CHAPTER FOUR
WORSHIP
As a child, Mina would sleepwalk constantly.
Waking in odd places around the house with his mother’s hand wrapped protectively around his arm or his father’s gripped sternly at the back of his neck.
Even as a college student, he still occasionally woke up standing in the kitchen or pacing his tiny hallway, usually induced by bad eating habits when he was in the middle of a particularly difficult stretch of classwork.
Mina was familiar with the feeling of waking standing up and in shock.
So, as consciousness slowly washed over him, his first thought was, No more Taco Bell, followed by, What an insane dream.
But as Mina opened his eyes and took in the dark room around him, his memory resurfaced, and he realized: not a dream. He was lost deep beneath the Temple of Abydos. He had encountered an ancient god who was going to show him the meaning of supplication, which didn’t sound great.
As the blur cleared from Mina’s eyes, he saw that he was in a different room now.
A room fit for a king. Or a god. The ceilings, at least 20 feet high, held chandeliers of flame that bathed the room in a soft orange glow.
And there was gold—glittering gold everywhere.
Statues of jackals and cats as tall as Mina.
Beautiful plates and bowls piled on thick, glossy wood furniture.
Porcelain vases with richly colored depictions of mummification.
And covering about fifty percent of the walls, a collage of vivid artwork that seemed to depict varying scenes of Egyptian life.
Some appeared to be unfinished, as if the artist had merely stepped away for a moment.
As Mina took in the room, another realization came to him with a dizzying dread. He couldn’t move. His shoulders ached, and his hands felt like water balloons, numb and bloated, tied behind his back.
Bound.
Mina stepped forward but only made it about a foot before snapping back and almost falling backward into the stone wall behind him. He looked back and saw that the ropes that bound his hands were also attached to the wall.
And then, like a spray of cold water, Mina realized something else—his clothes were gone.
His blue polo and khakis had been removed, and in their place was some kind of white skirt or kilt, similar to what most of the male figures were depicted wearing in all of the art Mina had seen on the walls of the temple.
As he inspected himself, he noticed something else.
He was shiny. From head to toe, it looked like he’d been covered in a thin layer of oil so that his pale body shone.
The shine made the hard ripples of his stomach and sinewy muscles of his legs glisten like raw chicken, and Mina’s stomach roiled; his cheeks burned.
He pulled against his restraints but accomplished nothing more than pushing the integrity of his shoulder joints to their limits and tightening the knot against his wrists.
“Help!” Mina shouted into the empty room. “Can anyone hear me?”
A deep shudder in the stones beneath his feet.
A familiar smokiness in the air dizzying his thoughts.
From the far corner of the room, a shape. A moving shadow with pointed ears, long fingers, and shoulders twice as wide as Mina.
The jackal god emerged, a work of ancient, terrifying art come to life.
He had a dark, wolfish face and eyes that glowed red like embers.
A black skirt hung low on his hips, gold and blue woven across the waist and hanging down to just above the knees.
Golden cuffs studded with red and blue gems adorned his neck and the thick bulge of his biceps, and gold hoops lined the lobes and sides of his ears.
The god shone like a galaxy.
When he came to a stop just a few feet away, Mina fought the urge of every cell in his body to cower back into the wall. He knew that some wild animals reacted to fear with violence. Did that logic apply to ancient animal-like monster gods?
Looking around for something, anything that might hint toward a way out of this, Mina noticed that in one hand, the creature carried what looked like a shepherd’s crook. In the other, something that looked uncomfortably close to a whip. Mina squirmed against the leather straps around his wrists.
One of the creature’s pointed ears twitched, and his head cocked to the side. “It is a flail.” His voice had changed. In place of the voice that sent dizzying vibrations through Mina’s body was a human voice. Deep and strong, guttural even, but still human.
“It is used for winnowing,” the god continued. “Separating the grain from the husk. The crook you have guessed. Symbols of my authority.”
The god stepped closer. Mina stepped back.
“I hear the worship in your mind.” The god’s sleek black snout wrinkled up, taking in the air in front of him as his red eyes rolled momentarily back in his dark skull.
“I feel the want inside you. I smell the lust coursing through you like a river. And yet each of these things you deny. Gifts which you hide, even from yourself.”
