Little Lambs
A Short Story by Abram Dress
The last time Dimitri saw his daughter alive was when he left for work on Monday morning. Thalia lay on the floor reading her favorite book, the same worn copy of Gods and Heroes of Greece that he had read a thousand times as a child. He opened the door to leave, shoulders already tense as he prepared for a rough morning. Before he could step out, Thalia leapt to her feet, hurriedly saving her place with her favorite pink Pegasus bookmark, and ran to the door to give him a hug.
Her little shoulder scraped against the Hellenic Police badge strapped to his belt. “Ow!” She almost cried, but then she was brave and bit her lip. “I love you, papoulaki.” She readjusted her hug and beamed up at him.
“I love you more, manari mou.” Dimitri leaned down and kissed her thick brown hair, not quite black like his wife’s, but darkening as she aged. She would be a beauty and he would be fighting the local island boys off before she was fifteen, not to mention the endless American and western European tourists who found Greek women so enticing. He shrugged off the troublesome thoughts and enjoyed the glow of the little girl's hug for a moment.
“Did you see how I didn't cry, papoulaki? I was like a hero, but I wasn't such a jerk like the heroes.”
“You are Thalia of Rhodes,” he laughed. “Glorious hero and not a jerk!”
“You're a hero and not a jerk too, papoulaki.” She squeezed him tighter. “My friend Lam says that gods and heroes and monsters come back over and over again to make new stories and have new adventures.”
“Lam sounds fun.” His shoulders relaxed, and he smiled. “Is she a new friend at school?”
Thalia nodded. “She isn’t always there, but sometimes she says hello to me after school or while we are playing. She says that my papoulaki might be a big hero. You might just not know it.”
“Don't I get to be a god?” He kissed the top of her head. “The gods made all the heroes.”
“Well, sure. Lam actually said you might be a god, but the gods were even bigger jerks than the heroes. So I think you get to just be a hero.”
“I'll be happy being your hero then, manari mou.” He gave her one last squeeze, yelled an unreciprocated “Antío!” to his wife Maria, and left for the station.
Thirty minutes later, he pulled his aging Suzuki Alto into the designated parking spot, marked clearly with a blue and white RESERVED LIEUTENANT sign. He sighed as he saw Sergeant Anastasia Lamasus escorting a screaming woman and a drunken man into the station.
The couple reminded him too much of his own household.
Dimitri followed at a safe distance, far enough to avoid being noticed by the couple as Anastasia escorted them to an interrogation room, but close enough to enjoy the view of Anastasia’s swaying hips, framed by the non-regulation snakeskin belt she always wore. He often meant to say something about that belt and make her wear something official, but he enjoyed the way it moved too much.
Dimitri rubbed his aching head as he entered his office and tried to focus on the pile of papers that covered his desk like so many taunting satyrs. After a time, Anastasia calmed the screaming woman down. Unfortunately for the minefield in his head, the Rhodes Hellenic Police station was immediately across a small cobblestone street from the fire department. A whooping alarm interrupted Dimitri as he tried yet again to review a report.
His head throbbed. He and Maria had been fighting again, and the only way to dampen her voice was to drink enough wine to drown his own hearing. They had been fighting more over the last few months, always about bills or working hours or other things that were not the actual issue. The actual issue, that she could not have children since complications during Thalia’s birth, was slowly but certainly ending their marriage. Dimitri wanted a large family, felt that he was meant to have a large family. Maria noticed when his eyes wandered, which they did more and more often now.
Dimitri refocused on the report, which was confusing enough without the interruptions and the headache. Dimitri’s team was investigating a series of reported missing children over the previous weeks, but the investigation reports were fragmented and incomplete. Sergeant Lamasus was leading the junior team and compiled the data to present to Dimitri. As he tried to decipher the meandering information, a rambling series of rows and columns listing names and locations, he felt almost as though she was purposefully leading him astray. His mood darkened, and the skies outside seemed to follow suit. Thunder rumbled. This happened often when he was in a mood, and somehow the thunder and rainstorms always calmed him.
He looked forward to some clarity of thought.
Until his phone rang.
He glanced at the caller ID–Maria. His wife rarely called during the day unless there was a crisis, real or fabricated. As he pulled the phone off the cradle, there was a quick knock at his office door.
“Hello Maria. Just a moment while…” The door opened, and Sergeant Lamasus slid in.
The Sergeant spoke louder than was necessary, and with a cadence that hinted at pleasure rather than business. “Sir, I could use some help with–”
He interrupted. “I could use a little privacy.”
“Who is that?” Maria’s voice cut through his head like Perseus’s sword through Medusa’s neck. Could this have happened at a worse time? Maria had noticed the way Anastasia looked at him at a recent police function. She could not let go of the suspicion that he was hiding an affair. Maria did not need to know how much Dimitri wished her unfounded suspicions were true.
“It’s nobody, Maria. What do you need?” He held up his hand to halt Sergeant Lamasus, but she approached his desk anyway, holding a fresh batch of reports.
Anastasia leaned toward him and whispered, “I’ll just leave these reports for you. Call me if you need … anything.” She said it loud enough for Maria to hear. Dimitri was certain that was not an accident. What in the hells was wrong with her? She set the pile of reports on the desk in front of Dimitri and walked out of his office. A double flash of lightning lit the sky outside his office window. Rumbling thunder rolled across him.
“Maria, what is it?”
Maria answered with renewed anger, “Your daughter wants to talk with you.” Before Dimitri could answer, Thalia was on the phone.
“Papoulaki?” Her voice was shaky. Nervous..
Dimitri smiled, and the room brightened as the thunderclouds shifted. Thalia could always clear his head. “What’s happening, manari mou?”
They chatted briefly–Thalia was nervous about strange monsters that might get her at school. “My friend Lam says that monsters always come back and that sometimes even heroes and gods can’t stop them.”
Dimitri assured her that there was nothing to worry about. “You’re reading that book too much.”
As though he could really judge her. Hadn’t those heroic battles between monsters and gods led him to become a police officer?
“And I think you should stop spending so much time with that new friend of yours. She’s filling your head with rubbish.”
After a few minutes of comforting, Thalia said goodbye and hung up the phone. The storm clouds had moved on completely. Sun shone brightly through his office window onto the endless piles of paper.
After work that evening, Dimitri sat across the table from Captain Spiros Christou as the sun settled over Rhodes Harbor. The fresh scent of the morning storms still rested in the air. The captain sipped from a tumbler, which he kept mostly full from the bottle of Ouzo Giannatsi next to it. A forgotten bottle of water hid behind the Ouzo bottle. Christou devoured a plate of extremely rare lamb, chewing noisily and washing the bloody bites down with large sips from the glass. Dimitri could almost hear the lamb bleating as the captain chewed.
After Dimitri left the small harbor-side cafe, Christou would spend the next two hours sipping the rest of the bottle before stumbling home to sleep it off. Dimitri worried that his own life was on the same trajectory, worried that any chance for greatness was past and that nothing but failure awaited him.
He was no god. No hero. Just a man.
A man unsatisfied with a life that was better than he deserved. How could he treat Maria so cruelly? Why could he not be happy with this perfect, however small, life that the two of them had created?
Why? Because he was meant for so much more. He felt it. He knew it. But also, somehow, he knew that his time had passed.
Dimitri let his gaze wander over the harbor. Pleasure craft drifted between the two statues guarding the harbor entrance–a deer and a stag stood submissively where the feet of the Colossus once commanded. His eyes shifted from the brightly lit statues to the evening shadows near the cafe, where the city’s homeless congregated. The economic collapse that had struck his homeland left countless people without a way to support themselves and their families. Many had taken to begging in the tourist areas, or picking pockets while others begged.
“Shit in their faces,” Christou spat under his breath, as he waved away a begging child. Dimitri pretended to ignore him–he knew the Captain’s disdain for the new poor. Only two glasses into the ouzo, the older man was already becoming cruelly honest. “These homeless bastards, making our lives harder. Scaring away the tourist money. Might as well be stealing money directly from my pocket.” The Captain fumed, glaring at the beggar, who now shadowed a rich-looking tourist couple. “What I'd give to go back to the old days. The days when men like us were… gods.”
“Greece has fallen a long way from those old days, Captain. Those old days with all the gods and the heroes. Thalia is getting all sorts of ideas about monsters in her head now, and when I look around, I think that maybe she’s right.” In a shadowed alley across the square, an elderly woman with her arm in a cast slipped a wallet from a young tourist’s pocket. Dimitri should have done something about the crime. Instead, he sipped his wine. What was a monster, anyway? A starving person stealing from the overflowing pockets of an American god?
Christou’s gaze meandered back to the table, eyes swimming. “We’re all the gods there are now, Dimitri. And we aren’t much. Look around. These aren’t days for heroes and gods. These are the days for monsters. We can’t win.”
Dimitri turned back to his wine and raised the glass. “Gia sou.” Christou raised his own glass. “If we can’t win, then here’s to surviving another day.” They emptied their glasses and Dimitri leaned back in his chair.
Christou filled his glass to the top. “I saw the new sergeant making eyes at you this morning,” he chuckled. “She also snuck out a bit early. Perhaps she was going home to freshen up for you, Dimitri. Are you keeping a little something on the side? That’s what a proper god would do.”
Dimitri half smiled at his empty glass. He should stop at one drink. Instead, he waved the server over. “Sergeant Lamasus is lovely, but I have nothing on the side.” He waited until his glass was full and the server was gone before continuing. “I imagine she’s exhausted. That couple this morning, the ones with the missing child, she worked with them for some time. That’s tiring work.”
Christou nodded, his chins bouncing with the motion. “The missing children cases are getting out of hand, but until that couple arrived, the children were mainly those of poverty.” Dimitri read the meaning behind the Captain’s words. The kidnappings didn’t matter when they were crimes against the poor. Now that an affluent family was impacted, the police force needed to react, and quickly. “Those kids. They were most likely sold to some Turkish…”
Dimitri sighed. He spaced out the beginning of one of the Captain’s racist tirades, watching tourists and local couples wander by the cafe. Normally he would be enjoying the view of the young ladies, but he could not seem to get the image of Anastasia out of his head, her hips swaying as she escorted the couple into the station. It was as though she knew she had an audience. And appreciated it. He thought about slipping that snakeskin belt off, gripping those hips… He realized Christou was still talking and rubbed his eyes.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“That Sergeant, the one you aren’t having an affair with. She briefed me on the interview. The husband claimed that he and the boy had been in town to volunteer at the church, that Catholic one over by the Agios Gate.” The Captain’s eyes swam in the sockets, unfocused by his drink. “You know, that’s when the monsters won, Dimitri. When that Sheppard God started making people depend on charity. That’s when the heroes went away.” The Captain’s voice trailed off, and he stared into his glass.
“The church. They were at the church…”
Christou looked up again. “Yes, they volunteered there. But the father said that he lost track of the child… Deserve whatever happens, you ask me.” The Captain shrugged and his gaze dropped again.
“The church…” Dimitri finished his glass of wine and stood up, unsteady. He was thinking of the list of names and places in the case notes. “Thank you for the drink. Yiá sou.”
The Captain raised his glass. “Yiá sou. Are you going home?”
“I just need to stop by the station to look at something.”
An hour later, Dimitri stood in front of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in the light of a streetlamp. The sidewalk was mostly dark–the city only illuminated every third lamp to save on costs–but lights within the church cast a soft glow on the sidewalk. The statue of St. Francis menaced in the dim light, and Dimitri imagined the bird resting on its hand was actually trapped, little feet crushed between the saint’s murderous fingers.
He had stopped by the station for only minutes, long enough to glance through the case notes and verify that in all the recent missing children cases, the parents had attended or accepted charity at the church. Dimitri tried to find out more information about what the investigators had found, but only blank spaces or illegible scrawls met his searches.
He had noticed that Anastasia was in the breakroom but had not stopped to talk with her–he did not trust himself alone with her after half a bottle of wine. He had snuck out of the station and rushed the couple kilometers to the church.
Dimitri jumped when Anastasia’s voice snuck up from behind him. “Lieutenant?” He spun to face her while trying to compose his face. She was in her uniform, but her hair was down and her eyes were aflame–surely the flickering reflection of the streetlight. “I saw you at the station, but you snuck out before I could say hello.” Her voice was deeper than normal. Throaty. “You could have said hello.”
“I just had some things to check up on before I went home. I didn’t want to bother you.” He took a half step back as she pressed towards him, her breasts brushing his chest. “Shouldn’t you be at the station? Or at home?”
“I’m off duty.” She pressed against him, looking over his shoulder at the church. “Are you investigating the church? The disappearances?”
Dimitri coughed and stepped back more, until his back rested against the church gate. “How did… Yes, it looks like there may be some leads here and I am not in the mood to go home. You, however, can go home.” He paused. “Now go home.”
“Are you not in the mood to go home?” she purred. “Are you and Maria having problems?” She pressed her hips against his and he felt himself respond almost involuntarily. He leaned back into the gate. Storm clouds closed in over the town. A flash of lightning lit the front of the church.
“Go home, Sergeant,” Dimitri’s voice could have been one with the thunder that rolled over them.
She took a comfortable step back and looked to the sky. “I see you’re a little angry.” She put her hands on her hips and smiled. “Fair enough, Dimitri.”
He frowned slightly at that. Somehow, the familiarity of using his first name was more disturbing than the physical come-on. She continued, head cocked, “I’m going to join you in your little investigation, but I will try to be less…” Her eyes flashed in the streetlight. “…friendly.” A breeze blew off the bay through the streets of the town, fluttering her hair and filling his senses with her sweet scent and an odd smell of carrion.
Somehow, the smells belonged together.
The interior of the church was well lit, welcoming and peaceful. It was an ancient structure rebuilt in the early 1900s to support a burgeoning Catholic community. As the doors closed quietly behind them, Dimitri and Anastasia stepped into a pool of light in the entryway. An elderly priest rose from a pew in the front and approached them with a genial look on his face. Seeing Anastasia, his face turned from benevolence into a lustful leer.
“Lam,” he whispered. “Do you need my room?” Dimitri noticed with disgust that the old man’s hand shifted to rest on his groin. Something else fluttered around the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t grasp it. His head felt fuzzy, with the drink or with something else.
Anastasia stepped forward and put her lips to the old man’s ear. Almost a kiss, almost a lick. “That would be wonderful, Father. We will need some time.”
“May I watch, Lam?”
“Of course,” she answered in a husky whisper as she rested a hand on the priest’s chest.
Dimitri’s eyes widened as the reluctant synapses in his brain fired. “Lam?” he said, stepping back towards the door. “What does he mean, Anastasia? What’s going on here?”
Anastasia let her hand drift down the front of the priest’s vestment before turning to Dimitri and grasping his hand in a firm grip, not quite painful. Even as he tried to pull back, some part of him wanted to follow her.
“What’s going on here…” he repeated.
Far away he heard thunder rolling, but it was so distant, drowned by the thick walls of the church and the blood pounding in his ears. As the thunder dissipated, he felt his own strength fade. Anastasia’s hand relaxed, but Dimitri couldn’t let go.
She smiled at him and escorted him through a door in the back of the sanctuary, which opened into a hallway, then another door which revealed a small bedroom. The priest followed closely behind, breathing hard through his nose. The noise as he aggressively licked his lips reminding Dimitri of the sound of Captain Christou devouring the rare lamb.
“You took my children,” Anastasia whispered in his ear.
The warmth of her breath was like the breeze off the bay, warm and sickly sweet. She led Dimitri to the small bed and gently pressed him down.
“You don’t even remember who you are or what you did, but I remember. I will never forget.”
Dimitri looked around the room in a haze. On the bedside table was a worn copy of Gods and Heroes of Greece. His breath caught as he saw the little pink Pegasus bookmark lying beside it. Dimitri could barely make out the blood-soaked page that was open, the smudged text reading “…was one of many mistresses to Zeus. Upon discovering her husband’s treachery, Hera fell upon Lamia and transformed her into a horrible monster. So transformed, Lamia was forced to devour her own children…”
Anastasia leaned closer to him, straddling him, and whispered in a leonine purr, “Millennia ago you took my children.” Her voice was no longer sultry, it was predatory. “You took my children and I need children to fill the emptiness in my belly. Once you were so strong. But those days are long past.”
Memories that weren’t his own flashed through his head. Memories of the power of a god, and the abuse of so many that would now be called monsters. Memories of women despoiled, then cast aside. Memories of a hundred lives lived, always almost the same, but always a little weaker. Was that so bad?
“Anastasia, stop this.” He said the words, but his body responded differently. “I don’t…”
She laughed. “I am not Anastasia. No more than you are Dimitri. They are names of convenience, the latest of hundreds or thousands. But once I was just a girl who lost her children.” Her hands worked at his belt and the buttons and zipper on his pants. “You want this. You always want this…” She grabbed him and he gasped. “...Zeus.”
Dimitri shook his head. The world swam around him. “What do you…”
Anastasia’s eyes widened in fake innocence. “Does that name surprise you? Oh, you were once so strong. But those days are gone. You’re nothing more than a weak man now. If you were stronger, you would not let me do this.”
Dimitri tried to push her away. His limbs wouldn’t obey. The shadow of the priest jostled in the corner.
“If you were stronger, then I could not make you need me. I could not make you come here, unprotected. Alone. I could not have convinced your wife to let me into your home. I could not have convinced her you were unfaithful. I could not have convinced her to drink to unconsciousness.”
Dimitri’s world was fading.
“I could not have convinced your sweet Thalia to come with me.”
Anastasia kissed him deeply, and he tasted blood on her lips and tongue. He gasped for breath as she withdrew.
“You took my children, you hateful man. You and your vengeful wife,” she growled. “And now you feed me. You are weak. You will feed me for generations. You have fed me your manari mou, your little lamb. And when you are born again, you will feed your lambs to me again. And again. And again.”
In the distance, lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. Dimitri could no longer feel the power of the storm as the darkness took him. All he could feel were Anastasia’s dagger-like teeth as they tore into him.
–END
Author’s Note: This is a pretty old one. I wrote it as an origin story for one of the villains in GIRL ON A BOAT. I like it as a standalone story, and I like it better once you’ve met Anastasia in that novel.
Copyright 2024 Abram Dress