BIRTH, by M. SternThe dream, since the first time he’d had it, was always accompanied by a sensation of scalding on his back. And like no other dream he’d had, it possessed a tangibility—one which had led him to explore the ways in which it was also unlike other dreams. Now he saw it all for the hundredth or thousandth time in his mind’s eye:
The stone room packed with black-hooded men; the stinking air vibrating with their growling, grunting chants.
The caged captives, rendered wretched and filthy in the corners, shrieking their counterpoint to the chants as leprous slaves busily released vermin through the bars, and casual sadists in different state of undress and inebriation poked and prodded and creatively tortured and humiliated them, giggling.
The statuesque, musclebound centurion
