by B. C. James
“If I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a little?”
Freya raised an eyebrow. If there was a thought bubble over her head it would contain a single question mark. In her long, long life it never occurred to her that all those words could coexist in the same sentence. She fought both the dual urge to slap the bejeezus out of him and openly laugh.
Brock drove a black on black, 2020 Challenger SRT. Guys were generally proud of the vehicles they drive, so as an ice breaker, she complimented him on his taste in cars. He simply smiled told her that his car had a name.
“Ma’am, this is The Reaper. Don’t let the name fool you, she’s actually a complete sweetheart.” Brock patted the steering wheel affectionately. “And Ms. Reaper, this is…I didn’t catch your name.”
“Freya,” she replied, “you can just call me Freya.” She offered Brock her hand.
“Just like Cher or Bono. That is so cool!” He took her hand and shook it. “Ms. Reaper, this is Freya.” He gunned the engine to make it sound like The Reaper approved.
Freya was a tad hesitant to accept the ride. She didn’t think he was dangerous, just weird. The extremely obtuse nature of how this person spoke put her a bit off balance. Under normal circumstances the thought of being stuck in a car with this type of person for at least seven hours would have been enough to wave him on by. She would have put up her hand, informed him that she didn’t know how to talk to him, and simply waited for a less confusing hero to come along. It was Saturday evening, and she needed to be at the State Farm Stadium before game time on Sunday. Either she took this ride or spent the rest of her life running from shadows.
They drove through the night; by morning, Freya was completely bothered. It wasn’t his strange conversation or the gushing about the musical genius of John Flansburgh that was getting to her. What bothered her was the fact that she wasn’t bothered by him at all. If any sentiment could be ascribed to how she felt about her time with Brock, she could only say that she was thoroughly charmed. She fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, enjoying the sound of his voice and his strange choice of topics. The next morning, he took her to breakfast and dropped her off at the stadium. As she was getting out of the car, Freya stopped, moved back into her seat, and gave him a long kiss goodbye. They exchanged phone numbers, and, for a change, she gave him her real digits. He mentioned how he was probably going to get a hotel and spend a couple of days in Glendale, and Freya told him she may call him after she saw her brother.
Brock just grinned and said, “Now you’re officially my woman. Kudos! I can’t say I don’t envy you.”
Freya chuckled and informed him that Futurama quotes are terrible pickup lines. He responded by telling her that she needed professional help if she believed that. The goddess just chuckled, gave him a final quick peck, and bounced out of the car. She was endlessly entertained by Brock and was seriously considering giving him a call sometime. He seemed like the type who would be lots of fun on a completely normal “dinner and a movie” date, which, deep down, contained the sort of innocence she desperately wanted to reclaim in her life. Those were thoughts for later; for now, she had to put her game face on.
Buying a ticket and sitting in the audience did her no good. Doing that wouldn’t get Thor’s attention unless she stripped down to her razor stubble and streaked onto the field. The last person Freya could remember to do that was Morganna, the “Kissing Bandit”. While Morganna did catch the attention of the players in the end all she managed to accomplish was parlaying her brief fame into a career in pornography. Freya could do both of those on her own, without embarrassing herself on national television. There had to be another way.
It wasn’t difficult to figure out a plan. She stalked the entrance for a few moments and looked for a security guard. Specifically, she was searching for a lonely looking security guard who would be quickly and easily captivated by her. She found what she was looking for in the person of a uniformed member of the staff who could have passed for Kevin James’ stunt double in the film, Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
She started out by giving him a song and dance about how she was a replacement cheerleader and had accidently left her ID at home. She followed this up by tugging at his emotional heart string with a bit about how she had just broken up with her boyfriend and had not really been thinking straight when she left the house. This not only got his sympathy but also gave him a glimmer of hope that he had a chance with her. After hearing her plight and watching her confirm her cheerleading chops with series of back handsprings with a step-out, the rotund security guard personally escorted her to the cheerleaders’ dressing room.
She kissed him on the cheek and gave him the phone number that she usually handed out to clients. This connected to a cheap and anonymous burner phone that she used for appointments. She started rummaging through the lockers for cheerleader outfits. She bet that if she checked her cheap little throwaway phone, the security guy had probably already called. All she could think was about how predictable most men were.
The locker room was stocked with makeup, refreshments, and a life-sized poster of each cheerleader over their particular locker. It was a little cheekier than a simple nameplate but still a tad over the top. As the smiling cheerleaders gazed down on Freya while she rummaged through the lockers, she became more and more frustrated. She found plenty of perfume, chewing gum, Astroglide, and the number of a doctor who sold black market estrogen, but no uniforms.
Her search options were exhausted; it was three hours before game time and there was not a cheerleader costume to be found in the entire locker room. Freya didn’t expect this. While most of her plans in life involved wearing extremely short skirts, this time it was REALLY important. She needed to get close to the players. Unless she had one of those uniforms, there wasn’t enough charm in the world to get past the platoon of security that were always on the lookout for stalkers, ex-wives, jilted girlfriends, and people serving the occasional summons.
