Die, Brony, Die

by Paul Neuhaus

  I walked toward Sebastian Squire (nee Squingey) and did my best to pull my robe down around my thighs. Our host grinned at me. “We need to get you some proper clothes.”

  “I have some proper clothes,” I replied. “But I left in kind of a hurry.”

  “That you did. Is everything well?”

  I looked over my shoulder at Keri and El then back at Sebastian. “I hope so. The world is safe and so is Pegasus if that’s what you meant.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I meant all of it,” he said.

  I handed him Clytemnestra’s dagger. “This belongs to you, I think. You might wanna keep it locked up somewhere a little safer from now on.”

  He took the wicked-looking knife. “I will do that.”

  I nodded. “As you might imagine, I am about to go to sleep for an extended period—an extended period during which anyone who disturbs me will be killed outright.”

  “I’ll put armed guards outside your door,” he said smiling. “Won’t you have something to eat first?”

  “No, I will not. First sleep, then food. Massive, massive amounts of food.”

  “Anything in particular we can cue up for you?”

  “Hamburgers. Massive hamburgers.”

  Squire turned to one of his assistants. Before he could even open his mouth, the assistant said, “Hamburgers,” and ran back toward the house. “There you go,” Sebastian said, turning back to me. “Hamburgers.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Before I turn in, I’m gonna do something odd. Could you send a couple of your people along with me?”

  The venture capitalist raised an eyebrow and looked intrigued. He still had one assistant left. “How about me and Johnny here?”

  “Perfect,” I said. Then I walked over to a quiet area between two of the buildings. Once we found an open piece of ground, I took the shampoo bottle out of my pocket and turned the cap until it was loose. “Hope, are you catching my general drift here?”

  “I am,” she said.

  I spattered some of the blood onto the ground and opened the pithos. On cue, Hope kicked Calesius out. His spirit went for the delicious monster gore like a shot. After a moment or two of drinking, the spirit became flesh. The stable boy of Olympus was fully formed. With sticky lips, he looked at us, confused. “This is Calesius,” I said. “I hereby appoint him as official caretaker of Pegasus. And, believe me when I tell you, he’s gonna be a goldmine of information. Treat him good.”

  “You’re goddam right,” Squire said. Sebastian and Johnny stepped forward and each took one of Cal’s hands. He looked at them like, Where am I? Am I supposed to know you guys? but I had a feeling he was gonna be fine. They led him away and I watched them go. Over his shoulder, Squire said to me, “‘Dora...’ It’s short for ‘Pandora’, isn’t it?”

  I pointed at my nose then pointed at my host.

  “Sleep now?” Hope said.

  “Sleep now.”

  As I limped toward the farmhouse, Hope said, “Hey, did you realize this was your second matricide in less than a week?”

  “Somebody better warn Old Mother Hubbard to lay low.”

  While I was asleep, I had a dream. In it, I had had two daughters. Twins. One looked like Hope in her human form, and the other looked like Keri (only younger—about Hope’s apparent age when she’s solid). The three of us lived in a tiny home by the sea. A tiny home in ancient Greece. Greece the way I remembered it from when I was very young myself.

  Every night, after a dinner of fish and coarse but delicious bread, we walked down to the shore to watch the sunset. Sunsets in those times weren’t like the sunsets we have now. Each of them was a painting made to honor the gods. Each of them began with the same burnished orange I’d seen during my brief visit to Olympus. By the end, the orange matured into a purple so deep it defies description. Disney had the feel of it mostly right in Fantasia. Every sight, every sound was beyond real back then. Vibrant and alive in a way the modern world can’t equal. Maybe because the modern world lacks the same magic underlying all things great and small.

  Anyway, we were happy, my daughters and I.

  I woke up eighteen hours later and felt... well, better than I did before. I was still fatigued but I wasn’t sure how much of it was physical and how much of it was existential.

  I got out of bed, took a shower, put on my clothes and saw to some basic maintenance with the toiletries Acadine provided. It was like a hotel themed Ancient Greek. “How are you?” Hope said when I emerged from the bathroom.

