Untitled Greek Tragedy
In honor of all the attention on The Odyssey, I'm republishing one of my favorite short pieces. I wrote this back in early 2023, while my entire life burned around me. I'll be turning this into an animated short film soon, so stay tuned!
Untitled Greek Tragedy
When Odysseus believed in a campaign, it consumed him. Even after fighting the same war a hundred different ways.
Six months into the war, Odysseus announced Athena had given him a bold new approach in a dream. Xander was 19 and naive enough to think they’d been fighting a long time. Two years later they charmed snakes and sent them into Troy to bite the priests. The snakes left behind their skins and never returned.
Then it was tunnels, which left thirteen of Xander's comrades buried alive. They belly crawled past a mass grave, decaying arms reaching for them. Elbows bent at unnaturally sharp angles. Upon retreat, the earth had caved in right after Xander climbed free and felt the sting of cold air on his cheeks, spitting maggots and worms out of his mouth. The man behind him had been the father of twins. Seven years later, Xander sometimes still felt a frantic hand closing around his ankle.
All that time, the soldiers watched madness bloom in Odysseus’ eyes, while he worked himself (and them) into a frenzy. He dispensed punishments faster than anyone could earn them. After each failure, Odysseus prayed to Athena with sounds more animal than human. His shift back to reason was both subtle and hard to mistake. None of the men could articulate exactly how their commander was different, but his countenance was less frenzied. His eyes focused on logical places instead of darting around. He breathed evenly.
An old-timer, Timarchus, blamed Odysseus’ proximity to the goddess Athena. “Mortals don’t abide divine energy. Poisons the mind,” he said. He spoke of men and women who’d rotted from the inside out after too much time as a plaything of the gods.
Whatever the cause, there were two people within Odysseus, one disciplined and methodical--the true military leader. The shadow Odysseus was the creative one, the one with ideas and fueled by brutality.
Xander had started the war a proud Greek, open to believing in Odysseus and his promises of victory. That he spoke to Athena. Now, he didn’t know about gods or goddesses. Still Greek last time he checked.
One night, Odysseus called Xander and five other men to a clandestine meeting. Twenty feet to the south was a seaside cliff so steep it could have been the edge of the earth. In all other directions, dense trees rose to box them in. Looking around, Xander saw a group of expendable soldiers. Like Odysseus had handpicked the ones most easily forgotten.
Xander himself had a mediocre record, earning neither honor nor shame. Cosmo had initially shown skill in combat, but recently his hands had started shaking around his spear. Xander often shadowed him on the field, killing for him when necessary. Timarchus was respected but old, and therefore, slow. Thaddeus killed in battle only when it was a choice between taking a life or giving his own. Damian had just enlisted, his youthful innocence and unbloodied spear not long for this war. Nico’s presence made sense, but only due to his unbridled hero worship of Odysseus. His only talent.
They waited for the leader around a fire, unnamed fears filling the empty space in their stomachs. It was hot for it being the dead of night and bugs feasted on their exposed limbs. Timarchus rebandaged open blisters on his hands.
“Sometimes I hate Athena for this,” Thaddeus muttered.
“Who says Athena’s even on our side?” Xander didn’t even realize he’d said it out loud.
“Quiet you fool!” Timarchus' voice was hard. “What do you expect if Odysseus catches you saying such things?” He gestured to Nico, his eyes narrowed in warning. Nico had no concerns about reporting on his fellow soldiers to Odysseus.
“If Odysseus is even coming,” Cosmo said.
“That’s absurd,” said Nico.
“Then why,” Xander asked, “Are all our ships and brethren leaving?”
They all raced to get a better look, Nico almost walking off the cliff in his haste. Orange bobs of light and white sails get smaller and smaller.
“He wouldn’t abandon us,” Nico said. “There’s a plan. We’re going to have the most sacred mission of all.” No one had the heart to argue with him, instead they were thinking about their tents and rations and wondering if those had been taken and packed aboard the fleeing ships.
