THE BRAZEN BULL

The Fruit mutants disgust me. I want to capture one and tie it to a slab in in RightWay Square for the King and all the land to watch as I slice a small hole in its right jugular. This will prove my loyalty to the monarchs. To watch the misfit twitch and gargle on its own perverted blood, coughing and wheezing, gasping for its last breath that it will never breathe again. And just before the creature feels death open its eternal crypt, I close the bleeding gap and stab the left artery. The congregation will cheer as I’m regarded as a true loyalist serving my country.

Then again, I can’t stand the sight of blood. I guess I’ll have to find other means to torment the Fruits and get into good standing with the King.

            “Ben, get back to work!” my supervisor yells, startling me from my daydream. He stands behind the conveyer belt full of Pears of Anguish. The devices are traveling west, which means they’re heading to the testing center. Quality engineers will pump the test subjects’ screams through the sound system for us all to enjoy, and to remind the Swayers who rules this region. I just wish the screaming is more musical than irritating. Most of the Fruits have high pitched whines with no rhythm. After a while, they all sound the same, like you can’t tell them apart.

Once the Pears of Anguish are verified and meet the quality inspection, they are then sold to the interrogators in RightWay Square. It’s Wednesday, which means the PeaceKeepers will gather a new group of Fruits, arrested in whatever slums they come from, and taken to the public gallows for the Dealing. Giant screens in the factory broadcast the Fruits being paraded to center city, naked and chained for our entertainment. Jeers and catcalls echo in erratic intervals from the watching Normals as the sun reflects The Fruits’ mutant rainbow pigment. The King says their unnatural skin color is a reaction from the radiation of the bombs dropped sixty years ago. How they are not extinct by now is unknown to me. It’s like they sprout from some corner of the earth, despite being unable to breed. The King must have a division of loyalists that scour the land for these ingrates.

I watch the Dealings on the screen just above my workstation. In RightWay Square, the Fruits’ arms are pinned behind them and slightly raised for added pain. The King determined that the entertainment from three thousand years ago is far more enjoyable than the technology used before the bombs fell. The Cabinet decided to switch things up and began other forms of gratifying executions. Sometimes the Fruits are masqueraded in pillories before the fantastic finale. As of late, the Dealings are becoming mundane, and the Normals are losing interest. The crowd numbers are decreasing. It’s my job to engineer new techniques to keep the crowd interested. And I take my job seriously. The Fruits do not belong in our society, as written in The Word.

            “There’s got to be a new design that will get me in the King’s good graces,” I whisper to Brody who is drilling into a Fruit skull from last week’s Dealings.

            “Ben, I know you ain’t gonna listen to me, but you need to keep your head down and not let that tyrant know your name.”

            I squinted at my coworker, not liking that he called our King a tyrant. I’m wondering if he is a kaleidoscope empathizer. Before I could ask, the royal alarm sounds. The King is heading our way. My heart races. This is my opportunity to serve the Overlord directly.

            The King stops at a workstation about twenty feet from mine. He pokes at the iron stakes being welded into the upright sarcophagus. “Too dull!” He booms at the service worker whose name I don’t know, nor care. These workers are beneath me. My skill and imagination surpass even my stupid supervisor’s. “Get in, you worthless piece of shit.” The King’s guards shoved the worker into the device he ruined and slammed the door shut. The scream was fast and over quick. “We will not give the Fruits such an easy death,” the King roars to the whole factory. He opens and closes the sarcophagus’s door three times, poking new bleeding holes into the dead worker’s body. The idea is to show the rest of the laborers how important it is to keep the iron stakes dull.

            The factory quiets to less than a whisper. Few are strong enough to speak to the King direct. Few are brave enough. Few live after speaking. But this job is meaningless, degrading. I know my potential and today I will follow fate and prove that I’m destined for greatness.

            “Your Highness,” my voice sounds strained and I know I must dissolve my nerves before he determines my worth. I clear my throat and start again, this time my voice is sturdy and deep. “Your Majesty, the Normals grow weary in RightWay Square. I…”

“Choose your words wisely,” he spoke without looking in my direction, but did stop his tour on the other side of my station. Apparently, he decides I am worthy of a conversation. We still make no eye contact.

