Another Saturday, by RJ Pugh

Saturn Devouring His Children, by Francisco Goya (Spain) 1820

Another Saturday

Her husband, Kronos, would not leave the stony room. It had been a very long time since their newest, and now thanks to him, only, child was born. There was always a lot of time between them. Rhea opened the heavy stone door and found him there, sitting naked, huge and bony and red-eyed. In his shame, he had been starving himself ever since he ate their last one. Time had passed, the world grew old all over again, and they had another child. He quickly fled to the stony room, and refused to look at his offspring at all.
   
Rhea tossed him a change of clothes which he would probably ignore. He did not look up. She closed the heavy stone door, and left him in the dark. Forever afraid of his children.

She walked with her young child on a path of soft dirt, and the child asked questions about Kronos. The same questions every sibling had asked, though they never met each other. “Why will he not see me?” “Why does he punish himself?” “What did he do?”

With every child since the first, Rhea had wondered whether or not to answer the questions. When she looked into their eyes, she could never do it.

All she said was: “He is ashamed. He has done something monstrous that he cannot resist. This is his punishment for castrating his father, Ouranos. You must not go near him.”

Kronos overthrew Ouranos to become ruler of the Golden Age, only to hide away ever since. Rhea had no desire to coax him out. She had promised her child that she would never leave them alone.

The child had grown and become a god before Rhea could bring herself to eat her first full meal since her last child was murdered. The young god was beautiful, like living marble.

The two of them ate together, at the top of the Mountain, on a field outside their home of ivory and white silver. They would gather food, watch the world, and consider how they might mold it into something new. The child was eager to learn how to be a god, and what that meant.

It had been a long time, and Rhea had decided to offer Kronos more clean clothes. At the thought of opening the heavy stone door and looking at him again, her body ached, and her mouth grew dry. She commanded the young god to stay outside their home.

“I’m fully grown, mother,” said the young god, her child. “I have never known him. I would like to see him.”

“You will not!” shouted Rhea. “He will never see you, he cannot!”

“Why not? He is my father!”

“He is cruel and monstrous, and he knows this!”

The young god remained outside, sulking, and Rhea opened the heavy stone door and threw in the new clothes. She paused at the sound of a deep sniff, and Kronos’s huge head jerked up and looked past her.

*

Starvation to a titan: endless emptiness that amounts to an infectious pit. He cannot die, his stomach begins to eat away at him, unable to harm him, but very able to hurt. Like a pool of acidic filth left to ferment in a dark room, in a thin glass bottle. How much pain must that bottle be in?

Kronos, his eyes burning worse than any of his body, looked behind his sister-wife, and saw the face of a young god he had not seen before but recognized, poking out behind a corner.

*

Rhea turned and saw the young god watching, and she shut the heavy stone door with a fury, and approached her child, whose face showed more sorrow than it had known before.

“How could he do that to himself? How could you let him?”

“It is for his own good.”

“It’s cruel! I’ve never seen anything so pitiful. Starving…”

“It is what he deserves! I will hear no more of this.”

The two left the home of ivory and white silver in silence, and outside, they would say nothing to each other for a long time. Even when Rhea tried to speak with the young god, she would receive no response. Time passed, and the world grew old all over again, and she even forgot her promise to always be together. The next time her child would speak to her, she decided, she would tell everything: the other children, the Kronos’s fate, everything.

She was outside her bright home when she heard the heavy stone door being pushed.

Her heart was beating fast enough to shake loose inside her body as she ran with tears in her eyes to the black stony room, and found it was open. Unable to control her breath, she leaned into the darkness inside, and found them both. There had been no scream.

He was kneeling, naked, his skin leathery and browned like an old hog’s. At first sight of her, he froze, his bright eyes appeared lidless, and his face began to twist and shake like he was going to burst into tears; he said nothing. His mouth was full.

Their child, naked too, was in shreds. The head and an arm were black-and-red stumps, flowing hot. Kronos had the other arm in his mouth, between red-stained teeth. His grip on the corpse nearly ripped it apart lengthways as his fingers dug bloody gashes deep into the spine.

His face was a mix of starving desperation and fear, tightened by shame, but he would not stop chewing. It was a wonder he didn’t choke.

Rhea wondered if he realized what he was doing. He bit down again and again, huge chunk after huge chunk of their child before her eyes. The whole time, weeping, grunting, moaning, and wet, wet crunching. He never slowed down.

There was bread and fruit on the floor. Her child, it seemed, had wanted to feed him. Kronos would not look at the food, now soggy with blood.

The child was dead, she knew, it had happened again. Her face straightened, her heart slowed, and she calmly set the heavy stone door back in its place as the weeping grew louder within the stony room.

Being immortal came with it certain understandings. A quick acceptance, an ease of moving on, a remarkable resignation. This had happened before. Time heals all wounds. Another child gone, then time would pass, and the world would grow old all over again, and they would have another child. They would have to. Their child was destined to kill him.

In the meantime she wondered idly as she walked on the soft dirt what more she might do to save the next one. No gods have ever died, so could they be saved? She promised herself she would tell her next child everything about Kronos.

​The home went quiet, the smell of blood grew foul, then faded, and never once did Kronos step outside. Then his weeping began again, then it stopped. Rhea thought of her husband’s face as he devoured their child. She could not imagine being so hungry.

RJ Pugh

RJ Pugh is a writer of short fiction whose work is focused on combining the fantastical with the mundane to create absurd situations. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA and enjoys art inspired by mythology and folklore.