Song of the stygian twilight

Sing, O Muse, of the suffering of Franky, the Officio Assistanteides, who, plagued by fate and despised by the gods, followed the dark path of life until he fell into the abyss of the shadows.

The plight of the Officios Assistanteides

In the golden Eshek, the place of noise and beguiling sounds, Franky, weary of life, sat sipping the drink that carried before his eyes the illusion of a better existence. But the brew of oblivion tasted bitter, and his head began to buzz like the wings of Hermes, the messenger of the gods. It was not the gruelling price of the earthly nectar in the halls of Eshek that made him sway, but the weight of the many drops he had swallowed in the hope of escaping the twilight of the spirit.

The despondent sufferer often thought like a forceless old man of the tyrant of his everyday life, the master of the pen and the endless documents, whose hard rulership bent him like a stalk in a storm. He wielded the sceptre of the office with powerful hands, and Franky, the lowly one, dared not rebel. In the evening, when the lights went out and the stars twinkled in the firmament, Franky lay in his lonely bed, his tears bitter as salt, and sighed at the cold that reigned not only in the air but deep in his chest.

But that night, as the stars made their course across the firmament, he sought solace in the disco of Eshek, among the luminous figures who honoured the gods of dance with rhythmic movements. Desperate, but with a spark of hope, he strove for the warmth that was denied him in the nights and desired the closeness of a muse whose favour was not granted to him by fate.

The deceptive favour of Aphrodite

As if in a dream, half drunk, half awake, Franky, the slave on record, suddenly caught sight of a figure whose beauty made the rays of Helios pale. She was as slender as the cypresses on the hills of Arcadia, and her eyes shone like the stars above the snow-covered summit of the Donnersberg. Her gaze fell on him, the clumsy one and resembling Hephaestus in appearance. As if in a miracle, the servile Officios Assistandides felt the warmth that his heart had been without for ages.

The lady, like the foam-born goddess, dressed in a robe that carried the colours of the night, approached him like the moon to the still waters, and spoke to him with a voice like the song of the sirens. Her hands, gentle as the breeze that blows over the seas, clasped his, and she drew him into the round dance. Oh, how his heart throbbed, like the one of a warrior in his armour preparing for battle!

With every step, with every glance, the confidence grew in him, the downtrodden sluggard of forgotten files, that fate was finally in his favour. Franky, the despised man, found himself in the arms of a goddess, and the gleam in his eyes reflected the joy that the gods rarely grant to men. Her words wrapped around him like the snakes of the Gorgon, and he fell for her charms, drunk and dazed.

‘Come,’ she whispered, her lips so close to his ear that his blood began to boil like Peleid's in anger. ‘Come with me, let us flee into the darkness, where no eyes can see us and no ears can hear us.’ And Franky, mesmerised by her spell, followed her as if he were one of the unfortunate ones who obeyed the song of the rock-born.

The frights of the night

Their footsteps led them into an alley, far from the lights and sounds of the golden Eshek, into the shadows that even Hades knew to fear. The laughter died away, the footsteps faded, and the darkness fell like a veil around them. Franky, in his folly, still believed in the happiness that the night promised him, unaware that a merciless fate accompanied by the laughter of the gods awaited him.

Suddenly the air changed, the warmth disappeared and a chill crept over his skin that would make even the fearless son of Peleides tremble. The lady, so divine in her beauty, began to change like the Proteus of the seas, and what was once soft skin turned to scaly darkness. Her eyes, once so radiant, now glowed like the coals of the underworld, and from her mouth, which had once seduced him with sweet words, came a hissing as from the mouths of Hydra

The unfortunate lover boy, caught in the embrace of horror, realised his fate, but the realisation came too late. The figure that was once the image of beauty now revealed its true face - a creature from the deepest nightmares, a creature that did not belong in this world. Her body expanded, becoming a monster that surpassed even those lost ones, punished by the wrath of the gods, in its hideous form. The claws of the cursed, sharp as the blade of Ares, dug into his skin.

Frozen in horror, without the strength to scream, The flesh watched as the world around him disappeared, swallowed up by the darkness emanating from the creature. No hero stood by his side, no God answered his silent prayers. Alone and abandoned, just as he had spent his whole life, Franky was absorbed, his life extinguished like the flame of a candle in a storm, and the night swallowed him whole. So the cursed man sailed into the world of shadows without Charon's tribute, doomed to walk forever on the desolate banks of the Styx, wailing.

However, the creature moved on along stygian paths, insatiably seeking the next delicious meal that was foolish enough to follow it into the darkness

But the gods, indifferent to the suffering of mortals, averted their eyes.

© 2024 Q.A.Juyub alias Aldhar Ibn Beju