The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones)

by M. H. Hawkins

  From somewhere deep within the woman’s throat came an almost-demonic howl, and she grabbed Chubby Marvin by his wobbly neck and slammed him against the glossy black SUV.

  The twins, Raja and Sima, leapt onto their feet and padded after her, on her sides. Growling, their lips curled upwards and once-again revealed their long rows of fangs—fangs that looked like rows of hanging white daggers. Their grizzled lips vibrated around as they snarled, and the slobber was already seeping over the black grizzle of their bottom jaws and from between their fangs.

  And the smoker, still smoking, slid off the glossy black SUV and slid over to the side. “Marvin,” he said, half-chuckling, “I think you pissed her off.” Shaking his head, the smoker licked his lips as he smirked. “I think you should’ve just apologized—and opted for a more breathable suit. I’d recommend linen. I mean, Marvin, look at you—you’re sweating like a faucet. But now, I think—“

  “Enough!” snapped the woman, never taking her eyes of Marvin. “Clyde, take the twins and get out here. Leave me with this… abomination.”

  The smoker didn’t object or make any smart comments. He just nodded at her and then nodded at the twins. “C’mon Raja, Sima. You heard the boss. Let’s get out of here.” He flicked his cigarette off to the side and stepped away. The wolves barked at Chubby Marvin before reluctantly following the smoker, Clyde. And they all walked away and seemed to disappear into the shadows.

  Now alone with Chubby Marvin, the woman growled at him. Her eyes lit up like sapphires again. With her hand still on his throat, she said “You think that your paper shields and your castles of laws grant you some kind of exemption from morality, from justice? You think that just because there isn’t a written law prohibiting your behavior it give you permission to do whatever you want? It doesn’t. Your paper shields, your laws, do not give you permission to act like an animal—nor can they protect you from retribution. The laws of man are the same thing that they have ever been—all that they have ever been: guidelines to maintain order. They are not some unquestionable moral code of absolution that deems some acts righteous while condemning others as wicked. The laws of man do not grant them the freedom to act immorally while calling what-they-do righteous nor do they grant them the right to eternally condemn those do not fit inside their pretty, little castles of codes and regulations.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he pleaded. “Don’t kill me.”

  She snarled at him again. “Didn’t do anything? Your kind are always ignorant of their sins. The gods offer you redemption, and all you can say is, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ All you can offer is ignorance.”

  “Please, please don’t kill me,” he begged again.

  “Kill you?” she mocked. “They say that when you kill another person that their soul, their spirit, haunts the killer—that their victims whisper to the one that took their lives, begging for justice, pleading for some form of redemption or vindication. What do you think of that, Mr. Fetalli? Do the ones that you’ve killed still haunt you? The ones you killed with your cavalier drug-testing, silver-tongued marketing, and your corporate theft; do they haunt you?”

  Slightly confused, Chubby Marvin shook his head. “No, not me. A killer? You think that I’ve killed people? I never killed anyone… ever, not ever, not in my entire life.”

  “No, not with your hands, but with your pen. You signed the papers that authorized the drug-testing, for profits. And your corporate fraud stole money from people’s savings, from their 401ks, leeching funds from their investments; money they earned through their blood, sweat, and time. So yes, albeit in a slower, sneakier way… you still took years from them, their life, and thus, their blood is on your hands.”

  Chubby Marvin latched on to the woman’s hand—the same one that was slowly squeezing his throat—and tried to pry it open. Gasping, he again tried to reason with her, arguing for his soul. “But… but you… you think that killing me will fix that? It won’t bring them back. How many people have you killed? How many ghosts haunt you?”

