THE VALKYRIE
Copyright 2015 Charlotte Vassell
Published by Charlotte Vassell at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank everyone who has allowed me to talk at them about this book and very politely nodded along, humoured me and showered me with kind words of encouragement. Chief amongst you are Sasha, Louise, Sarah, Sam, Celine, Amy and my auntie Denise. I'd especially like to thank my auntie Michele for her tireless proofreading and constant enthusiasm.
Table of Contents
Glory Be
Somewhereistan
The Women's Institutionalisation
Admin
Housekeeping
Going Blind
The Changing Rooms
Sweet Charity
Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned
Interlewd: Prometheus Bound
Showering
Valhalla
Publicans & Presidents
Driving In Cars With Gods
Cruel Britannia
Britannia Rules The Graves
The Rules of Engagements
Apollo: The Early Years
Apollo & Daphne
Apollo & Cassandra
Apollo & Coronis
Apollo & Glory
Battle Report: Day One, Valhalla
Evangelicals
The Gig
Drowning In The Bath Tub
Battle Report: Day Three, Seoul
Interlewd: A Splitting Headache
Elgin
Bridesmaids
Stars
Tea Time
Tea Off
The 19th Hole
Lucifer
Battle Report: Day Five, Valhalla
Stags and Hens
The Eve Of The Wedding
The Wedding
The Darkness
The Lightness
Glory Be Two...
PART I: VALKYRIE LIFE
Glory Be
The sheets smelt of chemical lavender, of him and of her. The sun smugly peeked its way through the gap in the curtains, a voyeur on her weakness: her reversion to type. The bastard illuminated sweat stains, other stains and tear stains. These were tears that no one need know about but whose soft outline clung maliciously to the pillowcase. She could no longer feel the pain that these tears were caused by but they came all the same. Glory was unusual for an immortal: she could cry. Or perhaps all gods could cry, but they didn’t like to admit to it. Glory turned on her side and inhaled with the spite of a goddess who had not woken up on the wrong side of the bed but in the wrong bed entirely. She was mad at the bed’s other occupant. Although she could never be as angry with him as she was with herself. Another one, another notch for the bed post, any more and it would come down with a great yell of timber; too many little chips away at it had made for structural unsoundness. Not that she cared, because she really didn’t. Glory was furious in general, the whole fucking universe made her want to scream and burn things.
Glory lay there awake at 5:42am. She knew this as her face was six inches away from the alarm clock’s vindictive red lights. It perched eagerly awaiting a follow up show from the side table. Glory stared at the ceiling and thought. She thought too much and was aware of it. Glory hated it when they held her afterwards, especially when they put their arm around her neck like she was about to run away. She was always about to run away. She hated it when they stroked her hair. She hated it when they kissed her on the shoulder. She hated it when they grazed her nipples. She hated it when they nuzzled her neck and breathed her in. She hated it when they rested their hand on her stomach, like they’d just knocked her up. She hated it when they called her beautiful. She hated it when they looked into her eyes like they knew her. She could not bear it when they told her they loved her. She wondered if Loki wanted to fuck again. Glory thought of all the awful things she’d done that day. She thought of her parents. She thought of her friends. She thought of her job. She thought of Loki asleep next to her, she also thought of Loki’s extremely dull wife, and she thought she’d just like it all to go away leaving her to die in a corner. Glory knew this wouldn’t happen of course. She’d leave the poor wretch’s secret London flat where he ran away to avoid the tedium of his marriage, go home, shower and go to where ever the heck Liberty had told her she needed to be, but in her heart all she had ever really wanted was for the world to end and her with it.
Glory got up from the bed surreptitiously and found enough of her clothing that she could leave the house in a presentable state. She quietly shut the front door behind her and looked about the street for a black cab to no avail. The air was wonderfully brittle and in that probing dawn she thought she’d walk a little of the way home to gain some clarity, or something. She had received a text on her phone that she didn’t know how to deal with, from someone she hadn’t spoken to for a millennium. It was an honest bolt out of the blue. Glory spent a good five minutes contemplating how easy plants had life before she spotted a taxi, hailed it and sat like a queen in the back seat as it hurtled eastwards. To Glory’s delight she found that the driver, Reginald, was a talker. Glory found taxi drivers utterly fascinating.
“So you’re out late, have you been to a party love?” The poor man was very nice and yet he was about to get the brunt of her latest existential crisis.
“Life is a party, is it not? We lurch from drink to drink, from awkward small talk to baring your soul to a total stranger so that for one night they see you: everything else in the middle is an unnecessary blur. I try to keep lurching from drink to drink perpetually. It shuts the rest of it out.”
“Are you a student love? You sound like you study an ology or something.”
“No I’m just British.” Glory said with a knowing smirk.
“Who isn’t love? We’re all British now.”
“As we all should be. Reginald, are you content with your existence?” Glory asked as that happy little hackney carriage sped off carrying within it the most honest conversation she had had in quite some time.
