text: they mixed salt with vinegar and poured it over his wounds. It was as if a ball of metal had exploded inside of him, and the splinters were slowly pushing out of his skin. When they taunted him, asking, “Do you want to drink some too?” he declined. They poured it down his throat anyway. He vomited over himself, and it slid down his body like a rotten honey. The soldiers left him, laughing, as the first of the flies came to feast. At least the vinegar covered up the taste of bile. *This time*, when the soldiers passed under the planks of wood holding him up and splayed open like the tanned hide of an animal, and when they asked him if he needed anything, Joram replied with a firm, “No, thank you.” Yet, how dry was his throat, and how deep was his thirst? He wished that even a faint mist might descend from the cloudless sky, and merely *exist* near his mouth. Instead, all he got were stinging sands and blazing suns. The closest he came to slaking his thirst was watching the distant city waver in the afternoon heat, like an armada of ships melting against an endless ocean of burnt sand. The sun rolled from low to high, and sweat rolled down his brow. In the great blue empty, wisps of clouds coalesced, taunting him before evaporating like so many ghosts. He tried to remain as still as possible, for every movement brought pain that sliced through his limbs and chewed at his joints. In the night, he woke with a rushing, *sinking* feeling in his stomach, as if the Earth itself was falling, but he cast off the notion as a hallucination brought on by the excruciating mixture of thirst and pain. He almost prayed. However, when the first whispers of a prayer left his cracked his lips, he could not stop as it turned into a laugh. What irony that a man should end up on a cross for claiming the gods *might not exist*, only to turn around and beg them for salvation. In the morning, a bandit came. Joram begged him for water, but he found that his throat was so dry he could manage only the harshest whisper. “Please, water.” “Shutup, dead man,” the bandit sniped, “Save me some trouble and tell me if you have anything in your cloth.” “I have-” Joram smacked his lips dryly, “I have money. Hidden elsewhere.” “Right, and I have a gold-headed lass who wants to pay *me* for a fuck. You think I’m stupid?” “No...” “You’re gods-damned right ‘No’. I wouldn’t let you down for half the money in As’hra’s Coffers.” The bandit took a step back as he surveyed Joram’s mostly-naked form, “And by the looks of you, I very much doubt you have so much as a pigeon hole in the Coffers.” “I promise-” “No!” the bandit jabbed the rusty point of a knife up at Joram, “*I* promise *you*! By Hasina’s swampy nethers, if you say one more word I *will* cut off your toes.” He *wanted* to say that Hasina did not have swampy nethers, because Hasina was a god and the gods probably did not exist. Instead, Joram closed his mouth. He watched the bandit wander away, up the hill. The bandit passed under several more crosses, circling around the wooden planks with his head tilted up to inspect the bodies for valuables. As the bandit disappear over the hill, Joram wished he had taken him up on his offer. A blood letting would be painful, yes, but quicker than *this*. His mouth was choked with sand, and flies were dancing over his blistered wrists and ankles, biting into his flesh. Joram resolved to ask the next soldier who came along to kill him. But as the sun arced overhead, no soldiers came. Joram could not spot a single soul through the wavering lines of heat, even if he shifted his gaze to the very corners of his vision. The man on the cross to his left died some time in the afternoon. Joram couldn’t look at him directly, but he could see him in periphery, shivering in the noonday heat. The man loosed a moan that reminded Joram of a rusted hinge, and slumped. “Hey,” Joram whispered as loud as he could. He twisted against the ropes, trying to look at the dead man. “Hey!” he whispered again, “Are you there?” Predictably, the slumped man did not answer, but Joram was not talking to *him*. Joram was attempting to commune with Bazlal, the jackal-headed god. Joram cleared his throat, and echoed the reverent tones they used in the temples, “Oh, Great Undertaker, let me down, and I will serve you. Show yourself, and I will do anything you ask of me.” Almost as if in response, the wind picked up and blew sand across his weeping wounds, yet Joram saw no sign of Bazlal. So, Joram began to scream. He screamed at the sand, and the wind. He screamed for Ta’shim of the Eastern Wind, he cried for Gol, the Sun Stallion, he even invoked the name of Hrafing the Deceiver. Not even the shadows flickered at his prayers. For all his screaming, he had only earned himself wasted time and a hoarse voice. An idea, maybe insidious to a well-minded man, entered Joram’s mind. If he was to die, then why not find out, just to be sure? “Fuck the gods,” Joram whispered, and sucked in his breath. He waited, eyes wide. Nothing happened. The wind did not change. The sky did crack. The ground did not split open and swallow him whole. His lungs expanded like a bellows, he threw out his chest as far as the ropes would let him, and screamed, “There are no gods! There never were any gods!” Stories told of fire that rained from the heavens and the undying torture that would be inflicted on the heretics. Yet, here he was, already suffering as much as any man could, and what did his heresies beget him? Nothing. The sun wandered. His vision began to tilt, slowly at first, until it spun faster than the whirling priests of Derve. The Earth swelled and sank, swooning him back and forth as if he were sitting astride a massive pendulum. His head lolled, and if he hadn’t been bound to the planks by thick coils of rope, he would have collapsed. It was not the hands that gripped his feet that woke him. Nor was it the fervent whispers, urging him to rise. It was the *smell*. A charred, burning odor - bitter and acrid and invigorating in the same way watching your own house burn down is invigorating. Crust flaked from his eyes as he struggled to open them. At first, he thought the creature standing under his cross was a vulture. A long, black robe, tattered with age, covered the creature from head to toe, and it’s spindly fingers ended in nails so sharp