“Maybe we get to go home now,” Damian said.
Xander was trying to figure out where home could possibly be. Thunder clouds emerged in the distance.
“We’re not far from Troy,” Timarchus said.
“They would give us safe haven?” Cosmo asked.
The disloyal question hung in the silence between them for a few moments.
Timarchus stated, “I was suggesting we put the fire out.”
Nico rounded on Cosmo, dagger in hand. Desertion was punishable by death, but if Odysseus had sailed away without them, was that really what it was?
Xander put his hand on Nico’s shoulder, “It’s the fear inside him speaking, stow your weapon. Odysseus will not thank you for killing off the last few soldiers he has on Trojan shores.” Nico sat down, shoulders pressed together with tension or possibly rage.
Thaddeus crossed his arms around himself. “Without Odysseus, we’re nothing,” he said. “Our only choice is to be killers for hire now.” Xander knew his friend would sooner starve.
“Maybe you can,” said Cosmo, his hands stuffed inside his tunic.
Xander tried to take some control. He turned to Timarchus. “The darkness is too powerful up here. We’d be completely blind out here without that fire,” he pointed out. “And stuck. I don’t think we want to be trapped here all night just to be found by Trojans come morning.”
“If we can’t see anything, then nothing can see us,” Timarchus said. The way he said “nothing” made Xander imagine an invisible set of eyes pointed squarely at his back.
Moans and creaking came from the trees. Timarchus took a few steps back from the fire and the others did the same. The sounds drew closer, but from which exact direction remained a mystery. Something screeched at them and it sounded hungry. They moved backward until their feet bumped rocks off the cliff behind them. Waves crashing against the rocks below. For a moment, Xander imagined them joining hands and jumping. Who besides Odysseus would even know?
Four men limped into the light, pulling an oversized wooden horse on giant wheels. It looked like a god cobbled together by a child. The men dropped the tattered ropes and disappeared into the darkness.
Odysseus emerged from the shadows. How long had he been lurking there? “Tonight, we will make history,” he promised. Xander’s surprise and relief at seeing Odysseus grew into skepticism. He’d heard this before, they all had. Ash from the campfire hung over their heads. Nico’s whole body sagged with relief. They moved as a group back towards the fire.
Odysseus’ oil black curls sat on a statue-handsome face. His arms were too long for his torso, his hands dainty, and his tree-stump-round legs had no contours and stopped suddenly over his small feet.
“For ten long years, we’ve watched the Trojans mock our efforts,” Odysseus continued. “The last decade would have broken a lesser people. Mark my words. We will see blood flow through the streets of Troy. They will get a taste of death tonight,” he promised. “Victory is ours!”
A crude set of wooden stairs fell out of a trap door in the horse’s belly. On them was Athena, in full armor. No one but Odysseus had ever seen her until now.
She glowed in the night, as though she had liquid moonlight in her veins, a stark contrast against mesmerizing dark eyes. Curly silver hair danced around her skeletal face. She descended the stairs, leaving a bloody trail of footprints behind her.
"The priests of Troy are celebrating our retreat at this very moment,” Odysseus explained. “When they see this glorious beast, their pride will trick them into believing it a reward from the gods. They will bring us into the city of their own free will.” Would they? Xander tried to picture it, but he was starting to feel a bit dizzy.
Golden owl feathers rained down on them, sparkling in the firelight with blood dripping from the tips. They were perfect and if Xander could just catch all of them he would be perfect too and none of it would matter. His eyes filled with tears and he stuffed the feathers into his tunic by the fistful. His feet flew too far ahead of his body and everything went black.
When Xander awoke, he had fuzzy memories of climbing blood-stained stairs that tried to throw him off. They were inside a curvy wooden box. The horse. Uneven breaks between the wooden beams let rain slip into their mobile fortress. “Where are my feathers?” he asked the others, and hearing no answer, began to search. His hands scrambled across the floor and up the walls, if only he could find them, his head would stop pounding.