            “I have designed a blueprint to awaken the weary crowd, My Lord. A bronze bull to slowly cook the Fruits.” The guards circle around me. I question whether to continue.

            “Hurry with your Bull. Shit. You’re wasting my time.” The King’s pun erupted laughter all around me.

            I continue, “As the Fruit cooks, I have designed tubes with twists that change their screams into music,” I practically throw up my words. He will either kill me or congratulate me. I stood motionless as sweat dripped from my armpits, hoping my shaking hands are unnoticeable.

            His head swivels. His eyes are dark, deep, and pierce a hole in my soul. My knees begin to buckle, but I know this is my one shot to get out of this shithole job and be remembered for millennia.

            “Granted,” is his only response as he pokes at Brody’s Fruit skull still clamped to the worktable and walks into another chamber.

            “Holy shit, Brody. I did it. I got the gig.” I bounce like an eight-year-old catching a severed Fruit ear in the Square. I stop fiddling with iron shrapnel and begin working on my Bronze Bull.

****

The King honors my request of materials; the finest metals, a foundry furnace, oxyacetylene torches, crucibles, and casting tools. My supervisor makes a group of Halfers clean a space in a side-lab within the factory, filled with the best equipment for my design. I unroll my blueprint onto the table, analyzing my process to build this majestic invention. In the King’s honor, I will give the Normals a symphony in RightWay Square for years to come.

            My concept is a life-size bronze bull, larger than a human. The bull’s body is hallowed. There is one opening, one door on one side of the metal carcass. Once the Fruit is locked within the hallowed chamber, a mixture of wood and incense, is lit outside and below its bronze belly. The flames will warm and heat the metal. The internal temperature will cook a Fruit’s flesh like a roast in a crockpot and the smoke from the smoldering body inside will bellow steam out of the bull’s nose. But my invention gets better.

            My favorite part of the design is the symphony for the Normals to enjoy. Within the bull’s skull, lined up with the Fruit’s head, I design an apparatus of twisting, welded tubes that will convert the Fruit’s screams into tranquil, even ethereal, soft sounds of entertainment.

            Days turn into night and back again, as I take short breaks only to rest and eat. I know my design must work perfect or the King will make me an example of poor workmanship and lack of loyalty. It takes me three months to forge my design into existence. Before I announce my accomplishment to the guards, I call to Brody.

            He steps into my lab and I pull the blanket from the bull. “Isn’t it a masterpiece?” I beam.

            Brody looks at my design, and turns his forehead toward the floor. His voice is small, “This is shameful, Ben” and walks toward the door.

My response was not so small. “Shameful!?!? It is you who are shameful! This magnificenceis brazen, and when I’m in the King’s good favor, I will report your disobedience.

Brazen. The word melded and twirled in my brain. Brody is right, my bull is brazen and that is what I will call it.

****

            “My Lord, I present to you, the Brazen Bull,” I announced with enthusiasm. This bull will put me in good favor.

            The King paces the circumference of the bronze beast, rubbing his beard as he moves.

            I interject, “My King, this majestic device will slowly burn the rainbow flesh of Fruits. His screams will come to you through the pipes as the tenderest, most pathetic, most melodious of bellowings.” I pause, wondering how I will be awarded, wondering who will be first to experience the pain while we enjoy the song of his demise.

            The King looks pleased. “You have outdone yourself.” He snaps his fingers to a near by guard. I’m elated to watch my invention work first hand. The King must be ordering his guard to drag a Fruit from the SharkPonds. My anticipation grows. I have done well.

The King’s grin grows into a ravenous sneer, “Get in.”

            “What? Wait.”

            Guards circle around me like vultures above RightWay Square. I kick and scream. They punch, pinch, and kick me as I struggle. My blood sprays a guard in the face. He spits in mine. I fight until the King’s men throw me in my own creation, slamming the door and starting a fire under the belly of my brazen bull. The pain is excruciating. My flesh smolders and I scream.

The End