Free Story: Horse Boys

Every so often, I write a story I really love just for me and the three friends who think I’m funny. These stories frequently include some, if not all of the following: swearing, butt jokes, fart jokes, dick jokes, alcohol, Greek Mythology (don’t ask), sexual innuendo, sexual not at all innuendo, swords, heresy, inside baseball art humor, and other fuckery. Often, I will attempt to submit these stories because, hey, you never know, but in my heart of hearts I do know there are a few of them that are just too… weird? Weird doesn’t quite cover it. People I do show them to, however, who aren’t judging them on their suitability to fit in a specific box or with other stories seem to find them entertaining.

The world is a trashfire and personally, I think that calls for some absurdity and maybe a chuckle. So, I decided when I do create one of these goofy word salads, I’m going to post them here in the hopes that, if you’re having a bad day or need a ten minute break from reality, one of them will do the trick. If you feel like, and can, drop something in my Kofi, I’d appreciate it. If you can’t, fuck, if you don’t want to, then have a read, have a laugh, and gut punch the rest of your day.

So, without further ado, I present the first story on the roster: Horse Boys. It is David R. Slayton’s fault, he’s the one who sent me the meme that asked, “Do you think they laughed in the Trojan Horse?”

Horse Boys

Agamemnon looked up at Odysseus. He hated looking up at people. Especially Odysseus, the fucker. He considered cutting the taller man off at the knees but he couldn’t really afford to offend one of his richest and most powerful allies now that Achilles’ boy toy had gone and gotten himself killed in such spectacular fashion. Patroclus’ own decision but Achilles blamed Agamemnon and, perhaps, the king of Mycenae allowed, if he hadn’t fucked around, no one would have had to find out. As it stood, Agamemnon was lucky to wake up each morning alive and if he survived the war and returned home, it would be on Achilles’ sufferance at which point his wife would probably kill him for sacrificing their daughter. Which, Agamemnon reflected, he deserved. He’d been trying to show the leaders of the loosely confederated Greek states he was willing to relinquish that which was most dear to him in exchange for victory at Troy; his own flesh, his own blood, his own legacy.

It had proven a Very. Bad. Decision.

Lost in his own thoughts, not expecting visitors so late when there was sure to be battle yet again the next day, Agamemnon was distracted enough to automatically mumble, “Send him in,” when his guards announced he did have a visitor, figuring that if Achilles had come to kill him, he wouldn’t have given Agamemnon the courtesy of waiting politely while the formalities were observed and he didn’t expect Odysseus to show up without sending a messenger first. Odysseus liked Agamemnon’s good wine and that had to be brought from his ship where he kept it to prevent others from drinking it, which Odysseus knew which is why he drank it at every opportunity and always sent a messenger ahead to make sure it was waiting for him when he arrived.

Agamemnon’s supply, and second through fifth resupplies, had been run though or had, more accurately, run through his fellow commander, rather more quickly than anticipated and the sixth had come with a note from his vintner with the sad news the most recent harvest had failed and if Agamemnon wanted a steady reserve, each would have to be cut to a trickle. Odysseus had been in Agamemnon’s tent when the information arrived and began dropping by thrice as often just to be a menace.

Having returned to his reverie once the guard left to give the visitor permission to enter, Agamemnon was nearly knocked out of his chair when a massive hand slapped his shoulder and again when he realized he was looking at a chiton-clad chest rather than a chin, he himself being head and shoulders above most of the camp’s other occupants. He craned his neck too quickly for his own equilibrium checking that Achilles had not cooked up some elaborate scheme to, in fact, be patient through the formalities and then murder him, and his seat tipped precariously onto its back legs. To his initial relief, hard followed by irritation, and then utter and absolute exhaustion, he identified Odysseus and deemed his body safe enough if neither his hearing nor his mind were so assured.

“My friend,” Agamemnon managed without gagging or laughing hysterically, “what brings you at such a late hour?”

“Cannot a man visit his friends when the mood strikes?” Odysseus boomed and Agamemnon was nearly bowled over with the force of it.

A headache began to throb behind his left eye. “Of course, of course, and I am, as ever, pleased to see you.” He ordered his lips to curve up in a smile. They managed to twitch up on the right side. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“It’s so much easier to talk with a little lubrication for the throat,” Odysseus grinned, gesturing to the ewer and kraters.

