort she tugged his body to the edge, so lithe but full of strength.

She let go and his feet dropped. She turned and looked down over the jagged cliffs and turbulent sea. The darkness combined with the distance concealed the vast waters, making them appear a bottomless void stretching past the horizon.

“I’m only a girl!”

Without hesitation she put a heel into him and sent his body spinning into the air, helplessly flailing and falling fast, into the abyss.

“Spread your wings!” she screamed.

“Gah! Gah!”

To no avail he jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.

And so Caelum’s body smashed into the cliffs and tumbled into the sea.

Brutus 12 - The Rape

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:28:00 -0600

Though the storm was finished but the night remained, Gayla kept clinging to the altar. While her cheeks and skin were drying of rain and tears, her body still trembled with fear and exposure.

Her widened, swollen eyes were fixed on him.

“Caelum?”

As if with deaf ears, he just lay there on his back, so close to her. He was naked as she was, shaking, sweating, and suffering for air. Compared to hers, his skin was even more unblemished. It was pinker and softer wherever it hadn’t been torn when his body had roughly tumbled down onto the stone floor. As her knees had been bloodied, his were too, but blood also came from his elbows, scalp, nose, and mouth. From multiple wounds it dripped, ran, and trickled into crimson puddles beside him.

“Caelum?”

“Goo goo! Gah gah!” was all he could muster from his throat.

“Caelum?”

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.

“Goo goo! Gah gah!”

Was this a test of the gods? She had offered herself to Him. As a result, the storm had subsided and the city had been saved from ruin, but the altar fire and the burning dove had been flung to the cliffs and doused in the sea. And now a man – a god? – Caelum? – had been set down before her. Was he a gift? An answer to her prayers? All of her prayers had been to Caelum, and Caelum was the hand behind all lightning, thunder, and rain. What was she to do? Was this a test?

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists. “Goo goo! Gah gah!”

He is a full-grown man in body, if not in mind, she observed. He’s even more beautiful than the boy from the village I saw bathing in the river before I came here and made my oaths. I felt so naughty crouching amongst the reeds and secretly watching, especially when the passion started in my lungs, burned its way down, and made love’s water flow from me. And seeing Him here, beside me now, makes me feel the same way again.

It has to be Caelum. I have only prayed to Him.

“I have remained a virgin for you, my love.”

He must want me, because he is just as ready as any horse I’ve ever watched mount a mare in my father’s stables, and I have only prayed to Him. I have taken my oaths and have stayed pure for Him. This is my duty, and this is why passions’ waters are swelling inside of me, trickling down my thighs. It is my duty.

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists. “Goo goo! Gah gah!”

So Gayla let go of the altar and gingerly crawled to him on hands and bleeding knees. Kneeling in the warm pools of blood at his side, she prayed:

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

When her prayer was finished, though both her and his heart and lungs were racing, she threw her slender thigh over him, captured a deep breath, clenched her teeth, and took him straightaway into her body.

“My Lord!” she screamed as her flesh tore, as her mixed water and blood streaked down over his hips and thighs and pooled with the blood at his sides.

“Caelum, Caelum, my Lord…” she moaned as she rocked her wounded knees in their bodies combined fluids; pools spilled from each of them onto the floor before the altar.

As her supple hips rolled back and forth, he jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.

“Caelum, Caelum…” she moaned as she rocked and clinched her ivory buttocks, as her long hair tickled his chest.

“Goo goo! Gah gah!” he erupted.

“Caelum, Caelum, my love…” she gasped as she swallowed his seed.

Brutus 11 - Feather to Flesh

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:27:00 -0600

The storm subsided into silence once more.

Caelum took a deep breath, and it was enough to fill the sails of many ships. He inhaled the smoke and stench of the altar’s burning dove, the must of the girl’s lilac skin and salty blood, the scent of the rain soaked floor, the odor of wet mud mixed with dung in the streets, the earth, trees, and lighting’s electricity. Then he blew out pure air, keeping all the tiny parts he’d stolen through his flaring nostrils.