While she was considering her next move fate and really good timing stepped in to offer a helping hand. One of the cheerleaders came strolling through the entrance. She was a bit shorter than Freya, with red hair and a severe look on her face that suggested she would be comfier swinging a battle ax than a pair of pompoms.
For a moment the two of them looked each other over. The cheerleader was trying to decide if Freya belonged there or not and Freya was wondering if the woman’s uniform would fit her. Before the cheerleader had the chance to ask Freya anything or yell for security, Freya decked her.
The dancer went down, which is exactly what is supposed to happen when a goddess unloads on a pompom girl. What Freya didn’t expect was that punching the cheerleader would actually hurt her fist. While she was shaking her hand and mouthing the word “Ow,” she examined the fallen women. Freya knew this person. She was no cheerleader; this was a Valkyrie.
Freya stumbled back a few steps and anxiously looked around to make sure there were no more of them hanging around. She couldn’t imagine what the escorts of the dead and damned were doing posing as cheerleaders, and she didn’t want to know. No good could come of it. It would be naive to think that their presence at the same place that Thor was playing football was a coincidence, so she guessed it would be a race to see who got to the Thunder God first. This was where Freya had an advantage. She knew that she was in a contest and the Valkyrie probably thought they were the only team on the playing field.
She stripped the costume off the unconscious Valkyrie and dressed in the borrowed uniform. She then kicked the unconscious minor goddess four times in the head to make sure she would not wake up any time soon, one more time…just for fun, then stuffed her in a broom closet. After washing the blood off of her shoes, Freya went in search of Thor.
Not only did Freya now look like she belonged in the restricted areas of the stadium but it gave her a weird sort of anonymity. The outfit was a little small on her, and a tad tighter then the designer intende
d, so Freya was certain nobody would be looking at her face. On the other hand, she was constantly stopped by guys wanting her autograph. Some of them demanded that she sign her name to parts of their bodies that would cause OSHA to deem the stadium an unhealthy work environment. This slowed her progress considerably. It got even worse when she found out that Thor never dressed with the team and was getting ready somewhere in a private dressing room.
While Freya was pondering her next move, there was a commotion out in the lower bowl seats not far from her. A pair of cheerleaders had apparently plummeted from one of the luxury suites. This wasn’t a case of some drunken girls falling in the manner that dangerously over-served people occasionally did. They came down amidst a shower of glass. The force required to send them through one of the luxury loft windows and over the balcony was a bit more extreme than a mere shove.
As usual, this sort of thing was causing a mass of confusion. People were running around, some of them screaming, a few trying to call 911, but most of them were angling to get a good shot of the injured cheerleaders with their phones. Some people were taking selfies with the victims in the background for their Instagram pages. Some people were shouting out that the girls were still breathing and that an ambulance was on the way. The word “miracle” was thrown around a few times by fans who heard that they lived.
Freya looked at the distance of a fall that was ended by unforgiving stadium seats and concrete stairs. This was no miracle, these were Valkyrie. It would seem that they found Thor first.
Through the crush of people, Freya spotted a black Fedora making its way through the crowd. Under the hat was an overweight African American, doing his best impression of a salmon swimming upstream as he tried to move in the opposite direction of the throng.
While Freya had spent years staying clear of Odin, she was still informed enough to recognize his lackey, Simmons. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that wherever he was going might also lead her to Thor. So she followed the hat through the crowd.
Freya shadowed him at a distance. He looked like he was trying to have a phone conversation through a crappy, pay-as-you-go flip phone. This frustration prevented him from paying attention to his surroundings, so there was little chance that he would realize he was being trailed.
Freya began to take stock of the situation. There were Valkyrie posing as cheerleaders. Simmons was hanging about, which meant Odin was somewhere near. The dog rarely strayed far from its master. Thor was probably somewhere on the phone explaining to his publicist why he had to throw a couple of cheerleaders through a window and over the railing. She began to wonder just what the hell she had stumbled into.
Chapter 19
Carl Simmons walked as quickly through the crowd as he could while talking on the phone. The problem was that Simmons’ physical coordination was about as sharp as his fashion sense. Getting through a crowd of people who were both anxious to see a football game and curious about the aftermath of a cheerleader taking a header from the stadium luxury lofts was proving difficult for him. Add a phone that dropped random words out of the conversation to the mix and it was like asking him to competently remove his own appendix.
“Yes, sir…how much blood sir? A small vial full is all that the bioengineering lab said they need to complete project Harryhau…um, project 204076-MD-001. What? What was I saying before? It’s of no consequence. Please stop yelling at me, I…I can’t help that my nose was whistling.”
Simmons began to blot the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his sport coat. He didn’t like talking to people in authority. In fact, for most of his life he had problems with authority figures in general. When he was younger, and the people around him were rebelling against “the Man” with tattoos, punk music, and alternative haircuts, Simmons responded to those in power over him by developing irritable bowel syndrome. This started a lifelong trend of strange noises coming from his body whenever he interacted with a superior. His body failed him even when pressed on the tiniest issues by somebody whose station was above his.
