corinth picked up the ball and tossed it up into the air as high as he possibly could. the energy it took for him to do so left him gasping and his muscles stung a little, but to watch the ball arc high above the sky, black against blue, was worth it. when the ball started to sink back down, he ran after it, bumping past athens who had been watching mere inches away.

the enclosure was a backyard to a white building surrounded by concrete walls that cut open hands when rubbed too hard or when scuffles turned sour. in the corner, there was a patch of green grass. the rest was stained yellow from lack of water or from too much sun.

sparta sat in the dust, his hands red with dirt and blood. the stains wrapped around his fingers and wrists and spiraled up to his elbows. he rubbed the pads of his fingers along the dirt, picking up small twigs and stones along the way, as he drew circles around the bird. the bird was dead, long dead, but its brown and grey feathers still stayed in its skin most of the time and the blood was drying so sparta’s hands wouldn’t be red for too much longer. the cracks of flaking blood opened like wounds on small boy's hands: palms big for holding bigger hands and fingers short to keep everything close. sparrow feathers and tears smeared comets into the dust while he cried for his mama even though his mama never came.

corinth ran after the ball, his breath short and his face glowing pink from exertion. as he ran, his hand running along the concrete wall, he started coughing. catching up with the ball started the initial coughing fit that turned into a rattler. he held his hand against the wall, clinging to it with white knuckles, as he hunched over to cough and cough so hard he could feel his throat start to stretch ragged, could feel lunch starting to come up. athens kicked corinth's foot gently before backing away a few feet while corinth continued to cough. when corinth's lungs and throat settled, he stood up straight, grabbed the ball, and threw it up again, this time out of anger rather than play. the ball went sailing backward and athens ran in order to try and get to the ball first, having had a head start. corinth was still faster and managed to shove athens away with a rogue elbow to the ribs in order to claim the ball again. athens didn't argue against the bone.

play continued until the sirens sounded. sparta stopped crying, corinth dropped the ball, and athens picked it up. all three of them hurried quickly and clumsily inside the bunker, shutting the door behind them. as they crawled down the narrow passageway, sparta started to hiccup, a leftover symptom of crying. corinth stopped and glared, and sparta murmured an apology before wiping his sniffles away with the sleeve of his shirt. corinth led the way until the three boys dropped inside the hollowed out room. it was round and the walls were mixtures of concrete, dirt, and chalk drawings. they each had to hunch, especially athens, as the ceiling

they sat in a practiced circle around the center of the room. after a few moments of quiet, hushed breathing, athens began the processions.

“we all here?”

the other two boys raised their hands. sparta’s fingers trembled while corinth raised his arm as high as it could possibly go. his ******* scraped against the ceiling in his earnestness. the three then began the tradition discussion of their names. sparta, forgetting conduct, almost gave away corinth's name, but corinth shut him up quickly. sparta apologized quickly and shoved his fingers in his mouth to keep from saying anything more. dirt and blood mixed with saliva in his mouth, and as he swallowed he ended up choking and gagging on the combination. he coughed and coughed, and corinth slapped him on the back. it didn't help, and the more sparta tried to stop coughing, the harder it lasted. eventually, he had to turn and face away from the other boys as hot bile slid up his throat and onto the floor with a small splat. athens grimaced and edged away.

"alright… show your lungs. everyone."

all three boys began the process of reaching under their shirts and pressing the smooth button under their ribs that unlocked the hatch. the hatch was a small door that ran from the bottom of their ribs up to their collar bone. when they found the smooth button, no bigger than the pad of their thumb, then a small click allowed them to open up their skin. underneath their torsos was a small plastic box that kept everything inside. it helped protect their bones, their heart, and, especially, their lungs. their lungs were frequent targets for doctors; they needed to be accessed quickly. fewer and fewer doctors came by to see the boys recently. corinth wiggled his shirt until he could shove most of it into his mouth, opening his body up and showing gray and green lungs that expanded and collapsed with every breath. his lungs were swollen behind his rib cage, and he experimentally reached in to poke in between his third and fourth ribs. the muscle that was there had been replaced by plastic, and had come loose when he'd pressed the button. his lung shuddered underneath his touch, but he felt the odd relief of pain swoop over him. two blue shirts tumbled to the floor as sparta and athens decided to take off their clothing and help each other find the buttons to unlock their hatches. the boys clung to the small moments of touch when the effects of their touh felt so alien, even after all those years after the surgery.

athens’ lungs were pink and perfect. he coughed and corinth couldn’t help but watch the way his diaphragm moved as he did so, and he felt jealousy pang in his stomach. sparta’s lungs were purple and blue, bruised and small, and they merely fluttered.

“lungs in order,” athens said quietly after a quick inspection of everyone’s insides. sparta immediately closed his hatch, flinching when his finger got caught initially between his inside and his outside, and started to put his shirt back on. corinth stole athens' shirt and slipped it on over the one he currently wore, his other hand slamming shut his lung hatch. athens blinked but let corinth stare at him greedily as he quietly shut his own hatch.

as they waited for the background noise of wailing sirens to disappear, corinth hugged his knees and athens started to draw people in the dirt with his forefinger.

