Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In Action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy
5
365 B.C.
Dio and Manes made good time on the road to Athens. Manes, bless his creepy, crooked little heart, kept up the first mile or so before Diogenes clubbed him like a baby seal and slung him over his shoulder for another thirty.
By sunset, they'd made it most the way to Athens and fully to an inn on the side of the road. It was not lively, despite the warm lamplight escaping its windows. An unhelpful sign hung above its door, the text on it resembling Baby Bear’s cursive lessons.
Dio lumbered through the door and slammed Manes onto the bar with a loud DING and a groan. “One moment,” came a cry from somewhere in the inn, along with what Dio thought sounded the tone of twisting metal. “Be just… right… there we go!”
“Manes!” Dio yelled. “Wake up!” Dio wondered if the little sneak was dead. An idle thought easily tested. Holding his four-foot-tall frame up in the air by his cloak with his left hand, he slapped Manes across what passed for his face with the other.
This conjured a groan from the poor man and Dio dropped him on the floor, satisfied second degree murder hadn't stuck. As Manes tried pulling himself together, Dio perused the price board hanging over the bar. At least, he thought that’s what it was.
All the services listed, such as Room or Wine were crisply written in a confident hand. The prices next to them, however, appeared angrily gouged like the sign outside had. Dio couldn't crack the code, lacking the necessary brain damage known as culture.
He was still vainly squinting when an average looking man of average height and average weight descended the stairs, wiping red paint off his hands onto a rag. “Hiya! Welcome to Krusty's! I'm Krusty! What can I do for you?”
“I need a room. Manes needs a room and a doctor, maybe.”
“Well, I can help with the room,” Krusty declared happily. “Not the doctor, though.”
“That's fine. I'm sure he'll quit bleeding on his own,” Dio shot his untrusted slave-kick a sharp glance. “Right?”
“Yes, master,” Manes moaned. “I don't like my bleeding either, master.”
“Could've fooled me,” Dio turned back to face the innkeeper. He noticed there was something wrong with his eyes, but he couldn't tell you exactly what. Just wrong. “How much for two rooms, Krusty? This guy’s bleeding will keep me up all night.”
Krusty pointed up at the sign over his head. “The prices are clearly listed, sir.”
“I'll have to take your word on that. Does an obol cover it?”
“No. That's not enough.”
“How about a drachma?”
“No. That's entirely too much.”
“You don't want too much?”
“No. I want just right.”
“And how much is that?”
“The prices are clearly listed, sir. Are you some kind of illiterate deviant?”
“Almost certainly. Are you a cunt?”
“Maybe? I don't know what that is.”
“I suspected as much. Its Italian barbarian for a real cool dude.” Dio began placing ten-year-old obols from Sinope on the counter one at a time. “Tell me when I'm up to just right then, cunt.”
Krusty glowed at the compliment, his eyes focused on the emerging coins. When three obols counted out, he stopped Dio with a hand and said, “Perfection! Let me show you to your rooms.” He waved at the two travelers to follow him up the stairs.
Pushing open the second door along the hall, they entered a room nondescript in every sense, including the narrators. The most noteworthy item in it was a most average looking bed with a metal frame. It looked to be about five feet long.
Krusty swept his hand through the air, as if revealing a secret. “The perfect room, I'm sure you agree. Inoffensive and just right. The next room is yours,” he told Dio. “Checkout is at eleven. See you in the morning!” The bore even managed to wink.
“Yep, sure,” Dio said as the innkeeper left before turning to Manes, who managed to hobble onto the bed and collapse. “Try not to bleed all over it, Manes. Don’t be rude.”
“There's some blood here already, master,” Manes complained. “I didn't do that, master.”
Dio was already out the door and into his own perfectly boring and utterly utilitarian room. The same bed, the same room, a perfect copy. It presented a bit of a challenge, considering his own height of six feet on a five-foot bed.
But what good was philosophy if such a trifle bothered the philosopher?
A faint screech woke Dio from his sleep. Odd, considering falling off his tiny bed hadn't. He peered about his dark room from the floor in vain. Obviously, he saw nothing. It was dark. But there it was again. The faintest of squeals. Curious.
