CONTENT WARNING

Unnatural Ends

by Michael J. Vowles

When he heard them enter the grove, Felix had not finished washing the blood out of his hands. His palms faintly pink, fingernails dark. Sometimes his work for the prefect had a way of getting messy.

The soft patter of the horses’ hooves on the dirt path came to a stop but Felix didn’t get up. He knew the prefect liked to consult his ancestors before seeing him. Instead, he remained slumped against the tree, trying not to look at his hands. From down the hill, beyond the modest tomb of the Seii, the voices of the two men floated up toward him.

“Speak your mind, Titus, if you’ve something to say.”

“Forgive me, but…are you sure you want to trust this business to a slave?”

“Slave though he may be, he gets results. I need you here in Rome.”

“We have men who could do this cleanly.”

“The competence of the praetorians has never been in question, Titus. There are just some tasks for which the dog is better suited.”

Against his better judgement, Felix regarded his stained hands. He had heard the prefect talk about him this way before, that his hands clamped with the decisive prejudice of a wolf’s jaw. That he was missing something on the inside. That this made him useful.

A whistle rang out through the grove and Felix stood. His legs carried him down the hill, out of the trees, towards the sound. A soft face with hard eyes smiled at his approach.

“Good work, cub,” Sejanus said as Felix came to a stop before him. Felix could only incline his head slightly. The bodyguard, Titus, tightened his face at the sight of him. Sejanus stepped forward and placed his hands on Felix’s shoulders. “Word reached me this morning. Did they give you trouble?”

Felix cleared his throat. He didn’t like the way Titus was looking at him.

“The senator took out his guts before I could get to him, Dominus. His wife though…she put up a struggle.”

Sejanus continued to regard him warmly.

“Always was a stubborn bitch. Rome thanks you for your service, cub.”

“Dominus,” Felix said, inclining his head once again. He could feel the gravity of the prefect’s iron gaze boring into him, but he couldn’t meet it.

“What is on your mind?”

“My freedom, Dominus…” Felix muttered.

“I haven’t forgotten, cub. You will have it—and you will have my name too—but these are dangerous times to be leaving work unfinished.”

“Unfinished, Dominus?”

“Yes. I have it on good authority that the senator’s son is in Massilia. A student or something—he won’t give you much trouble. But he could give us trouble—plenty of trouble—in the future, if we let him live. It’s the ugly truth of the work we do to secure Rome’s peace, cub, but we cannot afford half-measures. Do you understand?”

Felix didn’t say anything. Sejanus caressed his shoulders.

“Do this for me, cub, and you will have your freedom.”

Felix inclined his head once again.

“Dominus.”

Sejanus smiled. A drop of rain landed at their feet and Sejanus removed his hands from Felix’s shoulders, looking up at the sky with a mock-frown.

“The sun hides from you, cub. But all the better to carry out your work in the dark.”

*

That evening, Felix left Ostia on a merchant ship, clutching a leather flask of posca to his breast. The prefect’s money was good and no one gave him any trouble. That he had been told to take the sea instead of the road felt like a cruel joke. Sejanus knew well how Felix hated the water. Knew intimately, in fact, as no one else did. Even ten years later, Felix could feel himself falling under the shadow of the prefect’s gaze for the first time on that battered pirate’s bireme. The soldiers asking whether he was worth dumping at the bottom of the sea.

            Felix took a draw from the posca, nestling beside the tightly secured rows of amphorae. The grunting of the oarsmen came over the cargo in waves, and Felix shut his eyes. At least he could take the road back. The prefect cared only that the job was done as swiftly as possible—preferably before news of the senator’s death reached the provinces.

That night, Felix slept little. A cycle of visceral, unpleasant dreams broken up by the Tyrrhenian waves shaking him awake. When he closed his eyes, he saw the woman’s face. The senator’s wife clawed at him, trying to gouge his eyes, but Felix had bashed her head against the fountain until she stopped. Her eyes were twitching but she still tried to stare at him.

“Beast…” she whispered, “I curse you…I curse…”

She was in and out of life, it looked like. Felix drew his hands from her hair and they were coated with blood. Even as her head lolled, eyes half open, she continued to stare at him.

“I curse you…” she said again.

Felix paused for just a second, before tightening his grip in her hair once again, turning her over, and plunging her head in the fountain’s water. This time she didn’t fight. For a long time afterward, Felix had simply stared at the woman’s body, watching the color of the water change. Then he had departed for the grove by the tomb of the Seii.

