Thalia’s mouth broadened into a disbelieving grin, her head shaking from side to side oh-so-subtly. The others might not have noticed it, but I knew my wife did nothing without a reason; every movement had a purpose. I lifted the axe, pointing it up to her and touching two fingers to my lips to blow her a kiss.
Then I went to kill my father.
He cowered on the sand in front of me, scrambling backward off the circular platform to put distance between us. “Put that thing down before you hurt yourself,” he sputtered.
“If you would like to die with a blade in your hand, I suggest you give me your hands so that I can free you. I’ve no interest in killing you while you’re tied up. That is the coward’s way out,” I said, leaning forward until my face hovered over his. “That is what you would do, and no matter what you tried to make me into, I am nothing like you.”
He groaned as he spun on his knees, holding his arms as far back from his body as he could manage. I placed the edge of the blade against the rope, sawing through it carefully.
The moment he was free, he scrambled to his feet and made for the weapons hanging on the wood-planked wall behind him. He grabbed the same straight, simple long-sword he’d always favored, claiming only a barbarian killed with anything else. The sword was a weapon of class, the killing instrument that the civilized men of the ancient world favored.
Death was death, and his blood on the sand would look the same whether I severed his head from his body with a sword or an axe.
He heaved a shield into his hand, trying to hold it with the hand I’d broken. He ended up settling for feeding his wrist through the strap on the back, and it brought me great joy to watch the mangled piece of flesh dangle uselessly.
As useless as the rest of him.
“You would kill your own father for a whore?” he asked, resorting to the only weapon he thought would be of any value, but I’d long since learned to ignore anything that came from his ignorant mouth, seeing him for the weakling he was.
I’d seen real power, learned under the devil himself in Ibiza. Real strength didn’t come from a man who allowed others to do his dirty work while he watched from the sidelines.
Real strength came from being willing to burn your father alive for what he’d done. It came in waiting decades for revenge, knowing that it would taste all the sweeter when you stole everything your enemy wanted and made it yours.
Real strength was exercising patience, and then reveling in the blood when the time finally came.
“I would kill myself for her. What are you in the face of that love?” I asked, walking slowly toward him. I swung the axe lazily, catching him in the shield intentionally.
He whimpered as the blow vibrated through the broken bones of his hand, the angle of my strike knocking his pathetic attempt to protect himself right off his wrist. He raised the sword in his other hand, swinging wildly with none of the precision he’d expected from me as a child.
I’d killed long before I should have, been the murderer to take care of those who failed the organization as a boy, because he couldn’t be bothered. He’d honed me into the weapon I had become.
It only seemed fitting that I be the one to dismember his body.
I swung the axe to the side, the blade clanging against his sword. The stupid idiot let his grip on the hilt release, flinging it to the side so early it was almost disappointing. As if there’d been no point at all in allowing him to arm himself.
“You’ll never be able to maintain power in this city when you let a woman sit at your side instead of forcing her to kneel at your feet. You need men in your corner who understand bloodshed, not women with delicate sensibilities,” my father inserted.
A strangled laugh escaped me as I listened to Thalia laugh with her whole body from above us. She leaned forward in her chair, the angle giving her a perfect bird’s eye view of the proceedings. “Who do you think demanded your head?” she called down, and I could only imagine the surprise on the faces of the men sitting around her.
“I think she understands bloodshed just fine. She wants to mount your head on a spike when I’m done with you. Where do you think she should put it? Such unique decor certainly needs the perfect spot,” I asked, looking around the pit.
“Fuck you and fuck your wife. You deserve whatever fate the rest of the families give you,” my father rasped. I lifted a foot, kicking him in the chest and pushing him back. He fell onto the sand, staring up at the council chamber above him as I walked in a circle around his prone form. “You can’t do it after all, can you? You always were a pussy.”
“Shh. I promised my wife your head. I never promised I wouldn’t play with the rest of you first. I’m trying to decide how to arrange your corpse. Let me think it over without your incessant droning,” I sighed, tilting my head from side to side as I considered it.
A symbol of the life he’d lived, or a symbol of the life that could happen with him gone?