“Th…the…guys in the lab gave it the nickname ‘Project Harryhausen.’ I don’t know why they call it that. Every time I have to go see them, they’re just playing video games and watching online YouPorn. No, sir…they don’t invite me to watch. They say I can’t be in the room because it puts them off carbon-based life forms. Please don’t laugh sir, I don’t find it funny. That sound sir…that was…um…my nose again, sir,” Simmons said while fanning the air and ignoring the sour looks from the people around him.
“You need more than a vial? How much? Sir…have you considered that extracting that much blood might kill him?” Simmons pulled the phone away from his ear as the yelling started. “Al…alright…I’ll get it.”
There was an audible click on the other end as Simmons was hung up on. He was under no illusions about his place in the world. He was far from being an alpha or even a beta male. Chances were pretty good he was also looking up at the gamma males as well. It was obvious that he was somewhere farther down the Greek alphabet in terms of his position and authority. If he had to place himself, Simmons was sure he was more of an epsilon or zeta male. This limited those he could push around to zygotes, coma victims, and those dolls made out of latex. All his life he’d walked around with a helpless feeling that included emotional pain and a palpable sense of inadequacy. Something deep inside him cried out for some sort of release.
While everyone was rushing around like it was Black Friday at Walmart, Simmons spotted a small girl who seemed lost. Well, she may not have been lost, but at the moment she was definitely unescorted. She was standing and watching the chaos with confused wonder while eating an ice cream cone and cradling what looked like a plush basset hound puppy. With chocolate on her face and a stuffed animal in her arms, the little tow-headed beauty looked like she had just walked out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
Simmons cautiously looked around while approaching her. When he was sure nobody was looking, he bent down behind her, acting as if he was tying his shoe. As he began to rise, he delivered a sharp elbow strike between the four-year old’s’ shoulder blades. She fell forward hard and instantly started to cry.
A woman, her mother, turned from the drama that was going on with the cheerleaders and quickly scooped up the child. She sat the confused and wailing child on a trashcan and started to inspect her for injuries. Simmons looked at the ground where her smashed ice cream cone was and saw that she had dropped her toy. He picked it up. It was indeed a plush basset hound. Simmons, a man who knew his Beanie Babies, instantly identified it specifically as “Tracker” the basset hound. He slipped it under his coat and walked away. When he believed he was at a safe distance from the girl and her mom, he ripped the toy’s head off and dumped it in the trash.
After committing what could only be considered a hate crime against a stuffy, Simmons headed back to where the little girl was. When he got there, she was no longer crying from pain, or for the loss of her ice cream, she was screaming about how she wanted her puppy back. Her father was looking on the ground for the dog and her mother was trying to placate her with a new ice cream cone. The red-faced little girl could not be consoled and sobbed uncontrollably.
After savoring the sound of her misery for as long as he thought it was safe, Simmons walked away, barely suppressing a grin.
Making a little girl cry wasn’t as satisfying as the things he did to the mice he caught in his apartment with glue traps. He thoroughly enjoyed the desperation of the trapped animals, and the sounds they made after he heated up the business end of a safety pin and had a go at them. Of course, he could do that when he got home but for now the girl’s tears were a good release for the sense of helplessness that had built inside him.
Simmons meandered around the stadium, got lunch, and waited for Odin to call him. Once his boss had finished with Thor, he was responsible for getting the Thunder God from Glendale, Arizona back to Michigan and then to the Aesir Engineering facility. Thor would be impr
isoned there until he was, in Odin’s words, no longer such a raging disappointment of a son. That could take a while. Thor may not see the light of day again until the Morlocks were in the streets demanding civil rights and government-subsidized sunglasses.
It had not escaped Simmons’ notice that a cheerleader had been tailing him for a while. He never suspected this was Freya. Odin was working with the Valkyrie in the capture of Thor. He just assumed that his boss, being the micromanaging wanker that he was, had just assigned one of those women to keep an eye on him and make sure he wasn’t loafing on company time. He resented her following him for a couple of reasons. First, her presence was as good as an accusation in his eyes. He never goofed off. Secondly, she was extremely attractive, and he just didn’t need to be tailed by yet another woman he would never see naked. He wanted to look around for another kid to take his frustration out on but settled for wandering aimlessly while waiting for Odin to call.
He was considering whether or not taking a hotdog break would be reported back to Odin as a time-wasting activity when his phone finally rang. The conversation was short and curt. His boss simply stated that he was done with Thor and told Simmons it was now time for him to clean up the mess.
After hanging up with Odin, Simmons made another quick call. It was another short conversation that consisted of little more than him being told to stand near the entrance to Section 129 and wait.
He lingered around the area where he had been told to go. He didn’t have to wait long. His contact’s odor announced his presence almost 15 seconds before the guy showed up. He was wearing a long jacket with the collar turned up and a hat that made him look like he was a 1930’s TV private investigator in a past life. The skin of his emaciated face was ashen with the occasional purple blotches. The darkness around his sunken eyes made him look like an undead raccoon. While Simmons’ first impression was that this was a walking corpse, he made room for the possibility that the guy may be an old Skinny Puppy fan, fresh from a drug-fueled, three-day rave.
