Incarprettamento

short story

Beware—dreams lingering long after waking are not visions but omens.

“What?” Matteo stared at the little paper a moment longer, then looked up.

“Were you expecting a nice affirmation? Fortune cookies never make sense.” Cam smirked and read his fortune, “Listen to mine: Your reflection owes you an apology.” He roared with laughter and reached for another cookie to read. “A lost sock is never alone, it just waits in another dimension. Stupid, right?”

Fortune cookies used to have poetic adages so whimsical you’d wanna carry them around in your wallet. Damn these nonsensical, tasteless cookies, Matteo thought. He didn’t sleep well last night, so everything was irritating.

Everyone cleared their lunches from the table, chatter fading as they refilled their coffee mugs and pulled out their laptops to get back to work. Cam switched on the projector light and brought the grim photograph into focus.

Matteo clicked his pen, commanding all eyes on him. “Jean, Irina, thanks again for joining the team. As mentioned on the flyer, our study of the Middle Neolithic period will be targeting agricultural rituals involving murder. We’ll be reexamining older records of 20 excavation sites - most notably, the Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux burial site in Rhône Valley.”

The team came together, starting with Matteo and Cam, childhood friends. They posted a recruitment form for additional members on the anthropology department bulletin board. Free lunch is a mighty good deal for near-broke archeology college students who, let’s face it, have nothing better to do and would be doing this kind of shit with their time anyway.

The addition of Jean and Irina provided a solid set of varying specializations, with Matteo and Irina handling Forensic Archaeology and Cam and Jean handling Cultural Anthropology.

Pen click. “This here’s the burial ground.” Matteo pointed to various spots of the projected image. “The body appeared bound by a homicidal method of ligature strangulation. The signature strangulation is called Incarprettamento and involves laying the subject on their stomach with wrist and ankles bound together behind their back, cruelly paralyzing the contorted body into a horrid bend.”

Matteo’s gaze lingered on the unnatural curl of the skeletal remains, a heavy sigh bearing inside him, as he dragged his pen along the curve, stopping at the neck. “Tight binding is looped around the throat and connected back to the wrists, making the body grotesquely fold in on itself, ensuring any movement intensifies suffocation. Death sets in shortly after dealing with asphyxiation and tormenting pain while being buried alive.”

Matteo looked over at Cam, who opened a second photograph. “Study these photos closely. The animal bone fragments buried alongside the subject strongly suggest a ritualized homicide, ceremonial in nature, probable human sacrifice. I want any connections you can find between incaprettamento and agrarian rituals. Pull all harvest data — folklore, ancient artifacts; get me anything linked to harvest rituals.”

Cam added in his upbeat Cam tone, “What we do know is the Italian mafia used this exact method of Incarprettamento executions centuries later, but we’re here to dig into the origin story. If we can pull off worthy research, we could get published in Science Advances, Journal of Archeology, or shit, National Geographic.”

They dove in.

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Matteo jumped awake from the tap of a subway stranger. “I’m not a stalker, but you usually get off at this stop, no?” Exactly something a stalker would say, but Matteo shrugged it off, managing to throw him a quick smile of gratitude before jogging past the closing doors.

He stumbled in the dark of his apartment. Before drifting to sleep, his mind recounted facts of the day in dreamlike loops. The symbolism of the Sun - an all-important god, symbol, metaphor across centuries. Neolithic Venus fertility statues. Odd but common enough burials pouring pounds of grain over the dead. The dots were connecting, and he couldn’t wait to unravel more threads.

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Two girls holding hands ran past dirt paths through tall grass. Daisies crushed between their toes as they giggled toward the large hut. Late again. Védara and the village teens were inside practicing knots and crushing plant medicine.

Hstéhr, best versed in the spiritual teachings of Védara (her father’s advisor), was bowed to and blessed by all. She was doing what she was told.

How Yugóm spoke different, wonderful essence over everything, nothing like Védara‘s words, she tethered Hstéhr someplace passionate and unknown. The friends were not consciously alike, no one understanding their refusal to separate. Didn’t matter to them.

Yugóm’s wind-chasing soul fired rapture in Hstéhr’s heart. Whisperings of Yugóm as wayward, wretched, lost cause —the words were wrong. Hstéhr could see.

Védara would dole out punishment for being late once everyone left. Yugóm would get it worse.

“Hstéhr, I showed you the new knots; show us if you’ve learned.” Védara tested his pet; she made the butterfly knot and placed it in Ra’s oblation basin. “Good. We will teach the others now.”

Hstéhr, in her thirteenth year, is the youngest of the group who is of age to learn necessary Eleusinian ritual preparations for Thesmophoria.

Védara started with Yugóm, as always. Hstéhr would have to help the other girls.

“She acts like she’s an elder,” Nagdii said to Bher as they turned their backs to Hstéhr. “The spirits hate arrogance, she’ll never be our elder.”

Hstéhr tried again with a weak smile and pleading eyes. “I-I’m happy to show you…as Védara asked. It’s difficult. Sure, you don’t need me to—”

“Go to someone else.” Bher grabbed Nagdii‘s arm and moved at a few paces to create distance.

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That night, the whole village gathered by the fire for Thesmophoria. As tradition, Védara, voice of the spirits, would lead the ceremony.

“Generations ago, the spiritual leaders of my lineage communicated with Ra and made a sacred vow - unifying the god spirits with human souls through soil - death, rebirth. Once connected, always connected. We offer half of our animals, grains, and medicine on Thesmophoria because Ra sustains our life.”