and so dirty, they might have been talons. It was these talons that were digging into Joram’s feet, as the creature chanted - not stopping to breathe - “Wake. Wake. Wake.” Joram’s feet twitched. The creature lifted its gaze, and Joram saw not a beak, but a brilliant set of teeth grinning up at him. Joram squinted against the glare of the silvery teeth, trying to see the face under the hood. “It’s good to see me up,” the creature said. The dark skin of his cheeks shone almost purple in the sunlight. “Water-” before he could even finish the word, a cold burst of water splashed against his face, dousing the blistered fires of his sunburn. Joram gasped. Without even thinking about it, his tongue darted out and licked at the sweet, cool liquid. “Need more?” “Please,” Joram rasped, though, thanks to the water, his voice was already stronger than it had been hours ago. The vulture man blinded him with another smile, “You can have some when your feet are back on this ground.” “You... you’re going to help me?” Joram fliched at the shrill sound that rose from the man’s throat, but it was only a laugh. As the man’s laughter rose, so did the burning smell. “Dear me, no!” the vulture man cackled, “*You* are going to help *yourself*!” Joram blinked. “How?” “First, come down from there.” Such a simple demand riled up a deep anger in Joram. He pulled both of his hands forward as far as the ropes allowed him, his slender muscles bulging with effort, and asked, “Are you blind, old man?” At this, the vulture man threw back his hood. Joram’s eyes were not drawn to the stained cloth wrapped tightly around his eyes - instead, Joram saw only the vertical gash sliced into the man’s wrinkled forehead. It was a deep wound, and the edges of it glistened with undried blood. A single, roving eye, half-exposed at its root, was sunk deep into the gash. The eye settled it’s unnatural gaze on Joram, and it seemed to flicker and glow with an alien fire, sending out wisps of prismatic light with every slight movement. “We see much the same thing,” proclaimed the vulture man. “What are you?” Joram asked. He threw his hood back over his head, “We are here to help our self. Come down from the cross.” “I *can’t.* I have asked for help, but none will help me. If you-” The vulture man held up his hand to interrupt Joram, “When we are hungry, do our mouths ask the hands for food?” “I-” “Do our lungs ask the nose for air? No. And so, we should not ask ourselves for help. We must simply *do*.” “But your body-” “*Our* body,” the vulture man corrected him, “is connected to all other bodies. This one, to that one, and so on. You look at us as if we are mad. But what is more mad - to ask for the help of those we do not believe in, or to listen to those standing right in front of us?” Joram’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish that finds itself trapped on land by the retreating tide. “Wake. Concentrate on this arm-” the vulture man lifted the sleeve of his robe to reveal a black arm, tattooed with a mural of scars, “Try to move it as we might our other arms.” Joram swallowed, dust and sand scraping against the inside of his throat. He lacked the energy to argue with the man, and in a way, his words seemed to hold a kind of *sense*. So he concentrated. He stared at the arm, trying to imagine what it must feel like to lift something so heavy. He tried to think of how the skin felt, not to the touch, but to be touched. Joram concentrated on the muscles, and in doing so, he flexed his own arm. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw the vulture man’s arm flexing, too, but it was only a trick of the sun. “No,” said the vulture man, his silvery grin glaring in the sunlight, “Not a trick. This is not *my* arm. This is *our* arm. Wake, and keep trying.” Joram gritted his teeth, and focused on the arm, until all he could see were white scars and purplish-black skin. The arm lifted. A hand touched his feet, touched his toes, and clasped the rope that bound his ankles. The hand pulled, and the ropes came free. Joram gasped, excitement overpowering the pain. Perhaps the movement over the last few days had worn out the ropes around his hands. Or perhaps he had lost so much weight, his wrists had shrunk. Whatever the case, the loosening of the foot bindings released more than Joram’s feet. He fell. The vulture man let out another shrill of laughter. A cloud of dust showered down on Joram, stinging his sore-riddled back. His elbows were singing with pain, and he thought one of his legs might have broken. “In the future,” the vulture man spoke, “We should do better to catch ourselves.” Climbing to his knees, Joram groaned. He looked up at the vulture man’s black hands, and a thought flashed through his mind. No sooner had he though it, than the vulture man’s hands clasped his arms, and hoisted him to his feet. “Thank you,” he said, testing his feet on the crunching gravel. Another beaming smile split the vulture man’s lips, “Gratitude is appreciated, but it is not necessary to thank one’s self.” “Who are you?” Joram asked, steadying himself on the vulture man’s shoulder. The vulture man inclined his head towards Joram, until Joram could see the frayed bottom of the eye-binding cloth peeking out below the vulture man’s hood. Joram’s stomach rolled, as he remembered what that hood was hiding. “We are *you,* Joram. And you are *us.*” Joram’s face twisted in confusion, though he did not voice his disbelief. “If we want a different answer,” the vulture man mused, “We must ask a different question.” Joram almost said something, before a choking fit took hold of him. He hacked up a lungful of dust and a dry, pasty liquid trickled down his tongue. At last, when the heaving ceased, he looked up at the vulture man, “Fine. *What* are you, then? A messenger of the gods?” The vulture man loosed an ear-piercing shriek, “The *gods*! What are the gods, but men who climbed atop the bodies of their fathers and brothers?” “So, the gods are not real?” “They are as real as we are, though, in time you will learn that even the gods are part of us, yes.” “But what does that make *us*?” The vulture man twisted to face Joram. He clutched Joram’s arm, a sublime, almost self-satisfied smile on his face. “We are God. And we are just now waking up.” *** I think this story untied itself somewhere near the ending.