Janus Unbidden
Flash Fiction Pondering the Unknown.
A submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Prophecy
Leagues of flying life cry terror, for their skies are no longer their own.
Of the land, plants sour, turning into colors not familiar to man. Cows and Horses chomp at their boundaries, and topple one another in great stampedes, consumed by fear.
Chickens begin to upchuck feed they had previously grown content with, ingluvitis collects its bounty on the brood, and farmers everywhere panic for the grim presage that was their inevitable poverty and starvation.
Town criers hail the populace with even more dire news: The Gates of Janus have opened. The Gates demand more blood and bone, and as of yet existing tales of conquest beseech families everywhere from the void: “Another broken one of you, be it by deadened fathers, insensate mothers, raped daughters, or abhorred sons, I am your history, so the Gates have promised me.”
As panic beguiled the civilization, a lone priestess emerged from the countryside, and she lit the flames of each temple belonging to each God. Civilian passerby and soldier alike gossiped in-between their sobs and mobilization in lieu of confronting the dark world brought upon them by Janus. “An optimistic priestess cheers merrily over a prophecy!” One spectator says. “I heard her say the Gods have a message.” another recalls.
Then it happened. After each temple had their ceremonial flames activated, every God known to the civilization appeared to each mortal, each God rendered sprightly and relayed their message in unison:
“Janus is unbidden. As was foretold, may this alien deity find its pound of flesh by its own engineered populace.”
Effervescent rays of light shot out from the numerous temples, and they descended upon the Gates of Janus in unison, causing the alien monument to vanish, along with the memory of its inscription, and its effect on the world of these mortals.
Barely audible whispers between the priestess and some of the Gods speak of Janus finding a new home on the heel of an alternate, more Romantic people dimensions removed from the burdens of this one, which resulted in the two-faced God almost overdosing on the blood of an unfamiliar, vulnerable people.