First couple of pages from Pandora's Heart (Patreon)

Bound Gods: Pandora’s Heart

It is not yet morning as I write this. Words. Thoughts. Feelings. I used to write so much. Every day. On every scrap of paper I could find. Writing was not allowed. Writing was not a privilege gifted to women. Which I was for the first twenty years of my life. I was just one of many among the monastery. I had never seen another unclothed. I did not know I was different. That what hung between my legs set me apart. That there were other things about my body that made me different.

Until the day the king's army came into the monastery and forced the nuns to their rooms. When a man came for me the quiet gentle soul I’d known as my mother, vanished and became a violent screeching beast. Blade in hand, a knife from the cutting board, but sharp as any dagger, she attacked. They laughed at her. Mocked her. Took away the blade. Then made her watch as they held me down and removed my clothes. It was the first time I could remember ever being completely bare in front of anyone. 

What they saw between my legs wasn’t what brought the room to silence. It was seeing the rest of me. Disrobed there was no way to hide the horrors of my flesh. The truth as to what I was. Human. But not. A man. But not. 

It was so shocking they lost interest in the desires of their loins and came to gawk. My mother tried to hide me but it was too late. All had seen. They summoned the Bishop, the Cardinal, and the holy advisor for the King himself. 

My trial finished before sunset and they piled wood at the bottom of the stake. My mother begged for mercy, begged for them to let me live, she promised to pray for me, she would bare God’s wrath if there was one to be had, if only they would spare me.

My mother was the only person who ever loved unconditionally, and the only person I could never hide from. The only person that no matter how still I stood, saw me. Even when no one else did. Even when the nuns, and occasional visiting priest forgot I existed, my mother did not. 

I never thought that could be changed, then they lit the torches and asked her if she was willing to die for me. Her mouth moved but no words came. 

Under the King's orders, the men set fire to the stacks. She watched. They asked her again, and once more only silence fell from her lips. It wasn’t until I disappeared in front of her eyes did she scream, beg, plead. Only this time it wasn’t mercy from God, the men, the flames, it was to me. She reached for me but was blind. I'd disappeared to her. And even though she burned her hands trying to find me in the flames where she knew I stood, she never saw me again.

Not even when Alton arrived and pulled me from the ashes.

Not when he rode away with me laying across the saddle. 

She watched, stared, her eyes holding sadness guilt and awe. 

Death himself had come down from the mountain and lifted a soul from the dead coals.

The soul of her son. 

It was a very long time before I understood what happened. Having centuries to play it over and over in my mind I came to peace with what I thought I knew, and what must have been the truth. I was not her son, born of her womb, I was not a normal man disfigured by the grace of God.

I am neither demon, angel, or nephilim. 

Alton told me I was a god. A human born with unnatural advantages. In my case extreme enough to alter my appearance and make it difficult to walk among normal men and women.

And gods need Doxies. 

The sons of goddesses, the most treasured, the greatest gift to the gods. A Doxie's ability to take ambrosia and increase it potency has allowed the gods to escape the madness that they were once destined to befall. 

While ambrosia kept them young, the need never stops, growing greater and greater until it can not be met, until their minds go feral and they tear the flesh from their skins.

But not before raining down on the world. A powerful god could destroy cities. A really powerful god could smite the world.

On some deep level, some knowing, an instinct or perhaps a feeling, gods find themselves drawn to ambrosia. Many learned what they are by accident, when they plucked a bloom from the stem of an ambrosia plant, and consumed it.

That is the day they become immortal. 

That is the day they are forever bound to the ambrosia flower and the young men who can produce the nectar.

The day I took ambrosia I did it because Alton said I should. But I did not feel compelled like others spoke of. After the bloom I was offered a Doxie, so beautiful and perfect, I wanted so badly to feel the pleasures I saw others take. 

But the moment I touched him any arousal was gone and all the need fostering in my core went cold. And what god could resist a writhing vessel of flesh, begging, pleading, spread upon the sheets, wanting to be taken? What man could shake off the lusts ambrosia filled him with?

