Sum Flux V.3 Open Call: Pompeii

Historical Fiction

May 08, 2025

"The skeleton of a woman was found lying on top of a bed, curled up in a foetal position. The body of a man was in the corner of this small room.

Analysis of the male skeleton showed that despite his young age, his bones had signs of wear and tear, suggesting he was of lower status, possibly even a slave.

...

The woman was older, but her bones and teeth were in good condition.

An assortment of items were found on a marble table top in the room - glassware, bronze jugs and pottery - perhaps brought into the room where the pair had tucked themselves away hoping to wait out the eruption.

But it's the items clutched by the victims that are of particular interest. The younger man held some keys, while the older woman was found with gold and silver coins and jewelry.

...

Dr Sophie Hay describes the private bathhouse complex as a once-in-a-century discovery, which also sheds more light on a darker side of Roman life.

Just behind the hot room is a boiler room. A pipe brought water in from the street - with some syphoned off into the cold plunge pool - and the rest was heated in a lead boiler destined for the hot room. The valves that regulated the flow look so modern it's as if you could turn them on and off even today.

With a furnace sitting beneath, the conditions in this room would have been unbearably hot for the slaves who had to keep the whole system going." - BBC1

Far in the distance over the villas and the water towers, high above the great aqueduct where the waters flow deep beneath their base, the mountains are burning.

A vast dark plume has borne from one of their peaks, great branches of thick black vapor curl across the sky. I fear something of enormous magnitude shall befall Pompeii before too long, for the Gods would not send down such fire if it were not meant with the promise of destruction.

I know that before long she will hasten to the Bathhouse, the woman who haunts my every waking moment and even such moments that I might dream when sleep has taken me. I am as certain of her arrival to this place as I am certain of my own name.

She made herself known to me some four years ago, wife of Senator Vetrius and lady of the house, upon her exit from the frigidaire, water dripping from her naked form as it drips from the sweat laiden pipes in the boiler where we haul fuel to the fires that warm their waters. She would have been little more than a sweated pipe to me, but her eyes wandered over my body as I stared at her feet and awaited permission to find exit from her presence.

But she would not grant permission, and instead bid me to escort her to our meager quarters. Not a day has passed since that she has not visited me on her way home from the market, and not a day has passed that I have not prayed that the Gods would put an end to her dogged interest.

Over the course of these years she has commanded that I hide several items for her that she boasts her husband need not know she has possession of. She does not tell me if these baubles and coins are bought or taken, merely that I secret them away to the boiler room where her husband has no need to inspect nor leisure.

It is the existence of these items in my possession that wisen me to her inevitable arrival, and not a misguided ideation of how she regards a slave in her household, not matter how often she has found herself in that slave's bed. I know this because her eyes have failed to regard me as anything other than another one of the baubles she has hidden from her husband's countenance.

I have brought her precious items to my quarters where I will tell her they are waiting so she need not waste time while I gather them from the pipes that I've been warming for their baths since the passing of my twelfth year.

Once we are inside the room and she has busied herself with inventorying her clandestine jewels, the door will be barricaded. We will wait for the Gods' judgement together on the bed where she demanded my sacrifice, and I will have justice.