Oops (They Woke the Gods)

In the old days, there was a river called Styx with a ferry that carried the deceased from the horrors of life to the horrors of death. More recently the sheer volume of dead from astronomical population growth led to impossible line-ups at the ferry, forcing many of the dead to turn back. They were the ones who, through some misplacement of heart or time, had not been given a coin for the Ferryman. On their journey back, they learned how to dance.

––––––––

.

Once Upon a Time in a Bar

It was still early in the day and Charon had just one more to kill before he moved on but he needed a drink first, not to take the brunt off the kill, but to ease the pain of having to pay his quarry before killing him. A quick glance around the bar was all he could stomach: the dim light, the smell of stale beer and mold, the lost souls.   

What the fuck are you looking at?

Just what he needed, some lost soul at the end of the bar with a patch over his left eye feeling a self-righteous need to open his mouth. Why can’t they ever feel anything positive?

He nodded amiably at the man and turned back to his drink.

I said, what the fuck are you looking at? Are you deaf?

He’s drunk. Just ignore him. You’ll see this one another time, under different circumstances.

I said...are you fucking deaf? And what the fuck are you smiling at? Do I amuse you?

This was one of the problems Charon noticed with these people, they didn’t know when to stop pressing their luck or when to shut up.

He lifted the shot glass to his lips and sipped his Scotch, felt the warmth of it flowing down his throat and into his stomach and warming up the darkness of another hostile watering hole. He’d never liked these people. He hated their complaining, their inability to save themselves, their misguided sense that they were lords of a universe they were systematically destroying. He sipped again. But they make great Scotch. Maybe there’s hope for them yet.

You drink like a fucking old lady.

And maybe not. Time to show this ass his future.

He turned his head slowly toward the drunk and stared straight into his one eye. There was no aggression, no anger, just an intense look over a smiling mouth. The drunk met the stare and sneered. He was just about to say something when his one eye widened and the color drained from his face. He looked away quickly, defeated.

A little taste of what’s waiting for you.

Charon raised the glass to his lips and shot back the rest of the Scotch. The drunk sat quietly, staring at the bar with his one eye and wondering what the hell had just happened. Charon stood up, threw a twenty on the counter, walked to the door and stepped into what was left of the world.

A Dancing Dead Guy

As usual, the sky simmered in unending twilight, the dull glow of a dying world. Charon wondered if any of the mortals missed the bright skies they’d managed to destroy with their bottomless needs. He’d seen depictions of what it used to be like and it seemed to him that the mortals had been given everything they needed to re-create heaven on their own firmament. But they’d done the opposite.

It was noon. He stepped into an alley that would have been bright in better times but now faded brick walls and dumpsters formed a depressing corridor with steel bars and sliding fire escapes strapping the dark walls. The air smelled like rotted meat and putrid vegetables.

Charon listened carefully and soon heard the sound he’d been waiting for. The last one on his list for this town and then he could move on to the next town but the list was getting shorter and soon he would have his real life back.

He heard a distant tap-tap-tap echoing off the brick and steel and he slowed his pace as he approached a junction where four alleys intersected. It was barren. No garbage dumpsters or cans, no metal fire escapes, no heaps of cardboard-covered homeless people, just a single man wearing a blue and white striped long-sleeved shirt with black suspenders tugging tight pants at least two inches above the tops of his socks. He wore short black boots with metal cleats. His face was grizzled and pale and his eyes kept glancing down at his feet tapping on a manhole cover. Charon wondered why they all danced and why it was always tap dancing. The man’s arms dangled at his sides and his back formed a perfect ninety degree angle as his feet danced over the metal manhole cover. He looked at Charon and smiled.

You took your time finding me, Ferryman.

Charon grinned. The list is long, Andrew Bishop. Sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you.

You seem much less angry at everything from the last time I saw you, with your foot in my face.

Again Charon smiled as Bishop danced, not taking his eyes off him. That was a long time ago, Andrew Bishop.

That was a month ago, Ferryman.

For an instant, Charon frowned, then smiled again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out something bright and shiny: a coin.

Bishop smiled and hit a few upbeats with his cleats. It must hurt you, having to give those away.

The smile dropped from Charon’s face. You have no idea. He flicked the coin into the air and Bishop caught it in his mouth. Charon looked deep into the man’s eyes and Bishop’s body turned brilliant red and evaporated into the stale humid air.

Like an Alarm

Dark buildings coated with rows of square reflective windows cast a dull dream-like haze over the strangely empty streets. Charon shook his head, disgusted. All they were given...and all they’ve wasted. He especially didn’t like the crazy mess they’d pulled him into even though it was with a little help from himself.