You do have two hands, Agamemnon thought, but rose and went to the low table, poured the wine, and brought it back to Odysseus, who had, of course, taken his only chair. Agamemnon forbade himself from sighing and sat on the edge of his cot instead, sipping only to wet his tongue. If he drank too much now, he’d be unable to sleep and to be poorly rested on the battlefield was to be foolish on it and to be foolish on the field was to be dead.

Which would solve a great many of his problems. Not all, but a great many.

Odysseus did not seemed nearly so concerned and downed half the bowl in one swallow. “I’m here about a horse,” he said without any additional preamble.

“A horse?” Agamemnon asked, feeling his brow furrow. The ache spread from his eye overtop of his head. Odysseus had a great many fine horses. Did he wish to add one from Agamemnon’s stable? Agamemnon’s beloved Aetha probably. You cannot. Have. My horse. Go the fuck back to Ithaca, I don’t care, I will lose this war before I give you —

“A really big horse.”

The edges of Agamemnon’s vision darkened. I am so. Very tired.

“I am afraid,” he said, forcing the words through gritted teeth, “that I am not myself tonight, my old friend, and am desperate for rest. May I trouble you to complete your errand and leave me to it?” Spit it out, Odysseus, before I go utterly mad. Please. “Have I missed something?”

“No, no.” Odysseus pursed his lips.

He is definitely smirking. You fucking bastard.

“I am atingle with anticipation.”

“We shall enter Troy with the assistance of said really big horse.”

Agamemnon blinked. He opened his mouth but found himself bereft of words and closed it, teeth snapping together, which did his head little good. After a pause of several minutes, during which Odysseus drank the remainder of his wine and fetched himself more, well, well, more capable than you let on, Agamemnon said, “I beg your pardon?”

“We build the really large horse out of the Trojan’s line of sight. The army withdraws just over the horizon, leaving a small force hand picked by you and I. Undercover of darkness we move the very large horse into position before the gates and then get inside. When morning comes, the Trojans see the gift, open the gates, and wheel it inside. On that second night, we exit the horse, open the gates, our fellows return, we overwhelm the city, and then declare victory. After the pillaging, of course.”

“We get inside the horse?”

“Yes. The best warriors among us get inside the horse.”

“And we wait for the Trojans, who, like us, have been at war for ten years to wheel a really big horse that has appeared from nowhere into their city.”

“Our army will be out of sight.”

“And you don’t think they’ll be suspicious at all?”

“Poseidon is on their side. They’ll assume it’s a gift from him, he’s a horse boy.”

“That’s… a fascinating assumption.”

“They’ll think we ran, that they defeated us and their god is rewarding them for proving us cowards.”

“Again, an assumption. This whole plan hinges on assumptions.”

“They’re assumptions extrapolated from evidence.”

“No, they’re not.”

“Okay, fine, they’re not but you made promises, Agamemnon. And if you can’t keep them, there are going to be a lot of really large, really angry men with pointy, sharp objects coming for you.”

“Honestly? I’m not that worried about it because Achilles is coming for me either way.”

“I’ll handle Achilles.”

“You’ll… you’ll handle Achilles? Do you ever listen to yourself?”

“I have people for that. Do you have a better idea?”

Agamemnon shook his head and scrubbed at his face with the heels of his hands. “You have… you’re a fucking lunatic, do you know that?

“Listen, I’m not the one who killed  Clytemnestra’s daughter.”

She was my daughter too. No, not now, I can’t… Don’t show him that, you can’t show him that. “Excellent point.”

“You need friends to finish this, Agamemnon, and you’re going to need them when it’s done if you hope to survive your home-going and its aftermath. I recommend large men with pointy, sharp objects who aren’t holding grudges.”

“And you think this really big horse is the best way for me to win them back and keep them for the duration?”

“I do.”

He is a blowhard. A motherfucking know-it-all and I hate him. But he’s rarely wrong.

“Okay, Odysseus. You win. Tell me more about the horse.”

And he did.

It was absolutely absurd and most definitely the worst plan in the history of terrible plans.

But then again…

“Well, either it will work,” Agamemnon mused, “or we’ll all die horribly. After a decade of the same fucking faces and the same fucking arguments and all the death day after day, year after year, either works for me. The horse it is.”

And the horse it was.

*****

Sweet baby Hercules, I cannot believe he was right about the really big horse.

