Last God Standing

by Michael Boatman

  In addition to looking out for my own backside, however, I had a larger consideration. I had violated a minor rule in defeating Dionysus. Realities are separate for a good reason. Breaching their integrity for personal gain is always a bad idea. It’s one thing to correct the violations of ne’er-do-well deities, another thing altogether to cause the violation just to protect my own skin. There might be ethical considerations; a karmic price to pay later for my victory in the Now.

  I can fix it. If something goes wrong, I can just Reset and start over.

  Later, my arrogance would lead me to make the worst decision in the gods’ long history of bad decisions. But the effects of Dionysus’ epiphany were beginning to wear off.

  Surabhi.

  I staggered back into Henri Lumiere’s, where the maître d’ informed me that he’d already called the police. The Molokes were gone. He recommended, in the most colorful terms, that I follow their example. Before the bouncers could throw me out again, I left.

  It’ll be OK. I can fix this.

  I punched her number, determined to explain. I called her, ten, twenty times, each time getting her voicemail greeting in return.

  You’ve done it, Lando. This time you’ve really done it.

  My mortal life, the life for which I’d sacrificed Eternity, was going up in flames that stank of wine and stomach acid. It was also abundantly clear that I was now the target of at least one angry family of gods. My nausea only deepened at the thought of taking on the entire Greek pantheon.

  Surabhi was ignoring my calls.

  Everything was ruined.

  My mortal life was a Godawful mess.

  DEPRESSION

  “I struggle with depression. Who doesn’t? Everybody’s got problems, right? But my father taught me how to deal with depression. Which was only fair, since most of the time my parents were the reason I was depressed.”

  < Audience reacts >

  “When I was ten years old, my father had this big business trip to Africa. The whole family was invited to spend Christmas at this resort in Zimbabwe. My mother signed up for a Swahili class she got from this ad in Modern Woman. The class turned out to be a scam cooked up by this ‘African King’ who was searching the New World for a ‘modern American Wife’. This appealed to my mother even though she already had a modern American husband. Barb’s a very romantic woman… also completely insane.”

  < Audience laughs >

  “The African King turned out to be this schizophrenic from Salt Lake City named Thicke Ronald. Thicke Ronald used the money my mother sent him to buy a bus ticket. He came to Chicago, camped out on the sidewalk in front of our house and begged my mother to come out and meet her ‘Negro Love God’. The man was from Utah: next to him Dick Cheney looked like Samuel L Jackson in black face.

  “When my mother refused to come out, Thicke Ronald challenged my father to a duel. My father went out to fight him. Thicke Ronald weighed three hundred pounds. He could benchpress my father, and he had more violent personalities than a flashback episode of Survivor. So while one of Herb’s employees distracted him, Herb snuck up behind with a shovel and and coldcocked him. The employee filmed the whole thing. Herb used the footage in a commercial: Crazy Herb Clobbers the Price Giant.

  “They kept Thicke Ronald in the ‘special hospital’ for three weeks. On Thanksgiving Day, my mother said Thicke Ronald appreciated her more than we did, packed a bag and flew to Salt Lake City. The night before we left for Africa my father made us pack all our old clothes in boxes and shipped them all to Zimbabwe. A week before Christmas, we all flew to Africa. Without my mother.”

  < Audience reacts >

  “Yeah, sad. On Christmas Eve we were sitting around, moping in our hotel room, surrounded by all these boxes. Herb told us to get dressed. We took all the boxes down to this big ballroom. The management was having a Christmas party for the hotel staff and their families. We gave away all our old clothes, toys… stuff we didn’t want. I was pretty sure we were going to have to visit my mother and new stepfather in whatever Utah boobie-hatch accepted Blue Cross Blue Shield, but my father gave each of us a little wine, and by the time we’d emptied the last box, we were all laughing.

  “My old man knew how to deal with depression. ‘Remember, boys,’ he’d slur. ‘When you think you’re standin’ on the bottom of the barrel, just think: somewhere out there are four little boys with no feet.’

  “So he gave away all my mother’s clothes.”

