A Bones Triptych: Drawn Down, Through a Glass, Sacrifice

Previously published as: Hart, G. 2022. A Bones Triptych: Drawn Down, Through a Glass, Sacrifice. Flash in a Flash Episode 213, May 20/22.

Sacrifice

I hesitate at the temple’s outer door, breathe deep, then pass within. Only my family’s needs matter now.

In the antechamber, the Senior Accountant waits. He takes my badge without meeting my eyes, opens his ledger, records something, then places the badge in a drawer. He closes the ledger firmly. In an ornate glass container on his desk, his testicles float in red ink.

Next, I pass through the chamber of the MBAs, who wait, their eyes gleaming with secret knowledge forbidden to those like me. They anoint my brow with the holy oils that are their order’s special purview.

Last, I enter the High Priest’s inner sanctum, where final authority vests in those who survived the ruthless culling. I kneel as they taught me, and hold my necktie for the high priestess to take in her elegantly manicured hand. She draws it tight to steal my breath, and holy lust glows in her eyes as she turns to face the High Priest. From his rich robes, he draws the ceremonial knife, which gleams icy white in the cold light.

“We accept your sacrifice,” he intones the ritual words, then draws the knife across my throat.

As I fall, my last thoughts are of my family.

Drawn down

Blood flows from ragged wounds, warming me briefly as I pull myself upslope against growing lassitude, unable to stanch the flow that slickens the floor. Who knew the human body held so much blood?

Behind, my slayers twitch, life returning sluggishly to collapsed veins and rotting flesh. If God hasn’t abandoned me, I will emerge into daylight before they catch me, let the sun cleanse me before they can drag me down to become one of them. I dare not imagine freedom, yet I pray for daylight; should I escape these delvings by night, the urge to return home would overpower me. I dare not return. I am changed.

Behind, rotting flesh scrapes along the rough-hewn stone passage, drawing closer. The dank airflow, an abbatoir’s exhalation, blows past, sickly sweet with its burden of decay, and I shudder, but too little blood remains to warm my veins.

Ahead, the sun’s light shines through the opening, and I force myself to crawl faster. Reeling from blood loss, I fall, hand grasping for that thin crescent of sunlight. And as the sun touches me, and smoke begins rising from my flesh, moist hands encircle my ankles and draw me down, where I shall never again see the sun.

Through a Glass, Darkly

Rajiv knows Hindus shouldn’t drink, but when he sees society’s many evils—Muslims persecuted, protesting farmers murdered, rampant corruption—he seeks refuge in a bottle. He drinks until his vision blurs, and only then, around his vision’s edges, does he see the shadows. They’re invisible to a direct gaze, yet draw that gaze irresistibly. When he forcibly averts his eyes, their whispers weaken his grip on sanity. So he drinks more, until he passes into dreams from which he awakens, screaming. Next day, he’s unsure whether the pain in his head is just a hangover, or something worse, for the shadows have followed him home. It’s bad enough by day, but as the light fades, they take tangible form, driving him from his room. They shepherd him back to the pub, where he drinks, hoping vainly to obliterate them. But instead their outlines strengthen and it’s increasingly difficult to look away, since then they draw closer. As he staggers home and falls into bed, the dreams worsen; he should be so fortunate to wake with a scream, but now the dreams hold him down, chest constricted, until the sun tears away the dregs of sleep. Limbs shaking, he lets them lead him back to his bottle.

Author's note

Sacrifice was previously published in the 2022 Bag of Bones 206-word charity anthology as part of a challenge to write a dark fantasy story exactly 206 words long. That number derives from the number of bones in a typical human body.

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