Somewhereistan
Smoking fifty cigs a day should in all likelihood kill you, but that merely requires you to be killed by something as trivial as cancer. Two immortal girls leaned against a small house in a small village in some small country that happened to have a large amount of untapped oil. Littering the ground around them could be found the chief cause of Imperial Tobacco’s last quarter profits. Now one could have called this pair beautiful, but that would be distracting from their very many more useful talents, besides beauty isn’t a talent it is purely a happy coincidence. There are many valuable things that these two were good at such as maiming, butchering, downing tequila and generally not taking any bullshit from anyone.
Honour, the younger of the two, was staring into the mid-distance as those who are still a little tipsy from last night’s sixteen bottles of port are want to do. Her hair was dark and her eyes wide set. Like her companion, Honour wore the standard issue black boots, black leathers, and black bullet proof jacket of Valhalla. Valkyries are not subject to the mercy of human bullets but it had been decided by Freya, goddess of war and ultimately their boss along with Odin, that they needed to look the part if nothing else. Honour openly enjoyed the outfit as she thought it made her loo
k like the heroine in a bad movie. Honour’s commanding officer was standing serenely calm against the wall of the house. With a cigarette in her left hand, Liberty leafed through the papers on her Valhalla standard issue clipboard with the other. Liberty was an old hand at this death nonsense. She had joined up some five hundred years or so ago to avoid the aching boredom of Olympus and the constant unwarranted attentions of its male (and sometimes female) inhabitants. Liberty was one of those girls who would cause traffic jams, bar fights and small flotillas to set sail, but far more importantly she could the see the future, well usually.
Honour glanced up from the empty space she had lost herself in “Where is Valour? I’m still drunk. I make poor decisions when I’m strung out like this. The struggle is real.”
Liberty looked up momentarily at her comrade and continued checking her lists – there was more likely a crossword hidden in their somewhere – and said “You’re always still smashed so what does it matter; plus I’m in charge what with Glory on a jolly so I get the blame when things go tits up.”
At the casual mention of tits Honour smirked a little “True, this isn’t proper warfare anyway. So some mortals get blown up by a few nutters, this isn’t Waterloo. It doesn’t matter a jot. There’s no honour in this. No one will write moving poetry about this, it isn’t the Charge of the Lightening Brigade.” “The Lightening Brigade?” Liberty shook her head “Kid, firstly you’ve got to let that go, it was your first week and we all screw up constantly at the beginning. If you weren’t good in the first place we would never have let you into Unit 401, you have to be rather phenomenal to get in. Secondly all conflict matters no matter where it is.”
“Yeah well, I suppose.” Honour perked up slightly at the prospect of some gossip “Oh, where did you disappear to last night by the way? You missed Valour giving a satyr a lap dance in The Sportsmen’s Arms, it was way too funny. You buggered off after you got that phone call. It wasn’t a certain freak show god of music and the sun was it, who might happen to be called Apollo? You’ve met him before I think, has a thing for teenage boys. Bit of a mentalist who stalks you? He’s hot but also a pathological killer/serial rapist. You know, that guy.”
Liberty ignored the question for an awkward ten seconds before she finally looked Honour squarely in the eye with the steely titan stare she was born with “What time is it?” Liberty put out her cigarette as Honour looked at her watch. Honour still wore a watch.
“It’s 5:42am. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”
“Great, only a couple more minutes. So I’ve got five potentials on here for this drop. Four insurgent rebels or whatever they are. I am pretty sure their lot are ‘religiously’ motivated or at least what passes for it these days, either way they’re wankers so I’m saying no automatically. I ended it with Apollo again, for good this time.”
“I hope you have dumped him, he’s a bellend. I’m not surprised that Glory won’t let him in the house. What about the fifth mortal?”
“15 year old male, 5’7”, 152lbs, no prior experience in combat.”
“He sounds promising.”
“Well we shall see. It’s this house.” Liberty gestured towards the building opposite. The sun’s errant light hit the top of the house as they opened the door, walked into the second room and saw the boy sleeping beside a younger brother. His mother was asleep on the other side of the room with an infant. Liberty and Honour solemnly paused for a moment before four men burst through the door yelling at the family. The boy woke and stood his ground as the men tried to assault his mother.
“I like this one, spirited, needs training but he’ll do” Honour said as the boy was killed.
“Excellent. I’m sure we can put him through his paces in Valhalla. That elf that Valour was talking to was cute. Elves can be clingy though.”
The Women’s Institutionalisation
A few hours later Glory was to be found in a village hall somewhere in England. Glory was as you would expect: tall, strong and devastating. Her hair was long and her dark eyes sharp. She was the sort of girl who always said no and meant it, but would herself never take no for an answer. Glory wore a pair of heeled ankle boots, tight jeans and a guy’s shirt (she couldn’t be bothered to remember whose it was). Slung over her shoulders like a cape was her favourite leather jacket, and as always she wore a pair of sunglasses that she used either to avoid eye contact or to delicately hide her comedown. That day she wore them for both reasons. Glory was a walking Freudian casebook.