  < Audience laughs and yells >

  “All her shoes, her toothbrush, her tapedeck, her typewriter; all her tampons, her eyeglasses, her makeup, her Diana Ross wigs, her watches, her earrings, her hunting knife, and her zippo lighters. He gave away every piece of jewelry he’d ever bought and every piece of underwear she owned. By the time he was done, a hundred and three African ladies walked away with more loot than Bernie Madoff. The locals sang Christmas songs in our honor. On New Year’s Day, some of the workers made us honorary members of their tribe. It was one of the best Christmases of my entire life.

  “My father knew how to handle depression.”

  CHAPTER XI

  COMIC CONVENTIONS, WHAT HAPPENED TO YURI LAST WEEK, VITILIGO ELF

  How could I have been so stupid?

  I should have seen Dionysus’ attack coming. Hadn’t I noticed a glimmer of cloaked divinity shimmering around him when he sent over that damned wine? Hadn’t I sensed that something was amiss seconds before I took that first sip? As I replayed the events of what would come to be known as the Moloke Massacre, I swore to myself that I had. Now that everything had gone down the toilet I could see all the signs of an imminent attack.

  Stupidstupidstupistupidstupidstupid…

  But I missed the signs: I was too busy trying to impress Surabhi’s parents.

  “You got it, Pinocchio.”

  Connie was sitting astride a huge black horse in the middle of my bedroom. The horse’s eyes shone bright red in the shadows of my shuttered sanctum sanctorum. I had drawn the curtains against the possibility of sunlight when I’d arrived home near dawn. The black horse’s mane swirled like ink in dark water, a roiling curtain of shadow. Its hooves shone like molten silver, and they left smoking prints across the carpet. There was something weird about the creature, apart from its size and obvious supernatural nature, but from the depths of my hangover I couldn’t quite figure it out. It glared redly at me, clearly disgusted. And it wasn’t the only one.

  “Please, Connie… no lecture.”

  “Oh really? After the wine-drenched gangbang you and Dionysus subjected me to last night? I’ve got a right to rip you a new one, mister.”

  “Connie–”

  “In light of the potential disruption of the Plan and threat to human emotional development I’d say you’ve ignored me enough, Lando Cooper.”

  “Connie, I know you’re my conscience–”

  “Transitory conscience…”

  “Anyway it’s perfectly within your purview to bust my chops, Connie, but–”

  “You really screwed the pooch last night, kid.”

  Connie hopped down from the spectral black horse. For some reason she was wearing a Wonder Woman costume, complete with silver bracelets and magic lasso. “Both your lives are pretty much in the crapper.”

  “Please,” I groaned, wincing at the sparks from the horse’s hooves. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Alright. The other pantheons are rumbling. In light of recent events, there’s been talk of a general uprising.”

  “What recent events?”

  “The powers are concerned about the disappearances. Zeus is gone, same for the Morrigan. And now Dionysus. And to make matters worse… Gabriel has suffered some kind of breakdown.”

  “What?”

  “Yup,” Connie grunted. “He was last spotted fluttering around Venice Beach, ghoststalking a bunch of homeless meth addicts. When someone asked him why he was doing that, he said… and I’m quoting here… ‘Everything’s gone to Hell,
Heaven is an illusion and the Emperor has no robes’.”

  “Gabriel’s an Archangel, Connie. All that bowing and scraping… He should get a life.”

  “Don’t even joke about such things,” Connie hissed. “The powers are afraid you’ve launched some kind of covert assault on the pantheons. It’s typical god behavior: taking the random ticking of a clockwork universe and making it all about you, but there you have it.”

  “Wait a minute. The Morrigan was dragged into the Underworld by Hannibal! She volunteered to help me!”

  “And she hasn’t been seen since.”

  “She’s a goddess, Connie! She still has most of her personal powers. She’s probably just regenerating somewhere in Ireland.”

  Connie shook her head. “She isn’t in Ireland, or any of the Underworlds. And neither she nor her host have been seen in Boston. All traces of the Morrigan’s power have been removed from our continuity.”

  “And the other gods are blaming me for her disappearance?”

