troy – april 24th 1184 

the night before the invasion of troy, diomedes, noted pederast, pounded the wild orchid satyrion into a  paste and the following morning distributed it into 30 mens wine. these men were odysseus, acamas,  aganepor, ajax the lesser, amphidamas, amphimachus, anticlus, antimachus, antiphates, calchas,  cyanippus, demophon, diomedes himself, echion, epeius, eumelus, euryalus, eurydamas, eurymachus,  eurypylus, ialmenus, idomeneus, iphidamas, leonteus, machaon, meges, menelaus, menestheus,  meriones, neoptolemus, peneleos, philoctetes, podaliriius, polypoetes, sthenelus, teucer and thalpius.  these men were placed in the hot, cavernous womb of a wooden horse, draped with fir and left at the  gates of the city of troy. the following is an hour by hour account of what happened inside the belly of  the beast.  

4pm – hour one 

cyanippus smells sweat and fir. the scents exist on opposite ends of the olfactory scale. fir is sharp and astringent. it belongs in mountains after the rain, or in a small bottle of unidentified liquid thrust under  the nose of an unconscious fighter in order to rouse him. the colour is white, bright blue.  

the smell of sweat is earth and skin. it is a low, spicy smell that can be hugely attractive if it belongs to someone you love. cyanippus did not love the twenty nine other men in the horse. but he could tolerate  anything as long as he had a flask of wine. 

5pm – hour two 

ajax the lesser has a painful erection. it came on suddenly, the deep red ache of a man without a boy to fuck. now his balls also pulsed with fire. he did not want to be in this horse, he wanted to be in bed with a bare chested teenager. preferably one who did not mind his excessive body hair. yet here he was.  packed in like salt fish and smelling not much better. will history books write about how incredibly hot  it was in here. how the sweat was dripping from the wood and into their mouths. 

idomeneus was a cuckold. he allowed young boys to cum in his wife, then licked her clean. it was this he dwelt on while watching the sunlight spit golden acne across the face of philoctetes, who sat  opposite him in the wooden horse. idomeneus wondered if he would let philoctetes cum in his wife.  then he wondered what philoctetes would taste like. probably wine, he was a pickled old sot like his  father. soon, idomeneus was rock hard, thinking about which of the twenty nine men who shared this  baked wooden coffin would taste the best, lapped from his wife’s anus like the milk of a fine stallion. 

menestheus was sat on a hastily constructed wooden bench, between anticlus and thalpius. anthiclus  was away with the faeries, thinking, no doubt, about his victory speech. but thalpius was humming  softly and kept turning to look at menestheus’ crotch. was the light skirt he wore hiding his throbbing  member.  

sthenelus reached into his underwear and removed his penis.

6pm – hour 3 

meges and leonteus are kissing. it is not the rough kiss of old men, the chaff and the sand of skin worn down by sunshine – it is the kiss of two young lovers, discovering for the first time that their mouths  are for so much more than they were ever told by their mothers. 

teucer has become aware of the area just below the heart. the place where a human becomes a lover. to  teucer, odysseus is beautiful. he will be sculpted so many times by so many brilliant minds. teucer  loves odysseus so much in this moment that he envies each and every person who will set eye upon the  marble representation of his masculinity. surely the marble will drip the very salt that now cascades  down the thigh of teucer. he weeps a soft longing. 

demophon and echius are writing on the floor, an ecstatic emulsion of olive skin and drool. as if one, they ingest as much of each other as they can without drawing blood.  

peneleos is lying on his back. from where he rests, he can see traces of the sky peeking through the wooden ribs of the horse. often he wonders what is up there, beyond the blue. is there the answers that  so many of his countrymen seek. is he, peneleos, simply another dying star. his thought process is  interrupted by antiphates urinating into his mouth.  

odysseus is licking his hand, enjoying the slight tang of effluence that lingers on every finger.  

7pm – hour 4 

ialmenus is dead. set upon like a pack of wolves by the rest. ripped apart by teeth wanting more than  the taste of flesh. cyanippus has begun to remove the skin from the corpses arm. from the bottom of the horse, blood drips onto the sand.  

antimachus presses his naked flesh against the rough wooden board. it feels like returning to the earth.  

8pm – hour 5 

there is no longer neoptolemus, peneleos or diomedes. there is only a pulsating cyst of ecstasy in the  centre of the horse. a teratomic pulsation, hovering in the air. careful observers could, no doubt,  recognize certain parts of certain men. the calm, easy smile of echius. the stern brow of eurydamas. but  they are part of the whole now.  

lightning spits from the reeling chamber. the pink mass thrums ever wider, now pushing against the  constraint of the wooden horse. outside, a wet mess is seeping from between the boards. agonized  wood splinters and cracks. the model horse explodes, revealing the awful thing inside. a creature, but reversed. the thirty men, reduced to an equine shaped gob of flesh.  

have you ever seen a nerve explode? the lapis veins like paper-cuts, the blood like ejaculate.  

thirty men become one horse, its muscles rippling like fire beneath the screaming flesh.