Work Text:
Two men came by night to Sodom.
The city was lit by the torches of hungry workers, who after the labors of the day sought their well-deserved rest in the many taverns. They roamed through the streets, with sullen looks and calloused hands, and they peered through the windows, even though they knew the inhabitants. Their eyes craved to see something, and their mouths craved to chew on something. Soon enough they would take for themselves a young girl as a meal, on which they could feast as long as the Lord granted it to them.
The two men were not like those whom Edith knew from the dusty streets. They were not the ones who called out to her with lustful voices when she hid herself. The glow of their torch came closer and closer to the door, and she heard her husband call, Woman, open the door for our friends . She did not know these friends, and the last guest who had unexpectedly stood before her door had been no friend. No one in this city was a friend.
She should not think like that, she knew. Too often had her husband admonished her, commanded her to be merciful to the people of this city despite their cruelties, to open the doors and honor hospitality, just as the Lord demanded of them. Yet she felt the cold sweat on her hands and saw the fear in the face of her daughters. The girls were more beautiful than any before, clever and kind, to Edith’s regret also a little headstrong, though pious like the lambs in the pasture. The Lord had been good to them.
Her husband scolded her, struck her into obedience, and opened the door despite the pleading and lament of his old wife. The two men stepped in and filled the room with benevolence, with the light of heaven and the sweet words of peace, which slid bitterly down her throat. For soon the light drew the darkness, and the workers gathered before the door of their humble house, with their rotten friends and partners. They wanted what they always wanted.
They lusted after what her husband possessed, his men and his women, and also his guests. What did they want to do with the men, what they also did with the women? Their howling and screaming circled the house like the iron spikes of a bear trap. Her husband asked, What do you want? And they answered: Everything . Her husband did not think long, avoided Edith’s tear-soaked gaze, and took his daughters by the hand.
He led them out the door.
They were nothing but cattle on the slaughter bench. The two strangers had to hold Edith back, as he offered her beloved girls to the workers, and they licked their lips, they screamed for the young flesh, just as they had once screamed at Edith. One stretched out his filthy hand toward her youngest, and the child wept bitterly. Yet it was the will of the Lord, and the call of the Lord her husband had to obey under all circumstances.
Edith cursed. She tore herself free from the strangers, who asked, Do you have no trust in the Lord? Can you not have faith, my child? She had been pious, she had once believed, in a Lord, in the one true God, and he had tested her in the worst of ways before he had granted her her husband. Never would she allow her daughters to be tested as she had been.
The workers screamed wildly in panic, for one of the strangers had raised his voice against them and drawn the daughters to himself. The mob screamed, We are blinded! For the glow of the torch and their desire had taken from them their sight. Edith seized her daughters by the hand, one on each side, and she ran, as if the vastness beneath her could split open.
Fire and brimstone rained from dark clouds and the ash burned in her old lungs, yet she would not stop running. She would not stop saving her headstrong girls from hell, and she would never again obey a Lord who tormented her time and time again. She had only her girls. Only one beauty in this cruel world. And if the Lord wished to take them from her, if he wished to test them, then he was like the worker who had fallen to lust before the door.
Do not look back , she heard a voice rumble, beyond the horizon and deep in the dark earth. Run, trust, for I am the Lord your God, and I will extinguish what lies behind you . She halted. Her girls screamed and pushed her forward, urged her to seek the vastness. But defiance was sweet, a silky veil woven of the finest.
The Lord, he must have been a man. Who else dared to shove her, to enslave her, and to test her with each of his trials? Go , she called to her daughters. For she wanted to see the face that had watched her all those years. On the day of their birth. In the hour of their first word. And when they had violated her.
Two men came by night to Sodom. The ash beneath their wings scattered with each step. They saw rubble, they saw debris. The sky broke the clouds for the monument of a petrified woman, with a face twisted in agony, salty as her tears.
But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
(Genesis 19:26)