Biographical Fragment No. 1: My Hour in the Circus Maximus

The way was darker than I expected, like some back stairwell of an industrial building. I found it suddenly hard to believe that just outside lay sunny Rome in September. We gained the top at last and stood about on something half-demolished. I could see into the unroofed tunnels which were once passages beneath the Circus Maximus. Sunlight blazed all around.
Then I felt one of my flashes.
Heat! I was part of a yelling, seething array of people whose sweat rode the close air. We were bored, hot, savage, and hungry. There was bloodlust in my throat—my own throat. Someone jostled my arm; a reek of garlic on their tongue penetrated my fuzzy senses. We shouted louder, screaming for the ragged, sick, and starving prisoners to be brought. Their blood would make amends for—what?—for something: the heat perhaps, or the boredom, or the hunger. It was interesting to watch people die. Yes, shout! Shout louder! We can almost taste the blood, and blood goes well with sweat.
It had been there—a moment when the taste of all those feelings corroded my mouth. I, left gasping, took a ragged breath to redeem the pipe-ways of my being. What ghost or fury inhabited the great Circus? Looking down into the very entrails of the Circus, which were like opened arteries of stone, I thought of those who staggered through them once, waiting for their blood to be spilled in the autumn sun, and I knew that evil clings to places. I turned to go away, because I was afraid.
“You can see the Wedding Cake from here,” a man’s voice spoke behind me. “See?” He pointed to Emmanuel II’s marble monument, across the Forum.
“This place just doesn’t look as big as it did in Ben Hur.” Another voice chimed in, peevish and dusty.
“Did they really film Ben Hur in Rome? I thought the chariot race was done in Hollywood.”
Someone else asked, “How many would this hold?”
“Not enough for the Rose Bowl!”
There was a general laugh, and the knot of tourists scattered.
“Idiots,” I said to myself, savagely. “What do you know? Can’t you feel anything? I’ll put you down there in the dark, with all these crowds screaming. Then you’ll know. We will order up your blood, and—”
Then I heard my own words.