My Cardboard Balcony

Sea Salt by Belinda Roddie if the old man drinks the brine, he will sweat and steam for a while before teetering over the edge of his little boat. and the fish will flutter to meet him, eating the dead skin from his wrinkled feet, and then his ankles, until he rises from the foam thirty years younger. then, gripping the oars with such fervor that they splinter between his fingers, he will sweep himself to shore where a bonfire will await him, along with a beautiful island girl with seaweed in her very black hair.

The gladiator bore blood on his chest as his only armor, standing amidst the sluggish sea of decaying corpses stinking from their own plasma and fecal matter. In the audience above, the emperor of Rome was laughing, clapping his fat hands together over and over, like a toddler just given a shiny bauble. The warrior, sweat mixing with the gashes in his forehead and causing them to sting, could not make himself look at the ruler of the empire. Not even when the audience jeered him to raise his sword in triumph.