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PROMETHEUS

CHAPTER  ONE

Families are funny things. My own was a lot stranger than most, though.

One of my earliest memories was learning what my uncle had done to our grandfather. It was one of my older brothers, I think, who first mentioned the violent act that brought an end to his father’s planned night of romance and lovelight, chopping off his cock and balls, then throwing them as far as his strength could muster, out into the darkness over the sea.

Then it was all the talk of the family, even over the breakfast table, where, despite our youth, the events were pored over, described in gruesome detail and their implications analysed again and again.

‘Waiting in the dead of night, he was,’ muttered my father, clearly not happy with what had happened. ‘I don’t care what you say, there’s something wrong with someone who can do that in cold blood.’ My father was a conventional sort, not swift to anger, eager only to protect his way of life and the household he’d set up with my mother and me and my three brothers.

Mother agreed with him that uncle Cronus was a bit odd, after all: ‘Always had ideas above his station,’ she mused. Both adults nodded. My brothers and I kept our heads down listening out ever more attentively for the salacious details that kept dropping into the middle of the breakfast table. The constant presence in my mind’s eye of granddad’s enormous cock and balls next to the bread basket, oozing their gelatinous contents onto the tablecloth is something I’ll never forget.

And my uncle had been asked by our grandmother, of all people, to commit the act. That was a turn-up for the books, who’d have thought she could ever actually want someone else to come along and lop off his member?

Moreover, who would ask their own son to carry it out?

As you can see, a truly fucked-up family.

There had always been rumours, apparently, of dark family secrets, about the way grandfather Uranus had met his future wife, Gaia, Earth-Mother, one of the most ancient and respected beings in the whole universe. It was not even clear that they weren’t both somehow related, and for such dark mutterings even to exist, should hint that there was perhaps, deep, deep down, some truth in this.

They met, they fell in love, they coupled prodigiously, as was always the way in those distant times, so very long ago, years ago, thousands of years ago. And they had lots of children, that much was patently clear. But then the rumours started: how badly he treated his wife, and especially how unimpressed he was with the first children she had borne him; how he had actually forced some of them back in, rather than let them see the light of day. The pain, the injury, the sheer, inglorious nastiness of it all.

Who knows what truth is hidden in a family’s distant past? Impossible to tell what goes on in others’ lives and marriages. But, so I learnt, certainly to my parents’ young eyes, grandmother had in the past cut a sorry figure, wrapped up in a grief that whispered of untellable crimes, of blood and passion, of unwanted advances and nights of torment. On visits she had dutifully played the traditional role of acquiescing, pliable consort to my grandfather’s boorish bluster-and-banter-filled persona.

I myself had not been aware of any of this – a very different Gaia and Uranus were what I had always known. A decent, upright couple. Reliably respectable. And yet, had I not also suspected a powerful and unstoppable nature hidden somewhere deep beneath grandmother’s graceful propriety?

Which is why I can imagine her finally snapping. Quite why she asked uncle Cronus to do the deed, though, I still can’t get my head around. I mean, who requests their son to help out in a marital issue, anyway? Not to mention the violence of the request.

But he did help out.

At her invitation, then, one evening, as the night was setting in, under a cloudless, starry summer sky, here sat Cronus, waiting in the gloomy corner of a cave where his mother was lying ready for the advent of her husband. Out of the shadowy distance he must have come, beaming with all the anticipation of male relief, seeing her sprawled, perhaps reflecting that she appeared more welcoming than usual. This might have aroused him even more, making the ultimate target of Cronus’s adamantine sickle even more obvious in the glint of the moonlight, as his son edged forward, weapon still concealed beneath a heavy cloak so as not to let its keen glint give him away… Then out he whips it, just as his father is lurching into the act, raising his member towards his wife’s ample throne, and –

And what, exactly? It was hard enough to envisage, actually to visualise, especially for a young thing like myself, with little or no experience of the ways of the world. To start with: a sickle? Surely that is the least effective instrument for lopping off the genitalia of a man leaning into his deed – its concave curve hardly lends itself to a swift swipe at the erect member. In fact, Cronus must have needed to use his other hand to hold his father’s member, in order to get a purchase on it. And not just the member itself, but the whole package. In a firm grip, to yank and to stretch, ready for the cut. And did Uranus himself not have anything to say, as his youngest son revealed himself in this supposedly private love-nest, brandishing in his hand a flint sickle and reaching out towards those proudly standing genitals?

It beggars belief. But there you go. That’s what happened.

And worse was yet to come. Having sliced them off in one bold move, Cronus then made a dash with them towards the entrance of the cave, which was set high up in a cliff overlooking the sea and, balancing on the threshold, he leaned back, swung his arm over his shoulder, and launched the whole, foaming lot out into the air.

That is how Cronus became the chief of all the Titans.

In the wake of this despicable story that intruded on our family mealtimes, more and more half-remembered stories from the distant past began to emerge, concerning wildly deformed offspring, dreadful, mutant children born to Earth-Mother, many-headed, many-armed creatures which, once again, suggested to my inquisitive, insatiable imagination that grandmother had hidden depths, secrets we could only guess at. To the outside world she would always appear robed in the finest shimmering green garb, the most naturally beautiful goddess, full of ancient wisdom and grace; but what, I wondered, lay below those gentle folds of cloth, what grim pits of fiery energy was hidden from our sight? What were the winds that whipped across the bare crags and ice-bound crevasses of her mountains? What miserable creatures twitched unseeing in the caverns deep below?

Uranus was humbled by the loss of his manhood, of course, and his wife was therefore much happier. Emasculated, he retired into the role she previously had always played for him, that of a nodding, affable consort, always ready to listen, always ready to laugh at her jokes, even when they were at his own expense. In short, he withdrew, and let his son take over the family firm.

© Copyright Paul David Holland 2023