Yes, you can. He’s almost always right.

The ships had sailed. They had pulled the horse to the door and climbed inside. The Trojans had found it the next morning, opened the gates, and brought it inside.

The absolute morons.

And now, the Acheans waited.

The horse was even larger than Agamemnon had envisioned though, in retrospect, he should have added at least five actual horses to the structure his mind conjured because Odysseus was in charge and when Odysseus was in charge, everything was at least five actual horses bigger than anyone else would have made it. Including actual horses. The strike force was also five times larger than Agamemnon expected, more of an advanced army at thirty men than the streamlined stealth force he had in mind to ghost through the city and open the gates.

We may as well make the surprise count in as many ways as possible, Odysseus had suggested as they were compiling their roster and Agamemnon had agreed at the time though he was beginning to doubt now, shoved inside a wooden horse with twenty-nine of Greece’s finest, all literally larger than life, sweating buckets, primed with adrenaline and bloodlust, and all very much focused on the fact that they were closer to He Who Had Wronged All of Them at Least Once and Probably More Than in The Last Ten Years While They Had Yet to See Any Real Spoils or Reward than in recent memory. Because he, and they, knew that’s everyone was really there for the spoils and reward; if Helen hadn’t wanted to go to Troy she wouldn’t have gone because no one took Helen, Queen of Sparta, anywhere she didn’t want to go and if she had wanted out of Troy, she would have left ages ago because no one kept Helen of Sparta anywhere she didn’t want to be.

Achilles, who was supposed to have gone with the ships as a member of the larger force, stood up, shoulders hunched to keep from cracking his head on the underside of the horse’s back, and motioned for Idomeneus to switch spots with him. Idomeneus, who had been sitting next to Agamemnon who was also supposed to have gone with the ships but decided he had Something to Prove, did so.

Achilles crowded in and man-spread, forcing Agamemnon to make himself smaller, to draw against the wall on his own or to be crushed into it but the slabs of muscle and flesh that made up the demigod clearly intent on killing Agamemnon slowly via traumatic asphyxia. “I had a dream last night,” Achilles whispered to him, voice brittle as a cracked glass bead, “about Patroclus. We were sitting at the shoreline, letting the tide wash our feet. Sitting and being together like we used to, every so often when we had the time. It was a rare and precious thing, when there was no war and there were no other kings and no crown nor duties nor demands. Me and him and the ocean.” Achilles cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes. “And do you know what he said in the dream? Do you know what he wasted that time doing?”

Agamemnon held his breath.

Achilles leaned even closer to whisper into Agamemnon’s ear. “He wasted it begging for your life. Can you imagine, after everything you’ve done, he wasted what could be our last seconds together asking me to spare you?”

Someone sitting further down the bench, toward the horse’s ass, must have told a joke because the bodies crowded down at that end all burst into laughter.

“I could never deny him anything,” Achilles voice dropped even more, nothing but a ghost, a twin to the one of which it spoke yet, somehow, Agamemnon could hear it clearly even over the din. “Constitutionally incapable.” He nodded slowly as if responding to something, or someone, Agamemnon was unable to see. “But this… I think this may be the first and last thing I can’t give.” His head thumped back against the wood and he closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, my love. And then again, perhaps I’m not,” he told the empty air.

“You,” Odysseus said, his normal volume tempered to avoid alerting anyone who might be passing by the horse where it stood proudly in the city’s main market square, “are far too sober for the eve of battle.”

“Is it eve already?” Achilles asked. “How can we tell?”

“I have an excellent sense of time.”

“I think it’s noon,” Menelaus said. “Smells like lunch.”

“How can you tell it smells like lunch specifically, brother?” Agamemnon risked drawing attention to himself because he was genuinely curious.

Menelaus shrugged. “I like lunch?”

The thirty men inside of the horse agreed that lunch was, indeed, an excellent meal.

“Er,” Agamemnon said, reluctant to point out anyone’s shortcomings lest his own be listed or attended to, “we do probably need to verify the time of day. For attack purposes and all.”

“King Asshole makes a good point for once,” Achilles said. “Someone check the porthole.

Odysseus had included a porthole in his plans for just that purpose.

No, Agamemnon had said.

It has to be somewhere and the eyes are too visible from outside. Same with the belly or the legs or chest. If we put it here, it’s hidden by the tail.

