THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (ereader that reads to you .txt) 📕

/> The marching feet destroyed the reality of the cave and made the reality illusion.
A thought struck him: what will help you here is prayer to God. Belief in God will help you here.
And when he had jumped time he was a legionnaire holding a spear and a shield. He marched in the middle of a troop and the feeling of mutual honour was fantastic. He knew these was the plains of Africa, Carthage to be exact, and he they were about to conquer it, spreading salt in the ground to keep the crops from growing.
From nowhere another army appeared. That's when he started praying, but to himself. All thru the fighting he prayed. But that didn’t help him losing touch with his concentration. It ended with a tumultuous clanging of swords and steel.
A spear entered his belly. He looked down and saw his intestines hanging out.
Right when he thought that this was it and that Belinda would be cursed by Lucinda for all times, he was sucked into a whirlwind and was litterally sucked back into the cave, feeling himself mumble the Lord’s Prayer to himself, shocked to hear his own voice echo like this between the walls.
He looked down. He was healthy, no intestines were hanging out. What was better, the angel was still in his arms.
“Please, Alexander. Don’t stay hear. Leave this place. Fly down the tunnel and head left now before she comes back.”
BANG.
He was ripped away, in shock, by the whirlwind again and landed
BANG
crash hard, so hard, on a marble floor that he wounded his knees and his face and everything else that was physical about him.
Right when his hands reached to rub the aching parts he looked up and saw where he was.
He was in a roman palace and was wearing a toga.
There was a man at the front of the room and he knew by instinct that this man was none other than Caligula himself, the most psychotic of all roman emperors, a crown of gilded leaves decorating his stylish hair. The man had a very strange look on his face that bordered on the severely perverse. Two women slaves with fine ornamental jewellery were fanning him some air with palm-leaves.
Another was feeding him grapes. A third was playing music.
There was a fourth woman on the throne next to him, a tanned woman with long brown curvy hair, dressed in a blue toga, with heavily painted lips.
The Emperor sat on a golden marble throne with a baldachin over it.
The ceiling of this huge room had a very fancy painting Zeus and there were pillars everywhere.
Alex was on the floor supporting his tired body in half-sitting position with his two dirty hands. Obviously he was that same legionnaire that had been discovered as a deserter. But how had he survived that spear?
Caligula stopped the fanning slaves and slowly stood up from his throne and walked up to him.
He looked down at him, obviously enjoying his power, and Alex looked at this evil man who smiled with an ego of the thousand armies of hell, obviously a touch of Lucinda in his eye.
"Face down, deserter! Take off your clothes!"
Alex did as he was told.
He lay still on the floor, only seeing the occasional sandal of his royal green bloodedness walk round hi. Then he felt a foot on his head and nothing more. It was pushing him down. He felt extreme heat on his back and started to scream. Hot coals were being placed on his body. He started praying again.
“Dear Lord, forgive me my sins. Dear Lord, help my spirit. Dear Lord…”
More intensely than ever, the heat on his back seemed to penetrate his skin. It hurt like the agony of hell itself.
The coals were taken away, after what seemed like an eternity.
He heard footsteps, Caligula obviously enjoying keeping him insecure and fearful.
Then, the Caesar asked some slaves to come over and he was pushed down, unable to move.
Maybe fifteen coals were now replaced upon his back now and it was hell.
“Lucinda. Please stop torturing me” Alex hollered.
He heard Lucinda’s voice echoing in the marble hall and it was obvious she was there with Caligula.
“You want us to extinguish the hot coals” she asked.
“Yes” Alex cried.
“Let’s do it then” she responded, Caligula agreeing.
Suddenly, there was a small stream of yellow liquid on his back.
The slow trickling was awful. Other slaves joined in and soon enough there were five of them doing it on him and all the time the women were laughing.
He started wriggling out of the grip of the slaves and punched one of them in the eye. He fell down. Alexander had no idea when his strength returned. But when it did, he knew that he was back in the game.
He broke free, turning into a wild animal on the loose after a hellish hunt with fifty wild hunters at his back.
He grabbed Caligula by the throat and bashed him against the wall.
“No hear me, you arrogant little shit. History hates you and there is a reason for it, so stop peeing on me.” Alexander had to laugh at his own comment as they started wrestling on the floor.
“Who is this Lucinda?” Caligula screamed.
“My sister” Alexander answered.
Caligula bashed Alex’s head bloody against the marble floor only to be viciously strangled by Alex.
It was very much like a farce. All the while, Alex seemed to feel Adnicul riding in circles in the forest.
“I must save Adnicul!”
Lucinda’s voice came out of Caligula’s mouth now.
“No such thing. To each man his own problem. You’ve got yours!”
