#milton lopes

He sweeps a little.

One must wonder if he was always a beast. After all, how does Tartarus craft the caretaker who will stalk its tenements? Perhaps before Prometheus was liver-bitten, he made him like mankind; crafted him from clay and then let the kiln be the fires of Hades. He shares his name with a Titan – it makes the picture come together clearly: maybe Hades ordered the bones of that first Kronos to be powdered into the clay that would forge the second Kronos. And so the first would have his own ribs encage him. We will never know. In spite of Kronos taking care of that infinite resting place, finality does not mean all answers are known. It only begs that we ask more. Even uttering Tartarus stirs up more falsehood than truth: fifty pairs of underwear hang from washing lines and a feast waits never eaten, but –  but there is little use in theorising now. The boulder will always stumble to the foot again.

Pinboards of franticising is such a trivial thing to the one who finds obsession amongst only the thread upon those boards. Red string. It never leads him anywhere. Still, though, he likes to take out a small torch and shine it upon the string threaded across the tenements he cares for. The pattern it takes – the writing surrounding it – if those way down were given hours, he would spend hours staring at those threads. All to a fruitless end – each cock of his head, each forward inspection, he is always led back to the tenement square. The most innocuous item is a constant source of distrust for Kronos. With dice, his constant pocketed companion, he experiences similar puzzlement. Too many a glad time spent pacing amongst the various rooms of Troy, slipping into an absent corner. He will take them, hold them in his palm, and occasionally, he will lightly throw them up. Only numbers fall back down. And still he will watch them with enough furrowed brows to make any watcher believe they are full of a higher purpose.

He sweeps a little.

Corridors possess the strangest of things. Kronos delights in this one for it is a collection of ordinary items. Bending down, the display is careful disarray, with a spillage of cutlery asleep near cans. From this heap, he picks up a knife, clutches it around his fist, and meanders onwards to where ordinary once more approaches him. On this occasion, it is ordinary death; even electric sheep must die and so a toaster must be broken. He sticks a knife into where bread should go. He feels nothing for nothing happens. The caretaker knows that his city is decaying, for it is not his city. Nearby, in a different room, he unfurls some paper near potpourri and a lamp. Yes. There is something he must do. Something grand in design, yet done as many times as he tosses a dice. It is only fools who think a caretaker offers entirely up that first half of his title to the population bleeding around him. Kronos is deliverance.

He sweeps a little.

In the uppermost level of Troy, confusion pounds blindingly through Klub. The sorts of men who attach a space of Bacchic potential to their office are the sort who make themselves a model citizen of Troy; the city is on the verge so let us drink; dance; drug ourselves into oblivion like the writhing snake in leather who is sharpening red under their eyes. Within this space, Kronos leers up against any who might provoke him with a look. He is a zoetrope spun at a faster speed, lunging harsh as the strobes make each second appear a changed picture. Beast! Not a god. Not a man. A young man, casually smart, watches this terror through the windows. The man – the boy – thinks it looks like a bull thrusting. When it is over, Kronos stands, looming over him, and cranes his neck from one side to the other. He watches the boy. From his pocket, he pulls out a necklace made only of red string: he ensnares the boy in it.

He sweeps a little.

To be a caretaker is to have access to all the rooms of the tenements. Most of the rooms appear abandoned. In one, he reduces the puzzlement of his world to a jigsaw. In another, he sits at a mirror. Whilst he sits there, girls and boys are being sacrificed and all the flowers have gone away to make their weeping graves. He looks at his reflection – worn-out clothes licked by sweat, a face peppered with slow days tiring – and raises a handheld mirror so that he might gaze around him. Flickering just a little are his lips as he catches the eyes of the strangest creatures from the corner of his own. These shadows of people reflect in the small mirror. Slowly, smiling slightly as he does so, he guides the mirror from side to side. He sees them. He briefly acknowledges their gaze when meeting their fearful-loving awe. It is all he can see of their face, and it is beautiful. He likes to make them scared. Terror is not always a threat; terror is the vulnerability of being known. In one pretty way, he admires them – so he lifts a masquerade mask adorned with a feather from the dressing table he sits at. He wears it and practices smiling in the larger mirror. Whereas his ones to the ghosts are minacious, his ones to the mirror are sickening in their forced, bright falsity.

He sweeps a little.

Kings receive floods of crimson, but a prince only receives a sprawled out sheet. Polydorus is a boy and he claws at the red string around his throat as his eyes bulge purple. When his sister dies, she will be stroked onto a sheet by a lover, but he stumbles onto the white sheet awaiting him and is unceremoniously tugged into a locked room by Kronos. Moloch must be sated. Child after child, Kronos takes them as provided sacrifice, feeding the golden bull god. Speak it again – beast! Not a god. Not a man. He understands the machine he is instructed to feed; he pumps it full of the unfortunate youthful blood who by birth are trapped in the labyrinth of Troy. Kronos smiles again for he sees the beautiful strange creatures process their despair at death like they should: the machine operates on too many levels he does not care for, but he understands that even the unseen feed it. Polydorus is left dead in his room. He hopes Moloch is satisfied for now. His task is done; odd jobs and business, he takes care of it all.

In a dark corner, he plays with dice, and stalks red thread. It will never lead him out of the labyrinth. Instead, it loops back round on itself: he does not register time beginning again as the red traps him. But it begins again.