“I will fill my body with flesh and will become flesh!”

“Take ME as your dove!”

“The girl shall be mine!”

She remained submissive and patient, on her bleeding knees, her hips offered up and open to him, her head down. He kept taking deep breaths, which made the wind whisk over her skin and whip her hair as it rushed into his lungs.

Still the words they spoke were unknown to one another’s ears, but hers were nevertheless enchanting music, and his were gusts of passion.

“Take ME as your dove!”

“The girl shall be mine! Flesh shall be mine!”

Unable to take it all in fast enough, Caelum leapt from the spire and high into the air. He spun into a terrible funnel with lashing tail and descended for the farmland outside the city walls.

“Caelum? Where have you gone, my Lord?” cried Gayla, sensing her sudden abandonment.

With clouds as shoulders, hurricane winds as body and feet, a lightning countenance, and thunder in his throat, Caelum penetrated the earth like a deadly spear. The mantle quaked and broke at the seams, the city walls cracked at their foundations, men and women were thrown from their beds, and horses kicked open their stable gates and galloped away.

“I should have had more to drink before bed,” lamented the shoemaker after tumbling to the floor with his blankets.

“The brightest star has fallen from the heavens!” cried a priest running in the streets in his nightgown, before falling to the ground.

“Mother Dirt!” howled the angry and determined, fallen star.

As the writhing earth collapsed rooftops and toppled walls, the temple spire began to sway, its stones to crack at the mortar. To save herself from tumbling off the platform to smash into the cliffs and sea below, Gayla dove for the altar and clung tightly to it.

“Please spare me!”

The sacrifice, a flaming dove floating in a golden chalice, leapt from the altar and bounced across the floor, spilling fire, blood, and oil. Taking flight from the spire, it crashed into the jagged cliffs below, and then met a quick end, doused in the tumultuous waters of the sea.

“Caelum, why have you awakened me?” whispered a voice from the depths.

“Please spare me!” cried the girl.

“Fuck me,” exclaimed the shoemaker as the floor beneath him kept rumbling, as the plaster broke from his ceiling and landed in his face.

“There is a void in the Heavens!” screamed the fallen priest in the streets.

With lashing tail, Caelum kept churning the mud and gulping it down, shaking the earth with his violence.

“Flesh shall be mine!”

Just mix the waters with dust, rot, and dung, and give it breath? Is this all it takes to make animated meat, to create what it takes to satisfy lust?

Flesh.

Into Caelum’s gaping mouth the soil kept pouring, stretching his belly with indigestion, filling his ethereal veins, and giving his feathers weight.

This way, with sucking wind, He filled his emptiness with substance, with Flesh. His twisting tail lumbered more with every swallow, his hands, feet, and face appeared. His wings became burdened and heavy.

When Caelum lost his lightness for flight and transformed into a man, he leapt for the temple spire and crashed down before the girl.

“Caelum?” Gayla stammered.

Though the storm and quake had finally left the night to silence, tears were still running down her cheeks. Her arms continued clinging to the altar.

He just lay there, naked, sweating, suffering for air.

Brutus 10 - Impotence

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:26:00 -0600

What a joy it was to explore a supplicating girl, to have her quivering beneath his fingertips as he blew round her fragile ankles! Trembling with excitement he exhaled against her slender calves, between her thighs, and caressed her soft down. Up the slight curves of her hips, across her navel, and over her bare ribs he glided, until finding her folded arms. With gusty tugs he urged her to let go and expose her supple breasts. As tears fell from her cheeks, he caught and swallowed them. When she dropped her hands to her bleeding knees, he twirled her pink nipples with his wispy tongue until they hardened with delight.

“Caelum desires me and I desire him. I am blessed,” Gayla cried, as her heart kept racing, as her eyes spat more tears for him to taste.

