yesterday on the playground.
The passage on page 34 read:
However, there is some record of how such sacrifices might have been carried out. After the traditional prayers and invocations of the gods, the animal (or human) was held down upon the stone altar (pictures depicting several people restraining another man—the sacrificed—on the altar are well-documented throughout many of these early “civilized” cultures) and the priest or, much more frequently, the priestess raised the chosen talisman in one hand and the Holy Blade in the other. A precise slice across the neck ended the life of the animal or human.* The blood was collected in a ritual bowl and then sanctified. The corpse was then eviscerated and the major organs removed. The priest or priestess then began the very important, and bizarre, practice of Haruspicy. This method of diving the future by examining the entrails of the dead will not be discussed here, but it should be noted that these ancient cultures believed this practice to be an authentic viewing portal into the future and the whim of the gods.
At the bottom of the page, the astrex from earlier was answered:
*Human sacrifices, as legend holds, often involved heart extraction, which will be discussed later on page 45.
Page 45 read:
The ancient practice of human-heart removal as a means of sacrifice to the gods is a legend of mythic proportions, but is not without its supporting evidence. Human sacrifices were not common, nor uncommon—they were reserved for only the most reverential of ceremonies, or the most dire. Almost without fail, a human was sacrificed when either plagues, famines, or wars besieged a society. When things were their gloomiest and most desperate, the Greeks and the Romans offered up one of their own to try to turn the tide of despair.
The chosen one, often a volunteer soldier willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to help his people and, ostensibly, earn a one-way ticket to Elysium, the blessed place for the honored dead, laid upon the altar and was held in place by other warriors and, much like the animal sacrifices described earlier, the priest or priestess invoked the gods and bestowed the final blessing rites. Using most likely talons (or metal spikes fastened to his/her fingers), the priest or priestess then pierced through the chest cavity and the breast plate to seize the heart. Once removed, the heart became the new consecrated talisman for future ceremonies.
Brendan didn’t care about Abraham and Isaac—he cared about what he could do to protect his family from further punishments. Brendan wouldn’t—
He wrote them inside a marble composition book, like the one Miss Tuyol made him have for grammar exercises. He created the list while watching Saturday morning cartoons, so Dad wouldn’t get suspicious and ask him what he was doing. Dad probably thought he was writing some story about Bobo and BooBoo Bunny, who always had the bad luck to get their carrot supply stolen. The cartoon was mildly funny, similar to
Brendan hadn’t performed any of the sacrifices he’d written down (and always worried by Saturday’s sundown that he had angered the gods even further because he was too chicken to do what they wanted), but he felt things were getting better. Mom still slept most of the day and had that empty expression on her face when she did get up, but Dad had resumed making breakfast for everyone on Saturday and that was at least some recognition of the day’s importance. And nothing bad had happened to anyone in the family since Brendan had dedicated himself to their protection.
That, however, changed last night.
Brendan woke when Tyler came home from his date with some girl who Delaney said was a weirdo. Instead of going right to bed, Tyler called his friend Paul and told him something horrible had happened. Brendan had discovered a while ago that when Tyler wanted privacy on his cell phone and didn’t want to go outside and sit in his car to get it, he would sit in his closet instead. He must have figured that it was the safest way to prevent Mom and Dad from hearing through his bedroom door or Delaney from nosing in his business from her room which bordered the opposite wall. He probably assumed that Brendan was too busy playing with action figures to care about his big brother’s private conversations. Brendan did care. He had to—or else how would he know if the gods were pleased or not?
Their closets shared a wall and if Brendan sat in his, carefully balancing himself on top of a pile of stuffed animals, while Tyler sat in his, Brendan could hear every word. Brendan listened last night and knew that the gods had had enough of him stalling for courage. They were threatening to ruin Tyler’s life (his brother had fucked up really bad with that weird bitch and now he could be totally fucked) and the only way Brendan could help him would be to man up and finally give the gods the sacrifice they wanted.
While Dad cooked eggs in the kitchen and Bobo and Booboo donned Mexican hats and pursued the weekly carrot thief, Brendan reviewed his list of sacrifices.
1—kick person down stairs
2—push person off roof
3—set person’s hair on fire
4—burn person’s house down
5—drown person
6—make person choke on carrots (ha!)
7—bury person alive
And the list went on and on for almost two pages until
45—run person over with car
Of his list, Brendan could cross off over half the options because there was no way he could steal a car, or drive one, or overpower someone enough to drown them or make them choke and he certainly couldn’t bury anyone alive. The rest of the options were possible, but not without their challenges. Number 33, for instance, required him to suffocate a person. That could be done if the person was tied up, but that required Brendan to come up with a way to strap someone down first without them fighting back.
The solution was easy, of course. Their cat, Lizzy, who Dad called Lizzy Borden for some reason, would be easy to sacrifice. He could tie her up and suffocate her or drown her in the sink or even put her on the train tracks that ran behind the elementary school—hell, he could even try to remove her beating heart—but killing the cat would be pointless. His goal was to protect his family. Certainly Tyler’s life was more important than Lizzy’s, but Brendan considered the cat a good member of the family who always offered love and affection without complaint and never meowed in the middle of the night to be fed like his friend Kyle’s cat did. Brendan could snatch a cat from the neighborhood but the community rules prevented any pets from roaming freely or being left outside unattended, so a cat would have to escape for Brendan to get his hands on one. Catching a cat that didn’t want to be caught wouldn’t be an easy task. Besides, the gods wanted
The easiest of the sacrifices—kick person down stairs—also offered the other crucial ingredient Brendan needed: anonymity. Performing a sacrifice for the gods only to be caught and punished defeated the purpose. He needed to be able to get away with it without any connection to him or anyone in his family. He could kick someone down the stairs at school and run away but there was always a chance that another kid or a teacher would spot him. Falling down stairs didn’t mean death, either. He’d need a place with a lot of stairs and he couldn’t think of
