Night of the *Erinyes
Author: Lysis, January 2012 (original post date)
*The Furies
**A story of the death of Kleitos the Black.
***References to the Oresteia by Aeschylus and The Bakkhai by Euripides were used in this story.
(I'm taking a break from posting new material right now due to a personal problem. So here's so old stuff.)
Marakanda, 328 BCE
The darkness was all encompassing, Arteimis would not shine, and even the crickets and other creatures that made up the sounds of the night had turned on him. It was cold and bleak, then hot as though he were burning in the fires of the Phlegethon and then plunged into the Cocytus where he believed he would languish forever.
Alexander groaned and clamped his hands over his ears hearing forever Kleitus' great bellow when the spear had cleaved through his guts. He felt as though the waters of the Styx itself ran in his veins replacing all else. His bed whereupon he writhed became all the woes of Tarterus ready to leap up and draw him down so deeply there would be no release.
Again and again it replayed, the scene: each step, each sound, movement, gesture, each word, every breath, heartbeat…his mind was aflame with it. He would scream aloud of the pain of it would it grant him relief, but that would bring the others. His Companions and he scorned everything, for he scorned most of all himself and could not bear to the see reflection in their eyes. All of their eyes, there were none that were full of softness, none that did not, had not, would not stare at him in horror and disbelief, none. He lived again that scene that had been played out upon the stage he had stepped upon so unprepared. He turned and drowned his cries into the bedding beneath him, for so had Kleitus, he too had been unprepared, unknowing. Such a cruel deed had been executed upon him.
Again, almost in wonder, in terrible awe Alexander studied his hand, touching the fingers, rubbing the dried blood painting the palm overcome by the strength with which this very hand had loosed the spear that had killed the man he had known since a babe. It could not have been worse, but oh, it had been.
They had been accursed before they had even begun.
The worst to recall was when the God, He who had appeared so soon, too soon, almost as though he had been awaiting, knowing of Alexander's hubris, with that bright deliberate eye speaking of the insult Alexander had laid once again at his feet. He would suffer it no more and had loosed The Erinyes upon him.
And, like Pentheus, Alexander had seen the two suns in the sky and taken the God's gift in hand and abused and laid scorn as it had been heaped upon him to the point of the unbearable, and had done the act that had laid Kleitus in his grave.
He accepted now the punishment…The Erinyes. They surrounded him, their eyes aglow dripping with Kletius' blood, his voice crying for vengence from their mouths. He was chained to their torments. They lay their judgment upon his person so clearly, upon his hands, face and clothing which he would not allow cleaned, although Hephaistion and Bagoas had tried.
He lay enclosed in blackness were they reigned supreme on a night such as this after the crime he had committed. They were there sucking away at him binding him from within, heckling, terrorizing, taunting, twisting and slithering around him until he felt as though he was shackled by them. They crawled, climbing upward inside of him refusing to release him; there would be no peace, not for what he had done.
Soon after the terrible deed hoping to appease the God Alexander tried to lay waste to himself, by turning the spear on himself, but had been stopped. In his rooms again he had tried. He had flayed the skin on his person with his nails until they ran red with his blood but one did not reconcile Dionysius who had been robbed of what was rightfully his so easily.
"I offer too late for a hurt past cure." Alexander's voice stirred the spirits of the air in appeasement only to have it echoed back on him until it was all he heard. Other voices joined the chorus and he rocked back and forth in silent agony. The worst was Hellanike's which took up the voice of Clytemnestra bewailing that she had dreamt of giving birth to a snake that took suck at her breast drawing both milk and blood.
"I can hear her very voice ring in my ears, she cries to me, "Hold, oh, child, and have shame.*' Athena, grey-eyed one wilt thou not seek mercy for me as you did for Orestes? I beseech you!"
Fearing no relief would be granted, for he knew he deserved none so dreadful was his transgression Alexander lay back hands to his eyes willing that the Gods pass their sentence upon him, for he was already persuaded past reason.
To be continued….