Now it wasn’t only fear taking her breath. It was the blood swelling in her breasts and between her thighs as he stroked her. Each time she panted for air, he was drawn closer and closer to her lips, until his fingers flowed into her parted mouth, were sucked over her soft tongue, and down her throat. Thus he was consumed with ecstasy, inhaled into her warmth, but quickly exhaled, spat into the cold to be swallowed again.

The rapture reached an unsatisfying height when Caelum had been taken in and spat out a hundred times. He had the urge to leave just a part of his ethereal body inside her and couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, she blew all he tried to plant back out.

“If only I were flesh,” he mourned, and then withdrew to hover nearby, head hanging. To her his retreating words were but the whistle of a dying zephyr dissipating into stillness.

In awkward silence, he brooded over his impotence while she desperately yearned for him to return and satisfy his lust. Only her belly moved, rapidly rising and falling with her heightened breath, while his airy, saddened eyes stole furtive glances at her, but mostly they stared upon the stone floor.

Then Caelum’s powerlessness began to twist into anger.

She just kneels there before a flame devouring a dove! Her earthy words are not prayers, but curses against me! How dare Mother Dirt offer such flesh to me just to tease me!

Foul Bitch!

As his shame turned to wrath and desire for revenge, the winds began to swell again, the clouds to roll together and blot out the firmament. The thunder started back up, and the spire’s high altar continued to flicker, sending flashes of eerie light far above the rooftops into the night. The denizens below clung to one another in their beds, imploring Caelum’s fury be quelled with temple’s sacrifices.

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

The weather still worsened, the lightning began to flash, and the rain to fall as the winds prepared to strike.

The altar’s fire kept burning, sending up smoke, immolating feather, wing, and hollow bone.

Mother Dirt!

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

The earth shook from thunder, walls cracked, and the winds began tearing limbs from trees.

Sensing her prayers were of no use and with fear returning, Gayla cried aloud,

“Take ME as your dove!”

Still on her bloodied knees, she dropped her face and breasts to the wet, stone floor. As the rain came in and began whipping her, the wind tearing at her hair, she bit down, arched her back, and raised her hips to him.

“Take ME as your dove! I have never been touched!”

Only then did Caelum realize she had another delicate mouth to offer his lust, an even sweeter, fleshy flower, dripping with dew and parting its lips.

“Mother Dirt! Flesh shall be mine!” thundered the Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky.

“This girl shall be mine!”

Brutus 9 - Wind Meets Girl

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:25:00 -0600

Gayla opened her eyes and unclenched her teeth. Had the storm passed? With caution she let go of the pillar and tiptoed to the altar. The flame was still burning, the dove soaked in oil still sending up wispy smoke.

Is this a sign He has accepted the sacrifice? The reason why his destroying winds have subsided?

Before the altar and fire, Gayla dropped to her knees and they began bleeding again, running into the cracks of the stone floor. She crossed her arms over her bare breasts, and bowed her head.

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

He did not know her words, but the sweet sound of her voice made him shudder. Never had Caelum hovered so closely behind a supplicating girl, heard the melody of her words. They were more beautiful than the songs of any feathered chorus he’d ever known. The flowing hair, the small of her back, the curves of her buttocks down to the dirty soles of her dainty feet transfixed him. Hypnotized were his ethereal eyes and ears as she continued:

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

Finally mustering the courage by shaking off his stare, Caelum stretched forth his airy hand and touched her bare shoulders with his fingertips. Gayla quivered to his contact, her skin tightened, and her heart began to race. But she did not lift her head, remained on her knees, and continued praying aloud.

“C… Caelum,
L… Lord of the F… Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky…”

She felt his wispy hands encircle her shoulders, and though he was delicate, her terror of his strangeness made her stomach climb into her throat, her lungs start breathing fast and shallow.

