Sisyphus

Millenniums have passed.

Every day the same burden.

The wicked hot sun above him beats down on his shoulders as he pushes. The skin on his back is cracked like baked mud. It breaks and bleeds when he starts his efforts each day. His feet are muddy with blood soaked dirt.

Sisyphus feels the normal strain on his shoulders. His neck bulges. His biceps quake. Dehydrated veins bulge. Beads of salty sweat roll into his eyes and off his body adding to the already gore slicked ground under his feet. His hands are white with effort.

The boulder he labors against has worn perfectly smooth with his efforts over the centuries, but this does not help him in his chore of gaining elevation. Every foot step is an earned torture as he labors to push his boulder higher and higher.

There is no point to this task.

He knows just as he reaches the pinnacle of this elevation the boulder will magically roll away from him.

This exercise in futility is a sentence for hubris. The one crime Zeus never forgave.

Sisyphus' punishment is to push this boulder up this hill for eternity and nothing can save him. Over the course of his amercement he has come to the conclusion that he deserves it.

As he toils day in and day out his mind worries over his crimes.

His list of misdeeds is many.

In the morning he goes through the list of merchants and travelers he killed indiscriminately. Their blood fueled his reputation and allowed him to rule with an iron fist. He pictures each murder with perfected detail. Some he just ordered dispatched. Those were the first he thought of. The easiest. Then he works through the faces of those he felt the blade enter skin and muscle. He would remember the look of betrayal. None expect death. That was the most surprising part. By the end his reputation was secure, yet the merchants kept showing up, the promise of riches too great. He wondered if in death they also were chained to a boulder for the hubris of thinking they would survive his wrath.

Zeus probably did not care about the crimes of those little people. Sisyphus is well aware how he earned Zeus' scorn and it wasn't with murder or betrayal. Those were crimes expected of a king.

By midday his mind usually turns to the crime he committed that tortures him the most. The one that makes his very soul ache. This is the crime that earned him his throne, the one he got away with.

He married the sister of King Salmoneus of Corinth. Her name was Tyro. She had long brown hair that had a wave to it when wet. Her eyes were large and deep brown pools of love. She was warm and soft. She smelled like spices. He had many children with her. His life was happy and good, but still he lusted for power. So he killed his brother in law and took the throne.

Grief stole his wife's sanity.

This memory always plays out perfectly in every detail. He wishes he could make this one not come, but like clockwork with the sun at its zenith it arrives.

He stands on the parade ground inspecting the Corinthian army.

His second gasps and points up.

Sisyphus follows his gesture to see Tyro at a high window in the knossos. In her hands is their youngest. A little girl. Not even a year. The sound of her small body hitting the ground lives with him as if it has replaced his heart beat. Then his next child. Followed by the third. All in a pile in front of him broken, bleeding and dead.

Then she follows. By the time she jumped he was cold to her suicide. He would have killed her himself if she hadn't thrown herself out the window. She saved him the trouble.