How Many Drachmae is an Eternity Worth?

It started with a man, once bulbous, now skeletal, as he slaved over molten silver day in and day out, creating drachmae for his ruthless, handsome Master.

His palms were bright pink and puffy and cracked, the tips of his fingers calloused and hardened like Medusa’s victims, no less monstrous than the gorgon herself. He was a rich man once but fell gloriously from grace and was now the subject of his own torture.

This will make sense later, you must trust me, for I do not want to give it all away so quickly—I like to tell stories like mysteries. I am told being mysterious is attractive and let us be honest, I am nothing if not mysterious. And attractive.

Anyway, this man, this deeply flawed man, faced his fate with a cowardice that pleased his Master endlessly. He wept over the silver and his Master delighted in whipping him, telling him to stop spilling his tears into the many unmade drachmae. But this man, you see, he eventually grew accustomed to the torture. There was a time when he stopped making the drachmae and his Master had to punish him, over and over and over again, until the man eventually broke and got on with his duty.

The Master soon came to realise that it was not the making of the drachmae that he wanted from his slave. It was the man’s agony. Whenever he stopped screaming so deliciously, stopped groaning so contemptuously in his endless labours, the spectacle was over. Even when he was not slacking off, he worked meticulously slow, saying he wanted to make the drachmae perfect for his Master. But it was not perfection the Master was after, and the man knew it.

I must admit, I am quite fond of this story.

I marvel at the creations, the scenarios, the settings. The lovely, glorious, bloody torture of my subjects. My daydreams can get quite fanciful, I must admit, for when a man swindled me for an extra drachma I had a very similar dark fantasy.

I imagined him slaving away over molten silver, making drachmae for hours upon hours, days upon days, years upon years … eons upon eons, perhaps. Yes, that sounded lovely. And when he reached an impossibly large number, an uncountable number of drachmae, the molten silver would rise as if from the deepest depths of Tartarus itself and consume him.

Slowly, of course, yes. His skin would peel and his throat would be cleansed by endless screams. Until the silver recedes, and he must live through it again. I know what you’re thinking: ‘But what if he just stops making the drachmae?’.

Ah, dear reader, I have thought of that. I am not so blinded by my hubris to not recognise the flaws in my fantasies. I imagine that when he stops making the drachmae, the molten silver would rise anyway, his only respite from the agonising pain the exhausting labour that only delays the inevitable. You are probably thinking that I am a psychopath—quite the opposite, dear reader.

I am an emotionally in-touch and cunning genius.

I have my reasons. And my reason for this dark fantasy was that this man was plump—so plump, in fact, that his bulging ankles were purple from glutton—but what weighed down his body the most was not his fat, but the many bags of drachmae in his pockets.

Despite the wealth he carried, the imbecile still swindled me an extra drachma. And while it is true that I am no poor man, the blatant greed is, at best, deeply irritating. See? I am no psychopath. A sociopath mayhap, but not a psychopath. I am well aware that my stories and my fantasies are my way of coping with the monotonous outrage of the earth and its petty, petty people.

I am rambling, I’ve realised. My apologies, you did not take the time to read this just to indulge in my undoubtedly entertaining observations. I wanted to tell you a story, one of my favourite stories in fact—the one about the slave and his Master.

The Master just had a glorious idea. Oh yes, so marvellous it was. It almost makes me envious that I had not come up with the idea earlier. It was a true stroke of genius.

The Master—with his dark, silken hair and glowing blue-fire eyes—entered the man’s workshop one day with an air of true importance. The shadows seemed to follow him like black hounds and his long, luxurious trench coat levitated just above the ground, curling around his ankles as though this glorious Master had command of the very air he breathed and all its pungent smell of Death.

And when he spoke—oh dear reader, I must tell you it was quite the sound. So deep, so earth shaking. He commanded such respect that his mere voice compelled the man to his knees.

‘You have been here for quite some time,’ the Master said, drawing out his words because even he knew his voice sounded heavenly. Or should I say devilish? I think it fits this character a bit better, he sounds more hellish than heavenly—in a good way. In a very, very delightful way.

Anyway, this Master of his said, ‘You have been working so tirelessly for me, so meticulously, and so… perfectly.’

The way he said ‘perfectly’ was a bit sour sounding—it was pretty obvious that he was quite riled up. I cannot say I blame the guy. I would be too. Ha!

