It was ironic that after five thousand years someone like him got the job of saving the future, or trying to save it anyway, for what it was worth. And he felt the weight of it on his shoulders, wondering every day if it was going to crush him like it did his father, or if he was going to be able to find his inner strength somehow and carry on with it until the storm was weathered, and everything was good with the world again. But as long as the storm raged on, he was going to have to accept his fate and find solace in David maybe. Because there was nobody else to do it. It was just him. And, supposedly, if he were to still believe even an ounce of what he was told, he was born for this, just like every man of the order before him.

“Story time!” David chirped happily.

He got back with a bottle of brandy at his side, and in his hands two swanky drinking glasses, Vitto’s favorite, which luckily he didn’t forget to pack this time, thank God. Under his arm, he held a thick leather-bound volume, a book of sorts, the only thing Vitto had left of his family, aside from his father’s vestments, that the government failed to confiscate somehow. Even before going to Egypt, he and David made a habit of reading from the book before going to sleep, and they’d been reading for two months now, quite religiously, thanks to David who was very excited about a book for once in his life. Vitto hung on to it all these years, and he was glad he did now. For as long as he had the book, his family’s legacy lived on, or so it seemed like in his head, somehow. And he felt like he carried on with it, the family, and the legacy, and the order, even though he didn’t. And it wasn’t so much about the book but what it stood for, what he was supposed to stand for, as being a part of it all, even though he still didn’t fully believe it. But he was glad he had the book, if anything when he read it, made David listen. And that was something to be grateful for. Because it was hard to get David to listen to anything. But when Vitto read him this book, he listened.

So Vitto read it to him out loud, every night, several pages at a time, and David patiently listened, taking God knows what from it. But learning anything was by all means better than learning nothing, Vitto reckoned. Even though later, when they were done reading, he’d fuck his brains out anyway.

“It’s not just some stories, David!” Vitto snarled. “Told you, it was more than that.”

But David wasn’t listening. He was busy turning the pages.

“Here!” he said, stopping at the page he carefully bookmarked before. He pointed his small child-like index finger at the engraved illustration of one of the secret chambers of the pyramid, barely aware they were sitting on top of it right now. At least, Vitto was fully aware. He wondered, when the alien gods came, if they came, would he be allowed into the secret chambers. He hoped so. He yearned to see it with his own eyes for a long time, since his childhood practically. God knows, he’d seen it a thousand times in the pictures. But right below them right now, that was a real deal.

“Read! Please,” David purred. And Vitto, having cleared his throat, started reading.

“Since the beginning of time, there was darkness in the universe, but opposite of it there was also light. Life clung to light, and the warmth of it. Evil, on the other hand, resided forever in shadows. It was from the shadows of the universe that it watched life grow. Unseen, unnoticed, it stayed hidden for a long time, without revealing itself, without making itself known. It watched life flourish and grow without making interference, until one day, at an odd moment, it decided to make itself show. And it began to grow too, rapidly, faster than life had before it, nearly too fast for anything alive to stop it or even escape its grasp. And when it reached life it killed it, eradicated it in its core. And that one time it started to grow for the first time, it killed almost every instance of life in the universe, before it went away to hide in the shadows again. So for the next time it came those that survived reached an understanding they needed to be prepared for its later attacks. And they got busy.”

David was looking at the engravings in the book, mesmerized, listening to Vitto. Among everything else on the page, there was a boy. Though he wasn’t so much a boy as he was a young man, just on the precipice of his adulthood, sinewy, his muscles and what made a man a man just beginning to show, a bit of fuzz for body hair but a big mane on his head. He was portrayed front and center, naked too. And David couldn’t take his eyes off him, and it wasn’t just for the penis.

On the top of the page, above him, there was a drawing of a burning skull, so monstrous that it made David uncomfortable, made him want to turn the page, and he would have had if it wasn’t for the boy.

“The very existence of life antagonized evil,” Vitto continued. “Its sole purpose was presumed to annihilate life, destroy it because it was chaos and life was the opposite of that, its antithesis, its antipode, its contradiction. For millennia life fought evil valiantly and many a time it won. But there were also other times it lost the battle. Many species had succumbed to the power of evil and faded away, many forms of life fell on the battlefield. But the fight was ongoing for a very long time, until one day, at an odd moment, a weapon against evil was found, forged in the workshop of gods with fire, earth, air, and water.”

The man-boy on the page was depicted standing on a ring-shaped platform now, among four pedestals carrying each of the four of life’s elements, each of them shining with bright light.

“The alien gods engineered a perfect weapon…”

“The Mandasheewans!” David blurted out, mispronouncing it. He couldn’t stop himself, he was too excited. And Vitto suppressed the urge to correct him.

