In The Days Before The Flood [FICTOID]

In the days before The Great Flood, in the Sumerian city of Eridu, a beautiful cherry grew in the garden of the Ziggurat of Inanna.

How beautiful was this cherry?  It outshined all the other cherries on the same tree, causing them to spoil and rot and fall off in grief at their inability to match this one blessed cherry’s beauty. 

It was gorgeous, it was awe inspiring, as big and as red as a glorious harvest moon.

It looked more magnificent than the anus of a temple catamite, if you were into that sort of thing (and in those days, who wasn’t?).

It gnawed at the soul of Unzi, the lugal of Eridu.

Once my forefathers ruled as absolute masters of all they could survey, he thought. But today I am reduced to being a headman in a small out of the way city while greater deeds -- and for greater rewards -- are done in Ur.

Indeed, since Gilgamesh established himself as the A-number-one-top-dog-boss-man of all Sumeria, all the traditional regional leaders could hope for would be not to be grandfathered out of their positions of leadership as local head men.

Unzi came to the garden frequently, ostensibly to worship the goddess Inanna and to avail himself of the services of a ziggurat catamite, but mostly to spy and covet and plot and plan to steal the magnificent cherry.

I must possess that cherry, Unzi told himself, though he could not explain why.

Despite his position of leadership in Eridu, Unzi could not simply seize the great cherry.

Oh, no, for it belonged to the goddess Inanna, and while Inanna was the goddess of love and sex, she was also the goddess of war and thus not to be trifled with.

To even suggest to his many min ions that they should seize the cherry would doubtlessly result in their poking him several times with their bronze swords until all the things on his inside were on his outside.

Not a desired result.

No, to steal the cherry would require great skill and cunning, which Unzi repeatedly told himself he possessed.  He carefully scouted the grounds of the ziggurat complex.  While guards stood at the foot of the might staircases that led up to the shrine atop the ziggurat, the outer walls of the garden were left relatively undefended.  The priests and priestesses lived around the complex, so sneaking into the garden itself would require great stealth.

Unzi waited until well after midnight on a moonless night, then cautiously made his way from his own palace to the ziggurat complex.

Ever so quietly he crept through the small, compact homes of the priests and priestesses, pausing if he heard someone stirring within.

Fortunately none of them kept dogs, being ritually unclean animals, and thus Unzi could pass unnoticed through the complex to the wall of the garden.

He brought a grappling look made of antelope horn and a rope of wooled thread.  Slinging the grappling hook over the wall, he tugged on it to make sure it securely snagged a purchase on the other side, then climbed over.

As his head came over the top of the wall, he saw the goddess Inanna holding the other end of the rope.

He would have cried out and dropped to the ground but the goddess moved too swiftly, yanking him over the wall and into the garden.  She planted her heel on his throat to silence him.

“You dare steal from me?” she whispered in a voice that sounded like distant thunder.

Unzi shook his head, then thought better of it and nodded.  Inanna would be only more enraged if he lied.

She drew a weapon from the quiver on her back, a device that people five millennia later would call a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun and pointed it at Unzi.  “It is good you confessed,” she said.  “You end shall be mercifully swift.”

Around the complex priests, priestesses, their servants and families awoke to the sound of a seemingly incessant series of sharp bangs like a frustrated carpenter striking a recalcitrant piece of wood.  Following the sound to the garden. They summoned torches and unlocked the gate.

Inside they saw the beautiful cherry still dangling from its tree, glinting in the flicker torchlight.

On the ground before it lay the body of Unzi the lugal, cherry-red blood seeping out from one hundred holes exactly the size of the cherry he sought to steal.

© Buzz Dixon