GLADIATOR

This scrap of paper is the only thing I was allowed to have in my cell. Anything else could be a potential weapon used for suicide. I am fighting in the Colosseum this afternoon. I may not live to see the night. The only reason I haven't died already is because the gods have cursed me with a long life and a heart unprepared for the gore and violence of death. If I had known how weak love makes a man, I would have hardened my heart long ago. Herodotus has found a way to make me fight. Nothing involving pain could induce me to kill a man, so he found a random young boy in the city, and threatens to kill him if I don't fight, or if I fail to win. Did my emotions give me away? Were my thoughts betrayed so easily on my face? If I die, so does an innocent child. If I win, one of my fellow gladiators will die. The gods are toying with me.

Curse me for my incompetence! Blood has been spilt on my account this day. When the guards came and took me into the arena, I had decided to kill, rather than be killed. My mind was far away, my heart devoid of feeling. The roar of the crowd greeted me as I walked into the Great Amphitheatre. My opponent stood opposite me, 100 feet away. We turned as one to the emperor's box, and raised our gladius' in his honor. The audience fell into an unearthly silence as the emperor dropped his handkerchief over the arena. The handkerchief floated slowly and touched the ground. The crowd screamed and I turned on my fellow gladiator, and sought to get through his defenses. He jabbed at my exposed knee, and I hit his blade away and parried with a slash to his neck. He jumped out of the deadly path and stabbed toward my eye. I ducked and brought my blade up into his stomach. He gulped and spat out blood. With revulsion for what the arena had made me, I took my blade out of his stomach and dropped him on the ground. "Friend," he muttered. "Let me die a hero." I put his blade in his hand and closed his eyes as he took his final breath. My vision turned red with rage. Rage at the audience who called for death. Hatred for the emperor Commodus and his blood-filled arena. I gripped my sword like a javelin and threw it at the emperor's box. Screams surrounded me as the guards rushed into the arena and tackled me to the ground. As I was dragged away, I looked into the box and saw the emperor looking flustered, angry, and not dead. The guards took me into a cell and beat me with an inch of my life. Before they put me into the solitary cell, I heard the sound of a child's cry. A young boy. Then…silence.