Everyone raised both hands to the sky, then bowed, palms pressed dirt. Around the big centerfire, they kept their position as Hstéhr‘s father, Ko’bhar, village leader, and Védara stand over the large open burial site.

Védara chants a prayer as the villagers stand, grab from the pile of offerings, and pour the mixtures of plant medicine and grains into the burial pit one by one.

The animals are bound by rope, so they cannot move or bite. Men hold the animals, kept alive, as women bind with special knots.

Ko’bhar cut the neck of the first rabbit and tossed it in. The rest of the men drew their blades and cut the necks of pigs, dogs, and deer. Blood rose, covering the ground, splashing the sides of the pit.

“This season of Thesmophoria, Ra demands more from us now, and we are honored to provide as Ra provides for us. Ra has spoken to Védara in a dream; his message to us must not be ignored.” Ko’bhar lifted his chin to Védara and then walked over to where his wife and Hstéhr were standing.

Hstéhr thought it strange, and she shivered when her father placed a strong hand over her shoulder. Ko’bhar lead the ceremony with Védara, and the men stayed next to the burial site, not next to the women.

Védara spoke. “In my vision, a woman was kneeling beside a river holding two water basins. She was pouring out water from the basins; one of them poured into the river before her, and the other poured out into the grass behind her. A large bright star hovered above her head, with many smaller stars encircling the large star. Once the basins were empty, she told me her name was Hecate, daughter of Ra and man. She walked to the big nearby tree, a man was sitting under its shade, rope bound all down the tree trunk and around the man’s waist, keeping him connected to the tree. The man had three faces and many hands that were all drinking from nine different overflowing cups.”

Védara looked at Hstéhr and Yugóm now; they remembered his request and walked up to him to hand over the extra rope they were carrying for him. Another strange new thing for the Thesmophoria ceremony. They turned to return to their spot, but Védara told them to stay beside him.

“The dream was a prophetic warning. You are the woman with the water basins, Hstéhr; your spiritual lineage makes you the daughter of Ko’bhar and Ra. We are all Ra’s children, but you are his special star. Your spiritual gift comes from Ra and brings blessings to our people. The offerings we bury below nourish the soil, nurturing the growth of new abundant crops. With your offering, we strengthen the bond between the three faces - our people, the earth’s harvest, and Ra. With your offering, you return to your father Ra and bless our people with abundance beyond measure.”

“No!” Yugóm grabbed Hstéhr’s hand.

Hstéhr froze, fearful that Yugóm’s rebellious yell would be met with severe punishment, and Hstéhr wouldn’t be able to help get her out of whatever awaited after the ceremony. Her frozen state began to melt as the realization of Védara’s words and Yugóm’s angry response sank in. Hstéhr turned her face slowly to meet Yugóm’s eyes, seeing in them something she had never seen from her wild beautiful friend before. In her eyes, Hstéhr saw Yugóm’s confident radiance fractured, visions of dark abyss flickering through the trembling window to her soul.

“Do not defy me, girl.” Védara threw the rope at Yugóm’s feet. “We will all do what is required of us. Pick up the rope and bind her.”

“No. I defy you.” Yugóm screamed. ”I defy Ra!” Her voice was powerful and piercing despite the sight of her, small and terrified.

Védara was about to strike her, but Hstéhr called his name.

“Védara. Védara, please, I want you to tie me. It should be you.” Hstéhr accepted what was asked of her. Of course she would, not because she always has, but to spare Yugóm — the one who is real, the one who is love among false gods and empty blind faith.

Ko’bhar nodded approval. The air shifted, pressurized so painfully inside Hstéhr she felt she momentarily died at the sight of her father’s nod.

Védara’s gift of spiritual ritual, the endless hours of tying various knots practiced to artistic grotesquery would forever haunt his witnesses. He held Hstéhr like a lamb over his lap and kissed the top of her head over and over through her excruciating cries as her limbs dislocated behind her.

“Make him stop! He is hurting Hstéhr, he’s killing her.” Yugóm shouted at the men; someone needed to realize this was crazy. This is insane. But no one realized. Yugóm tried to take a blade off one of them, but they overpowered her and held her in place. “Don’t let her die.” Yugóm fell to the floor sobbing.

Védara tightened the loop around her neck. Hstéhr couldn’t hold onto her breath, oxygen slipped her grasp like water through clenched fists. Each stuttering inhale spasmed tight and painful, choked off by wall after wall of new enclosure. Then she was thrown into the pit.

The painful shock from the fall held her frozen for a few moments as she sank under the pool of blood. Her body jolted her head up. She spit out the blood, but the rope tightened, lacerating her further. The agony of ligature strangulation, blood asphyxiation, or soil suffocation are all violently equally felt. Two minutes of hell. Everything became death, to die in so many incomprehensible ways. She stopped moving. Two minutes frozen in time captured eternally. She became the bridge.

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Matteo awoke in a coughing fit. Dreamlike reality distorted around him as he worked to steady his breathing and piece together where he was and what was happening. A sliver of night peaked through the curtain of his bedroom apartment - I’m here, he thought.

He walked into the bathroom, turned on the sink, and cupped water into his hands to ease his dry throat.

When he looked up at his reflection in the mirror and saw the deep ligature marks around his neck, he cried:

“Hstéhr.”