Achilles' Fetish
fiction by Lauren Scharhag
After the incursion, they called me the Trojan Whore. Anyone could get inside.
As the city burned, the Achaeans took hostages of a kind. Besides me, there were eight others in the brothel. The pimp was gone, either fled or slain. What was I to do? They were our enemies. They would do what they liked, whether I refused or not. If I survived the ordeal, none would take me with them. I was not even worth keeping as a slave. The only way I would sail Poseidon’s rafters would be in a barrel of chum. But more likely, they would leave me behind on this ash-strewn beach, to die a traitor’s death at the hands of whatever hoi polloi remained. Their desire for vengeance would demand an outlet, and is there anyone quicker to be sacrificed than a whore?
It was easier for me than for the soft ladies of Ilium. Why he picked me, I’ll never know. The other men snatched at youth and beauty, and I was past my prime. But he took his time and looked us over carefully. Something in my face must have moved him because he took my hand and led me with surprising gentleness to his tent. There, I removed his breastplate with practiced fingers and bathed him, relieving him of the soil and sweat that accompanies a long journey. It was almost by accident that I discovered that vulnerable spot. Once found, it could not be unfound. His moans seemed to startle even him, as if he had not been aware that such pleasure existed and, in his ecstasy, he cried out, “Mother, O Mother!”
For all the days and nights he abstained from battle, I became a fixture in his tent and in his bed. How well I learned his feet, kneeling to attend the fine bones, the callused soles, the long, agile toes. I trimmed his nails for him, ran a pumice stone over the dry and hardened flesh. Gently, I massaged the hairy, muscular calves, crisscrossed with pale lines from the lacings of his sandals. I traced those lines over and over, kissed his instep. Thus, I teased him, never touching his heel until last, as he writhed and shook beneath my hands. When I did, it was always with such softness, with reverence for what was mortal in my enemy. Every time, it was his undoing. I had seen and entertained stranger cravings in my time. I just found it extraordinary that none of his other lovers had discovered this before me. I had planted a need in him. I wondered what I would reap for it. Not even his beloved Patroclus could sate him as I could.
His beloved’s last action had been to encase his mortal flesh in Achilles’ steel and leather, to die touching what Achilles had touched. As for Achilles, no man’s blood had ever run so hot. In his grief for lost Patroclus, his rage was terrible to behold. I thought he’d destroy every living thing in his path, including me. But this is to say I feared him as much as any other man who’d ever shown me his temper. Dead is dead.
Once he spent himself, he crawled back to where I huddled. He buried his head in my lap and whispered his secrets to me, his breath hot against my thighs. How his mother, the sea nymph, she of the silver steps, had held him in the black water, the river of the dead. She dunked him like a washer woman bent over her scrubbing board. Through gritted teeth, she told him not to struggle, even as the water rushed over him, into his mouth and nostrils. He drank it down, he breathed it in. The pain of his transformation from boy to something Other was excruciating. But no matter how he cried and thrashed, she held him there. She would see her boy grow strong, to claim his godly birthright. These are the acts that birth our desires. What was done to us. What we keep reliving. As if that weren’t terrible enough, there was yet another prophecy she imparted—that he would die in glorious battle, as if he would choose anything else. We are all Fate’s jesters. Look at this motley flesh. How men’s fates are looped together, their weft to strangle us all.
I said nothing, but stroked his hair and held him, and thought of how his mother of the glistening feet reminded me of the street girls, whose sandal-bottoms spelt out a coy follow me in the dirt. All men do is follow.
Spurred to fight, his need for my caresses only intensified. Whenever he returned to me after hours or days of battle, he would be wild-eyed, spattered in blood and gore. He paced impatiently through the funeral games, first for Patroclus, then for Hector, Troy’s first son, whose flesh he’d threatened to eat raw. But rather than consume, he’d dragged his foe in triumphal debriding behind his chariot and devoured me instead that night. The river choked with dead outside, such that even the river god wept. I heard it.
That night, as my captor slept, I swept up the nail clippings, the bits of skin. I gathered his hair from the bedding. I cast them into the brazier, praying to every god I could name that someone could know what I know of this man. What, to the gods, are the prayers of a whore? Maybe nothing. But what are the prayers of a whore who holds, by his tender heel, the great Achilles?
It seems I was heard. They say Apollo himself guided the arrow that slew him. But I claim that arrow. It was my prayer and my guidance. How everyone would laugh to know it was a whore who felled mighty Achilles, a whore he also called, “Mother.” But rather than wait for the men, whether they be Trojans or Achaeans, to finish me off, I threw myself into the wine-dark sea, and let Thetis have her way with me.