So Caelum touched a girl for the first time in eternity. With the gentleness of his cloudy palms, he flowed slowly over her lips, stroaked her long hair, took in the slight bends of her girlish hips. She kept on with her prayer as she quivered with fright, stammering, and suffering for air, remaining devout and offered as tears began filling her eyes.

Thus a god inhaled the smoke offered up at his altar, the body of a dove.

Brutus 8 - The Offering

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:22:00 -0600

Before Caelum threw his fit, and while he was drifting about the city peering through windows, a fragile girl with long, black hair and unblemished skin was ascending the spiraling stairs of the temple spire, a sacred flame in her palms. Only when she reached the top and stood before the altar did the stone beneath her bare feet begin to tremble to the sound of his curses.

The wind came, as did the rain. The thunder knocked her to her knees and bloodied them. Her hair lashed her face and her raiment was torn from her body, but she kept her sacred promise by crawling for the altar and setting it afire to turn the offered dove into smoke.

Once the altar was lit, the shivering girl clung to a pillar and held on with both arms and legs. She wept as lightning blinded her eyes, thunder deafened her ears and shook her to the bones, and rain flogged her exposed skin. She did not shirk her duties, for as she hung on with fear of being torn loose and thrown to her death from the heights, in quavering voice she offered a prayer.

Despite the punishing wind and rain, the sacred fire continued burning, consuming the dove, feather, flesh, and hollow bone, and she was thankful it had not blown out, for her duty was to carry it in her hands up the stairs of the spire, to the altar, and back again. For the priests, the continual flame was not only a sign of Caelum’s appeasement, but proof the girl chosen to bear it was unblemished.

Like a terrified child clinging to her mother, trembling Gayla kept hanging to the pillar, and from her trembling lips she whimpered her prayer again and again.

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

Gayla’s wounded knees bled down her porcelain shins. Never before had her skin been scratched or torn.

Just as the chilling wind and rain licked the blood away, the storm subsided.

Brutus 7 - The Tantrum

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:21:00 -0600

Caelum held his upturned palm to his lips. With fingertips aimed for revenge upon the sacrilegious canine, he took a deep breath and shot from his throat an arrow of putrid wind. Flying fast, the tip pierced deep into the dead crow’s breast, and filled its flesh, feathers, and hollow bone with poison.

“Filthy beast, you shall writhe and whimper until death when you taste the flesh of the feather,” whispered Caelum in the tongue of Aeries, and his soft voice sounded like wind rustling leaves.

The mangy dog continued on, unaware his meal had been poisoned with wretched air. Pitter-pattering down the cobblestone street he kept prancing along, head high and tail wagging. But an attacker even scabbier than him sprang out from the shadows with a heavy stick and struck him on the snout! The poor dog yelped, dropped the crow from his mouth, and scurried away, tail between his legs.

The one-eyed highwayman chuckled as he watched his victim run off. He slid his club back into his belt, scratched a louse or two from his patchy scalp, snatched up the crow from the street, and shoved it into his tattered pouch. With head high, he whistled along, his stick swaying with every prancing step. Into the alleyways he went, then he hopped down into a culvert and escaped to the countryside through a sewer grate.

Caelum seethed, “So this is what Mother Dirt has kept from me? This is why She and the Others have insisted I stay perched in the heavens, with the stars and the clouds, where the mountains are no bigger than my thumb? Their pets, these wingless beasts with hooves and paws, hands and feet – they not only maim one another, but they recklessly abuse my feathered children for sport!” The earth trembled at the sound of his words.

Clouds began rolling in, the firmament flashed with fire; the Winds arrived and began spinning a web around the city.

“I will tear down these walls, drown, and wash away every wingless beast!” Caelum proclaimed.

Shutters and began slamming shut, doors locked. The night’s stragglers ran for cover.

The Shoemaker quaffed his ale, threw down three coppers, and slid off his barstool. “From the sound of things outside, none of us are going to have shingles in the morning. Best I be on my way,” he said to the barkeep.