He opened his door quietly and peered down the hall. Light oozed from underneath Manes' door, along with a muffled groan. Curiouser.
Stealthing his way to the door, he silently pushed it open to a macabre scene straight out of myth. Literally. The curiousest yet.
Krusty stood by the bed, twisting a crank, revealing the mystery of the damned noise. Half the mystery. The remaining screeches surfaced through a gag stuffed deep in Manes’ mouth with each turn of the crank. He had manacles binding his legs and feet.
The innkeeper had him on a rack disguised as a bed, stretching him out like pasta. Dio simply reacted without enjoying the scene, knocking him on the back of the head like a baby cow. He collapsed with a whine and whimper to his perfect floor.
Surveying first his own and then Krusty’s work, Dio asked, “Now boys. What in Hades is going on in here?”
Manes, stretched tight on the rack, could only moan against his gag. He looked, well, for lack of a better word, straight spined with his shoulders back, and if he could have stood at that very moment would have gained a full foot in height. “Mmmmmf!”
“Oh,” Dio said. “Right. Let's get that out of your mouth and try again. Bet you've never gotten to say that! Hiyo!”
“Master,” Manes whined. “Why?”
“Because you're gross?”
“No! Why did you stop him, master?”
“He was killing you.”
“I was into it, master!”
“You like being tortured and killed, do you?”
“Just tortured, master!” Manes protested. “I liked it!”
“Get off the bed, you strangely straightened bastard. It's his turn.”
“Yes, master,” Manes grumbled as he hopped off the bed with the grace of an Olympic gymnast. “How about that, master?” He asked as he danced what could only be described as a jig. “Not torture, master! Medicine! I hope it lasts!”
Dio doubted it would as he picked up the unconscious Krusty and slammed him face-up on the bed. He fastened the manacles around his wrists and ankles before slapping him. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “Wake up, Krusty. Time for answers.”
“Wuh?” Krusty whined groggily.
“I know what you are now. You were going to kill this dumb deviant weren't you? Not in the plan, was he?”
“No?” Krusty protested weakly.
“Look, I'm definitely going to kill you, so you may as well tell me the truth. Were you going to kill him?”
“Yes,” Krusty admitted.
“Why?”
“Because people are always too tall or too short! They're never just right!”
“And you are?”
“Obviously.”
“Okay,” Dio replied as he tightened the crank, stretching bone and sinew slowly but surely. “Let me guess. Once you finished with this fool you were going to cut me down to size? My head or feet maybe?”
“Of course,” Krusty admitted between pained gasps and grinding teeth. “You're too tall for the bed!”
“I am. Bit of an outlier. So was Manes. But why is that your problem?”
“I like things a certain way. They need to be elegant. I have a world-to-mind problem. Oh gods, you’re all sick!”
“Yes,” Dio disagreed. “Yes, you are. How many people have you made just right over the years?”
“I don't know. Couple hundred maybe. So many to go yet."
“Too bad you're not in government.”
“I know! Just imagine making everyone just right! I could do so much good.”
“Hades might give you something,” Dio offered hope alongside death. “If you lobby the other sickos enough. Something in Tartarus, maybe. Middle management type with average benefits. Nothing to impress, mind you, or too useful. Just right.”
Krusty perked up at this. “You think so?”
“Yeah. Sure. Totally. Hades loves little cunts like you.”
“Kill me now!” Krusty happily and proudly demanded with what passed for his whole heart.
With explicit consent, Dio cranked and cranked until the wheel fell off, with Krusty screaming yes until his lungs failed and his sad life fled. Dio placed one coin over each eye and spoke a reverent prayer, “Charon of Styx, these coins are counterfeit.”
He hadn't killed a man in a long while. The exertion left him feeling empty, beyond physical exhaustion. Strangely, that void filled with unexpected admiration. He had to admit Krusty had died with dignity. Well, not that exactly. He'd died like a murderous pervert with political ambitions.
But he'd seen death and embraced it, rather than running from something he couldn't run from. He died grinning, baring his teeth at the Furies. Not in defiance, but in love somehow. Odd and profound from such a common man. No one loved the Furies.
Dio hovered over the corpse, entirely lost in thought. Otherwise, he would have seen the pure murder in Manes’ eyes.
Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In Action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy