Of Human Bondage by idolatrie //In Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a favourite sport was to fasten two fighters together with a strong rope and let them beat each other to death. Often it was death because the loser couldn't back off and the victor rarely spared him. The victor kept the rope and tied a knot in it. He had only to swing it through the streets to terrify money from passers-by. --Jeanette Winterson; 'Written On The Body'// There's a rope tying us together, brother-mine. A disintegrated umbilical cord stretching dry and crackled, stinking of decay. It spirals out, a parody of twine; loops us closer like father's patterned cravat snug against his throat, like mother's wedding band constricting her flesh, like a hangman's noose tightening. The rope gave birth to you, brother; it gave me you - appearing twitching on the other end like a crystal grown in a jar of sugar solution. When I saw you first, just hours out of mother's belly, already I felt the cord dancing between us. I looked down at you, an awkward squeal in my old cot, and knew that you were mine. My present, my toy-rag-doll, my miniature devotee. My fellow fighter - dangling on the end of my thread waiting for me to beat you up. I spun you in my orbit, your sun as you centrifuged desperately trying to escape. But the rope was too strong and your parry too weak. Did you really think I would let you go? Oh, my poor beautiful brother. Black and blue look so good on your skin. You belong to me. I am your centre, I am your ground, I am your night. Now, when the light is dark and the shadows stretch over the bed where you lie, when I stand between your legs and whisper promises a- dime-a-dozen, take a moment to reach down and grasp that dirtied thread. Listen to it crackle in your hand and hiss puffs of putrid essence from fissures erupting. Look at it glinting malevolently from those threads of fresh blood spiderwebbing across it that pulse with crawling life each time I draw near. Run your fingertips along the length until it enters your body and feel the knot there, where my thread melds into your flesh. Feel that knot against you, feel that knot becoming you. My will becomes you. You are the memory of my win. My lips on your neck beneath the cravat and I win again. My tongue against the ring on your finger and the cold metal tastes of victory. I tug on the rope and you stumble against me. After all, brothers should be close. It could have been different, by an accident of birth. But it's too late for you now. I killed you first. (end)