The scene repeated itself until daylight broke. The present detaching itself length by length into the past, the frayed thread that tied him to the fatherless boy in that doomed hull threatening any moment to snap. Felix’s teeth chattered in the salt breeze. He had a rash of bacon but didn’t feel like eating. By the time they docked at Massilia, Felix was sure—it had been a folly to spare him all those years ago. He imagined not taking the hand of Sejanus, being left instead to wash ashore at the Styx with his father, and cross in peace to the Asphodel Plain. Instead, he had chosen life, clasping the prefect’s hand, pulling himself up, and leaving what should have been his natural end behind.

Felix thought on this some more in the shade of one of Massilia’s popinae, thinking that the people that averted their eyes from his scarred face must have somehow knew. Here among us is a kind of living ghost. The effect got him the answers he sought, however. At every popina and taberna, in every alley and every square, people were quick to get rid of him. Celtic traders at the market regarded him the way they did anything else without a soul, their pale eyes unmoving and their jaws set beneath their auburn moustaches. The songs of children fell silent at his approach. Even the dogs cowered in recognition of one of their own.

But no one bothered him. A day passed and there was no word of the senator’s death, but plenty of words had reached Felix regarding the son. He followed them toward the edge of town, pausing at a statue of Tiberius Caesar Augustus whose paint had chipped and faded around the legs. Felix supposed that the people here in the provinces neither knew nor cared about the Caesar’s self-imposed absence. In a few short years, it would be Sejanus’ likeness watching over them—and they wouldn’t care then either. Rome was a world away to these people. Not a place, but a story they sometimes told themselves.

Felix blinked at the solemn face. Since he had been standing there, a shadow had passed over it without his realizing. He stepped back, frowning, and continued down the road. As he walked, the shadow followed him. People started to spill out of the insulae, staring up at the sky. Felix stalked past them, pulling his cloak tight around him, and the light continued to fade from the world.

The sun hides from you, cub.

Felix kept walking. A multitude of whispers filled the streets, punctuated with intermittent whimpering. He was so close now. Felix brought the darkness to the villa on the edge of town, finding them all standing outside, pointing at the sunless afternoon sky. He slipped behind a row of olive trees and into the open door they had left behind them. Gently, Felix bolted the door shut behind him. Silence. Nothing moved, and so he continued.

Felix found his quarry by the impluvium, staring at the milky sickle in the sky. He was younger than he had been expecting. The long shadows of the colonnade all converged on the boy’s feet. He gave no indication whatsoever that he realized he was no longer alone. He seemed conscious of nothing, except what was happening through the compluvium. Felix regarded the boy’s slender neck, thinking how it was the only thing left now between he and his freedom. There would be no point in informing him he was an orphan. There would be no point in saying anything at all. For a while, though, Felix joined the senator’s boy in watching the darkness curve itself around the sun. What remained looked to Felix like a wolf’s fang.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the boy said, catching Felix off-guard. He remained staring up at the lightless picture above them. “It’s a bad omen, you know.”

At last, the boy turned around. He was slender and pale, but there was no doubt that he was the senator’s son. The boy swallowed, glancing up and down at the beast in front of him.

“I could smell you…when you came in. Are you here to kill me?”

Felix cocked his head, examining the boy’s face. There was much of his mother in him. High cheekbones, eyes like almonds. He took a step forward.

“This is something to do with my father, yes?” the boy stammered. “Or money? Take whatever you please.”

Felix took another step forward and the senator’s son stepped back, closer to the impluvium.

“Or just…for the sport of it?” the boy whispered. He was shaking now. Felix continued forward and the boy stepped back, his foot slipping over the edge. He crashed into the water and Felix was on top of him, hands fastening around his throat. The boy pulled at his wrists, but Felix was too strong for him. His eyes darted frantically over Felix’s shoulders, but no one was coming. His face was very quickly growing purple, his throat making that pitched suction that Felix had heard so many times before.

Felix was close now. Any second, he would be a free man. A rich man, even. And after ten years, he would have a father again.

But the image of that future, close as it was, was vague. And all at once, it was supplanted by the vivid detail of his past. He had been no older than the boy before him when Sejanus had stepped over his father’s corpse and offered him his hand. How the prefect’s head had blocked out the sun, and how Felix, blinking his eyes fully open, had taken his hand. A life of relative comfort had followed. Even as a slave, he had lived better in Rome than he ever had in Sicilia. Far better. And where the prefect’s ambition went, Felix was expected to follow.

*

Felix was back in Rome just in time to see Sejanus’ bloodied body thrown down the Gemonian Stairs. The waiting crowd tore at it with more ferocity than Felix had ever shown the prefect’s political enemies. A cacophony of roars erupted all around him and Felix turned, fighting his way against the traffic. Caesar, it seemed, had returned from Capri.

By nightfall, Felix had made it to the grove. There was nowhere else to go. If Caesar’s vengeance didn’t find him, then the boy he had let live in Massilia surely would. Maybe the next day, maybe the next year. But it was okay, Felix thought. He was ten years too late anyway.