Penemue's Inferno

by Ramy Vance

  “You were explaining the virtues of sharing,” Athena said with all the enthusiasm of the class pet.

  “Precisely. All you gods, you literally know the secrets of the universe. You possess immortality and powers beyond human imagination. Sharing some of that knowledge will in no way diminish your status as gods. It will do quite the opposite for—”

  “But if we tell the humans too much, they will try to replace us with … with them,” Loki protested, turning around to look at Adam and Eve.

  For the first time, the two lovebirds stopped looking at each other, their gazes turning somber as they stared back at Loki.

  “We would never,” Eve said. “We just want to know things. Learn things.”

  “And once you do, what will you do with that knowledge?” Loki turned to Penemue. “Learn to fly, to manipulate energy? Master the heavens in rockets?”

  “We … we …” Adam stammered, unable to find the words.

  “And once you master those things, then what?”

  “Well, nothing,” Adam said. “Things will just keep on keeping on.”

  “But what if you master immortality, too?” Odin said. “Won’t knowledge and immortality make you gods?”

  “More than gods!” Athena said. “For they can do things we cannot.”

  “Children, children.” Penemue waved his hands in a calming fashion. It wasn’t working.

  The class was quickly getting unruly. How, I wondered as I watched the commotion, would one discipline a classroom of out-of-control child-gods?

  “Like what?” asked Izanami. “We are gods. Gods!”

  “They can have children. We can’t. Yes, we can create. But their way of creation is different than ours. They multiply. They expand. And if their children, too, have knowledge and immortality, they’ll … they’ll breed us out!” Athena shuddered at the thought.

  “Breed us out?” Odin stood on his chair. “Never!” And as the raven god cried out, his youthful figure grew until he was a war-scarred, full-grown man.

  Well, a full-grown god.

  “I will never allow that,” he screamed, scanning the others with his one good eye. There was something different in Odin. Before he’d been a doe-eyed boy, eager to learn. But now that he perceived humanity’s threat, he was more switched on, his one good eye gleaming with the lust of the hunt. “I will never allow that. Never. For before they can multiply, I will … Wait. Who the hell are they?” Odin pointed at us.

  So much for being flies on the wall.

  Ever Been Punched by a God?

  Gods don’t punch. They’re more the lightning bolt, whirlwind, shoot-things-out-of-their-hands kind of fighter. Kind of like Raiku in Mortal Kombat, except there’s no arcade screen to shield you and no Play Again? option when you die.

  And that’s exactly what was going to happen if we didn’t find a way to stop them. A lightning bolt hit me square in the chest, pushing me onto my back with a heavy thud. But unlike what I expected to happen when hit by a god’s lightning, I didn’t explode into a million little pieces of Jean. Instead, I was able to take it in the same way I could handle being hit by a car.

  Which is to say: it hurt, but I’d live.

  Maybe.

  Normally in a situation like this, I’d go all Jean-Luc Matthias on them and pull some crazy stunt to get out of the situation. Generally it involved a loud boom. But there was nothing around to go boom, and I had Bella and Judith to worry about.

  Well, Bella.

  I didn’t know what to do, and looking for something, anything to help, my eyes caught Penemue’s. The twice-fallen angel no longer looked like the regal professor of only moments ago. He looked forlorn, wasted, tired. His tweed jacket was torn and his wings were no longer immaculately white; they had more of a dragged-in-the-mud quality.

  I’d been in plenty of fights with that angel by my side. As much of a buffoon as he was, he wasn’t a coward; he’d always jumped in by my side in fights. (Plus, he had badass meathooks that came out of his forearms whenever shit got real … And shit was about as real as it could get right now.) But the angel didn’t do anything; he just stared at me with glowing eyes as tears of light streamed down his face.

  So much for having an angel on your side.

  Angel-less, I drew upon all my military training that taught me how to handle situations like this, and did exactly what it told me to do.

  I ran.