Jupiter had been tack clear, This is on you, Charon. You sent them back.

He never much liked Jupiter, who for some reason had pretty much disappear for a couple of millennia and who seemed sometimes more mortal than god and sure as hell had a thing for mortal women. He often wondered how Juno put up with him. On the other hand, there was the rumor: Juno, his wife, was also his sister. And he wondered why Jupiter had ignored the complaints he’d made

Fucking gods.

But Charon rarely let them get under his skin. He was happy to ply his ferry across the River Styx and carry the recently dead to whatever awaited them on the other side. He cherished those moments looking into their eyes as he rowed and watched them sitting nervously, gazing at the far shore, wondering what was in store for them: would it be heaven or would it be hell? How often had he looked into the eyes of some self-righteous mortal mandarin who’d lived his or her life on a pedestal, looking down on everyone? He relished their screams after he delivered them and set off to fetch the next hopeful.

He looked forward to the ones who didn’t have their coins. Getting across the Styx was an important part of everyone’s death, not something to take lightly. It required careful planning and execution and the single most important thing was to have that coin. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t a lifetime of savings and it wasn’t all their property and their cows and sheep, which they wouldn’t be needing anymore. It was just a coin but time after time they showed up without it, expecting a free ride in Charon’s boat which by the way, was the only boat on the river and the only way across. But they came to him desperate and without coins and he gave them exactly what they deserved: a kick in the face. And if that didn’t do it another kick in the face and another until they slipped into the dark waters of the Styx to drown again and again without end because they were already dead.

There was a time when he made them wander the banks of the river for a century or two, naked, hungry and terrified until he pulled them into the boat and carried them to whatever their fate on the other side would be.

Things had been going well for Charon the Ferryman. He’d amassed a fortune in coins over the millennia and he’d earned a reputation of being the meanest son of a bitch in Creation. It was a matter of pride with him until things had started going south a couple of millennia ago. The mortals had stopped bringing coins; all of them. It was like the whole world had run out of coins. Day after day, he kicked them in the face and still they came, lined up along the shore, empty handed, no coins, watching him kick soul after soul into the murky water until, eventually, he wasn’t ferrying anyone across the river and the dead roamed the banks of the river and the stygian fields beyond, gathering and increasing their fold: chattering, complaining, polluting, demanding, littering, whining and threatening legal action until he finally said, That’s enough. This stops.

There was no way he was going to take anyone across the river for free, not even if they wandered about in coinless limbo for a few hundred years. That would have put a serious dent in his aura of meanness. He was Charon, killer of babies without coins. No free rides, ever. Instead, he sent them back to the surface. He didn’t actually have the authority to do that and he was surprised that he got away with it. He looked over the mass of writhing mortals and said, Go back! All of you! Right now! Get out of here! Shut up and get out of here!

Surprisingly, they found a way back, which was anything but good for them and infinitely worse for Charon. It created a mass migration that broke all the laws of an orderly universe. It was an alarm that woke the King of the Gods and he had some words for Charon.

Standing thirty feet high, Jupiter was impressive and wherever he went the wind whipped against his face and scattered his long black hair over his muscular shoulders and gold armor. He had eyes of ice and fire and he carried a thunderbolt.

Charon, boomed Jupiter. What the hell have you done? But before Charon could say anything, Jupiter answered for him. You sent them back! You sent the dead back to the firmament.

Charon nodded yes. He knew that this deity could turn him into an alabaster bat and keep him in a closet for all time but being too mean-spirited to be afraid he just nodded and listened.

You can’t do that. The King of the Gods uncrossed his arms and pointed at Charon. We have rules, laws, ways of doing things...and sending the dead back to the world is not a way of doing things. You failed the process, Charon, and I want you to understand that this isn’t anything personal...but you need to pay. He wrapped his arms imperiously across his armor. His black hair whipped across his forehead and his golden eyes glowed. You need to pay. He stared down at Charon, who stared up expressionlessly. Jupiter’s voice was free of malice or anger; he was merely stating the obvious. I’m tasking you with bringing them all back. His voice lowered and he leaned down closer to Charon. And before you kill them, you’re going to give each one a coin for the Ferryman. At which point the King of the Gods disappeared without so much as a poof or a smidgeon of vapor where he’d stood.

Fucking gods.

Goodbye Tokyo 

One day not far away, a massive object drifted slowly across the skies of Japan and came to a halt directly over Tokyo. It cut off the sun and left large parts of the city in darkness. Most people thought this was odd and many thought it was just another annoying advertising gimmick. A few thought: Armageddon. Finally. Others thought it was just some temporary event and someone somewhere was working of fixing it.