Alexander took the Emperor by the throat bashed his head against the pillars and screamed:
"By the light of the moon, I have vanquished a DEMON!"
“Now, who’s poetry stinks?”
Ludinda’s voice was still coming out of the Caesar’s mouth and it was accompanied by a fart.
The laugh was genuinely his own.
“I love Lucinda” he said, now in his own voice.
“Love this” Alex said, grabbing Caligula’s crown and tearing off a few hairs with it. It landed on the floor, clanged and rolled a few feet away.
Alex then grabbed the leader’s head in both his own hands and smashed his head against a pillar.
The skull cracked and the Emperor sunk dead down onto the ground.
He panted and looked out the window.
There was a balcony there.
The draperies were swaying in the breeze.
He looked behind him. No one was there. Not even the girls, not even the slaves.
At his feet no Emperor was resting in his eternal sleep.
He felt his head. Styled hairdo.
What was that?
A gilded crown of leaves?
He was dressed as Caesar now?
Could not be, could it?
Yes, it was.
Again, he looked out onto the balcony and saw the silk draperies fluttering in the breeze.
There were people out there.
On sandaled feet he walked toward that balcony.
As he walked out, he saw a majestic view of the Forum Romanum from his own palace above the hill south of the Colloseum. There were about five markets in action and the field day had been the magnet of over fifty thousand tourists. When they saw Alexander they cheered. It was ear deafening. He started laughing.
”My God, I am Ceasar” he exclaimed, chuckling.
“It is glorious, isn’t it?”
The voice to his own right was sweet like wine.
He looked toward the origin of that voice.
She was a gorgeous looking woman, about 23 years old, dressed in a blue toga.
Her red lips were full and luscious, painted dark red and in a slightly open smile, her tongue resting like an inventing entertainment under the gums.
Her skin was nougat brown and those brown eyes seemed deeper than the inside of a bowl of chocolate mousse.
“Who are you, lovely lady?” Alexander mused.
She cocked her head to the right and cradled back and forth.
“Your slave.”
It was then that he noticed that long, curvy hair falling across her shoulders, leaving one shoulder open and the toga just barely covering her beautiful midsize breasts.
“My slave?”
She nodded, closing her eyes. Those eyes seemed constantly half-closed anyway, in a constant sexual invitation. She smiled again, her dimples dancing in her cheeks.
He then heard the crowd cheering.
“Alexander! Alexander! Alexander!”
He embraced the girl and she embraced him.
They both waved and the crowd cheered even more.
There seemed to be more people here now than he ever had seen in his own audiences back in Clurafar. People as far the eye could see.
“It is all yours” the woman said, grabbing a grape from the table behind her and putting it in his mouth. It was a tasty grape. Rich and fruity and as tasty as the woman in her arms. The entire table was full of fruit.
“What is your name, my girl?”
”Beata!”
”Really?”
She nodded.
He felt himself craving this woman, completely forgetting that he was on a spiritual journey here, where everything was at stake. He had crushed the skull of an Empire moments back and now he was on a balcony overlooking a crowd of thousands cheering his name.
At once, he felt the woman kneel down beside him.
“What are you doing, Beata?”
She opened his toga and saw what lay beneath.
It was large and swelling and seemed to grow even larger just by Beata looking at it they way she did.
She grabbed her own toga and released the gold butterfly safety pin.
The woman was now naked at his own feet and her bosom was nougat brown and swelling, her nipples chocolate coloured and wonderfully appetizing.
“It is huge” she exclaimed and looked up, admiringly. “May I?”
And as she did, stars seemed to dance in front of his eyes, the crowd singing his name, grapes in his mouth, peaches in his hands, oysters caressing his groin.
Soon, he was inside her on the table, his own fruit shooting into her belly, her femininity wobbling and wreathing in his arms, grapes and peaches squashed under her derriere.
She was moaning
“Beata Maria, will you marry me?”
There was no question any longer of a duel.
There was only a question of having a woman that seemed to look like a nougat dessert would in human form, owning a crowd that was cheering his own name over and over.
Far away, Adnicul was lost in a death cycle.
Far away, an angel was crying.
Far away, his family was rotting in hell.
Far away, all that was far away.
Right here, Alexander was trapped in an illusion, making love to a slave of nougat colour, female charms wobbling in his hands.
“I will marry you!”
In two seconds, he was back in the throne room, maybe a month later.
He was wearing another toga and it was closed. He had obviously recently made love. He felt it due to a certain edgy relief throbbing in his limbs.
Alexander was at the front of the room and he knew by instinct that he was the one with power, a crown of gilded leaves decorating his stylish hair. Two women slaves with fine ornamental jewellery were fanning him some air with palm-leaves.