The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

by Peter Roman

  I only shared what had happened to me once, when I was deep in my cups with fellow members of a town guard one night. Somebody asked me where I was from and I told my tale. There was a silence, and then somebody else bought another round. That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up the next morning outside the town, amid the smouldering fires of the refuse pits. I’d been stabbed twice in the chest, but luckily my assailant’s aim had been off and he’d missed my heart. I likely had the cheap wine to thank for that one. I was naked and religious symbols had been carved into my skin, the marks of a god that had probably been long dead even then. I lay there for a few days and nights, until my wounds healed enough for me to stand, and then I left that place, in search of a place with a more welcoming air.

  I mostly didn’t tell anybody who I was or what had happened to me after that. But people still figured out I was different. I took up with women here and there, but their loving looks all turned to suspicious stares when I recovered too quickly from wounds like those that had killed their kin, or when I failed to get them with child, or when they aged and I didn’t, or all of the above. Some fled from me in the night, or opened the doors for men with weapons, while others cursed me as a devil of some sort. Perhaps I was. I learned not to love, because to love was to be betrayed. And I learned to stay on the move. I made up a different name and a different back story each time I took on a new job. Nobody asked many questions though. The sort of jobs I worked, everyone was on the run from something, and everyone made up their past. When people looked at me twice, I quietly slipped away, on to the next place where no one knew me.

  I got as far away from that cave as I could. I left the territories of the Romans, in case they were still looking for me. I knew they thought I was dead, but there were obviously stranger things than me out there, things that might know I was still alive. I wandered the world, such as it was in those days.

  It was hard to get away from the empire though, and it eventually caught up to me. I took up with the wrong chieftain in the forests of what would one day be known as Germany, and when the Romans came looking to expand their borders, he swore he’d rather die than become their servant. He was that fierce sort of man who wore bones in his beard and decorated his skin with burns. He sent back the Romans’ emissary without a head, and they sent us a legion in return. We were twice their number and overconfident. But they were Romans. They slaughtered us on the bank of a river. I got my sword stuck in the shield of one of them and another one rammed something long and sharp into my side, and then I was drifting down the river with the rest of the bodies, including that of my chieftain. He got what he wanted, at least. I got hung up in the branches of a fallen tree, and cursed God, Christ, Judas and anyone else I could think of while I waited to die. Another Roman found me while searching the bodies for valuables. He dragged me back to the rest of the legion and the soldiers stared down at me and argued about whether or not they should finish me off. I spat my own blood at them and they laughed and gave me the thumbs-up gesture. They said that horse-fucker Commodus would give them a bonus for bringing him a slave with such a fighting spirit.

  I didn’t know what they meant until they carted me off to Rome and the Colosseum, where I healed from my mortal wound as quickly as usual and spent the next few years living in the gladiator cages. And in the sands of the arena. I fought to live, and I lived. I wasn’t ready to die yet. That would come later. But back then I still wanted to live, if only to find out who I really was.

  The Romans didn’t have any more idea than me where I’d come from originally, and I wasn’t about to volunteer my personal history. The men in charge of the pits shrugged and cast some bones to figure out what kind of gladiator I should be. The dead gods favoured the secutor that day, so the Romans gave me a helmet with only two small holes to see out of, and a short sword and shield. It was enough for me. I was bold and reckless because I knew I healed quickly, so I took chances that others wouldn’t. And sometimes that’s all the advantage you need. I killed everyone they put me against. I felt no sympathy for my victims. They died knowing who they were, at least.

  The crowds loved it and began to cheer for me as soon as I stepped onto the hot sands. Even the emperor acknowledged me, applauding along with the rest of the crowd.

  The emperor Commodus.

  The guards who lived down in the pits with us said he was the maddest emperor to rule Rome yet. They said he thought he was the reincarnation of Hercules. He sometimes made his lovers dress up like animals, or he dressed up like an animal himself. He killed a hundred men each day before breakfast—mainly slaves and criminals. They also said sometimes he liked to fight against the gladiators as well. They said we’d be lucky to die such a noble death, but they laughed when they said it.

  I didn’t tell anyone that even as I fought for life, even as I killed man after man to the approval of the crowds, I knew I was some sort of curse upon the earth. I knew that with each mortal wound that I impossibly survived I was some sort of abomination, like the strange creatures the Romans occasionally found in the hidden corners of the world and delivered to the Colosseum’s sands for sport.

  The manticore that killed three tattooed savages from a nameless land with one stab of its tail.

  The chimera that spat flame from its dragon’s head, all the way up into the audience, which screamed with delight as a cohort of rebellious soldiers turned prisoners managed to kill the beast at great expense to their numbers.

  And the angel. He had gone mad after they snared him with nets and cut his wings off. When he fought my comrades from the pits, he ripped their entrails out with his bare hands and lifted their bodies to the sky, like some sort of offering to the god that had abandoned him. Until it was my turn.

  I ran at the angel where the others fled from him in terror. I felt drawn to him in a way I didn’t understand. I leapt into his embrace with my usual recklessness and jammed my blade through his head, like so many had done before me. He didn’t care. He just sliced me open from throat to groin with his razor-sharp claws, wailing his laments to the crowd.