Around him, the other men were awake and wincing. From outside, a frantic chorus of screaming bugs surrounded them. From the inside, they heard rats scurrying and each other’s ragged breathing. Timber groaned beneath their weight. The air coming into their lungs was too thick.
“What happened?” Xander asked. He still searched on his knees for the golden feathers.
“God toxins,” Timarchus said. “We had to stop Cosmo from throwing his face in the fire.” Odysseus sat in the corner, muttering to himself. The floor had a few makeshift beds made of straw. There was enough room to move approximately 30 steps along the horse’s belly and 10 steps across it. The ceiling was as tall as three of them if they stood on each other’s shoulders. Xander imagined the starry sky above them, but he only saw black slits between pieces of wood. A single oil lantern sat at their feet and painted elongated shadows on the walls that made Xander think of hanged men. He imagined the silhouette of the horse on the cliff, an outline of lumpy contours and jagged lines. He thought it must look a bit savage from the outside.
The heat overpowered them and they nodded off to sleep.
A scream in the dark.
Xander's heart beating to escape.
The scream winding down into moans.
It was the song of a violent death, one they’d all heard on the battlefield enough times. Damion sat slumped over, bleeding from his neck.
“This is not a civil war,” Odysseus spoke in a whisper, making the inside of the horse seem enormous. Each soldier leaned into him. “All Greek blood is precious. To spill any unnecessarily is an abomination.” Xander recalled Athena’s bloody footprints and kept his questions to himself.
“Line up!” Each soldier walked solemnly to the wall behind them. He stalked across them, standing in front of each one in turn, but making no eye contact. His sight remained fixed on some invisible moving target behind them. When Odysseus stood before Xander, the commander’s eyes stopped moving and bored into the back of Xander’s skull. Xander felt his right eye begin to twitch.
Odysseus reached down and pulled up a rat, white, with a black spot over one eye. It stopped squawking and sniffed Odysseus with curiosity. He put the thing in his mouth and bit down and threw the forgotten half of the rat’s body to the floor. He laughed and blood spilled out of his mouth.
He then moved two steps to the left, faced Cosmo, and with one clean movement, cut the soldier’s throat. Blood flew onto Thaddeus’ face. Cosmo fell to the ground with his eyes still open. His face was a study in revulsion, shock. His mouth was open, twisted. It was the stillness in his hands that filled Xander with a deep well of grief.
Nico moved to open the trap door, and when he struggled to lift it, Timarchus reached down to help. “What do you think you are doing?” Odysseus demanded.
“They’re going to start to smell,” Timarchus replied. His voice was reasonable, but his body was on edge.
“We will NOT be leaving a pile of dead Greeks to tip off any scouts. Our plan depends on complete secrecy,” Odysseus said. “Leave him here.”
“Secrecy!” Nico repeated, as if he hadn’t been the first one to reach for the trap door. Timarchus stayed silent, but backed away. Odysseus threw the trap door closed. “No one leaves. No defection, even in death!”
Xander hadn’t noticed this before, but Damian had died smiling. The wound on his neck was no longer bleeding and started to smell like spoiled meat. Blood dried at their feet. Thaddeus trembled in that same spot on the wall, Cosmo’s blood drying on his face.
Xander wet his tunic with a water pouch and cleaned his friend’s face. “Just like in battle. Focus on surviving,” he held his comrade’s shoulders. “We may not be brothers in blood, but we are in spirit. I vow to protect you till this is all over. Nod to show me you understand.” Thaddeus nodded his head once, his eyes still unfocused.
Xander guided him down onto a straw pallet, as far away from the bodies as he could him (which was still too close) and waited with him until he fell asleep. The wind pushed against the horse, gently rocking the soldiers and dead bodies in its belly.
Lighting from the outside filled the horse with bursts of hostile brightness. Death’s sweet aroma filled the air.
“I told you we had a special mission,” Nico said.