  But not before grabbing Judith and Bella’s arms, pulling them out of the way of a child-sized Thor hammer flying our way, and—more literally than I would have liked—throwing them down the hill.

  ↔

  The three of us tumbled down the hilltop like Jack and Jill and Jack’s judgmental mother-in-law. If I had a quarter for every time I tumbled down a hill while pursued by overpowered magical creatures, I could make three phone calls in a 1980s phone booth.

  We tumbled as the childlike gods ran to the hill’s edge, each daring the others to follow. And that’s when it hit me: they might have been gods, but they were still children. Children who had yet to embrace things like blind violence or mob mentality. Children who, when they fought, didn’t play for keeps. They were still learning to embrace their more violent tendencies.

  I could use that. Or rather, Momma Bear tumbling a few feet in front of me could.

  “They’re kids,” I said when friction finally won over gravity and our tumbling ceased.

  “So?” Bella asked, stumbling to her feet.

  “So, we have a mother here.” I pointed at Judith, then up the hill. Thor and Zeus, the bravest of the bunch, were already halfway down. I turned to Judith. “You had years to hone your judgmental, critical, authoritative ways.”

  “Hey!” Judith protested.

  “That’s a compliment. At least in this context,” I said. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here. But Penemue is at the top of the hill, and if we can reach him, maybe, just maybe this whole thing will be done. I need you to go all judgmental on their asses.”

  “How?”

  “By being you.”

  Judith scowled at me.

  “Exactly … except at them.”

  “Fine,” she said. Taking a step past us, she walked to the base of the hill and yelled, “You two! Stop right where you are.”

  Full credit to Judith—she was all mother-in-law rage.

  Thor and Zeus stopped right in their tracks. The others, spurred by their bravery (and the fact that they were far enough ahead that the others could always turn tail and run if we proved more badass than they suspected), trailed down the hill, stopping at the same point as the two leaders.

  “Enough of this. Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”

  Good, I thought.

  “But we don’t have moms,” Athena said. “We made ourselves.”

  “Well, technically I made you when I was swallowed by Metis,” Zeus said.

  “That’s not what I meant, you cheeky little monkey, and you know it,” Judith yelled.

  “I’m a god,” Zeus muttered. “Not a monkey.”

  Judith ignored the pouting god. “So you made yourself, huh? Well then, you should have made yourselves some mothers to teach you the proper way to treat guests.”

  “Guests?”

  The kids were looking between themselves while they tried to assess exactly who we were.

  “Yes. Who do you think we are? Invaders?” Judith asked.

  “Titans?” Zeus said.

  “Or Frost Giants,” Thor offered.

  “Or the Devil,” Eve yelled, pointing at—oh shit … Marty. “That is the Devil, and he is trying to tempt me again. Tempt us all!”

  And that was all it took for our little reprieve to come to an abrupt and probably fatal end.

  “GoneGodDamn snakes,” I said, pulling Judith and Bella as we continued fleeing from an angry mob of children.

  ↔

  Since we had tumbled down the hill in a southwesterly direction, we had two choices. We could head toward
the floating iceberg and—among the ice cracks and glacial gorges touching the earth below it—try to find somewhere to hide, or we could head into the dark forest I was pretty sure was Yomi, the Shinto land of the dead.

  Partly because it’s easier to hide in the dark, but mostly because I don’t like the cold, I pointed toward Yomi and charged ahead.

  Judith and Bella followed and within a few moments, we were in Yomi’s embrace.

  As soon as our feet touched the forest’s foliage, we were enveloped by a dusk-like hue as an eerie sense of danger overcame us.

  This place gave me the creeps. Maybe the cold would have been a better way to die.

  Dark Forests, Skeletons, Stonewalls and Goodbye Kisses

  I’d been to Yomi once before. Well, I hadn’t actually been in Yomi, but rather, a particular chamber inside it. A museum. The Museum.