  But even through my pain, I saw what no one else could see. I saw the grace spilling out of the angel. I didn’t know what it was but I breathed it in between screams while the angel pulled out my entrails. And the grace healed me even as the angel tried to kill me. And it made me strong. For the first time I saw what was missing inside me. And I wanted more.

  I killed the angel in the brutal, long way you kill angels. And then the guards dragged me down into the cage, my guts trailing behind me, and waited for me to die. But I didn’t die. The grace kept healing me. I grew stronger instead. And for the first time since I’d been born, I didn’t feel empty inside. I got up off my bed of straw on the floor and I rattled the bars of my cage and said I wanted to fight some more. I wanted to kill another angel. The guards stood on the other side of the bars, careful to stay out of my reach. They spat on the ground and said I was cursed. And I knew they were right. For if not even an angel could kill me I was truly a damnation.

  So they took me out onto the sand and the crowd cheered me and chanted the name they had given me: Flamma. The guards said I’d be remembered through the ages, but I was still a slave. And Commodus stared down at me from the emperor’s box but didn’t give me the thumbs-up like everyone else. I thought then that perhaps he saw me for what I was. Another arena monstrosity. I had much to learn.

  I mastered all the fighting styles. The Dimachaeri. The Velites. The Mirmillones. Even the Scissores. I dispatched all of my opponents and showed them no mercy. None of us deserved to live.

  At night the guards brought noble women to my cage and we fucked there in the darkness amid the screams of the animals and the prayers to the gods that couldn’t hear us anymore. Or wouldn’t.

  And then the emperor came down into the arena to fight me.

  I’d just killed three Thracians who had been a particularly good team. I’d been friends wi
th them in the pits and shown them a few moves. But I’d kept a few others to myself, which had saved my life. There were no friends once you stepped onto the sand. Even so, they’d managed to cut me in a dozen places and knock my helmet off. The crowd saw my face for the first time and cheered more loudly than they ever had.

  But not Commodus.

  He stood and stared at me as I lifted my bloody arms to acknowledge the crowd. Then he jumped down from the emperor’s box into the arena and strode toward me. His guard followed him, but he waved them back as he stepped over the bodies of the Thracians. It was just the two of us. He stopped a little more than a sword’s length away and studied me.

  “I’ve admired your work on the sand,” he said. “You’ve always been a tricky bastard. But I had no idea until now it was you.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by that. He couldn’t have known my secret. No one knew my secret. So what was he saying?

  It didn’t matter. He kicked one of the Thracians’ bloody swords into his right hand. Today would be the day we fought. The crowd went about as wild as you’d expect. They threw money at us and poured wine into the sands. It was as festive as Saturnalia.

  I wasn’t afraid of him. I would find his weakness, just like I always found my opponents’ weaknesses. And I knew he wouldn’t find any weakness in me.

  I was naïve in those early days.

  “The curious thing about all this,” he said, “is I thought I’d already killed you.”

  So that was it. The lunatic emperor had me confused with some other poor soul he’d slaughtered in the arena.

  “Not me,” I said, spitting into the sand. I feared no one, not even emperors. “You’re thinking of a different slave.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, kicking another sword into his other hand. All around us, his guards began to grin. “Little monkey,” he added, and his voice was a thousand voices, the collective whispers of a crowd. And for a second, and just a second, his eyes went black, blacker than the night in the pits even.

  Judas.

  It would have been the sensible time to ask him some questions. To be patient while I asked him what was going on. What he was doing here, pretending to be the emperor. Who I was.

  But I’ve never really been sensible or patient. Especially back then.

  Instead, I threw myself at him like I’d thrown myself at the angel, without thinking. “What have you done to me?” I cried, my words almost lost in the roar of the spectators.

  He parried my blows with a fan of metal and then slipped away, under my strikes. He cut the back of my right leg and I stumbled and went down on my knee.

  “I was going to ask what you’ve done to yourself,” he said, stepping back out of reach. His voice was still that chorus, but he spoke low enough that only I could hear him. “You’re a long way from the cross,” he added.

  I struggled to my feet and the crowd chanted my name. Already the wound felt better. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but the angel’s grace was healing me quicker than usual. My body knew what to do with it, even if I didn’t yet.

  I hurled myself at Judas again, but this time my main attack was a feint. I stabbed at his face and when he bent back at an unnatural angle to avoid the blow, I carried through, ramming the blade down into his foot, pinning him to the arena floor. He shouldn’t have fallen for it, because I’d used it before, against a retiarius who was particularly good with his net. The crowd shrieked with delight and the emperor’s guard came running at me.

  But I’d left myself open with the move. Judas struck back even as he was screaming from the pain, the flat of one blade striking me across the head, the other slashing the back of my left leg. I went to the ground again, my hamstring severed. I knew from experience a wound like that would take time to heal, more time than I had in this fight.

  Judas waved the guard off again and dropped one of the swords to pull my blade out of his pinned foot. I rolled a couple of times and came up on my knees holding the last Thracian sword.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded. My voice was such a mixture of rage and fear that I almost didn’t recognize it.