All Xander could picture was hurling himself at Nico, plunging his spear, dagger or even his fingernails into the softest corners of the man. He felt blood beneath his nails and relished the feeling of the warm liquid until he realized it was his own.
Overhead, carrion birds landed on the top of the horse. An angry yellow eye bored down on them from a hole in the ceiling.
Thaddeus had rolled in his sleep and buried himself in Cosmo’s body. They almost looked like lovers. No one had closed Cosmo’s eyes and they were pointed right at Xander. They seemed to be whiter than should be possible. They pierced him. He stared at it until his vision blurred.
Its lips moved, but Timarchus' voice came out. “Watch yourself, Xander, you’re looking unsteady,” the dead body warned him. And then the corpse giggled.
It was too much. The corpse would steal all their voices if he didn’t stop it. He lunged at it, his spear landing straight in its chest. It gurgled and coughed up black, dead liquid that looked more like oil than blood.
The others landed on him. Limbs dragged ropes over him, they shouted words that didn’t make sense, like “Murderer” and “Traitor.”
“You don’t understand,” Xander murmured. “I didn’t kill him, he was already dead. Timarchus, it had your voice. It’s bewitched!”
They were stuffing something in his mouth when Odysseus came over.
“You made a mistake. It wasn’t Cosmo,” Timarchus began. It was a sign of his distress that he would openly criticize Odysseus to his face.
Nico stepped in, fast. “We just saw Xander kill Thaddeus.” His voice shook.
Xander's eyes flew to the corpse and in its place, he saw Thaddeus, Xander's spear sticking right out of his heart. His body welled up with shock and grief, refusing to believe it.
“I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t, I couldn’t.” Xander rocked back and forth. You made a mistake. It wasn’t Cosmo. Timarchus’ words rang in his brain, and he realized they could have been directed at him.
Odysseus looked between Xander and the others, weighing them against each other. His head swiveled back and forth like an owl.
“I didn’t.” This time Xander's voice was calm. Almost commanding. His head was getting clearer. It was what ten years of war had drilled into each of them. Survival. Any way possible. In moments of crisis you respond and find a way forward. Even if it’s grotesque.
“They’re plotting against you,” he told Odysseus. “All of them. They don’t believe the mission will succeed. Thaddeus’ idea. They’re trying to defect. Run home.” The word “home” felt sour in his mouth. He dropped his head and prayed to Athena for his trickery to land as strongly as his spear had landed in the man he’d sworn to protect.
Everyone inside the horse went still. Odysseus’ pupils tightened into dark, shiny beads. He looked at Nico and Timarchus, who appeared to sense control shifting away from them.
“I will not allow a few worthless soldiers to prevent me from giving Athena and all of Greece the victory we’re destined for.”
At this, Nico’s head snapped up. Nico who had been devoted to Odysseus, who’d never lost faith, who’d made himself an enemy within his fellow troops due to his unrelenting service to Odysseus. Nico, who’d put Odysseus above Athena, and everyone else, in his world view, found himself reduced to nothing. His hand flew to his dagger, but not fast enough. Odysseus had the advantage of already planning to kill Nico before he started talking. Nico was on the ground and Timarchus right after him.
Odysseus then turned to face Xander, who was struggling to free himself from the bonds the other soldiers had managed to get around him before being interrupted. The commander looked gleeful. He smashed the lantern and plunged them into darkness. He threw his hand over Xander's mouth and pulled them both down to the floor of the horse’s belly. Xander felt the other man’s body weight shifting over him, pushing him hard into the floorboards, and felt his breath on his neck. Breath that smelled like blood. A warped, broken board pushed into Xander’s ribs.
Voices outside. The Trojans approached.
Someone rolled them into the city, where victory had already been declared. Odysseus and Xander sat in their own private graveyard, watching the Trojans through cracks. Troy celebrated with wine and sacred dances. A few priests set up a shrine at the foot of the horse, with lit candles and white blossom wreaths.
