Free The Chiron Confession (Dominium Dei) by Thomas Greanias

For now, take the ‘helmet of salvation.’”
    Athanasius took the centurion’s helmet from the warden. It had brass accents and the infamous red plume. The plume, he knew, was less for décor than for the optical effect of making a centurion look taller.
    “You know, I wore a helmet like this once to a costume party with my girlfriend, the model Helena,” he told the guards, and he could tell by their response that they all knew of Helena and had probably fantasized about her every time they passed a statue in her image. “Funny thing is, my eyes still only reached the tip of her nose, and I was staring at her nostrils the whole evening.”
    They started laughing at the comic playwright, who was certainly different from the usual vermin. But as they laughed, Athanasius took the helmet and smashed the warden’s head. The warden cried out as his face split in a bloody gash.
    “A considerable improvement,” Athanasius said, grabbing the sword from the warden’s side and spinning around in time to drive it into the gut of the oncoming Praetorian from behind. Athanasius put his foot to the stomach of the Praetorian and pushed him into the other one. They both fell back onto the stone floor.
    The two remaining prison guards circled Athanasius with a long chain between them, lingering beyond the reach of his sword. They crisscrossed him with the chain, tightening it around him.
    Athanasius rushed the closest guard while he could and tackled him to the ground. He ripped off the guard’s helmet and began to smash his head with it when he heard the clank of chains. He felt something heavy and blunt hit him in the head from behind, then he blacked out.

    Athanasius awoke in the darkness of the dungeon below, chained to the wall in his heavy armor. At one time prisoners had to be lowered through the floor of the upper room. But he had a dim recollection of being dragged in his armor down a flight of stone steps to this dungeon, all to the murderous threats of the bellowing warden.
    His head throbbed inside its “helmet of salvation,” and his shoulders drooped from the weight of his armor. His body felt dead to the world, his spirit crushed from the realization that he was about to depart this earth with so many unfinished dreams. The end always came more swiftly than the characters in his plays ever expected, and so it was with his own life.
    In the silence he heard only the distant sound of running water somewhere, and then made out a small cistern drain in the dimness. It was probably connected to the Cloaca Maxima—Rome’s central sewer known as the Great Drain.
    He ran his dry tongue over his teeth, touched his fingers together and squeezed his toes to confirm he still possessed these and other bodily appendages. The warden and guards would have killed him on the spot were he not already condemned to a public execution. To deny the mob its entertainment seemed a worse crime than murder in Rome.
    Athanasius ruminated over his sorry twist of fate and what would become of Helena. I have become the very tragic hero that I mock in my comedies, he thought. Now only my ghost will haunt the Pompey like Julius Caesar—if Pliny can figure a way Rome can profit from it. Athanasius could already hear the tour operators: “He killed the gods in his plays only to be killed by their wrath. Hear ye and be warned, citizens of Rome!” That’s how he would play it, and raise the tour price. Two ghosts were better than one, and the new one should at least bring a sense of humor. Yes, Pliny would make sure of it.
    But the thought passed as he realized the cold, cruel truth that while it might keep him alive to some, his body would decompose in the earth, or be fed to dogs, and the glory and immortality he sought as a playwright would die with him in the grave.
    Surely, this cannot be the end. This was too rushed, his epic poem cut short. Now he would be the butt of jokes.
    Could he hang himself in his chains? Get a guard to fetch him