  “I guess I’ll live,” I replied.

  “Huh. Not quite the take-on-the-world attitude I was hoping for.”

  I stretched before I sat down on the bed to put my shoes on. “Yeah, I don’t know what it is. I guess there’s still too much up in the air. I couldn’t begin to tell you what my tomorrow’s gonna be like. Or the day after that or the day after that.”

  When she spoke again, her voice had the quality of a shrug. “You just described everybody in the world ever.”

  “Not the people with goals and plans. The people who know who they wanna be.”

  She made a deep, dismissive pffting sound from within the pithos. “We know who you are—or at least I do. Now you just gotta decide what you’re gonna do with yourself.”

  I sat there with my hands at my side. “You may have me at a disadvantage,” I said. “Who am I?”

  “You’re the best sister an anthropomorphized emotion in a jug could have.”

  I stood up. “Well, that’s a start, I guess.” Since I didn’t fully trust Squire yet (or the people he had working at his theme park attraction), I decided to take Hope with me. I picked her up off the dresser and opened the door. Outside the door was Elijah with his hand poised to knock.

  “Oh,” my ex-boyfriend said. “I heard your shower. I figured it was safe to roust you out.”

  I stepped out of the way to let him in. He grabbed the chair by the dresser and oriented it toward the bed like he had on his first visit. I went around him and sat down on the bed again, putting Hope down next to me. “How’s Keri?” I said.

  “She’s a little shell-shocked,” he replied, his tone very serious. “It makes sense after what you guys went through. She told me all of it. She also made it pretty clear she thinks you’re the shit.”

  “Good,” I replied. “I think she’s the shit too.” I made like I was fluffing up the pillows and then I looked back at him. “I’m going to tell you something maybe you don’t already know. I’m going to tell you and you are not going to tell Keri I told you.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Your daughter’s taking pills. Lots of pills. It’s a coping mechanism, I guess. She was in house with an absentee mother and a father who clearly loves her but may—and I emphasize the word may—be a little eccentric. Now, the mother’s gone and the circumstances around that were... fucked up at best.”

  He looked down then back up again, and his eyes were misty. “I didn’t know that. I suspected but I didn’t know. I’ll... do whatever it is people do in these situations. Get her help. Find her a doctor. Find a facility.”

  “If it’s not too presumptuous, I’d like to take part in that. And by take part, I mean I’d like to go with her.”

  He was taken aback. “You have a problem too?”

  “I do.”

  He nodded, taking the information at face value. “Listen—”

  I cut him off. “Don’t ask me.”

  “Don’t ask you?”

  “Yeah. Don’t ask me. It’s too soon, and it’s inappropriate and I don’t think you’re gonna like my answer. Hell, maybe you should never ask me.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he looked about as shut down as anyone I’d ever seen. I hadn’t meant to be harsh, but I also didn’t want any ambiguity. “Okay,” he said.

  “I know we haven’t talked. Not really, but somewhere during all this, I made a decision by osmosis. It wasn’t something I sat down and did, it just happened. I decided that I’d wasted
a lot of my life unnecessarily and that we’re both, like it or not, very different people now. I also realized that Greeks—and, yes, I’m stereotyping here--are overly passionate people. We lead with our chins. We take everything personally. Particularly Ancient Greeks. We’re all batshit crazy. Maybe because, when you take a hard look at the old stories, we had some really shitty role models. Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite... You’ve never met a bigger crop of drama queens in your life. It’s part of my heritage and I guess I wanna sit with it for a while.”

  He nodded again, this time with more surety. “You wanna get some lunch?”

  “I wanna get some lunch, yeah.”

  We left my room together to go get lunch.

  As we walked away from the farmhouse to the main building, we passed Pegasus’ paddock. Not only was the horse at peace, some of Sebastian’s men were patiently helping a freshly-groomed Calesius acclimate himself to the modern world. When he saw me passing, the stable boy smiled and waved. I happily returned the gesture.

