THE BLOOD GOD

As we rounded the thirty-second corner my mind was wandering and wandered, as so often it did, to feelings of dissatisfaction at the tedium of our lives of endless effort and infinite scrubbing, and that was why, as we paused for a break on the halfway landing of the Monument To Past Mistakes, I leant over to one of the other slaves and said For all we know there is no Blood God. You know that, right?

You may read this and think, here he has made his first mistake. And that I could not argue with, because once the ritual was over and the iron battlements had been scrubbed clean of human blood and the rendered fat had been carved with the special wire from the catchment dishes and loaded into barrels to light the Big Light, the High Priest summoned me and glared in my direction with his white cataract eyes while his decorated majordomo said, He wants to know why you think the Blood God isn't real.

I never said that, I told them. You basically said it, the decorated majordomo interrupted, and the High Priest just kept looking at me with a calm expression that basically said, inform the sacrifices quartermaster that he may as well postpone the next sacrifice because we have a offering right here who is practically jumping up and down to be rendered unto the Blood God, like he is all too eager to slake the Blood God's thirst, so we might as well cancel all our other plans so we can give this guy what he wants. Well, alright, I thought, maybe now we will see if the High Priest and his decorated majordomo can be swayed by the power of words and ideas. And so I said I admit it, I said it. You must have wondered yourselves, whether if we did not make offerings to the Blood God, might we still reap rich harvests from the fields, within the margin of error? Would the many tears of the mothers and fathers down in the village not dry up if we did not, you know, stop doing so many sacrifices? And the High Priest and his decorated majordomo looked at each other solemnly and nodded, and I thought, this augurs well for me. Then the majordomo beckoned to his Chief Slave and whispered in his ear and the Chief Slave clapped his hands and five more slaves ran over and he whispered to them and I thought to myself: it really does just take one person to speak up - one voice of commonsense to call up a cooling gust to dispel the fog of madness. And then from inside the rusted metal hatch a drumming issued forth, which instantly I recognised was not a fortunate issuing, given that the hatch led into the dungeons where they stored beasts and contraptions used in the rituals. Mutated deer, machines for churning, even weapons from the big war. Several months ago I had only just ducked behind the iron rampart in time when a sacrifice had been tied to a cluster bomb and detonated.

Then the hatch opened and a device which looked like a table with leather straps and wheels was carried out by a troupe of slaves and tied onto the worn securing loops of the iron battlements. Ah, c'mon, I argued to the High Priest, but he shook his head sternly. His decorated majordomo explained that they had been waiting patiently for such a blasphemer to try out the new invention from the Heavenly Inventor which was proposed to be both a more painful torture experience and a more efficient blood extraction. We affix you here, he said, pointing to the straps, And then we cut holes in your feet and basically just roll the blood out of you. I proposed an alternative arrangement where I scampered down the Monument into the woods to never be seen again but to live in penitence and apology to the Blood God for what He might, in his charity, downgrade from a high blasphemy to a regrettable transgression, but they shook their heads and shoved me onto the table and tightened the straps.

This man, the decorated majordomo announced, has blasphemed against the Blood God and the mercy he bestows upon our people and our crops, in exchange for a small sacrifice every now and then, and suggested that everything would be fine if we skipped the sacrifice. The High Priest glared. The decorated majordomo looked around sheepishly, because he had obviously gone into too much detail. Some slaves began to mutter. The High Priest hit the majordomo with his staff and pointed at the slaves.

You, slaves! The majordomo yelled shrilly. Why are you muttering? It was pretty clear why they were muttering. Soon they were spinning their chains over their heads and attacking the decorated majordomo and the High Priest. Somebody crushed the Heavenly Inventor's skull with a piece of masonry and my table overturned and I scurried to the edge of the iron battlements and down the steps. I didn't look behind me for fear that I would see other slaves, and that when I saw them I would stop, because I knew they would probably be strapped to the table and have the blood squeezed out of them instead of me as a punishment if I escaped. And so I ran down the Monument To Past Mistakes' many steps, going fast, sometimes sliding on my butt down the smooth sides of melted plastic, not stopping until I reached the ground. I ran blindly, the pale glow of the Big Light stretching ghostly fields before me, and I kept running until the night was quiet and the only sound I could hear was the squeak of sand under my feet and my own panting. By good luck I had, instead of running into the slave barracks or the Uncrossable River, gone South towards the Dead Forest. And as the sun came up I pushed aside a flaking palm frond and crunched my way into the Dead Forest.