The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 10
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror
Gnaeus Paris, Transfuga
When Caesar destroyed Pompey’s army at the battle of Pharsalus, Gnaeus Paris decided he had had enough of Rome. Hiding under the carcass of a horse until sundown, he snuck away and headed north. He stripped off his armor but his gladius he kept, using it the next morning to kill a peasant of roughly his size and steal his clothing. He made his way to the coast and joined the crew of an actuaria bound for the land of the Sarmatians, where he stayed for twelve years working as a mercenary.
When he was forty years old he lost his left eye to a Dacian falx and once again he had had enough. He crossed the Tanaïs river and walked east, stealing and robbing as he went.
Footsore on a rainy night he pushed open the door of a dirty hovel and slew the man inside. In the morning he woke to the sight of the man’s widow, an old crone, crouched in a corner, staring at him. Why had she not slit his throat as he slept?
Awake, man of Rome! she said, patting her toothless mouth with gleeful fingers. Sitting up from the filthy pallet he took up his gladius and beheaded her. Very little blood, but the head rolled round and round the dirt floor. The old man’s body was nowhere to be seen.
That night, ten miles away, he slept under a fig tree after gorging himself on its fruits and an hour later he woke with the shits. He voided his slops cramping among the roots, and in the branches above him the crone chortled again: Awake, awake, you man of Rome!
Gnaeus Paris ran. He lost his footing and fell down a rocky slope, impaling his left leg on his gladius. When he tried to stand, cold hands dragged him down into the bloody mud. His empty eye socket was clogged with muck. His teeth chewed earth.
The man he had killed in the hovel said, Sleep now, boy of the west, be at your ease. From far above, the goddess watched them with all the emotion of a starless sky.
💀
