Tartarus, Day 1
They’d left him there without a word. He’d have liked one—he thought he deserved that. A gloat, at least, a “now you’ll get what’s coming to you.” But the gods left him with nothing.
He seemed to be in a broad basin perhaps a hundred yards across. A loose ring of rocks enclosed it; he could not see to their tops. In the flat, glaring light they were featureless. Through gaps between them Sisyphus could see sheer drops into darkness. He shuddered.
A knoll with a flattened top stood in the center of the basin. It was an easy climb for a shade like him. From its top he could see nothing but the endless rock of Tartarus ringed about him. At the bottom of the knoll was a boulder, roundish, about shoulder high to the man he’d been. Sisyphus dismissed it as of no importance.
He sat on top of the knoll and looked at the ring of rock and the flat sky. He waited. No birds sang. No wind blew. In the dull light his eye had nowhere to rest and nothing to do except drift occasionally to the dark gaps. He looked away, but they lingered in his awareness like a stain.
Nothing happened. Sisyphus had expected something…more. Birds eating his liver. An ever-receding pool. What kind of torture was this for him, a king, the man who had taken Death prisoner?
A heat burned in him at the memory. He kept himself warm with it, but began to wish for nightfall, just for a change.
Then night fell.
+++++
sun through high, flat clouds
I long for an honest
shadow