“I don’t need a roof, seeing folk always comes here to get wet anyhow.”

So as the highwayman with freshly cooked crow in his belly writhed, seized, and foamed at the mouth with eyes turning to blood, the lightning became blinding, thunder began shaking houses at their foundations, wind started ripping shingles away in sheets, and torrents of rain and hail began pummeling the city. Blackened clouds formed into countless towering funnels and began descending, swirling fast with lashing tails.

“Rip stone from stone, roof from wall! Rend the limbs from every beast and drown the heads!” commanded Caelum.

“Turn it all into a heap and wash it over the cliffs and into the sea!” he thundered from the mouth as he shot lighting from his fingertips, knocking down walls, splintering rooftops, blasting trees apart and setting them afire.

He then aimed his destroying finger for the city’s highest temple spire, a pillar rising above the city, overlooking the southern cliffs and sea. But what he saw perched at the very top, desperately clinging to the smoldering altar, made him drop his ethereal hands and widen his eyes. The wind and rain paused for his next command, and the tornadoes refrained from putting their tails down.

At the top of the spire, a lithe girl was desperately holding on, trying to avoid being thrown to her death by lashing winds. Her gossamer robe had been ripped away, revealing her trembling, rain soaked skin.

So quickly wingless beauty cupped its soft hand over Caelum’s mouth and put an end to the storm.

Brutus 6 - Provocation

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:19:00 -0600

Caelum drifted to a window with half open shutters and looked inside. At a table sat a large man gnawing at a chunk of meat with his hands and teeth while a bony woman in a bonnet and three small children with dirty, wishful faces looked on.

“Children be good. Let papa eat and share what he can. Times are tough, so he needs his strength for another day of labor.”

“Chomp, chomp, chomp, gulp,” chewed and nodded the father, and then he tore off more with his teeth. “Nawt a peep from any of yous,” he growled with bulging cheeks and smacking mouth dripping spittle. After a few more bites, he spat a piece of gristle into the middle of the table. All at once, six grimy little hands lunged for it.

Caelum found the scene curious. He could not understand a word, but he wondered, “What it is like to eat flesh? Do they eat one another, or a different kind of beast?”

The pondering god continued gliding along. With great curiosity he peered through one window after the next:

Through one, there sat an old man and a woman trying to play cards but arguing instead.

“You damn, cheating old woman!”

“You foolish, gray fart!”

“I should trade you in for mule!”

“I’d rather sleep with a broom!”

“And I know where you can stick it!”

Through another pair of shutters, two children, a boy and a girl, were kneeling over a bed, hands clasped and heads down, their wet-faced mother standing in the doorway with a lantern.

“Now before I blow out the lamp, be good and say your prayers.”

The little girl answered,

“Caelum, Lord of the Four Winds, the Heaven, and the Sky, please see daddy home from war. Please blow air into his ship’s sails so he gets back really fast, so we can hug and kiss him again... …and just one more thing. Please help mommy stop crying all night. Amen.”

Mommy started crying aloud, blew out the lamp and disappeared down the hall. The children climbed into bed.

Caelum drifted on, wondering what he had witnessed. Were the small ones offering supplication to the larger one and their reverence had moved her to tears? If only he understood the meaning of their sounds.

With a turn down one avenue, then into an alleyway, he was then led to yet another window. From it came strange sounds, a seeming mixture of joy with pain. When he peeked through a crack in the curtains, he found a naked woman straddling a man. She was grinding her hips into him while striking his face with her pendulous breasts.

“Yes! Like that!”

“Oh baby!”

“Don’t stop!”

“Oh baby!”

Were they fighting? Perhaps the victor would eat the other? Or was this a bonding ritual?