  Once inside Neo-Olympian H.Q., El and I made a beeline for the chow hall. It was an off hour, so the place was nearly empty. There were only people around a single table. It was Squire and the bronies and they’d saved me a spot. As I sat down next to Sebastian, Petey, Ty and Chad all smiled and patted me on the back. Our host himself was smiling, but he didn’t get up. He had a bunch of paperwork in front of him and he stacked it and collated it, so he could put it aside. While he was doing that, I noticed a peculiar detail. One of the sheets of paper had several photos attached with paperclips. The photos were of a restaurant between Los Angeles and Vegas called the Parthenon. It’s a themed drive-in with a miniature version of Mount Olympus. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if Medea hadn’t had pictures of the very same place hanging in her apartment. Part of my brain said, Well, that’s damn peculiar, but I didn’t make anything of it. For one thing, I’d only caught a fleeting glimpse before the paper was put away, and, for another, I didn’t want to get into it. If at all possible, I was going to stay out of the mysterious adventure business for as long as I could.

  “There she is,” Squire said with a grin. “The lady of the hour.” Then he picked up a little bell and rang it. A line of men came out of the kitchen, each of them carrying a plate in each hand. On each plate was a different kind of hamburger. “You didn’t say what you were looking for in a burger, so I had the chef make one of every kind he could think of. You don’t have to eat all of them, of course.”

  “Bullshit,” I said picking up a fork and knife and putting a cloth napkin over my right knee. “Get ‘em over here. I wanna knock ‘em out before nightfall.” Everyone laughed, and I ate at least a little bit of every damn hamburger they brought.

  After I ate, and the conversation dwindled, I decided to wander outside and get some fresh air. I was grateful that none of the men decided to follow. I guess they figured I needed a little space. It was midday, the sun was high in the sky, but thanks to our altitude and proximity to the ocean, there was a chill in the air. I hugged myself and looked out over the little village. Over by Pegasus’ paddock, Calesius had stopped working. He was talking animatedly with Keri and Keri was laughing. Now that was interesting. I was happy to see Keri in good spirits, but I wondered what a guy fresh off the boat from ancient Greece could say that would be so entertaining to a modern girl with a lot on her mind. I was curious but not curious enough to interrupt their conversation. I sat down on the steps leading into the main building and drank in the air. After a moment, Keri saw me, said something to Cal (touching his arm in the process) and then she came over. “Can I sit down or are you having Pandora time?”

  “I just had eighteen hours of Pandora time. Plus, they gave me so much hamburger I think I’m gonna be sick. Distract me for a minute.”

  The girl smiled and sat down next to me. I give her credit: She got right to it. “You’re not gonna get back together with my dad, are you?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “He and I haven’t talked about it. In fact, we’ve barely talked at all. How did you arrive at your theory?”

  “After you hang out with somebody for a while you get to where you can read their rhythms. I think I might be there with you, but I could be wrong. You want my two cents? About my dad, I mean?”

  “I do, actually.”

  “I don’t think you should get back together with him.”

  “Yeah? Why do you say that?”

  “Because he’s an idiot man-child,” she replied. I laughed, but she went on. “No, I’m being serious. I don’t know what it was like between you guys before Addie came into the picture, but I think the whole drunken pregnancy thing was a real signal. I know Addie supposedly tricked my dad—maybe she even used some kind of Grecian voodoo on him—but I still can’t help feeling the drunkenness and the navigation of his penis into her vagina was at least partly his fault. And things haven’t changed much. God bless him, but he’s rudderless. He doesn’t mean for things to go wrong, but his basic nature demands they do. Character equals destiny.” Then she stopped and considered. “Is that a saying or did I just make that up?”

  I grinned at her. “I think the idea started with Heraclitus. A philosopher. Greek. I’ll give you partial credit, though.”

  “Okay, cool.” She thought for a minute. “Where was I going with this?”

  “You were giving your dad a big thumbs down.”

