Free Photographic by K. D. Lovgren Page B

his skin glistening in the heat, ready. The four men behind him would help him drive his point home to the monster. The Cyclops, Polyphemus, blinded with his own club, the club blackened by soot and tar and sap and burned to sharpness in the fire, by the enemy he had forged in Odysseus. The giant's hunger for human flesh, sated by six men, had stoked Odysseus's fire for vengeance. A fire that never burned far beneath.
    The heat in the cave, bolstered by the bonfire of the Cyclops, soaked Ian in the sweat of another century. As he waited for the word from Tor, the only word he cared about, he felt his head expand and swim in the heat. Someone grunted behind him and he turned to face his men. They lowered their heads. He pushed forward into the circle they made, the huddle. Each pressed his head against the heads of the others. They pushed and pounded each other's shoulders, slid in the sweat and glycerin and sand. Their sound, the deep reverberations of voices within, echoed out into the cave. 
    As another delay postposed the moment for action, they fell back into their places on each side of the stake. Ian shrugged his shoulders to stay loose. He looked down at the heavy stake. More of Tor’s bloody verisimilitude, Ian thought, studying the sticky, blackened point of the stake where he was positioned, at the front. He wondered if Tor had gone so far as to have the art department use real tar. 
    Even for Tor that sounded extreme, but as Ian looked down at himself, he questioned whether there was anything Tor wouldn’t do. After many takes his costume was covered in black and sticky grime. It wasn’t the sooty mess he minded so much as the stickiness. In the heat the cloth of his costume had adhered to his skin. The heat might have melted the art department’s simulation soot.
    All his long-held, much-quoted desires and intentions for living the character, filming in real locations, getting as close as he could to what was real were bowing under the weight of fulfillment. His aspirations rose up to mock him now. He stood next to the stake in the mouth of the cave, his body half in the sunlight, half in shadow, head burning and buzzing, feet cool. His shoulders ached with the anticipation of lifting the stake again, though the men were there to aid him. Why did it feel as if he were hefting the burden alone? He stared into the darkened maw, strategically lit, and at the emerald target toward which they would thrust their weapon, the screen a substitute for the monster which would be graphically inserted later. 
    “Thirty seconds,” the Assistant Director said. 
    A big, burly red-headed man called Eammous, who was stunt co-ordinator and also played one of the shipmates, said, “All right, then?” in Ian’s ear.
    “Right.” Then, much louder, “Right, men. Are we ready?”
    They replied, in unison, “Ready, Captain!”
    “Posi-TION.”
    They all bent down and cradled their arms around the stake in preparation.
    Voices came from different points of the set to signify readiness.
    “Rolling.”
    “Frame.”
    “Picture.”
    “Speed.”
    “And…Action,” Tor murmured from his position near the camera, where he could look at his monitors and the angle of the camera shot.
    "H-RUPP-a-pai!" Ian bellowed. He’d dug up some ancient Greek for his character, to incite himself and his crew to their best effort. Used to his call by now, they responded as one.
    With a grunt the lads swung the stake up into their arms. They stood, perspiring in the heat, barely needing the glycerin drops the makeup team sprayed them with for added sheen; at the ready.
    "E-na, dyo, tri-A!" His Greek approximation of 'one, two, three' didn't matter as much as the guttural pitch of his command. The company ran forward, knees akimbo with the effort of digging into the sandy floor of the cave, gaining speed as they raced toward their target full bore. Ostensibly the drunken form of Polyphemus, their actual target was a round leather glove-like