  The woman let go of Chubby Marvin’s neck. She paused then let out a light-hearted snort. She always liked it when they became belligerent, when they mocked their judges. Then just as quickly as she had released her grip, she snatched his throat again—this time with her other hand—and again slammed him against the SUV. Moving her well-crafted lips next to his ear again, she licked her lips seductively before she began whispering to him. “How many of your kind have I killed? How many abominations have I killed? Since my anointing, I must admit that you are the first… so far. How many people have I killed? More than I’d care to admit—and especially not to the likes of your kind. As for how many of their ghosts haunt me… none.” Her lips moved even closer to his ear, and even more intimately, she whispered, “They only keep me company. But perhaps… perhaps you would like to keep them company.” Pausing momentarily, a sound made her smiled. Chubby Marvin was crying and whimpering, like music to her ears.

  No remorse, she thought, not for their kind. Now grinning, she went back to whispering to him. “Concerning your last question, your first question actually, will killing you make amends? No, it certainly won’t… not for those you killed, nor for those that died, or to their families, or those—albeit scarred and pained from you—that lived. But perhaps… Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps you are not the disgusting creature, the abomination, that I am making you out to be. And if that were the case, which it isn’t—but if it were, then I would have just killed an innocent man.”

  She released Chubby Marvin’s neck and took a step back. She watched as Chubby Marvin’s tears ran over his plump cheeks and slid down his jawline and down his neck until they were sucked into Chubby Marvin’s neck rolls and glistened within the cracks of them. She watched as he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his expensive suit and continued whimpering.

  Die with some pride, she thought and shook her head. She sighed then said, “But if that happened, if I killed you, if I killed an innocent man… well then… the world would keep on spinning, and I would just have to add another whispering ghost to my collection.”

  The woman’s next words barely seemed to register inside his brain, but they must have hit a chord because Chubby Marvin’s head popped up and he was instantly reenergized. She said, “But I am not going to do that. I’m not going to kill you, not today.”

  She nodded towards the far-side of the parking garage, the side opposite the glass pavilion, and said, “Go.”

  And Chubby Marvin listened. Hesitating at first, he wondered, is she serious? Is she playing with me? After all this, she’s just going to let me go?

  Again nodding towards the end of the parking garage, she said, “It’s alright. Go ahead. Get out of here… before I change my mind.”

  Chubby Marvin really listened this time, and he broke into that slow-motion start of his before breaking into a high-speed waddle, and he ran down the aisle of the dimly-lit parking garage just as fast as he could.

  Watching him, the woman dropped her head and shook it, chuckled all the while. A fat guy running through a parking garage, what’s not funny about that? Different than last time though, she remembered. This time, there aren’t any wolves chasing him.

  Chubby Marvin kept running. His legs burned hot and his lungs were struggling, but he kept on running. He was getting a second chance at life. This time, he wouldn’t mess it up. I’ll redeem myself. I’ll really live life, he told himself.

  And he saw it, his symbolic second-chance and the exit from his hellish night, an exit sign. Glowing bright red and hanging above the entry to the parking garage’s stone stairwell, it would take him away, out into the city and onto the city streets that he knew so well. It meant freedom… His exit, his escape.

  Yet, almost free and racing towards freedom, it was almost like he couldn’t help himself, and his thoughts of redemption took a sour turn. And his thoughts of a better world turned towards something more pleasurable, something easier, something more… hedonistic, something
carnal, desirable. A second-chance at life, a second-chance at fulfilling his every physical desires—and then fulfilling them again. His desires, they were mostly sexual, and they were just forty feet away and hidden beneath a glowing red exit sign.

  With so many thoughts, there’s no wonder that Chubby Marvin didn’t notice the giant wolf behind him. Twice as large as the two from before, he could hear the wolf’s nails tearing into concrete floor and the sound of its loud, encroaching panting. He finally looked back and saw it. Then he ran faster, as fast as he could. Twenty feet away, the glowing red exit sign to freedom was only twenty feet away.

  The giant wolf was closer. Bouncing off a concrete pillar, it shot through the air and at Chubby Marvin. All he could see was two giant azure eyes and a mouthful of polished ivory fangs. But it wasn’t going to kill him. Not today, she had told him.