The priests sang a wordless chant that could have been a prayer of thanksgiving or a request for guidance. Pure tone stacked on top of each other. A woman’s voice cut through. “This horse wreaks of death,” she said. “We must burn it, reduce it to ash, and throw it into the sea.” The wood grew hot underneath them.
A man’s voice said, “Cassandra, enough!” A group of men forced Cassandra in front of a column on a temple door. Her hair whipped in the wind while the men slid chains over her. He could have sworn that she looked right at him.
The streets emptied. It was only the horse and Cassandra, whose gaze had never strayed from them. Odysseus opened the door and flew out. Xander stayed put to watch Achilles lead the army into the sleeping city, leaving Xander…forgotten? Abandoned? Free.
He slid down what was left of the trap door, landing with a thud on soft, cool earth. He’d only ever seen the battle worn walls of Troy from the outside, grubby and sturdy, with what may as well have been scratch marks. Ten years of attempts to breach Troy and they’d never done more than surface-level damage.
From the inside, slabs of white clay towered over him, with intricate relief sculptures of maidens dancing, gardens in full bloom, and the lives of gods. It all played out with gold accents that shimmered even in the low light of the city’s torches. The same torches the Greek army was now commandeering.
The streets were short and maze-like, with dwellings over shops and air filled with the smell of spicy bread. The silence washed over him, but was short-lived as the sounds of an army stampeding in overtook the vicinity. Then he heard the terror-filled screams of soldiers who’d never had to see the war up close. It sounded just like the civilians.
And just as Odysuses had promised, a river of blood made its way through the city of Troy before the sun rose. It trickled across Cassandra’s toes, still chained to the door of the Temple, as a warning to other people who may be overconfident in their flawed prophecies. Who questioned good fortune.
He wandered, shedding his armor and tunic like a snake skin. He found a corner near a small, poorly cared for temple to Charon. The bricks crumbled and the steps were uneven. He imagined his friends asking Charon for service across the river Styx into the afterlife, without the golden coin they needed to pay their way.
He clung to his spear all night. Then the next day. And soon, he became a normal part of the conquered city. Growing dirtier and thinner, he watched the men he used to fight with--and occasionally Odysseus himself--turn Troy into a Greek enclave. If any of them recognized the beggar who sat by Charon’s temple, they never showed any signs. Neither did the meager alms he received ever include what Xander most desperately wanted, golden coins for the dead Greeks from inside the horse. Just in case they were still there on the banks of the River Styx, waiting.
When his time came, he walked a lonely, twisted stone path, with darkness on all sides. The clearing that led to the water was barren and gray, with only a few twigs and rocks on the ground. This was a U-shaped section of river, without much visibility in either direction. He searched the surface of the water, hoping to see Thaddeus, or Timarchus, or even Nico, tossing in a stone when he saw nothing underneath the black, glassy river.
A yellow orb appeared from around the bend on his left. Charon’s lantern filled the entire width of the river bank with a gentle glow. He stood straight, rigid even, which made him seem taller. His shimmering silver robes flowed into the belly of his simple wooden boat. The light sat on top of a staff that hung high over their heads.
When Charon reached him, Xander was surprised to see the ferryman had kind eyes, full of inquiries. He held out an open hand for payment. Having none, Xander merely stood his ground. Eventually, Charon turned his head forward and dipped his staff into the water to push the boat away.
Xander expected the water to be colder and deeper than it was. It felt almost welcoming. He waded through knee-high gentle waves. Inch by inch, the river took more of him. Echoes of the Trojan priests’ chants filled his head and then the water engulfed him. He floated for a few minutes before his legs pulled his body down.
The river was littered with trinkets--pearls, bronze mirrors, pottery--items others had used to try and bribe their way onto the ferry. One of the mirrors reflected a face back to him, weathered like an old sandal with a checkered smile he didn’t like. He sank further down, passing a few skeletons, including two holding hands and then a devastatingly small one.
He landed on the murky river bed, next to an anonymous pile of old bones. His last thought was how beautiful Cassandra had looked chained to the temple.