And so, the Master in all his cunning genius decided to be merciful.

‘You are free to wander up there,’ he said, referring to… the top of a very tall hill. Where the grass actually grew green, not brown and spiky, and where the man’s home was. The Master knew this. And I must admit that this slave was actually quite cunning himself, as he was immediately suspicious of his Master’s intentions. Legitimately so, I suppose. But he accepted his Master’s generous proposal.

‘A single day in which you can do whatever you please,’ he said to the man. ‘Do not waste a single moment.’

And so, he clawed his way out of his hellish workshop and wandered the endless grassy plains of his home. The grass was silky soft beneath his feet, the soil a deep brown and cool to the touch, but he did not stop for even a moment to marvel at the beauty of the life all around him.

I found it quite odd that even after so much time in a place of such encompassing Death like his workshop, he still did not stop to quote-unquote ‘smell the roses’. He was an odd fellow, I give him that.

I suppose you are wondering how I know so much about this man’s story, or maybe whether I am just making it up. It is all true, I assure you. I got it from the horse’s mouth, I assure you, my sources are quite reliable and not at all biased. Must I say ‘I assure you’ again to properly assure you? Or are you still somehow sceptical of my accounts? I assure you, I am a great storyteller, and that is all that matters in the end, no?

Anyway, back to the story at hand. The Master was not done with his plan. For when his slave wandered the living world, he planted a reminder in the slave’s vision. A clock of sorts, slowly but surely ticking down to nothing. Well, it wasn’t precisely a clock but rather a feeling of impending doom and an innate sense of loss of time. His vision grew gradually more vignetted. But it’s best you imagine a clock, I know that makes a bit more sense to you, my sceptical reader.

What truly delighted the Master was the man’s immediate panic. Now, so deliciously and anxiously aware of his very limited time, the man ran across the plains for as long as he could, until he came across a rider on a luxurious chestnut stallion and forcefully unseated her. He did not look back at her. He was so careless as to not realise that he’d just stolen a horse from a girl no older than sixteen and left her crying for her beloved Atlas.

It was a marvel, I think, that even in such circumstances the man found a way to be an arsehole. To steal from another who was less well-off than he was when he was free. It certainly made me feel more justified in my actions. But I digress.

I know his time was more than halfway through when he reached his hometown, and I know this because it is quite impossible to forget the sheer panic in his muddy eyes, nor the droplets of sweat that coursed down from his hairline despite not having exerted much energy himself. The stress was getting to him, and his Master, who’d been watching him from the shadows, was deeply pleased by this.

Atlas, the stolen stallion, did all the work getting the slave there and just as he’d left the girl in the dust, the man didn’t think of gifting the stallion with an apple, or a carrot, or something. It was quite rude.

I actually spoke to my brother—who is a brilliant horse whisperer by the way—and he told me he had no doubt that Atlas was annoyed with the slave.

‘He smelled of Death,’ my brother told me with a twinge of disgust in his tone. ‘No horse likes that smell.’

That reminds me, I’d forgotten to tell you why I really despised the plump man that I was talking about earlier—remember him? Immediately following the events in which the idiot swindled me a drachma, he passed by a horse, but that’s not really an important detail. It is why I remembered, you see.

I decided to follow him for a little while, but it only took a minute for me to see how truly vile this man was. I watched as a swift pickpocket child swiped a drachma from the plump man’s pocket and quickly got caught in a fat, sausage-fingered grip.

He yelled for the lawmakers (police for those reading this in English in the 21st century), and sure enough, they came and followed his every whim. He ordered that the child be whipped and beaten. He ordered them to keep going until the boy stopped moving.

I was outraged at this plump man for punishing the boy for stealing a drachma that was not even his! It was mine, damn it!

I apologise for getting so riled up. This man was truly the bane of my existence, I must say. Thoughts of him and what he’d done plagued my mind for eons. That bloody drachma in his fat fingers irked me.

Anyway, I suppose this is a good segue back into the other story because the slave passes through the main street in which this very event happened.

He did not seem to take notice of how the once untarnished brickwork of the main square had now browned and cracked, as if Cronus personally visited and defiled his home. He did not take notice of the very bricks on which the pickpocket boy was beaten. The slave, in truth, was too plagued by thoughts of his lady wife, whom the Master knew he would attempt to find in his limited time.

