Daily Flash Fiction

Doran walked into the ritual chamber, feeling the warmth of the guttering torches all around that released choking black smoke into the atmosphere. He felt the gooseflesh on the front of his naked body relax while it remained on his back, reacting to the chill air of the desert night outside.

He walked to the bull totem at the rear of the chamber and sank to his knees, opening his arms wide and staring into the deep eyes. then he started to curse.

He began with the most eloquent and detailed curse he knew, damning the bull-totem to decades of psychological torment. As he went the curses became more visceral, threatening the bull-god’s family, his very person, his sexual future. And finally he reached the final curse, the most basic he knew, that eternal curse, the single word that was most taboo in his culture. It was not, on reflection, all that bad – he condemned the god to, what, intercourse? But distilled within that word was all of his hatred, his rage, his anger and aggression at the way the world was, the need for death and doom and disease, the fact that one had to kill to survive, and the eternal struggle that was both necessary and so transient, for the hell in which he lived.

Then he stood, still staring at that face, felt the chill disappear and the horror subside. He bowed to the totem and backed away, his face staring at the floor. As he backed out he felt harsh wool on his back as the chief himself draped the homespun raiment onto him. Then he turned and looked out at the menfolk of the tribe, and saw that now he was one of them, a man of the Molochi.