What little they could make out in the darkness looked like a giant expanse of dirt and rock, which it was. It was the underbelly of Mount Fuji...floating over the city, dropping random slabs of igneous boulders and gobs of dirt the size of trucks that flattened buildings and the people inside them. As more of the bottom dislodged and fell, the underbelly became increasingly unstable until boulders the size of oil tankers plummeted into freeways like a fleet of meteors, crushing and scattering buses and trucks like plastic toys.

Then, as with all large objects floating unsupported in the sky, Mount Fuji stopped floating and fell. The rumble when it crashed down onto the city traveled hundreds of miles in every direction and created an earthquake that sent a tsunami across the Sea of Japan that washed away cities and towns along the shores of Russia and both Koreas.

And this was just the beginning.

Deaths Worse than Death

Another dreary city. Another dark alley. But this time something was different. There was an unfamiliar feel to this alley, something he hadn’t encountered in the legion of alleys and bars he’d scoured in his hunt for the dead. He slowed his pace and breathed deeply and quietly. He scanned his surroundings but nothing seemed out of place in the usual brick and rusted steel, the dumpsters spilling garbage. Feral cats stalked him with green eyes glowing in the shadows. Cold crept across his back. This wasn’t supposed to happen to Charon the Ferryman, son of Nyx and grandson of Chaos. Everything in this alley should be creeped out by him. But the feeling grew stronger. He stopped and closed his eyes welcoming whatever it was to step forward and reveal itself but instead of seeing it, he heard it. It was faint...a shaky sound coming from his left from a dark doorway.

Brother.

Shit.

Brother, the voice repeated. They want to kill me. The last thing Charon needed. His brother, Somnus. The God of Sleep, stepped out of the shadows.

Like most of the gods he was tall, about twelve feet, and had that ethereal glow about him as though he’d just bathed in liquid sunlight. Unlike most gods, Somnus had wings sprouting out both sides of his head. Charon had never figured that one out but he did know that Somnus, though not a lot of trouble, was mostly an irritant, a baby-faced god who spent most of his time doing nothing but laze and sleep. Charon found his indolent manner hard to tolerate.

You’re a god, he said. "They can’t kill you.

Brother, there are deaths worse than death. His eyes scoured the alley and Charon realized how desperate he was and he wondered what Somnus had done this time to piss off the wrong gods.

What have you done this time, Somnus?

It’s a long story. His wings pressed nervously against the sides of his head. I might have destroyed heaven.

Roasting Olives

Heaven was that place to which mortals aspired but would never have because it was home to the gods and the gods were never going to share it with the mortals. And besides, the mortals’ minds would just explode in the face of its infinite grandeur. As for the gods, they mostly sat around being godly, like Jupiter, King of the Gods, sitting on his golden throne as he lifted his arm and threw a thunderbolt into a green serpentine statue where the explosion turned it into green vapor. Somnus! he hollered. I can feel it in my bones. This has his earmark, his....

On a marble throne next to Jupiter, Juno, his wife and, uh, sister, considered her husband’s words. She lifted her hand to her mouth as though about to yawn but instead burped into her palm. Somnus would not have the power to so something like this, she said.

But he’s tricked me before! His eyes blazed under his laurel leaf crown and the dark hair wrapped around his neck billowed in a wind that burst out of the air by his head. It has to be him! Who else would even think of it! And where is he? He’s disappeared.

Juno picked her nose, examined her finger and flicked something gray onto the alabaster patio stretching into white columns towering into the sky and out of sight. He’s probably asleep somewhere, my love. He’s lazy and easily distracted and I can’t think of any reason he would do this. We both know he’s never wielded this much power. He wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Two thousand years! Jupiter’s scream soared into the sky and into the stars and rolled across the Elysian fields like slow hard thunder.

Careful, said Juno. You’ll wake the dead.

Jupiter’s head snapped angrily toward her but the King of the Gods calmed quickly when he realized that she had a point. He turned a small shrubbery into green mist with a slightly more subdued bolt of lightning.  I’m going to turn him into a shrubbery, he said. And I’m going to set him on fire every morning. 

Juno smiled. What a lovely idea, my love. We could roast olives on him.

Jupiter snapped his head at her again, this time with a malicious smile spreading across this bearded face. He roared: Yes! Yes! We’ll roast olives on him!

King and Queen, husband and wife, and uh, brother and sister, laughed throughout the morning before Juno stole away to ponder the mess she’d created.

