I Don’t Remember

Not only that the language itself sounds straight out of a marvel forcibly funny haha moment, but Menelaus? The Menelaus who all thoughout human history, from Homer, to Sappho, to Euripides, to Virgil, to Shakespeare, to Brooke, to Barth; from Classical vases to Medieval poetry to Reinessance art, has been known as the man whose sword fell from his hands at the sight of his wife after 10 years apart?

"What joy for me to hold my wife" Menelaus?

"He flung the sword away, and kissed her feet" Menelaus?

"I believe all. I understand nothing. I love you" Menelaus?

"I have no fault to find; my wife, he daughter of Zeus and Leda, is mine again, she whom her brothers on their snow-white steeds, whilst torches blazed, made my happy bride, but gods removed her from my home." Menelaus?

The Menelaus who was picked out of the suitors by Helen herself? The Menelaus who couldn't kill a begging Trojan so his brother had to do it for him? The Menelaus who rescued Odysseus and got out Patroclus' body? The Menelaus who volounteered to fight Paris one on one so everybody could go home? Who kept expressing his guilt about himself being the cause of war through every assembly he spoke at in the Iliad? Who after 10 years away at Troy, took his wife through a 7-year long journey at sea back home, where he reinstated her as the queen of Sparta? Who wept like a child in front of Telemachus recalling the war and his brother and all the friends he lost and the only consolation being his wife' gentle hand on his?

You want me to believe that man scarred Helen's face and called her only worth half the ships because of it?

As she wipes the sleeve of her soft shirt across her face she feels something wet drip onto her hand, right above the soft patch of skin her tears had been running down. A shiver runs down her spine.

It’s warm, which immediately sets alarm bells off in her mind. It has a thick and viscous quality to it, and it absolutely reeks. She should have noticed the scent sooner, regardless of how little time she had been conscious. A lack of awareness was how people got themselves killed, and she knew she was better than that.

The disgusting liquid slides down the palm of her hand, arcs across her wrist, and becomes one with the rest of the residue left on her cheek. It makes Sydney's stomach churn regardless of the abstract tingle of pleasure the odd sensation brings.

Her hand is mere inches from her face. Maybe four she thinks to herself, relying on her body's hand eye coordination in the pitch black room. Four inches is apparently the exactly correct amount of closeness she needs to be able to feel a warm puff of air from something exhaling directly above her.