“I’m closest, I suppose I’ll do the honors.” Diomedes claimed the ladder that led up to the porthole and opened it a crack, peeking outside to check for potential witnesses before he swung it wider. He peered around the small door and squinted up, then closed it and climbed down. “Arsehole says it’s lunch.”

“Ha!” Menelaus crowed.

“I’m only usually right,” Odysseus reminded him.

“And keep it down,” Agamemnon reminded his brother. “Or we’re going to be lunch.”

Menelaus shaped his hand into a semblance of a mouth and flapped it open and shut though he did stop talking.

Achilles grumbled something unintelligible.

“What was that?” Agamemnon asked, cursing himself the moment it was out of his mouth.

“I said,”Achilles bellowed, “Maybe you shouldn’t ask others to do things you aren’t willing to do!”

“Hello?” a voice said from just beyond their wooden fortress. “Lord Poseidon? Is that you?”

“Oh, fuck,” someone muttered.

Twenty-nine men hissed, “Shhhhhhhhh.”

“I’m very sorry,” the voice said. It sounded young. A teenager or even a child. “I was going to ask… I know I don’t have the right but… I’m scared. I know it looks like the Achaeans have left but they’ve left before and they always come back and… I don’t want Troy to be destroyed. I don’t want them to sack our city and… and… I’m not ready to die yet. I’m only thirteen! I haven’t even kissed a boy yet! Or a girl! Or anyone else! I’d really like to try that so, you know, if they are going to come back and kill us all, could you maybe, I don’t know, send someone my way for a few minutes? I know you’re busy but I’d really appreciate it. I don’t have much of a sacrifice, we’re sort of out of everything, but here’s an apple from my lunch. I saved it. Okay, thanks!”

Inside the horse, the Greeks held their collective breath for as long as possible before Menelaus hissed, “You bloody moron,” at Achilles. “Get yourself killed if you want but the rest of us have lives to go back to.”

“Your wife is in that fortress.”

“Some of us don’t need partners to complete ourselves, Achilles.”

Achilles lunged for Menelaus. Agamemnon tried to grab an armor strap and missed, falling headlong into the opposite bench, the hit echoing through the space. Odysseus caught Achilles and wrestled him back into his seat while Menelaus picked Agamemnon up.

“Woah.” Another voice from outside. “You’re right, Poseidon really is in there.”

Another wait. And then Odysseus whisper-screamed, “That’s it, no one move. You,” he pointed at Menelaus, “shut up, you,” at Agamemnon, “can prove yourself later,” at Achilles, “and you drink this.” He handed Achilles a wineskin.

Achilles put the vessel to his lips and downed the contents in one go, then handed it back to Odysseus. Odysseus scratched the back of his neck.

“I didn’t mean all at once.”

“Why, what was it?” Diomedes asked.

“Unwatered wine.”

“Fantastic,” Achilles said. “Have any more?”

*****

Odysseus, as it turned out, had a lot more. It was, in fact, most of what he had laid in as stores, though there were some rations and some water.

“What were you thinking?” Agamemnon hissed a few hours later, as Euryalus began another lewd drinking song and then shushed himself, first lowering his voice and then belting out the chorus. Meges flopped over the other man trying to cover his mouth and burst out laughing, the bray of a hyena filling every available speck of empty space inside their definitely not so really big fortress.

“That if bad feelings came to a head, being drunk was better than fighting amongst ourselves,” Odysseus slurred, sticking his tongue out. His eyes crossed as he tried to look at it.

“What are you doing?”

“Counting the,” he belched, “bumps.”

Agamemnon rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. “Sweet baby Hercules, we are all going to die.”

“Naaaahhhhhhh,” Menelaus giggled. “Fffff they find us, we can share our…” he turned his wineskin over and shook it. Not even a drop emerged. “Well, shit. We are fucked.”

“Who are you mad at?” Agamemnon asked.

“Mostly you for dragging me into this bulllllllfuckery when I was per… perfectly happy doing Sparta. I mean doing Sparta. I mean… no, that’s what I meant. I was doing a lot of Sparta. Helen and I had an arrangement. S’fine. She’s happy with Cassandra, I was happy and now look. We are shhhhhhiiii…” Menelaus moved his jaw around, flexed it until it cracked, “sitting. Sitting, whew, that was a hard one. Sitting around in a fucking horse with a rectal window waiting for it to be nighttime.” Then he giggled again. “This is so dumb. This is so dumb!” He shouted.

