A Viper in the Fire

I watch as the great gold god Sol Invictus slowly drips beneath the hori- zon. Through one eye, I witness Orion the hunter rise and roll in the night sky as twin crows hop and peck at my right hand. The black birds spear newly hatched maggots as they burrow into my rotten wrist.

The world around me sinks into abysmal blackness. I have been nailed to this cross for two full days now. My right eye has become completely clotted shut with blood and an amalgam of sweat and crow shit. I am the only one left alive. My last comrade passed away a day and a half ago.

Lucky him.

The earth is silent, except for the incessant buzzing of flies swarm- ing around my seeping wounds, laying eggs.

From on top of this high vantage point I can see thirty-thousand rotting corpses. My fellow defenders of the now dead republic. The trampled hillsides are dotted with my brothers. We hang on wooden planks, like scarecrows in a winter field surrounded by horror.

Pompey the Great, our spineless general, fled east with his per- sonal guards and left us all to suffer with no hope of reinforcements or rescue.

I pray for death as the sun rises on the third day.

“Dear god of gods, let me down from here. Let me die on the ground. You, my Lord of Lords, are so rich and beautiful and I am poor and ugly. You, my master, are perfect and eternal and I am but a hollowed rotten husk pinned to these boards. Just let the nails loosen a little so that I might die in the mud, like a soldier.”

“Please, god. Please,” I pray over and over and over.

My hollow prayers go unanswered. No mercy from a single fuck- ing god, no mercy from my roman brothers. No mercy from the cold night or searing day. The newly hatching spring insects keep warm and sleep in my gaping lesions causing a constant sibilation under my red raw skin. My world goes black even in the noon sun.

I feel I have crossed over into insanity. Driven mad by my bastard brethren pigs, and their shoddy work. I have been executed by mind- less morons. If only they would have killed me correctly my suffering would be complete by now.

On the third day I abandon every one of my gods just as they have abandoned me. I instead pray to demons, dark forces and shadows. Death would be a welcomed joy now. My invocation changes from rescue and salvation to vengeance and damnation. My cries are to a deaf and dumb god and a pantheon of fraud. I give my being to the master of all death and greed, Lord Dis Pater. I beg that if I ever find Caesar, Pompey and his traitorous men in the afterlife, that he grant me a different form of retribution everyday until the sun explodes. Dis Pater, like them all, immediately proves his uselessness. The last of my faith drips down my cross like so many pints of my blood.

I can remember when I was a boy my father would tell me stories about fighting under General Crassus. He and his best defended the gates of Rome from the wretched horde of subhuman slime. This leg- end begins with the ungrateful slaves and gladiators taking up arms. These troglodytes dared to rebel against their mother and stab at the nurturing breast of Rome herself.

My old man would boast, that he alone crucified the great Spartacus. That his hands killed the legend. Three nails for the last of the great gladiators, three nails for the last of the great freedom fighters. My father would say that he could tell it was him, because in defiance he was the only man that did not make a single sound as the nails ripped through him. Five hundred men named Spartacus were crucified that day. My father probably just crucified a corpse. Later in life, as a grown man and a father, I now see these stories were merely fabricated exaggerations of an old man vying for his son’s attention. No god or man could endure this horror in total silence.

I do not believe in either anymore.

If there is a supreme deity he is a comedian, for I have been commanded to crucify eighteen men in my military career. It is such a physically underwhelming task to crucify another human being. Constructing the actual cross is more labor intensive. The long nails move swiftly through the flesh. Three swings of the hammer and your work is done. When a soldier is commanded to crucify another man, the subordinate’s mind shifts before bringing down the hammer. You don’t just crucify the man, you crucify any outstanding transgression in your life as well. It becomes cathartic, almost enjoyable. I would pray to Jupiter or Apollo.

“Dear Jove, let this shit pit of a man suffer for his crimes and for all my crimes.”

My salvation came not from the gods, but from the men I hung on roods.

A perfect sacrifice. I’ve been reborn eighteen times. My sins wiped clean again and again. Now that I am on other end of the hammer, the pointy side of the nail, it is a different view than what I was expecting. I was expect- ing far more dignity and even a silent thank you from my executioners.

When the first nail was pounded through my left hand it was so quick and unexpected it barely registered, not even a bee sting. The second nail hit bone. Internally shattering several metacarpals in my right hand. Splinters of jagged bone exploded outward from my hand. Instinctively I tried in vain to rip away from the wood only tearing the wound even more setting my whole arm on fire with pain. I groaned so long and so loud I fantasized about Caesar looking over and cringing. Then they hammered my feet. One nail two holes. Quick and easy. The third nail slipped past into the wood and missed anything of conse- quence, but my right arm might as well be stuffed with white hot coals. An unquenchable burn exploding from my shoulder to my finger tips.