Short Stories

Price we pay for the sun

Close to the witching hour, there we stood like soldiers to attention, but in our hearts was not the bravery of lions ready to fight for a noble cause, but instead the fear of frightened children on a windy night. The sort of fear that brings a gurgling sickness to the stomach and makes the head feel woozy as if out at sea in a storm. Each individual praying to every deity and celestial being they knew. Not me. Please not me.

Then came the drums like thunder in the mountains during the rainy season. Each beat fighting with that of my heart to be the most deafening. Here came the man with the power. The man, who played to tune to, which the dance macabre took place. The man, who also chose, who danced the dance.

My actions like the others around me, suddenly became critical to my survival. One false move and it would be game over for me. Anything for a trembling hand or a fleeting moment of eye contact could be it. The key to surviving is being invisible to him, you have to be so silent and still that his mind becomes blind to your very existence. Sadly this time I lost the game.

I thought I was going to make it, I really did, but I made a rookie mistake. I sighed. The priest with his gold feather headdress, so bright and beautiful you would think it was made from one of great sun’s rays and his cloak of pure woven sunshine, turned on his heel to face me. 

Internally scolding myself, I mustered enough courage to look him square in the face. As I did I was greeted with nothing. Not a scrap of humanity or warmth resided in that man’s face and certainly not within his soul. His skin was like the hide of a bull, pale seams of age surrounded his small black void like eyes. He pulled his thin, chapped lips into a grotesque sneer as his signal to his brawny henchmen that I was his choice. I was to be his sacrifice.

As they marched me towards my fate. Emotions swirled around my body, as if I was drowning. I fought back the tears of despair and hopelessness as I felt my minutes in this world get washed away, I promise myself I would die strong. That I would die with honour. This was a promise I planned to keep if nothing else.

The pyramid towered up in front of me, like a stair ways some would say to paradise, I would say to damnation and suffering. From the base of the temple you would think the parade up the thousands of hard stone steps would take some time, would allow you to steal back a precious minute or two. Disturbingly they are as unforgiving and the priest and idols of which the temple is dedicated and pays homage to.

At the peak you can truly see why it seems like the seat of a god, the three hundred and sixty degree view of the mesmerizing Mexican terrain never fails to steal away the breathe of even the most mindless of fools. Before my eyes was a great expanse of city sprawled out across the landscape and on the very edge of the horizon was hints of a jungle of the richest green.

Typically such beauty is the last thing those fools see, in a strange sense they see what they are dying for. It is a common belief in this society that the only way to die a good death in through sacrifice or war. My time on this earth was as short as a fleeting solar eclipse, No one will remember me or my name and I will simply be another set of brittle bones in sandy ground, the colour of fire.

Finally, there it was, my death bed. In front of me was a high stone slab, stained with red death. As I lay upon the hard rock, I felt the roughness against skin. Meanwhile the henchmen, who escorted me here now set to work binding me. The helplessness I repressed earlier engulfed me once again, the drums returned as the ceremony began. Due to my current position, I had limited vision of what was happening around me, forced to stare at the early morning sky. A day I wouldn’t live to see.

Here came the golden priest, as empty as ever, this time knife in hand and sneer its full disgusting glory. He now towered above me as the pyramid had before, he raised his blade and I tensed, but kept my eyes wide. The blade came down with such force that my back arched on impact. Fire coerced through my veins as I felt the searing heat in my chest. I gasped for air like a fish on land. Then I saw it. The high priest of the sun god, Huitzilopochtli, now held in his up stretched hand, my beating, pulsing heart. My vision began to blur as the sun began to rise, the light shrouding me like a warm calming embrace, this isn’t too bad I thought as I let out my final breathe. After all it is the price we pay for the sun.