  It seems that when the gods were still being gods, they had this place where they stored all the stuff too destructive for the universe to have easy access to, while at the same time too powerful to destroy. Things like the Golden Fleece, Odin’s Eye and Noah’s Helm … and, of course, the Spear of Longinus—the spear that stabbed Jesus. In other words, a weapon so powerful it could literally kill a god.

  The museum also stored some of the most wretched and horrible creatures in existence. The Erlking, a platoon of aqrabuamelu and camazotz, even Gogmagog, all carbon-frozen like Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back. For one reason or another, the gods chose not to kill those creatures, but rather hold them captive—alive and pissed off—forever. Kind of like the Phantom Zone prison that held General Zod. After an eternity flipping around the universe in one of those, no wonder he was so pissed off.

  I was there in the Museum, and because of some terrible shit that went down in a story far too long and tragic for me to ever want to relive again, those evil creatures were released into the world.

  And even though I hunted down and killed most of those evil fucks, I’d always wondered why the gods chose Yomi as the domain to hold them in.

  Running through the dark forest now, I understood. This forest wasn’t just dark and dreary, it was downright filled with all sorts of creepy crawlies just ready to swallow you whole.

  Placing the Museum in Yomi was the equivalent of an island prison surrounded by sharks. Except this place didn’t have sharks—it had a gashadokuro, who, within our first twenty yards into the damned place, swiped down at us with a giant, bony fist.

  Thankfully, the giant skeleton wasn’t expecting to see three humans and a viper running through his (her? Hard to determine sex when you’re literally looking at a giant, fleshless skeleton) domain. The oversized Skeletor swung down with its open hand like it was trying to high five us, and if it hadn’t been for the unnaturally large cherry blossom tree between us and him, he would have squashed us like bugs, staining the white ridges of his palm red.

  “So, not that way,” I said, pushing Bella and Judith to the left and away from the gashadokuro. If the gashadokuro legends were true, then he was rooted in place and wouldn’t be able to follow us.

  Of course, those legends were filtered through Penemue’s alcohol-addled mind. My only hope was that the creatures who called this dark place home weren’t frolicking about at the forest’s edge.

  We veered to the left before turning sharply right again and deeper into the forest. I took the lead, pistol in hand; right now, the best thing to do was clear the path. Behind us, I could hear the cries of the child-gods as they entered the tree line. They were yelling—mostly at each other—to hurry up and catch the marauders.

  “Marauders?” I looked back at Bella. “Seems were in a 1940s western being chased by a posse of black hats … And since we’re the good guys with a noble mission, we’ll be fine.” I gave my wife what I hoped was a reassuring wink before turning to see what fresh hells lay in front of us.

  But any effort to reassure her was literally blasted to smithereens. We heard a crackle of electricity followed by a thunderous boom and the unmistakable sound of bones shattering as a femur (or maybe part of a jawbone) fell right in front of us.

  Evidently Thor or Zeus hadn’t taken kindly to the poor giant trying to give them a high five.

  ↔

  We must have run about three hundred yards, dodging all kind of mythical Yomi nasties as we went, and every one of them was shocked to see the three of us dashing through.

  But these mythical creatures weren’t fools, either. They heard screams, the taunts … the boom. They knew what was happening. And instead of interfering and risking the ire of a band of gods, they followed at a distance, the temptation of seeing us being demolished by gods too great to pass up.

  Great, I thought, my death is going to have an audience.

  We ran until we reached a cliff face jutting up as far as the eye could see. Only thing was, we were running with our eyes wide open and our goal was to keep running, so there was no way we could head straight into a stone wall. It was as if the damn thing had been camouflaged and only became visible when we were too close to do anything about it.

  Given that we could no longer run away and had to abruptly change direction, the gods could gain considerable ground on us. We needed to keep moving.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s follow this until—” But as I spoke, the rock wall angled inward. I turned the other way and watched in horror as the cliff face turned in, too.