Though, what the Master failed to predict was the passion that would ensue when he did finally find his lady wife. You see, when the slave was free and rich and plump, he bought himself a lovely, young girl. In all the years he’d been gone, slaving away for the Master, she’d grown into a lovely woman. Even I must acknowledge her beauty—it was as if she were blessed by Aphrodite herself!

Her gorgeous, luscious locks of gold hugged her bosom quite satisfyingly and were long enough that the strands fell over their uncovered form in an act of real-life censorship, like that one scene from Game of Thrones. The point is, by the time he returned to her, she was of legal age (by your current standards) and so he fucked her quite doggedly.

I regretted that. I really did not want to see that. Or rather, I did not want to see the man. His lady wife was perfectly fine, though she did not seem to enjoy his company. It begs the question, truly, why would she want to fuck this man? This man that had so suddenly gone missing years ago?

I figured mayhap he was more attractive than he used to be, considering the labours and starvation his Master put him through. To be honest, anything would be more attractive than what he used to look like, even though he bore oozing scratches on his arms, hands, and fingernails from clawing his way to Life. Then I realised, with just a little pity, that she dared not reject his advances.

Once they were done—fairly quickly, if you care to know—they dressed, and he told his lady wife what happened to him.

‘I was kidnapped,’ he said, ‘and forced to slave away in this dark cave for so long …’

And blah blah blah. This is the most boring part in my opinion, so I am going to skip it. Nothing important happens, I assure you. Mysterious and attractive, my dear reader, never forget that.

This next part is my favourite part of the entire story, so read closely. What happened was that the man suddenly noticed his lack of time. It was so close to nothing that he panicked and reached out for his wife. She was confused, but only for the remaining second he had, and then they were suddenly in his Hellish workshop.

I must tell you, I was very, very pleased to see her. As I approached, I slow clapped, and the man glared at me with such venom I could taste it on my tongue. It was delicious.

His lady wife, however, was not so angry with me as she was with her husband. I stood back and watched with the most shit-eating grin as she screamed at him and hit him and cursed him out, damning him for all he was worth for dragging her down into this Hellhole. As she glanced at me, she seemed to know I wouldn’t correct his action. She was stuck there forever, so she took it out on her oh so beloved husband.

My plan had worked out quite swimmingly—much better than I anticipated, actually. I figured that the slave’s temporary freedom would only increase his mental anguish, for he had forgotten what he lost, what he had been missing out on. But he did me a true service in making his eternity worse (worse!) by damning himself to an irate woman for the rest of his miserable existence.

I laughed at them as they squabbled and—when I finally got bored—the man turned his attention to me and cussed me out. It was truly amusing. I just had to stare into his soul.

I very much enjoyed pointing out to him that he had not been making my drachmae since his return: ‘I do not appreciate you slacking despite my generosity.’

The sheer fear that flashed in his eyes was delectable. As the molten silver rose once more and consumed his fleshy body, his bloodcurdling screams were like Orpheus’s voice to my ears.

‘Curse you, Hades! Curse you!’

Anyway.

His wife stood untouched and unfazed in the river of silver. I commanded a lovely, spiky whip from the shadows into her grasp. Her eyes flashed so brightly when she looked at me, and I could have sworn I saw a little smile tugging at her lips. It would not be long before her husband regenerated, and she could put it to good use.

And that is the end of the story. Quite a great one, if you ask me. My best one since Sisyphus. Though, when I brought that pickpocket boy to my throne room, told him this story in all its glorious gory detail, and then escorted him to look upon the molten and mercilessly whipped body, he turned pale, then green, and I had to get the Underworld janitor to clean his stomach contents up.

Strange thing, that is, a dead boy throwing up.

Euri Glenn is a neurodivergent writer, editor, poet, and actor from Jambreen (Tamborine Mountain), currently based in Magandjin (Brisbane). They are pursuing a Master of Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Queensland, while serving as the Publisher and Editor in Chief of Jacaranda Journal. Euri's creative and editorial work is driven by a deep love for speculative storytelling, with a particular passion for fantasy, dystopian, science-fiction, and post-apocalyptic. In her spare time, Euri is almost always working on at least two manuscripts at once. Through her work, she seeks to inspire meaningful change for the world and all the creatures who dwell within it.

You can find her on Instagram @euri.chelsea.glenn and TikTok @euriglenn, and her other publications here.