  “Yup. They suspect you of stealing divinity. They think you may be murdering passé gods and hoarding their powers to stave off your own looming redundancy.”

  “But I retired voluntarily. According to you, Yahweh acknowledged his ‘looming redundancy’ during the industrial revolution.”

  The black horse whinnied. In the confines of my room it sounded like a haunted eighteen wheeler firestripping its airbrakes. I knew my parents couldn’t hear it – no strictly mortal ears can eavesdrop on a divine pow-wow – but the subtle sound was unsettling in the Saturday morning silence.

  Downstairs, Herb was preparing one of his Fitness Breakfasts for himself and Missy Tang. My mother was out on her weekly mani-pedi-run. She never missed a Saturday at the local nail salon, where she enjoyed making the lives of the Korean shopgirls particularly disappointing.

  Since Herb’s return, I’d sensed an upswing in the animosity between my parents. Their war of wills was nearing some kind of breaking point. The tension on the Cooper Plantation was as thick as drywall. All things considered, I didn’t need any more weirdness pushing my personal applecart into oncoming traffic.

  “What’s with the horse? And why is it eating my comforter?”

  Connie rolled her eyes.

  “Lando this is Sleipnir. Odin’s magical steed. During your little pissing contest with Dionysus I decided to get some fresh air. I ran into Frigga over Norway… you know, the Queen of the Norse Gods? Anyway, she invited me down for a few rounds of Texas hold ’em with Pele of the Polynesians, Ratri, the Hindu Avatar of Night, and Athena of the Greeks. I won Sleipnir off Frigga on a bluff. Boy was she pissed. Right, Shleppy?”

  Sleipnir whinnied again, his eight hooves pounding the floor until every window in the house shook.

  “Hey!” Herb yelled. “Turn down that damn ghetto blaster!”

  “Athena told me about the uprising. The Greeks are furious of course. Ares is howling for your head, especially now that Dionysus has been whacked.”

  “Surabhi’s gone. My parents are driving me nuts. Everything’s gone wrong and now those idiots think I’m a murderer. Connie… I don’t know what to do.”

  Connie leaped up onto Sleipnir’s broad back. “You know what to do: do the right thing.”

  “But what is the right thing, Connie? How do I fix all this?”

  “Think like a mortal, Lando. Accept your limitations and figure it out.”

  Outside, the brightness of the July morning faded. I heard the rumble of a stormfront closing in as the sunlight fled before the storm’s onrushing shadow.

  “I could fix it, you know. I could just go up to the attic, fire up the Shell and–”

  “No! You gave up the Divine to live as mortals live. That’s a one-way ticket. Now you’ve got to solve your problems the way humans have been solving theirs since they climbed out of the trees.”

  “Yeah? And how is that?”

  “Simple, Pinocchio. One step at a time.”

  There was another thundering whinny, followed by more shouting from my father. Then goddess and godly steed vanished into the shadows.

  “One step at a time.”

  I glared at my mobile, trying to will Surabhi’s number to appear. The message indicator stared back at me, untroubled. Against Connie’s admonitions I found my mind wending its way back to the object that sat at the bottom of my Northwestern footlocker in the attic directly above my head. With direct access to the Eshuum’s infinite potential I could fix everything.

  “It couldn’t hurt. Just this once.”

  I expected a swift rebuke from Connie.

  All I got was silence.

  I love comic books. The colors, the drama, the outlandish costumes; the idea that any average joe or jane, when pushed to his or her limits by unforeseen circumstances can, simply by the application of will, the advent of science gone awry or genetic mutation, gain power and save the world. It’s utterly ridiculous, completely asinine, and unforgivably juvenile.

  I love comic books.

  In real life, there are rules, laws, speed limits that cannot be broken. But in comic book stories, there are no limits. You say there’s a supervillain threatening a planet of benign humanoids on the far side of the galaxy? No problem, conquering the speed of light is child’s play for Superman, who can simply fly into space, punch out the bad guy and be back in Metropolis before lunch.