Mina couldn’t stop himself from staring up into the god’s red eyes as they searched his face.
His heart. His soul. Mina felt exposed. A live wire cut from its casing.
He watched the working of the sleek muscles in the god’s long, canine jaw.
The blood pumping through the veins that bulged in his arms. His downy fur glistening with a sheen, whether of oil or sweat or some natural animal musk, Mina wasn’t sure.
The thing deep and low in his stomach pulsed.
Mina shook a wave of dizziness from his head.
“Why am…” Mina’s voice was low and raspy. He cleared it and tried again. “Why am I wearing a skirt? Where are my clothes? And why am I shiny?”
“The garment you are now wearing is called a shendyt. You soiled your other garments in fear. And the anointing of oil will keep your wounds clean.”
The jackal god stepped closer again, so that his warm breath of smoke and spice poured over Mina’s face and bare chest, sending a chill racking through his body. A guttural growl escaped the jackal’s jaws.
He held up the tools in his hands. “These are what I use to shepherd and provide for the souls in my care. And they are what I shall use to shepherd you. I feel your desire. I can taste it.” With lightning speed, Anubis flung his arm forward, and the flail struck the wall, sending a deafening crack through the room.
And as it did, Mina’s arms fell to his sides. The god stepped back.
Mina’s wrists were free. Mina searched the room for a way out, everything in him screaming to run.
“Your journey has begun. I have released you. Now you will release yourself.”
“Excuse me?” Mina rubbed his sore wrists, the slick oil already soothing the puffy red rings.
“Touch yourself, son of man. Touch the flesh you crave.”
Mina’s mind reeled, his eyes darting around the room. Where is the door?
The creature continued. “You should never devote yourself to a god in whom you do not trust. You will trust me in time. But the first god you must trust, the first you must love, is yourself.”
This wasn’t happening. There was no way.
This god, this monster, wanted to watch him play with himself?
Was that really what all this was about?
Captured by a perverted deity who got off on watching guys fondle themselves?
He looked down at his half-naked body. The low thing in his belly ached, and Mina squirmed against it.
Anubis’s eyes blazed red, and he raised his flail. But this time, instead of cracking it into the empty room, he cracked it down across the flesh of Mina’s torso.
“Aaah!” Mina doubled over, cocooning his stomach with his hands. “Fu…Jesus Christ,” he hissed through gritted teeth. Slowly, Mina straightened to inspect himself. Already, three bright stripes flared across his pale white belly. “What the hell was that?”
“I see your desires. They do not match your words. It is not good for a man to split himself in this way. Say no to your heart enough, and it will eventually cease to speak. You’ve heard it said that before you can love someone else fully, you must be able to love yourself?
In the same way, before you can feel the fullness of desire, know the completion of joy in the perfect natural beauty of flesh, you must first feel the flames of desire for yourself. ”
The god stepped forward, pressing a warm knuckle to the underside of Mina’s jaw, tipping his head to look up.
His voice grew soft, the blazing eyes cooling to a dull red.
“I will help you. Because I am your shepherd now. I will give your heart what it wants, even if your clouded mind attempts to rob you of happiness. And of pleasure.”
Mina eyed the flail. “I really don’t understand what you want from me.”
“I want you to see yourself for what you are.”
Mina swallowed. “Which is?”
The god stooped down so that his massive face completely consumed Mina’s vision. “A flame,” he growled. “A small one for now—choked nearly down to an ember—but still a flame. You are a sensual being, wild and dangerous and mesmerizing. Let yourself feel the heat rise up from within you.”
The god stood and stepped away, a few seconds later bringing back what looked like a large mirror, tall and oval-shaped, framed in gold and held up by a wooden easel. In it, Mina could see his whole body reflected back at him, still shining and bright red across the stomach.
“You must be brought out into the open. Exposed for your barest self and most primal parts so that you can build yourself back up into the blaze you desire to be. I sense that potential within you. You want to burn. To rage. To become a conflagration. Look at yourself in the silver. Love yourself.”
Mina looked at his body in the mirror. Too pale. Too thin. Not strong enough. Not man enough.
Not pure enough.
Not son enough.