The Emporium of Disputed Goods.

My job was a simple one. When the fight for the possession of man's worldly goods became too vast for the simplistic minds of the foolish rabble to handle, they would be delivered to me for care, consideration and cataloging  Within those walls I was owner of naught, controller of all. From Golden Geese to Jason's Golden Fleece then from Holy Grail's and Tablet's of Destiny I, Mr Lynx, presided over them all. I knew each with such debased intimacy, I almost repulsed even myself.

Even the fire that lined the dank stone walls were stolen by man, a flickering animal fat scented insult to their godly parents above them. And for what? Each time I passed them I laughed smug with superiority, what fools I had thought those Heroes to be! Blatant acts of blasphemy – exile from paradise – for nothing. No glory, no hope just the inevitable dusty shelf; baubles of my infinite amusement.

Each morning I rose and pushed the trolley of new additions through the eight hexagonal corridors which comprised The Emporium of Disputed Goods, which radiated inward, spiraling down into a final inner sanctum. Each door way I passed I would loosen my tie that little bit more and drew my handkerchief even closer to my nose.

No matter how many times I walked that path, I would never have accustomed myself the the stench of half rotten flesh and formaldehyde. However, no matter how much revulsion rose in my gullet I would press on each day. Like the sacrificial lamb to love I was. Each night I would toast to devotion and each morning I would rise and pray to the beat of desire. The name of my altar was Helen. Her divine light of beauty drew my soul in day after day.

The tribute I had brought her that fateful day was a dagger of exquisite workmanship and frightful beauty but little had a known, it was to be the implement of destruction for my entire world.

I kept Helen apart from the other bodies in the inner sanctum, their frigid blue green and cumbersome frames were no suitable company for her heavenly fragility. I would whip my duster quickly across their forms so I could better spend the remainder of my time laboriously polish and and adorning Helen's prismic coffin with only the most exquisite items that came into my grasp. Each day I would swear in feverish whispers that I would sacrifice anything for her, foolishly pledging myself to her beauty and to serve her always. Each day I would seal the contract by the way of a kiss upon her stone cold lips as I anointed her body with exotic and seductive fragrances. On the lonelier days my touch would linger on.

What a fool I was.

That afternoon in which the path to my downfall was trodden, I was first alerted to the wheels of fate turning the babies that lined the walls of the inner sanctum shook in their formaldehyde. Ghoulishly rattling in their jars 10:1 to every strike to the outer walls. Pulling away and closing the door of my beloved's confine, I had struggled to catch my breath as the strikes grew louder. Drawing a single breath I had hunched my shoulders and looked warily around. And I had listened.

Either they were hitting harder. Or they were getting closer.

I scrambled in my pockets, the delicate blade I had brought for my adored fell from my grasp as the rhythmic rise and fall of the war chant drew closer; crescendoing with the sound of rattling bricks and splintering wood, then decrementing in the high pitched scream of china striking stone. Scrambling with the key to Helen's display case I paused only to look back, wiping the moistness of fear from my eyes as I scrambled for the familiar curse of Helen's gold cast key.

I looked down, spluttering my frustration – had it been so I could see or that she wouldn't see my tears? At that point I hadn't had time to decide – the clatter of fallen armor and the cries of a few unlucky enough to cross paths with a dismounted spear had confirmed to me that they just one doorway away.

From what I recall it was at that point that I knew my demise was at hand, there scrambling hysterically on the floor by Helen's feet. It was just that I had not expected the source of the malicious blow.

I turned my head to the heavens in desperation. Joy ripped through my heart as I saw Helen standing above me. But in one dreadful second I realized how that face could have launched a thousand ships. The angelic contours that had once defined her features were now a contortion of pain and rage, eyes wild in a crazed sneer which drove a lance of dread through my temple, paralyzing me where I knelt. Her chest heaved like Poseidon 's tempest and the delicate knife stood rigid in her cold clasped palm, both watching my and hungering for my flesh.

Each space between the seconds that past became increasingly more dreadful than the last. The speed that the horror rose in my chest was matched only by the blood which pour and the pain that ripped through my body. The delicate tribute I had brought my beloved just that morning sang it's way between my pectoral muscles. As I cried a blood curdling falsetto I was slit from chin to groin. The strike of my heart now thundering to the beat of the war cries of the Trojan and Spartan warriors, splitting open the doors to the inner sanctum.

As her cold fingers peeled back the skin from my chest as a child greedily tears the wrapping from a lovingly prepared gift, questions never to be answered raced through my mind. Had I not cared for her? Had I not provided her with all that a woman should desire? Had I not loved her in the most complete sense both spiritually and physically?

Through the blood and tears I saw her reveling  nay wallowing in ecstasy – my skin slipping across her lips and down her face, coming to rest upon her still having chest. Her face, congealed with blood and madness she turned to me and that sweet voice I had longed to hear, bitterly cried:

“I will not let them take me.”

It was in that instant that I realized that I, in a haze of desire and the blindness of love, had foolishly pledged my self to her and now here she was, to collect her debt. As I began to succumb to the pain infesting the void where my skin had once been, the last image that was seared into my memory was my divine love drenched in my own blood.

I have much time to muse upon that day and the images of Helen that still haunt my mind as I lie here in some vast hall of Greece, some great palace overlooks a vast city. Do not ask me which one for I had never ventured from my Emporium, my haven, not even in my dreams, before that fated day. But even now I am not myself, I am not he, not Mr Lynx, he has not left the Emporium. Helen's ripped and torn skin is bound and crudely sewn around my façade. Her delicate eyelashes surround my eyes which look over the waves crashing just short of the horizon. Although my stitches are ugly with congealed blood and wasting muscle fibre I am surrounded by great beauty. Wreaths and soft blossoms line my cradle playfully scenting the air in an attempt to drown my own stench, exquisite cloths and the finest embroidery drape around the worst of my misshapen limbs. Gifts, tributes possessions... useless. Now I am doomed to lie here, owner of plenty but controller of naught.