Glory found herself in one of those village halls that had tables that folded, chairs that creaked and a spare packet of plastic cups underneath the sink in the kitchen. It was where middle England went to apathetically vote, sold cakes in aid of charities they didn’t really believe in, and where their sons learnt how to tie knots from ever so slightly creepy but ultimately harmless men. That day however it was full of young immortal women of various shapes and sizes. Some girls/young women/the ovaried looked expectant, others bewildered, one at the back looked bored. Amongst the throng sat the said bored girl of indeterminable origin. This was Bea. Unfortunately for Bea one of the silliest girls in the room had sat next to her and decided they that she was going to be her friend. Having taken an aforementioned creaky chair next to Bea, this girl leaned over and attempted to make the sort of small talk that forges lasting friendships. “So you’re a nymph yeah, you look watery? I’m a dryad: oak trees all the way. What are you like thinking of joining? My mum used to be, like, one of Artemis’s virgins before, well you know until my dad raped her. I might join Artemis you know, I don’t know if she’s looking. It could be fun. Shooting stuff is kind of, like, cool and I love camping.” The girl said.
“Artemis is the goddess of chastity right? Wouldn’t you miss sex?” Bea asked.
“That’s true. I hadn’t thought about that. Do you have to be, like, a virgin when you join? I think I’m technically a virgin. Well, maybe.”
Thankfully at that point a vision in pink walked on to the tiny stage: a purposeful and fickle creature who ruined mortal lives for amusement. There stood Fortune, cruel and handsome in her coral skirt suit and court shoes, her neat pearl earrings and her gore. “Right settle down, settle down. Now I am sure most of you know who I am. Well it’s wonderful to see so many of you girls here today for the latest in our series of talks on career paths for lesser immortals and demigods. I hope you find it most instructive in taking those ever important steps forward. Don’t forget that there are pamphlets at the back with further information, right next to the ambrosia table. Ahem.” Fortune arched an eyebrow at Glory standing next to the table humming the opening bars of Oh Fortuna. Glory revelled in smoking a freshly lit cigarillo as she poured vodka into one of those plastic cups already half full of ambrosia, the food of the gods. She stopped pouring, picked up a leaflet on being one of Freya’s handmaidens and silently pissed herself with laughter.
“Excuse me you can’t smoke in here, there’s a sign on the wall by the kitchen about that.” Fortune said.
“Fuck off” was Glory’s reply.
“Okay... Well then, our first speakers will be Olympians, then we’ll move onto the Norse and after a short break we’ll hear talks from the Egyptian, Shinto, Aztec and Taoist pantheons. Camelot is not recruiting this year as are none of the other pantheons. So first things first: Athena.” Fortune vacated the stage and threw Glory a look that was crossed between annoyance and interest: Glory had a reputation.
Athena had been waiting at the side of the stage for Fortune to announce her. You had to have known her tremendously well to notice that she looked a little off. Very few knew her well at all, but Glory had picked up the faintest of cues and assumed that her father Zeus had been up to something terrible again. Athena wasn’t nervous or anything as feeble as that, but there was something in her expression that showed that her mind was working overtime. She had the manner of a microbiologist and the left hook of prize fighter. Athena took to the stage in sensible clothes, sensible shoe
s and a sensible outlook on the world.
Athena leaned across a lectern and surveyed the crowd “Good morning all, I shall speak plainly as most of you lack any veritable cerebral ability. I am looking for archivist librarians, approximately forty three of them. I have a large collection of material that needs to be correctly classified and stored. This should turn out to be a most enthralling task for any budding taxonomists.” The room was silent for a very long minute until a few chairs inevitably creaked.
“Riveting” said Glory, her comment audible only to a few at the back, all of whom were a little embarrassed, well except for Bea who smirked. Athena started talking again for quite some time about something awfully dull. Glory managed to block her out. After a good twenty minutes Athena walked off the stage having noted a few poor lambs who looked bookish enough for the task. The room began to chatter. Fortune waltzed back on stage, having enjoyed the awkwardness a little too much.
“Lovely. I forgot to mention that there will be forms going around later for anyone who wants to apply for any of the vacant positions. Please complete the forms in Latin and not English with black ballpoint and in capital letters. Right so our second speaker is also an Olympian, Dionysius.” Fortune smiled to the room, lapping up the fraught tension as some of the wiser girls braced themselves for Dionysius’s entrance.
“Wassup girls?” Dionysius lurched on to the stage with a leer and a full glass of red wine in hand “I’m looking for a few more Maenads. So how many of you like drinking eh?” He looked around desperately. Dionysius was clearly very drunk, again.
“Filth” Glory yelled as half of the room giggled.
“Anyone? Anyone at all? No? It’s basically, drinking, screwing and occasionally tearing people to pieces in a frenzy.” Dionysius said as he accidently threw his Chateauneuf du Pape over the girls on the front row. He was treading the fine line between looking fun and trying not to throw up on himself. Eventually after some coaxing from Fortune he hiccupped off stage dejectedly whilst the crowd murmured and/or tweeted what they had just witnessed.
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