Flash Fiction – Prompt is Snake in the Grass
My historical fiction author brain has to label this alternative history. The bitter ruler of the title is the emperor Tiberius and though he was married to Julia they had divorced by the time he became emperor.
The Bitter Ruler
I seem to sign nothing but death warrants these days. Sejanus brings them in each morning; one scroll, two scrolls, three scrolls, sometimes more.
He has an apologetic pained expression as he places them on my desk. He knows what’s in them, he knows how those words will hurt his emperor.
Sometimes I refuse to sign so that I can express clemency.
It’s an important attribute of an emperor; clemency. For though I have the power to have you killed, I also have the power to let you live.
I prefer do to the latter but Sejanus implores me to be careful, too much clemency and it will signal that I am weak.
“Too little clemency and the emperor is too harsh, too draconian,” I counter. “Look what our history tells us about tyrants!”
He smiles in that way he has of showing he doesn’t countenacnce my view but he will let it pass.
Of course he’s right, he’s always right because whenever I bestow my clemency, the next month the scroll returns thicker with ever more evidence. And I am played a fool once more.
It used to make me angry, now it just saddens me. It saddens me that so many of my friends hate me so much. Why do so many want the crown from off my head?
If they truly knew what it was to be emperor! To sacrifice all your own wishes, your own desires for a realm that seemingly despises you.
If it were not for this accused crown I would be married to Vipsania still. We would have been happy.
Instead I am tied to Julia, my empress. She wears her crown well enough, a stately presence on my arm at banquets. She chatters away to the King of Judaea and the Indian trade ambassador. They find her charming.
They don’t know her like I know her.
I know what she gets up to at night, Sejanus brings me scrolls on that too.
He suffers greatly, says he cannot bear for me to be made a fool of like this.
What pride have I? What do I care about wearing the cuckold’s horns when I have worn them since my wedding night.
Her lovers are too numerous to list, suffice to say I know them all. I considered them friends once. Now they bow their deference and I find myself wondering if that is the position my wife takes before them. Does she stand there bowed to the waist, arse thrust up in the air ready to submit to their lusty thrustings? Or do they stand before her and gargle with their spit as she takes their putrid members into her lying mouth?
They make me sick, all of them. Those fawning courtiers with treachery in their minds and fingers that dabble between my wife’s thighs.
I suppose they are waiting for me to die so that they may marry her and take my crown.
We have no children, how could we when we have mated but the once. And from that one rutting I grew such a disgust of her that I have never touched her since.
It used to pain me this childless state. I used to imagine a smiling boy who I could teach to ride, an ally in my fight against them.
But now I am glad. For why would I want to leave this cesspit of a city, this sewer of an empire to my own blood.
No, I have a far better plan. I have a snake for Rome, an emperor it truly deserves.
I’ve told no one of my plan, not even Sejanus, for I’m not as stupid an old fool as he thinks I am.
If I were to reveal my snake then the next morning his name would be in the first scroll placed on my desk. He thinks I don’t know. I play along because it suits me. Why wouldn’t I take the opportunity to remove Julia of her lovers?
I once thought Sejanus was one of her admirers. But no, apparently he has some wine boy who submits to his foul desires with but the faintest of resistance.
But that sodomite will learn soon, as they all will learn just how much I truly despise them. For only such hatred would compel me to leave them my snake, to name Caligula as my heir.