A Lump of Coal

I’m going to turn that slimy little snake into a frog. She smiled at the thought as she scratched her pubic hair through the folds of her robe. Then she thought about turning him into a lump of coal. He would spend forever as a lump of coal and be aware that he was a lump of coal. Her smile widened. Not much of a future in that, eh, Somnus? Might be better to just die like a mortal.

She thought about her visit to the Oracle millennia ago when she’d gazed into his cauldron of visions and saw the humans devastating their world and destroying themselves in wars, murders and mass suicides. She knew that, with a little nudging from her, they would perish by their own hand and Jupiter would be hers, alone, forever. But she also knew that Jupiter would intercede and save the mortals, especially the women, so she had to distract him until it was too late. That’s when she’d thought of Somnus. A little sleep, a little manipulation, and Jupiter would be hers.

But Somnus had screwed up.

I’ll turn him into a lump of coal. I’ll burn him every day for eternity.

Someone to Kill

You put the gods asleep...all of them...for two thousand years? They sat at a worn sticky counter in another depressing bar with a spell placed over the patrons so they wouldn’t notice the twelve foot God of Sleep and the wings sprouting out of his head. Charon shook his head slowly, staring at the filthy bar top. You don’t have that kind of power, said Charon.

Somnus downed his Scotch in one quick swallow and signaled to the bartender for another. The bartender saw him as a large frog and really didn’t think that was odd. He didn’t notice the wings flapping on the sides of its head as he filled the frog’s glass. I know. And I don’t know what happened. It was supposed to put him out with happy dreams for a hundred years or so while Juno got rid of the mortals.

Juno? Charon suddenly swung his head toward Somnus. She was involved?

She’s his sister you know, said Somnus, downing his drink and signaling for another. Let’s not forget that part. It plays on the dynamics when you...

Somnus!

OK... Somnus’ empty glass was on the counter before the bartender had time to move the bottle more than a few inches. Here it is in a nutshell: Juno was jealous of Jupiter having sex with mortal women so she arranged for me to put him under a sleep spell while she encouraged the mortals to extinguish themselves. He chugged down another shot and the bartender refilled his glass. But something went wrong. Jupiter did fall asleep...and so did Juno and all the other gods. I rushed back to the underworld where everyone was completely engrossed by a monumental argument between Pluto and Proserpina. I waited for the heavenly gods to wake up. And they did...two thousand years later...right after you sent a swarm of dead mortals back here. He downed another Scotch and placed his glass under the waiting bottle. And now...here we are.

Charon shook his head and sipped his drink. You really messed up this time. Jupiter will move Creation to tear into you and I can’t say that you don’t deserve it.

Um... Somnus downed another shot, thought for a moment, sighed heavily and said, There’s just one other thing.

Oh shit. Charon stared back at the counter. Why do I get the feeling that this will be anything but good.

Somnus’ wings were wrapped tight enough around his head to turn white, a sign that Charon assumed was not good. Well, you see...the heavenly gods have been asleep for two thousand years... He downed another glass. ...which has a side effect.

And that being...?

They’ve been weakened by the inactivity.

So?

The underworld gods are just as strong as ever, which would make them stronger than the heavenly gods. It could mean another war between the gods.

Charon felt his stomach sink. Wars between the gods were ugly. They upset the balance of things and you never knew who you could trust or which of your godly friends today would be tomorrow’s unfortunate god trapped in the body of a goat. Charon downed his drink and knocked his glass on the counter for more. War or no war, he had someone to kill. He chugged back his drink and knocked for more.

Mistresses of Madness

Even more than the ugliness, it was the smell, and even in her present form with its tiny nostrils the stench of the Furies was almost unbearable. But she needed them. She needed to humor them and use them, and time was running out. Soon, Jupiter’s attention would turn from the weakened state of the gods and the horrors he would inflict on Somnus and he would see what had become of his beloved mortals and the world they had all but destroyed. Plus, she needed to keep her weakened state a secret from these three vile sisters which was why Juno appeared before them as a crow.

They’re so ugly...so damned ugly...and the stench.

They wore the short skirts and brown leather boots of huntresses. Skimpy armor coated their chests and every patch of uncovered skin was a horror of snakes burrowing in and out of their coal black flesh. Their eyes dripped blood. Their evil laughter iced the air around them.

And the smell. She just wanted to get this over with. You did well, my fair sisters. Juno was almost sick with her own words. That mountain over the city was a nice touch.

The three sisters snapped whips made of mortal entrails and cackled uproariously. Their screeches and chortles echoed off the surrounding walls of the canyon soaring into the skies around them. They sucked