  Chubby Marvin blinked and it was all gone, replaced by a giant, swiping wolf paw… but it wasn’t a paw, not exactly. The giant fur hand reached out towards him. It almost looked as large as he was. It was. Hitting Chubby Marvin like a freight train, it wrapped around him and pulled him into a bed of warm fur. The giant wolf held him against her chest like he was a football. Still rampaging through the parking garage—now on three legs—she turned right—a hard right, right next to the glowing red exit sign, and she went barreling down the other aisle of the parking garage.

  Charging through the concrete maze, the giant wolf slid around a corner, charged down another aisle then came upon one of those spiraling exit ramps. Bouncing off its curved walls, the giant wolf emerged out of the spiraling ramp onto a lower level of the parking garage. Chubby Marvin—whose screams were being muffled by the giant wolf’s fur—had finally squirmed loose, just enough, to see what was in front of him.

  The giant wolf was still charging, now even harder. Barreling down an even darker aisle of the lowest level of the parking garage, everything was dark and empty. Is this hell? wondered Chubby Marvin. It wasn’t.

  Looking up at the giant head of the giant wolf that was kidnapping him, Chubby Marvin lowered his gaze and looked forward, to where the giant wolf was taking him. A concrete wall covered in shadows. And though he didn’t even think that it was possible, Chubby Marvin became even more frightened.

  But the charging wolf didn’t stop or slow down. It was speeding up, shooting forward like a race car. The wolf wasn’t stopping for anything, even if that meant crashing into the concrete wall it was heading towards. We’re going to die, Chubby Marvin thought, squirming to break free. This giant wolf is going to splatter me against that brick wall, and that is how my life will end. He squirmed again, but when the giant wolf squeezed, he quickly stopped squirming.

  Chubby Marvin’s concerns were none her own, and the giant wolf charged harder towards the wall. After a slight turn, it leapt onto a concrete pillar and catapulted off it, its monstrous hind-legs blasted he giant wolf through the air, towards the first concrete wall, like a rocket about to explode. It did. The giant wolf blasted into the shadows, past the concrete wall, leaving it intact and without a scratch.

  CH 5: One Week

  Though they had already devoured five before him, the wolves were currently finishing off whatever was left of chubby Marvin Fetalli with ravenous hunger. And when they finished, not a drop was left of him. And Nisha kept her promise; she didn’t kill him. And while she might have escorted Chubby Marvin to his reckoning, she hadn’t spilt more than a few drops of his blood, no more viciously than someone spilling milk. And while she wasn’t sure if it counted against her promise or not, she chose not to partake in the consumption of him either. Not today, she had told him, and she meant it.

  The wolves tore through the abomination once-known as Marvin Fetalli, just as they did the ones before it, but it wasn’t as savage as you might expect. While abominations appeared human—as human as any white-collar criminal could look, once they came in contact with the gods, the rottenness of their souls came to the surface. And once an abomination’s blood was spilt, it would darken quite quickly, and within seconds it was as black as jet and would steam like dry ice. Left further exposed, the liquid would simmer on its own before, become a bubbling boil, and left unconsumed, would evaporate into something that resembled a low-hanging black fog.

  And the flesh, an abomination’s flesh tore apart simply enough, but once opened, the meat became just as queer as the rest of them did and became as easy to tear as soft-baked bread. Their bones became bleached white and brittle, the color and texture of drywall. And like drywall, their bones would crumble into fine white powder just as easily.

  The den of wolves were licking their fangs and cleaning their muzzles of whatever flecks of meat they had missed, remnants of Marvin Fetalli… the ex-CEO of Enlightened Pharmaceuticals, drug manufacturer, forger, (borderline) inside-trader, stock price manipulator, free market abuser, price-gouger, thief, killer… and abomination. Here or anywhere else in the world, no tears would be shed for Marvin Fetalli.