  In my post-retirement reality, getting across the planet required careful planning and the aid of at least one other supernatural being, preferably an angel. Once, before I decanted myself into human form, I could bridge planetary distances between the minds of my believers: if enough of my faithful were in China, I could be in China, instantly. If a worshipper climbed to the top of Mount Everest I could accompany her to the summit. Technically, the old me could be everywhere or anywhere, as long as one believer was waiting at the journey’s end.

  This brings up a number of questions of the “Does a falling tree make a noise if there’s no one in the forest to hear it?” variety. Trust me, it’s complicated. The point I’m making here, is that there are no free lunches in this universe, even for immortals. No energy without waste, no acceleration without an attendant build-up of inertia, no effect without cause: even gods have limits.

  But superheroes don’t.

  Every year, I looked forward to Chicago FantaCon: the biggest yearly comicbook-sciencefiction convention in the Midwest. Buying Surabhi’s ring had left me seriously strapped for cash, but I’d saved a meager amount on the side, enough to scarf up a few back issues and the odd, affordable rarity.

  The creators of my current favorite title, From Here to Alternity, were scheduled to sign copies of the hot new Alternity graphic novel at this year’s FantaCon. The new book was being released in conjunction with From Here to Alternity 3D: The Movie, later that summer. The producers had shown an early trailer at the San Diego ComiCon a week earlier and were scheduled to premier an even more detailed trailer at FantaCon. It was going to be an event of epic proportions – a Ten on the Geek Richter Scale. I’d picked up my copy the first day they’d gone on sale and had kept it wrapped in airtight plastic for nearly a year.

  But superheroes were a million light years away from my personal microcosm. I’d haunted my room, replaying the Moloke Massacre with a deepening sense of doom. My conversation with Connie only complicated matters. Finally, tired of finding no answers, I grabbed my copy of Alternity and caught the train downtown to meet the only other god who might understand.

  “Dude,” Yuri said when I answered my mobile. “Where you at?”

  I was at the front entrance of the Downtown Hyatt Regency, shuffling along in a long line with hundreds of people dressed as their favorite heroes or villains; various wizards young and old, and practically every character from the Star Wars films. A few people dressed as the original Lando Calrissian passed me as they made their way up the line. My depression only deepened: Billy Dee Williams’ acting talent had made the odds of my attempts at humanity
being taken seriously smaller than the odds for Darth Vader becoming head of the NAACP.

  “I’ll meet you at the usual spot,” Yuri said.

  Our usual meeting place was at Superninja Go! Go! Go! a popular Chicago shop specializing in Japanese anime. Yuri thought comicbooks were dumb, but he collected “adult” Hentai animation with a disturbing joie de vivre. He possessed a staggering collection of Japanese cartoon porn; more planet-sodomizing satanic overlords and omni-tentacled sex demons than you could shake a crucifix at.

  Superninja Go! Go! Go! was usually one of the most popular kiosks at FantaCon, but that morning it was virtually empty, no doubt due to the ever-deepening recession: only children with wealthy parents or childless single adult misanthropes could afford to blow hard earned cash on four-color adolescent power fantasies. Yuri was animatedly debating the genesis of his favorite Japanese import with Ken Takahashi, the owner of Superninja Go! Go! Go!

  “I’m telling you, it was called Ninja Sexforce!”

  “No!” Takahashi thundered. “You’re unbelievably wrong!”

  Ken Takahashi sat behind his mobile counter, a small, breakfast link of a man, bearded, with an unruly mop of thinning black hair tied back into a ponytail. For some reason he always wore shades, even inside on cloudy days. He was wearing a faded red, white and blue T-shirt featuring an animestyle rendering of a superheroic Barack Obama battling a giant evil robot Dick Cheney. Takahashi appeared to be about fifty years old, his tummy round as a bowling ball. He also happened to be the Buddha.

  “When Science Sexteam Snatchaman first premiered in the States in 1989 the American distributor changed the name of the show to Supersex Bang Bang Fight Club,” Takahashi rumbled. “The Sexteam Snatchaman team characters were ludicrously renamed Ninja Sexforce. Ninja Sexforce: Battle of the Bukkakki Beast came about in the late Nineties. Different distributor, same characters… but it was the horrifically censored, incredibly sucky redo!”