Jezebel

Everywhere you looked there was lice and disease, hunger and pain. Starvation was a constant bedfellow. Some had turned to cannibalism. They murdered their children, and abandoned babes, and consumed them. Some cut down the executed, some dug out fresh corpses. All to stave off the ever-present hunger.

The lice, and diseases they brought, drove men to madness. Some stood on the corners, or sides of the road, cupping their hands to receive water that never came. They preached the end of the world and often killed themselves in a public display of self-loathing. By the next day they were nothing but glistening bones and dust.

Long had we been forced to live in these conditions while the king and queen drank clean water and ate to their fill. We stood in the recesses of the castle at night as the king made love to his queen on golden fabrics and lice-free beds.

Even though their people starved and went mad all around them, they seemed oblivious to everything, but themselves. That night we took our places in history, rebellious revolutionaries demanding our dance with fate.

~

On that night, I caressed the queen's quivering form. She did not glare at me in hate, her only expression was that of confusion. She must have wondered who I was. I kissed her passionately as the gilded blade slid inside of her. It has been said that there is no lover as beautiful as death and her knife. Her eyes fluttered only a moment before they closed. A true patriot, I had saved her.

The king did not die so easily. One thousand black crows decided his fate. Each one hungrier than the next for their morsel of tender flesh. Judged and found wanting, they pronounced a punishment fit for a man called tyrant. They tore him apart, piece by piece, until all that remained was his shattered skull. He had been eaten alive by a crowd that had once worshiped him.

~

Then Israel stood up, his eyes bright in the birth of a new dawn and a new nation. His white dreadlocks created a halo around his dark face so that we saw him as he was. Our saviour.

"My people," he cried. "this night we have wrested freedom from the hands of tyranny. We have labored through the birth of a new day. We have given life to the revolution and paid the prices due. Now is the dawn of our new age, given with blood and tears. Celebrate your new freedom!"

The crowd roared with consent, a deafening ocean of voices rising as one to his ears. They had died, killed and shed many a tear for this new era. Now their new found god, their new tyrant, called them to dance and make love and drink in the halls of a murdered king.

And they did so with relish.

~

I stood beside him as he spoke, the blood of my beautiful queen staining my lips and hands. He kissed those bloody lips when he was done. He gave my new name to the hungry crows, as they reveled in the filth they had created, a name to eclipse any other. I have been called many things.

"This is my queen. My Jezebel." He spoke my new name as a caress, said it with pride and fear. He had crowned us king and queen, undisputed before the crowd. With those perfect lips, and a poisonous tongue, he pronounced our doom.

I stood with him the day our names were called. There was a price to be paid and we must pay it. We stood on the scaffold, as a king had before us. Israel, unbelieving, stared out at the same hungry crows that had devoured the previous saviour. They called for his blood as they had for the tyrant before. They meant to have it.

They tore at my dress and my short hair, declaring me a witch and a pixie. The nakedness only served to frenzy them. Israel cried out, "Save me, save me!" In the end he was just as weak as any other man of flesh and blood.

And, just as the Jezebel before me, I was devoured by the wild dogs.