  While Nisha did not partake, she was nearby nonetheless. Instead, like a proud mother might do, she stood off to the side and watched. Leaned her back against the wall with her arms crossed across her armored chest, she patiently watched her pack with a smirk of pride, coyness, and strength. And as they went to feed, Nisha would smile at the passing wolves with their wagging tails and nod at them, directing them to join the others in their feast.

  Occasionally the smaller ones would come over and nuzzle or scratch against her armored shin-guards. Though mostly nuzzled her for affection, some wolves would use the edged portion of her armor to scratch the itchy parts of their manes that they just couldn’t reach. Nisha did mind either gesture and would scratch them behind their ears, give them three pats on their side (banging their ribcage like a drum), and then send them on their way.

  Watching the streams of wolves that passed by, it was obvious that Nisha’s offering did not go unnoticed or unappreciated but… although her offering was noticed by all, the appreciation fell five short. Her five brothers.

  Prior to Nisha’s offering, the other five that had been anointed by Fenrir had brought their own meals, abominations, to the pack. The sea of wolves had descended upon them as they had done to Chubby Marvin Fetalli, but something felt odd. And whether it was true or just imagined, the entire cavern of wolves seemed to favor Nisha’s offering the best, almost all of them.

  The wolves weren’t the only ones; Fenrir seemed to have noticed as well. Prior to feasting, Fenrir did as he had done five times prior. As a group of yellow-eyed wolves (usually four, and in the shape of men) held down the abomination, Fenrir would theatrically lift his hands into the air and say some words. Then, more often than not, he would end up swinging the backside of his thick-knuckled hand across the abomination’s face—to settle it down or at least stop its whimpering self-loathing and loud wailing. Fenrir would follow up with some convincing words for the abomination, and it would nod sadly and in agreement—a somber, silent admission of guilt—or acceptance. Then the abomination would quiet down, close its eyes, lower its heads, and finally accept the fate that awaited them… a fate for evil men, a fate they knew they deserved, a fate held in the grizzled mouths and gnashing teeth of a thousand wolves. And with the abominations’ acceptances, Fenrir could finally complete his ritual, and after a few more words, the wolf-god would raise his hands into the air—lifting a thick, pale fog that seeped out of the polished marble flooring. Once the fog had raised high enough to touch the thick strap of leather around Fenrir’s waist, the wolves knew that it was okay to start, and they did.

  And as Fenrir did five times earlier, he completed the same ritual for chubby Marvin Fetalli, Nisha’s offering. Only his time Fenrir followed up his words with a smiling nod of appreciation and later gave her an approving pat on the back, something he hadn’t done with the others. No one said anything about it, they all knew the reason why, why Fenrir like Nisha’s offering the best, why the pack did. Her offering was clean, given in generos
ity, and offered with an open-heart.

  Their offerings were not so clean. Barely noticeable and ever so faint, theirs had a blemish to them, the bitter taste of animosity born of pride, the bitterness of doing a task they thought beneath them. Just like a king would scoff at doing a handmaiden’s work, Fenrir’s five anointed new-gods felt hunting abominations was beneath them. And Fenrir could smell the animosity, pride, and jealous in their offerings.

  The five anointed new-gods smelt something else in the air… favoritism.

  In some ways Fenrir’s clan of seven (seven wolf packs) were not unlike other families. While grudges could go on being ignored and unaddressed, they didn’t need to be spoken of to know that trouble was still brewing below the surface. This grudge was certainly brewing, subtle yet quickly, and like old unstable dynamite, it could unexpectedly explode at any given time. Although, not at the moment. At the moment, the wolves’ bellies were full and snuffed out the animosity, at least for now.

  All the same and nonetheless, the growing grudge was still brewing and was so thick that it was spreading across the massive carved, polished cavern. Like the pale fog that accompanied their feasts of abominations, the thick fog of dissent was heavy in the air. And while Nisha stood on one side of it, leaning her back against its polished granite walls, her five newly-anointed brothers did the same thing, only they were doing it on the opposite side of the room—and stewing with unspoken animosity.