Having witnessed so many scenes that night, Caelum decided it was time to leave the ground for the softness of clouds, and ponder it all in silence. However, just before he made his ascension, the pitter-patter of paws on cobblestone caught his ears. A mangy dog appeared around the corner, and it was carrying a dead crow in its mouth. The animal was prancing; holding its head high, and its tail was wagging.

This shocked the Lord of the Four Winds, the Heaven, and the Sky. It made him very angry.

“This beast of the dust has murdered a winged child of the wind!”

Brutus 5 - City Streets

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:18:00 -0600

Caelum caught sleep on the winds and drifted over the hills and vales, the oceans, deserts, and forests. In slumber upon gales he sojourned the earth as if upon sails. When he was rested, he stretched his wings, yawned out a flock of birds, and opened his eyes. To his delight, just beneath him he found a large city, its tall stone walls, spiraling streets, and so many busy, little bodies scurrying here and there! Never had he seen such a sight, of men or beasts and their daily doings, for he had always been perched at greater heights, from which mountains were no larger than his thumb.

Caelum smiled. He stretched his neck over the edge of his cloud bed, and looked down with great interest. It all made him chuckle aloud: dogs chasing cats, peddlers shouting what’s for sale, constables in pursuit of thieves through the streets, paid girls flashing bare thigh and breast from alleyways, a mule so startled by a snake it breaks loose, causing its cartful of melons to tip over, sending its contents splattering the ground.

The beasts without wings lead such curious lives! The god mused.

When nighttime arrived, Caelum’s curiosity had become too much. He needed an even closer look. So, in the form of a gentle breeze and wearing a cloak of darkness, he leapt from his clouds and landed ethereal foot onto dusty cobblestone.

Projections of flickering lanterns, the shifty shadows of men and women, reached through windows and onto the streets. A staggering man followed a beckoning whore into a dark alley and disappeared; only the clinking of coins into her open palm could be heard, followed by rustling and grunting. Horse drawn carts slowly clicked their wheels and hooves away past dusk. Patrolling militiamen knocked drunken men on the heads with batons to help wake them up and send them scurrying home to bed.

Brutus 4 - The Descent

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:17:00 -0600

With winds as wings and clouds as feet, Caelum, lord of the skies, soared the heavens – the heights his domain forever before the first man born from soil below. Always had he been faceless as air, unchained of even the weight of dust, free to ride the ethereal currents as horses, or to close his eyes and drift, to be tickled by his brother and sister stars.

But the gods were always lusty.

Caelum had held back his passion to dirty his feathers too long, an eternity. So he aimed his head down, tucked his wings, and plummeted to earth.

A Caelum priest looking up and watching from the streets that night agonized,

“The brightest star of the heavens has fallen, leaving blackness in its place! Our prayers will no longer be heard!”

A passing shoemaker replied,

“The gods don’t understand our voices, so it doesn’t matter whether they hear us or not.”

“Blasphemy!”

“Stuff it old man. To the gods we’re nothing but ants. We’re lucky when they don’t accidentally step on us.”

“Blasphemy!”

Having abandoned his heavenly perch, winged Caelum tickled treetops with his belly, making forests laugh fluttering birds from their branches. He swept the hills’ bends and curves, and gusted through canyons and crevasses, chilling the earth with his touch, mixing with her sand, leaving little dust devils in his wake, their spinning winds crying,

“Father! Don’t leave us!”

But their lives were short. Without him there to keep them turning in his breath, the helpless infants stopped whirling, whimpered,

“Father!”

once more, dropped their dust. and died.

“Blasphemy, my ass,” retorted the shoemaker in the streets.

“You must beg pardon for your words!” plead the priest.

“As long as the little birds drop dead from the sky and their nests, young men meet miserable ends at war for old men’s sakes, whores give me itchy balls, and dogs go hungry in streets filled with food carts, I’ll keep on blaspheming.”

Brutus 3 - The Gravedigger

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:15:00 -0600

Lightning casts its web and dusk changes to night. Thunder claps. Rain begins to trickle; clouds spit a little hail before letting loose the water for mud.