“Yes, David. Them,” he replied patiently and continued. “From the moment the weapon has been constructed, the gods began raising beacons of hope all across the universe. With their guidance, life everywhere was given a second chance, a new hope for salvation and growth. The gods visited many galaxies before they came here, to Earth. And even though it took them a long time, they did come here eventually, to protect us too, among all others.”

“Here?” David asked, surprised. “They were right here?”

Vitto nodded positively. “Yes.”

“Earth was the cradle of life in our galaxy. So when they first came, they came here. And they brought the weapon with them. Having harnessed the power of four elements of life, they sealed each into its own individual container. A capsule of sorts. The essence of fire was taken from the brightest star in our galaxy. From the biggest gas giant, they’ve taken air. The essence of water was taken from the planet with the deepest ocean. And the essence of earth, without having to stray far, they’d taken from here. Turned out, Earth was as good of an earth planet as any.”

Vitto smiled at the pun, but his smile faded quickly when he realized David didn’t get it. He shook it off and continued.

“The capsules were then sealed and buried deep underground…” he explained, pointing his index finger downward. “To be unearthed five thousand years later, which, give or take a couple of days, it’d been five thousand years today.”

David looked at him incredulously. Then he looked back down at the picture.

“If the four elements are the weapon, what does he have to do with anything?” he asked, confused, pointing at the man-boy. Vitto shook his head.

“He’s the most important part, David! Didn’t you listen to anything? To merge four elements of life together the gods had to create an artificial man. A perfect being. Capable of things beyond what any other man could do, and at the same time surprisingly human. A warrior, in a sense, built to protect us. The fifth element to other four. Adding to them, improving upon them. And together they presented the complete weapon against evil. The young man at the center of the page, that’s him, the fifth element.”

David’s interest was suddenly piqued.

“A man?” he asked, surprised. “They’ve created a man as weapon?”

Vitto remembered the first time he himself laid eyes on this picture, the fifth element in all his glory, naked too. Couldn’t take his eyes off him, he was so beautiful. But at the same time, looking at him felt strange. There was something about the way he was, something in the lines of the drawing maybe, something eerie and unsettling that grasped your soul when you were looking at it too long. It almost made you feel queasy. So no, he wasn’t just a mere man, not by a long shot. They’d drawn him as a man, sure. And a very attractive man at that. But he was a weapon, strange as it sounded. And a very powerful weapon too.

“Not a man, David! I said it was an artificial form of life, remember? Not a man but built in the shape of a man. You have to pay attention. It’s upsetting me when you’re not paying attention, you know.”

“Sorry…” David shrugged. “Looks like a man. Cock and all.”

Admittedly, he did have a cock. A very proportional, perfectly-sized, easy-on-the-eye cock. But Vitto didn’t really like David looking at it. For whatever reason. They were in a committed relationship, after all, however dysfunctional. He wasn’t supposed to be looking at another man’s cock, even the divine deity’s cock, even though Vitto himself was looking.

“Stop looking at his weenie, David! It’s a heavenly creature. Like a flesh and blood angel. You are being incredibly blasphemous.”

“Sorry,” David murmured again, conceding reluctantly. “This is how he’s drawn.”

“Cherubs are drawn naked too, you know. This is tradition! Doesn’t mean you have to stand there looking at their…you know, crotch area,” Vitto said, punitively, happy though David wasn’t looking at the dick anymore, and continued reading.

“Every five thousand years as evil returns, the Gods do too. And together with them, they bring the only thing that could possibly save us, humans, from evil. The stones are already down in the gut of the pyramid, you see, waiting for them. But the fifth element is still on his way. And when he gets here, he’ll complete the weapon,” Vitto said. Then he paused to mull it over.

“He’s supposed to get here anyway,” he said, his brows suddenly knitted in a frown. “It’s been five thousand years to date, you see. The gods are bound to return to Earth now. They promised.”

A pause hung in the air between them, and then simultaneously they both looked up at the stars.

The sky was clear, and the stars were bright, and beautiful. There was no indication though of the forewarned alien arrival. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

Vitto and David stayed silent for a little while longer, and then, disturbing the silence as he would, David asked, “Will they?”

“They must,” Vitto said. “Otherwise we’ll be screwed. The whole world is screwed without the fifth element.”

They watched the sky anxiously, locked in an embrace. Little did they know that the gods’ spaceship was indeed entering the planet’s atmosphere right now, on its way back to Earth, that exact same moment.

They were indeed coming back to rescue humanity, as was promised five thousand years ago, true to their word. Or they so intended.

And they would have had if the ship wasn’t suddenly and irrevocably blown to pieces midair, before it was anywhere near landing. And Vitto’s fifth element, the very same from the book, was blown straight out of the ship with the sheer force of the explosion and was now free-falling with the debris back to Earth.