  “At the moment I appear to be killing you,” he said, coming after me. “We must amuse the crowd, after all, or they grow restless.” He snapped out at me with one of the swords, and I threw myself to the side. But it was just a feint to set me up for the kick he delivered to my face, hard enough to somersault me backward. The wound to his foot didn’t seem to slow him down any.

  “I meant what you’re doing playing at being the emperor,” I snarled. I got back on my knees and spat blood at him.

  He chuckled as he circled me, forcing me to shuffle around to face him.

  “My dear little monkey,” he hissed at me. “I’m not playing at anything. I am the emperor. Do you know how much work it took to become the leader of the most powerful empire in the world? How many years? The machinations and treachery are as divine as any court of gods. I have earned this.”

  He suddenly lashed out at my face with a sword. I parried the blow, but couldn’t stop the strike with the other sword. He stabbed his blade through the back of my right leg and into the sand, pinning me now. I cried out in pain and the crowd cried out in delight.

  “The gods be damned,” I said, turning my pain into a scream of rage. “Why are you doing this?” He was going to slay me again and I still didn’t know what was going on.

  Judas moved behind me, and now I couldn’t see him.

  “For the same reasons I killed you,” he said. “Or at least I thought I killed you.”

  I reached back and tried to pull out the sword, but he smashed the other blade down onto my arm, breaking the bone. I made various unmanly noises at the pain and fell forward, into the sand. The crowd began to chant his name. Commodus. They’d always been a fickle lot.

  “You’re going to destroy them,” I spat into the sand. “Just like you destroyed everything Christ could have given humanity.” He may have been the emperor, but he was still the same Judas underneath.

  “They have tried to create a golden age,” he said, “but they cannot help their nature. They dress in the robes and fineries of upright citizens, but they are still beasts ready to turn upon each other.” He slammed his knee into my back and held me down against the earth. “Listen to them shriek at each other. They want the chaos of the arena. Did you hear them cheer when I came down here amid the blood and beasts? This is where they want to be. It is their nature.” He ground me deeper into the sand. “This empire will burn like all the others. I may be the flame, but they are the kindling.”

  “You’re mad,” I gasped.

  “Civilization is madness,” Judas said. “A delusion that you all share thinking it will hold off the night. I remind humanity of what you are. Monkeys killing each other in the dirt. I’m what you should be praying to because I’m the natural order.”

  “That’s what this is all about?” I said. “You’re feeling left out because people have moved on to other gods?”

  He put the blade of his sword against my throat. “You’d best pray to one of those other gods now,” he said. “For I won’t save you.”

  “Answer me one thing before I die,” I said, gasping for my last breaths of air.

  “Perhaps, if the question is interesting enough,” he said, pausing.

  “Who am I?” I asked.

  Judas chuckled. “You? You’re just another dead monkey,” he said. And he drew the blade across my throat and held my face into the sand until the blood drained out of me.

  I died with the roar of the crowd in my ears.

  And I awoke to the sound of my own screaming, alone under the earth.

  I thrashed wildly, reaching out for Judas in the darkness, trying to find a weapon, trying to crawl away, all at once. But I was held by the grave. Dirt flowed into my mouth, choking off my screams, and I clawed my way blindly ou
t, until I burst forth into the light.

  I pulled myself halfway from the grave and spat the dirt out of my mouth before I threw up on the ground. I took deep, heaving breaths. More sobs than breaths, really. I looked around, expecting to find myself in Hades. Instead, I found myself in a shallow grave beside an olive orchard. A crow laughed at me from a tree, and I heard a donkey bray somewhere in the distance. Not exactly what I’d expected of the afterlife.

  And that’s when I realized I couldn’t die. Not for good, anyway. Judas may have killed and buried me again, but my body wouldn’t let me stay dead. My body’s supernatural healing powers extended all the way to resurrection.

  Since then I’ve learned the length of time I’m dead depends on how much grace I’ve got in my system. Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes years. But so far I’ve always come back to life, whether or not I’ve wanted to.

  I brushed the earth from me and screamed some more. At what had happened to me. At what I had become. Then I threw a clod of dirt at the crow to shut it up and walked away from the grave to figure out where I was.

  I was a day’s walk from Rome, but it seemed an entire age had passed by the time I returned to the city. I walked through the gates in search of Commodus or whoever Judas was now, but he was gone, and the city was torn apart. Armed militias clashed with each other, while soldiers got drunk in the public squares. Men and women fucked in the alleys. Villas burned here and there. And everywhere was graffiti announcing the death of the emperor. Some said he’d been killed by a slave he’d taken to his bed, while more creative pieces described in pictures how a group of his animal lovers had torn him apart and consumed him. The official notices posted in the squares said he’d been strangled in his bath by his wrestling partner, Narcissus. I didn’t know which of the stories were true.

  Nobody recognized me. Nobody seemed to be in charge. I knew Judas had created this chaos somehow. The empire was falling into ruin, and nothing could save it now. And I also knew Judas wasn’t really dead, not any more than I was.