A hooded old woman strikes her shovel into the softening earth. She scrapes against rock. Roots crack. She is weeping. The wrinkles in her face collect and carry the tears, and the rain.

The miserable, ancient mother digs her children’s grave.

A pit opens, and one by one, the bodies are thrown into a pile.

The shovel keeps striking.

She continues weeping and the rain does not let up. Thunder claps.

She remembers giving birth to each of them, how she squeezed them out and slapped air into their lungs. How as children they laughed and frolicked, ran about with smiling faces!

Now they are dead – no longer smiling.

Do they whisper curses for having been born? Do they curse her?

She keeps working, weeping – thunder strikes – rain keeps splashing down. She keeps working.

After laboring the entire night, the work is finally finished – all the spoiled infant flesh has been thrown into the ground, covered up forever.

She collapses – splashes into the mud. The rain begins relenting. Thunder strikes the last time

Roots sprout like snakes and burrow deep into her decrepit body. Leaves sprout from her mouth, eyes, and pores.

The golden rays of morning dawn, revealing a beautiful girl lying in the old woman’s place. She yawns and stretches. Her eyes pop open and she giggles aloud. Onto her naked feet she leaps, out from tattered robes. She begins singing joyously, and then she skips away.

Forgetfulness and satyrs on her mind.

Brutus 2 - The Lost Harpies

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:00:00 -0600

You are three ancient and glorious birds! Shall I say women? Is it true your cloaked faces are so haggard a glance upon them will turn flesh to stone?

From my knees with face choking on the dust of your forgotten shrine’s floor, my eyes swollen with tears, I beseech you to awaken! I offer my blood and to kiss your dainty feet with fondest supplication.

Sing of Brutus!

Reveal how Brutus is sired by a fallen god, orphaned, and carried away by a flesh-devouring witch.

Tell how Brutus enters the world of men a feral child. Is it true an old farmer finds and raises him, and as a boy he pulls the plow with bulls strength?

Sing of the raging battles! When the lines clash and Brutus is there, does blood truly flow as a river? Are men hewn down like wheat, heads and limbs sent twirling, bowels made to spew from opened bellies, corpses piled into mountains?

Sing of the brothels, taverns, and opium dens our returned champion calls home!

But mostly, let us know of Brutus’s heroic deeds – how he confronts the gods and evil men, leaving annihilation in his wake. Our salvation?

Let us ponder with sickness whether our eldest brother has broken our chains.

I implore you old girls at the cost of my soul! Stretch out your wings, dust them off, and sing! But please don’t show your faces until the end. Stone will shatter at the shrill of your sweet, discordant voices!

Unveil your perfect breasts! Offer our mouths rosy nipples dripping with cold, salty milk!

Teach us greatest beauty is laden with sourness.

Sing of Brutus!

Brutus 1 - Dedication

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:58:00 -0600

Jimmy, I devote this book to an old but still young friend.

I have no doubt Brutus will delight you, for as you thumb through its pages you will be startled into laughter by its foulness. You always found humor at the worst of times; I remember: when the devils put on lewd dances and made the worshippers heave upon the floor with sickness, you always cheered as the hungry dogs came running to lap up the mess.

I’m too weak to follow you, for you took flight without regarding the price your flesh would pay, but you discovered the truth, stared straight into its face. All the rest of us continued embracing false hopes like mothers’ boys refusing to be weaned.

Jimmy, you have found eternal youth my memories. I’ll never remember you growing old, feeble, white – your spirit will continue its frolic as I absurdly labor to the end. Unlike you, every time I gaze into a mirror I am a witness to further decay. Each day, my flesh is withering more, becoming useless, wrinkled, worn.

You never said farewell, but I am blessed to have known you. I will not forget your young face, name, or laughter, though your abandoned bones have long been swallowed into the Earth’s unforgiving bowels.

Goodbye my brother.