As the city burned, the Achaeans took hostages of a kind. Besides me, there were eight others in the brothel. The pimp was gone, either fled or slain. What was I to do? They were our enemies. They would do what they liked, whether I refused or not. If I survived the ordeal, none would take me with them. I was not even worth keeping as a slave. The only way I would sail Poseidon’s rafters would be in a barrel of chum. But more likely, they would leave me behind on this ash-strewn beach, to die a traitor’s death at the hands of whatever hoi polloi remained. Their desire for vengeance would demand an outlet, and is there anyone quicker to be sacrificed than a whore?
It was easier for me than for the soft ladies of Ilium. Why he picked me, I’ll never know. The other men snatched at youth and beauty, and I was past my prime. But he took his time and looked us over carefully. Something in my face must have moved him because he took my hand and led me with surprising gentleness to his tent. There, I removed his breastplate with practiced fingers and bathed him, relieving him of the soil and sweat that accompanies a long journey. It was almost by accident that I discovered that vulnerable spot. Once found, it could not be unfound. His moans seemed to startle even him, as if he had not been aware that such pleasure existed and, in his ecstasy, he cried out, “Mother, O Mother!”
For all the days and nights he abstained from battle, I became a fixture in his tent and in his bed. How well I learned his feet, kneeling to attend the fine bones, the callused soles, the long, agile toes. I trimmed his nails for him, ran a pumice stone over the dry and hardened flesh. Gently, I massaged the hairy, muscular calves, crisscrossed with pale lines from the lacings of his sandals. I traced those lines over and over, kissed his instep. Thus, I teased him, never touching his heel until last, as he writhed and shook beneath my hands. When I did, it was always with such softness, with reverence for what was mortal in my enemy. Every time, it was his undoing. I had seen and entertained stranger cravings in my time. I just found it extraordinary that none of his other lovers had discovered this before me. I had planted a need in him. I wondered what I would reap for it. Not even his beloved Patroclus could sate him as I could.
His beloved’s last action had been to encase his mortal flesh in Achilles’ steel and leather, to die touching what Achilles had touched. As for Achilles, no man’s blood had ever run so hot. In his grief for lost Patroclus, his rage was terrible to behold. I thought he’d destroy every living thing in his path, including me. But this is to say I feared him as much as any other man who’d ever shown me his temper. Dead is dead.
Once he spent himself, he crawled back to where I huddled. He buried his head in my lap and whispered his secrets to me, his breath hot against my thighs. How his mother, the sea nymph, she of the silver steps, had held him in the black water, the river of the dead. She dunked him like a washer woman bent over her scrubbing board. Through gritted teeth, she told him not to struggle, even as the water rushed over him, into his mouth and nostrils. He drank it down, he breathed it in. The pain of his transformation from boy to something Other was excruciating. But no matter how he cried and thrashed, she held him there. She would see her boy grow strong, to claim his godly birthright. These are the acts that birth our desires. What was done to us. What we keep reliving. As if that weren’t terrible enough, there was yet another prophecy she imparted—that he would die in glorious battle, as if he would choose anything else. We are all Fate’s jesters. Look at this motley flesh. How men’s fates are looped together, their weft to strangle us all.
I said nothing, but stroked his hair and held him, and thought of how his mother of the glistening feet reminded me of the street girls, whose sandal-bottoms spelt out a coy follow me in the dirt. All men do is follow.
Spurred to fight, his need for my caresses only intensified. Whenever he returned to me after hours or days of battle, he would be wild-eyed, spattered in blood and gore. He paced impatiently through the funeral games, first for Patroclus, then for Hector, Troy’s first son, whose flesh he’d threatened to eat raw. But rather than consume, he’d dragged his foe in triumphal debriding behind his chariot and devoured me instead that night. The river choked with dead outside, such that even the river god wept. I heard it.
That night, as my captor slept, I swept up the nail clippings, the bits of skin. I gathered his hair from the bedding. I cast them into the brazier, praying to every god I could name that someone could know what I know of this man. What, to the gods, are the prayers of a whore? Maybe nothing. But what are the prayers of a whore who holds, by his tender heel, the great Achilles?
It seems I was heard. They say Apollo himself guided the arrow that slew him. But I claim that arrow. It was my prayer and my guidance. How everyone would laugh to know it was a whore who felled mighty Achilles, a whore he also called, “Mother.” But rather than wait for the men, whether they be Trojans or Achaeans, to finish me off, I threw myself into the wine-dark sea, and let Thetis have her way with me.
About the writer
Lauren Scharhag is an award-winning writer of fiction and poetry. She is the author of Under Julia, The Ice Dragon, The Winter Prince, West Side Girl & Other Poems, and the co-author of The Order of the Four Sons series. She lives on Florida’s Emerald Coast.
To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com |