  And then I realized what was happening. The gods, being gods, were toying with us. They had resurrected the stone curtain in such a way that it literally caught us by surprise. Then they’d turned what seemed to us like a cliff face into a valley. Well, a cul-de-sac-style valley, for this particular unnatural structure terminated in a dead end.

  “Humph,” I mused to myself, “a dead end. As in, dead at the end.” Because that’s exactly where we were: at the end. We were going to die at the hands of child-gods in a hell constructed by a twice-fallen angel whom I considered my best friend.

  Still considered my best friend, despite everything.

  I looked over at Bella, who slowly turned around to face the gods. I was finally going to get what I always wanted: to die by her side. Just like I’d said in my vows. Of course, when I said that in my vows, I had hoped that the end would come when we were both so old that neither of us could stand up without something snapping. I had also hoped that we’d be hanging out and I’d say something witty and funny (as I was prone to do) and we’d literally die laughing.

  But I guess beggars can’t be choosers, and this was as good an end as any.

  That was the resolve I was feeling. But when I looked into Bella’s eyes, I saw a young woman determined to fight. She picked up a rock in one hand and folded the other into a fist, and I knew my Bella wasn’t ready to go gently into the night; she planned to rage until her last breath.

  But didn’t she see that this was a pointless fight. Short of a miracle, there was no way we were getting out of this one alive. She might not have accepted that this was the end, but I had.

  So taking a step forward, I did what I had wanted to do from the second I saw her standing within the veil. Yes, we had come together before, but not like this.

  I hadn’t slipped my hand around her waist with such need. I hadn’t found the spot at her back where my fingers could urge her forward. I hadn’t shown her this kind of love.

  I pulled her in close and kissed her lips that were familiar but somehow new … lips that reminded me of what it was to be happy—really happy. She kissed me right back, as though she’d expected it. Her lips parted, and all at once, we were home. Both of us.

  Resolved or not, I decided then and there that this wasn’t the end. We were going to live on, and I was going to get a chance to do that again.

  A hundred times more.

  And I realized that my despair and my acceptance largely came from being in Hell. Hell was a place without hope, and I was giving in to that, letting its toxicity wrestle away any faith that I could actually win
the day.

  Bella’s kiss, that cured me of any depression I might have felt. Bella was my hope. She was the thought that kept me going and would keep me going even after death finally managed to dig her finality into me.

  But of course, hope is a fickle bitch. Just because you want her to do something doesn’t mean she’s going to come running, and when I heard a childish voice say, “Uwww, gross,” I knew that if I wanted to kiss Bella again, I’d have to kill a god.

  Spanking Gods and Raging Thors

  I turned to see Zeus and Thor leading the gang through the valley. Gods they may have been, but they were still kids—and kids almost always elect a leader to guide the shenanigans of their little pack. And the kid who most often gets elected? The biggest and baddest of the bunch.

  In this case, there were two of them.

  Thor walked through first, closely followed by Zeus. Even though they were barely five feet tall, I could feel their power coursing through them. They both had the power of lightning and from the crackle and boom that shattered the gashadokuro, I knew that one of them was at least strong enough to destroy a skeleton giant.

  Which made him strong enough to kill me.

  We were screwed. But Bella’s kiss had reversed my resolve to accept my fate and go gently into the next life … which in this new godless world was literally nothing.

  Still holding onto Bella’s hand, I said, “So this is what the mighty gods are, huh? I have to say, I’m less than impressed.”

  “What?” Zeus said, all bravado given he had a Thor standing between us. “You dare.”

  “Yeah, yeah … I dare.” I scrunched my face up to convey disappointment and disgust. “Look at you … all of you.” I turned my gaze to the others behind the two alpha gods. “Ganging up on a bunch of helpless humans. And for what? Because we crashed your classroom? Listened in as you got schooled by an angel … a lesser being.” I imbued those last words with as much patronizing gumption as I could muster, channeling my inner Judith as I spoke.