Agamemnon flicked his brother’s ear. Menelaus licked Agamemnon’s hand and then bit him.

“Are you serious right now?” Agamemnon chided.

“As a blorbo.”

“I have to pee,” Ajax the Lesser announced.

“Hold it,” Agamemnon told him.

“Thas isn’t good for you,” the man informed him.

“Ajax the Greater would have been able to hold it,” Philoctetes snorted.

“Ajax the Greater alsho has Bladder the Greater,” Ajax the Lesser said. “S’not my fault.”

“Someone give him an empty skin,” Agamemnon said.

As one, all twenty-nine men hugged their wineskins.

“Ye gods, what now?”

“What if there’s some left?” Odysseus asked, eyes wide. “He’ll get pee in it.”

“You let Demophon pee in your mouth twenty minutes ago.”

“That was consensual.”

“What if there’s not any more left?” Achilles wailed.

“S’can’t be all of it!” Diomedes cried, pulling on his hair. “M’not drunk yet!”

“I love you guys,” Menelaus said.

“Menelaus ishhhh drinks drunk,” Thersander sang in his deep basso profundo. “See, I know how to be quiet!” he proceeded to bellow at even higher volume. “I am the best boy. What do I win?”

“A one way ticket out the arsewindow,” Agamemnon snarled, “if you don’t shut up!”

Thersander’s eyes started to water.

“Sorry,” Agamemnon said, “gods, Thersander, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… no, no, please don’t —”

And one of the best of the Achaeans started to weep as though Agamemnon had kicked his puppy, then eviscerated it, and used the entrails to predict the death of his mother.

“I hear him now too! Oh, Great Poseidon.”

“Oh, fanfuckingtastic,” Agamemnon muttered to himself, before drawing Thersander’s head against his side. “There there, I didn’t mean it. You are surely the best of boys, Thersander, but don’t tell the others they’ll be jealous.”

“Really?” The massive killer looked up at the King with teary eyes and snot running from one nostril.

“Sure. If that’s what I need to say to calm you down and keep you from alerting the Trojan army to our presence, absolutely.”

Thersander hugged Agamemnon’s waist and cuddled against his belly, smearing everything that was dripping out of him across the king’s armor. “I knew you were a good king. The best king. Everyone else hates you but I knew you were the best.”

Agamemnon blew out a huge breath and patted Thersander’s shoulder. “Thanks. I guess.”

“Hey!” Menelaus boomed.  “Why don’t I get hugs?”

“Why don’t we all get hugs?” Odysseus blurted.

“I definitely need a hug,” Achilles shouted over all of them.

“If I hug you, will you all. Please. Shut the fuck up so we don’t. Get. Murdered.”

“Yes!” the occupants of the really big horse chorused.

And then proceeded to shush one another in an even more lusty chorus.

“Fine,” Agamemnon agreed wearily. “Hugs for everyone.

*****

When Agamemnon woke, he found his brother leaning against his shoulder and Achilles’ head in his lap.

Achilles woke half a second later, looked up at him, and rolled onto the floor.

Everyone else continued to snore, whisper, fart, and do whatever it else they did when unconscious.

“Fuck,” Menelaus said when Agamemnon, quite literally, shrugged him awake. “What time is it?”

“No idea,” Agamemnon said, feeling as though he had been among the intoxicated instead of the only one to remain sober. “Go check.”

“You go check.”

Agamemnon raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’ll go check,” Menelaus said, stepping over some of his fellows and on others as he made his way to the ladder. He climbed up, pausing a few times, shaking his head or gripping the bars a little more tightly, but eventually made it to the arsehole. He, like Diomedes earlier, had there wherewithal to crack the portal slightly and check around the horse before swinging it open fully. “It’s dark,” he said.

“Well, then,” Agamemnon said with a small smile, fetching his sword and shield. “We have a job to do, do we not?”

“Don’t,” Achilles warned. “I will kill you right here, right now.”

Agamemnon’s grin widened to show his teeth.

“Brother -“ Menelaus begged.

Agamemnon bashed the pommel of his sword against his shield.

There were gasps and shrieks and screams. Someone vomited.

“Good evening, Horse Boys. It’s time to do a war.”