  Keri laughed. “No, I wasn’t. I love my dad. I think he’s awesome. But I don’t think you and he should rekindle your thing. Look at him. Look at the brony thing. I know I’m supposed to be tolerant and accepting in this day and age, but I still can’t help feeling that, if a grown man dresses as a cartoon pony and goes to public places to hang out with other grown men dressed as ponies, that man is somehow broken. Is that a terrible thing to say?”

  “Maybe. Maybe it’s us. Maybe we’re the dicks. But, yeah, bronies give me the willies.”

  “How accurate was that movie 300?”

  She was talking about the flick where three hundred Spartans protect Greece from a whole army of Persians. I made the so-so sign in the air. “They got a lot of stuff right, actually.”

  The teenager grinned. “Can you imagine any of those buff, testosterone-y motherfuckers dressed up like ‘Sparkle-star’ or ‘Glitter-gal’?”

  “You’re saying there’s been a sea change in masculine behavior?”

  “Maybe for the better?” she replied with a mock devil’s advocate tone. We both said, “Nah” together.

  After that we looked out over the ocean for a good while. Finally, Keri said, “After we get back to civilization, will you still be my friend?”

  “Fucking-A,” I replied.

  I have a confession to make: When I got back to civilization, I didn’t go see Jack. I promised him I would, but I had no idea what I was gonna say to him—and it had nothing to do with his head wound. If I didn’t want Elijah, why would I would Elijah two point oh? It’s not that they were the same person. Sure, they looked a lot alike but the idea that identical twins have identical personalities is false. When I’d know him, Jack had always been quieter, more introspective. Cautious. I guess that sounds good on the face of it, but I always got the feeling the younger of the Wiener twins was carrying around a heavy load. That he was at war with himself. Maybe the foul ball had knocked that out of him, but I wasn’t especially curious to find out.

  I guess what I’m saying is, I didn’t want to look at anyone as a potential romantic partner and I was pretty much done with all things Wiener.

  Note my use of the capital W there. I wasn’t about to move to the Isle of Lesbos, but I also wasn’t interested in either my old flame or his brother.

  If you wanna think any of that makes me a bad person, go ahead.

  One thing I neglected to mention: When I got back to the trailer, there was a little bit of mail. There was also a flier stuck in the groove between the door and the trailer proper. When I got inside, I put Hope down on the desk and I looked at
it. It was printed on canary yellow paper. It was an ad for the Church of Reciprocity, a well-financed cult with a litigious streak a mile wide. You’ve heard of them, I’m sure, but in Los Angeles they were ubiquitous. I got the stupid fliers at least twice a month.

  This one was different, though.

  This one was advertising a “Conclave of Universal Consciousness” to be held at—are you ready?—the Parthenon Restaurant between Vegas and L.A. I stuck it to the little cork board behind my desk and stared at it for a long time.

  DORA WEIR RETURNS IN KUMBAYA, SPACE HIPPIE

  Books by Paul Neuhaus

  Company Town - Book 1 of the Quinn Henaghan Chronicles

  Magic! Monsters! Mayhem!

  All the things mousy Quinn Henaghan didn't want in her life. But now, thanks to a long-hidden power, Quinn is fast on her way to becoming the world's most powerful sorceress.

  Can she master her powers in time to save Los Angeles from the demon who's been ruling it for a century?

  Urban Fantasy at its finest! In the tradition of The Dresden Files and Doctor Strange!

  Aeon of Horus - Book 2 of the Quinn Henaghan Chronicles

  A priceless artifact! A dark conspiracy! An approaching apocalypse!

  Quinn Henaghan is again embroiled in a situation not of her own making. Thieves, witch-hunters, demons and rival wizards all want a totem she acquired but didn't ask for. As she weaves her way through this collection of rogues, she learns the statue she holds is the only thing that stands between life as we know it and the total destruction of the earth!

  Urban Fantasy at its finest! In the tradition of The Dresden Files and Doctor Strange!

  Messiah of Burbank - Book 3 of the Quinn Henaghan

  Danger! Demons! Sex!

  Quinn Henaghan has a family now. She also has a new enemy, one far deadlier than any she’s faced before.