I know my lack of interest disturbs Alton. He studied it for many years before I asked him to leave it alone. Sometimes I will catch him staring at me those questions and worries playing through his eyes. 

No, I never fell to the addiction of either the flower or the boy.

But that's not what bothered Alton so much. He never said it to me, but I saw his notes when I took them from the vault. 

He knew what I hoped he never would. How the presence of a Doxie did not arouse me but the site of what the gods would do with their bodies did. 

And Alton knows, everyone knows, it is unnatural for a god to wish for no control, to be possessed, to be forced, to be held down, invaded, to be desecrated in the most erotic ways. 

But there were no answers for the observations written in his journal. Even with his technologies, he'd failed to produce a Doxie who would want to possess a god in the same way a god possessed them. 

It is not their nature.

I didn't need to read his writings to know that. It is a fact so complete Alton gave up his attempts to give me what he's given others.

And Alton never gives up on anything.

At least I will never have to know the madness of ambrosia withdrawal. I don't know why I still take the blooms, perhaps in hopes the results will change. 

I'd almost come to peace with my oddity, then he became apart of the Association.

Sol.

For the first time it was a person whom pulled at my insides. His presence rose the heat in by belly, made my mouth water, my heart ache. Looking upon him brought tears to my eyes and rendered me mute.

I watched him for centuries, pining. I new not to trust him when he finally looked my way. I'd seen the Doxie's he broken.

But he promised to love me. 

And with but his presence, the perpetual promise of one day being in his bed, he snared me.

No one had seen me unclothed in ages. But when Sol asked for me to disrobe I didn't even hesitate. The thought wasn't even conceivable.

Even Alton, when he wanted to examine me for health, to see if I was some how compromised in my biology, he had to take my garments from me. Layer by layer, robe over robe. And I would still hide even if it were only to disappear. 

But by then, like the woman who raised me, I could not remain invisible to Alton. He always found me. Eventually. Sometimes he would have to stare at the place I was for a long moment before the illusion was shattered but I could never stay unseen by him if he was looking for me.

The fact Sol never saw me unless I willed it should have made his intentions clear. Maybe it did. Maybe I knew but I didn’t care. I loved him. Or so I thought. Now I know I as in love with the illusion of being loved. Perhaps just being desired.

In my greed for the lie I betrayed the only person who, beyond the woman who raised me, believed in me, cared for me, and wanted only for me to happy. 

Alton was the closest thing I had to a father, a brother, a friend, never a lover, but a confidant who could not be replaced. He trusted me above all others. Even above Zen. Even above his most coveted Chimera, the beast and the man. Alton put my wellbeing above his own so many times and yet when Sol asked me to betray him there there was barely a pause in my actions. One where I simply stared at who I wished I could have, who I wished would want me. Even then I knew Sol would never lay with me. 

I do not know what is worse. To know I no longer hold Alton’s confidence or to know I no longer have a home among the gods. For I am no god. Yet I am not a man. I bare the deformities of a monster, yet carry the gifts of the genetically advantaged. 

Tomorrow I may be no more. I hope I am no more. I pray in the darkness of death will take me and not spit me back out into this world. For come dawn I am to be taken from the only home I have known for centuries, the only people I have known since the day I was pulled from the smoldering coals. 

For come dawn I will be delivered to a being who few have ever seen, and fewer lived to tell it.

A Titan.

Sun eater.

His very existence explains so much about the changes happening to this world. And at the same time it creates nothing but more questions. 

And I am not worthy of answers.

This time when I face the stake I have no right to plead innocent for I am guilt wrapped in flesh.

There are so many more things to be written, but for now I must go. I have only hours to gather my courage, to test what I am, if I am anything. And should I succeed I will not stop until I have touched the sun for surely it’s fire will be hot enough to ensure I never return.

I can only hope my friends understand and will one day forgive me. I do not deserve Alton’s forgiveness but I cannot stop myself from hoping it too will happen. In time. And time is infinite. 

Let, for whomever may read this last entry know, I blame no one. I hold no grudges, I keep no anger. I have let go of my jealousy. I am ready to accept my fate. 

This day, August 8, the year 2033.

Pandora