With my decision made, I swung the axe down and severed his uninjured hand from his arm. He screamed, raising his arm to clutch at the bloody stump where blood poured freely. “Fuck!” he yelled, making to get to his feet.
I swung again, taking the foot on the opposite side. His shoe stayed pointing toward the chamber above, the muscle and sinew and bone cleaved in a perfectly straight line. I hefted the axe again, turning my attention to the council. “Whoever has been caring for these weapons deserves a raise,” I said, bringing the axe down on my father’s other ankle.
I left his broken hand for as long as I could, watching as his body sagged far too quickly with the blood pouring free from his limbs. Only then did I move to dismember him further while he screamed, the sound a constant accompaniment to the delicate artwork. I leaned over him as I cut him at the elbow and then the shoulder of his good arm so that I had three pieces to work with. “Just end it,” he whispered, his voice barely a breath as he lingered at the brink of death for a precious few seconds.
“Go to your death knowing that the pain you feel now is nothing compared to what I have felt all my life, knowing that I have you for a father, Eugene Regas,” I said, stepping lower and slashing the axe against his legs. I cut those into three pieces as the final breath left his lungs, his eyes turning unseeing as he stared up at Thalia above. She watched in rapt fixation as I dismembered my father’s other arm, and then finally lifted the axe above my shoulders to take his head.
The cut was clean at his neck, a straight line across his throat where blood flowed onto the fabric of his shirt. Without a heartbeat, it didn’t pump as freely.
They were always more fun before they died.
I tossed the axe to the side, arranging his severed limbs around the stub I’d created from his torso. I saved some of the pieces to fill the place where his head waited currently, arranging his bigger pieces closest to his torso and getting smaller with points radiating out from the center.
Finally bending down, I grabbed my father’s head by the hair, lifting it from the sand so that I could arrange one of the chunks of his legs and the last remaining hand into place. I finished the sun that could shine on the darkest part of Thalia’s life now that the vengeance for her mother was one step closer to being finished.
Then I turned my back on the crude art piece, making my way to the stairs up to the council chamber from the pit. I had to haul myself up the first step, my father’s head hanging over the edge and banging against the steps as I lifted my weight up onto the hanging structure.
The moment my weight touched the stairs, they began to retract from the top, the pieces of floor tucking themselves beneath the council members’ chairs until the panels could deposit me at my own seat once more.
I took my seat, keeping my eyes on Thalia’s as one-by-one the other council members removed their hands from the mechanisms in the chairs. Thalia was the last to do so, lifting her bloody fingers and placing them on the arms of her throne as she waited.
The center circle returned to its rightful position, the floor gears winding and twirling until it slid into place. Then I stood, walked across the surface, and stopped directly in front of my wife. I reached out a blood-covered hand to cup her cheek, smiling with pride when she didn’t flinch away from the contact despite the gore covering me.
Then I held out my father’s head, his face dangling in front of hers from where I clutched him by the hair. Thalia raised both her hands, grasping his skull just behind the ears as she lifted it out of my hand. I released my grip, letting her tilt her head to the side as she stared down at the man who’d caused her so much torment.
She pivoted, turning to face the back of her chair and the two sharply pointed tips at the center of it. Bringing his head over hers, Thalia brought it down quickly onto the spikes. His unseeing eyes looked out at the rest of the council members as his blood dripped over the metal of her chair while she settled herself back into her seat.
A trophy for a queen.
She raised her eyes to mine, a tiny smirk playing about her lips as she shifted her attention to Alexander Galanis and Tobias Hasapis for the briefest of moments. It might have seemed innocent to anyone else, but the men shifted uncomfortably with the silent threat.
If Thalia had her way, they would be next, and in this, she would always get her way.
Galanis swallowed as Thalia lifted her chin, and there was nothing in me that doubted she intended to sit atop a throne of bones and look down upon a kingdom carved from flesh and blood.
She was Persephone to my Hades, and Philadelphia was about to become the Underworld.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
λουλούδι μου – my flower
ο λάκκος – the pit
Νεκροταφείο – cemetery
η νύφη μου – my bride
η ψυχή μου – my soul
Θεά – goddess
Ηλίθιος- idiot