Ancient Greece; Greek: Ελλάς, translit. Ellas; was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. AD 600).
Immediately following this period began
          the Early Middle Ages & the Byzantine era;
Roughly three centuries after the Late Bronze Age
collapse of Mycenaean Greece,              Greek urban poleis began
to form in the 8th century BC,        ushering in the Archaic period
& colonization of the Mediterranean Basin.
                     This was followed by            |          Classical Greece;
an era that began w/ the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting
from the 5th to 4th centuries BC.                   Due to the conquests
by Alexander the Great of Macedonia,                    Hellenistic
civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end
of the Mediterranean Sea; The Hellenistic period coming to an end
w/ the conquests & annexations of the eastern
          Mediterranean by the Roman Republic,
                  first          establishing the Roman province of Macedonia
in Roman Greece, & the later province of Achaea during the Roman Empire;                              Hell, in many religious & folkloric traditions,
is a place of torment & punishment in the afterlife;
                         Religions w/ a linear divine history
                   often depict several hell[s] as eternal resort-like destinations
         analogous
             to exile
         while religions w/ a cyclic history often depict hell
                    as an intermediary layover between fantastical incarnations;
        Typically these traditions locate hell in one or another
                    dimension, or even under the Earth's surface &
often include entrances & exits to & from Hell from the land of the living sky above [many mortal men are known to have traveled to the underworld or consorted w/ devils & demons so-called: Orpheus, Jesus, Faust, Robert Johnson & Aleister Crowley:               Other afterlife destinations include
Heaven, Purgatory, Paradise, & Limbo;
Other traditions,     which do not conceive of the afterlife
as a place of punishment or reward, merely describe Hell
as an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place
located under the surface of Earth, for example Sheol & Hades [my old, old neighborhood]; In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy; Greek: Ἑλένη, Helénē, pronounced [helénɛː],               also known as Helen of Sparta,
or simply Helen,                       was said to have been
                                          the most beautiful woman in the world,
who was married to King Menelaus of Sparta,
but was abducted by Prince,       Paris of Troy,    resulting in the Trojan War
  when the Achaeans set out to reclaim her & bring her back to Sparta;
                She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus & Leda,
     & was the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor and Polydeuces;
Leda & the Swan is a luridly pornographic story involving *******
                   & rarely depicted artistic subject from Greek mythology
in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces Leda;   Leda thus bearing Helen & Polydeuces, enchanted godling offspring of Zeus
[thus
                                     Helen was a demigod
              like Orpheus, Heracles, Achilles & Dionysus, fulfilling the rank &
                                    status  of the Biblical Nephilim  /ˈnɛfɪˌlɪm/ (Hebrew: נְפִילִים‬, nefilim) the offspring
of the "sons of God" & the "daughters of men"                before the Deluge, according to Genesis 6:1–4:
A similar or identical biblical Hebrew term,
read as "Nephilim" by some scholars, or as the word "fallen"
                                                         appears in Ezekiel 32:27:
                      When people began to multiply from the face of the ground,
                      rolled into shape & being by the first insects,
     an army of scarabs doing
     clean-up after creation                                 before the invention of ants
                                   to maintain order on the most basic level of newly mined nature & once the creatures made of dung molded in the moist crevices of the earth into the shape best suited to them
      copying the mandrake so to claw their way out of the soupy ionized  
                                                       ­     electrified    mud;
some w/ female bits formed by hatchling sea anemone,
jellyfish & globular secreting sacks,            while some only a stick &
             two rocks hanging in a thin leathery pouch, looking like eggs,
             but Surprise!    [men continuing to be surprised to this day]
                          growing upright & naked,
               sloughing of their insect overlords while taking up insects ways of farming & irrigation,  taking hundreds of centuries
to build the towering hives of their ancestral youth
when the ants & bees & lone beetles taught them how,        the squadrons of
                 butterflies never shared their ability to transform from
                    a segmented crawling garden slug
                  to the highest form of flying insect               regaled majestically
in
the            colorful royal emblems of their tribes]
        & daughters were born to them, the Sons of God seeing that they were fair & took wives for themselves of all that they chose;
Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever,
for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years."
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—& also afterward—
when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans,
who bore children to them; These were the heroes that were of old,
                                              warriors of renown.
— Genesis 6:1–4,        [New Revised Standard Version]
The word is loosely translated as giants in some Bibles
& left noticably untranslated in others; The "Sons of God" interpreted
      to be fallen angels according to some classical Judaic explanations;
                      while at the same time Leda bore Castor & Clytemnestra,
      children of her mortal husband Tyndareus,                            
                                            the King of Sparta;
                       The Judgement of Paris the event that led to the
        Trojan War, & in slightly later versions to the founding of Rome

There was an Old Person of Sparta,
Who had twenty-one sons and one 'darter';
He fed them on snails,
And weighed them in scales,
That wonderful Person of Sparta.