The Valkyrie

by Charlotte Vassell

  “Is there really?” Her eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out whether Ares knew this for sure or if he was tapping her for information.

  “Yes, I just said so. I haven’t disclosed this information to anyone other than you yet.” Glory always confounded him slightly, he was far more used to everyone taking everything he said as a command, and that excited him.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes I just bloody said so.”

  “That’s news to me. Is the old man about to get it in the neck? Who’s the challenger this time?” Glory feigned indifference.

  “Well that’s it, I don’t know. It’s coming though I can feel it. It’s making my skin itch.”

  “How very candid of you.”

  “I trust you. We exist in a state of co-dependency you and I.” Ares was sure she felt the same about him; they had an understanding.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I am in the dark awaiting illumination.” Glory lied to Ares. She was sure that he was holding something back in case. Glory had felt them cross the cusp of the new age, just as Liberty had and Ares now claimed to, but there was no way on earth that she was going to admit that to anyone.

  “You should have married me when I asked the first time.” Ares looked straight forward as his car pulled into the Valkyries’ road.

  “You can’t call me little sister, tell me that we’re on the edge of a massive fuck off war and then casually make a statement of regret over the mercurial state of our relations.” Ares flinched ever so slightly at her use of the word mercurial. Hermes had nothing to do with it. Her blood was rising to her cheeks. Glory was battling with herself to remain composed and to neither scream nor kiss him.

  “What did you object to most? It wasn’t the incest element was it? Don’t apply petty human values to us. My parents are full siblings; we only have the same father or is it not the incest itself but your hate for our father, as understandable as that is. He is an arsehole after all. Perhaps it’s that he never recognised you like he did Apollo, Artemis, Hermes and even fucking Dionysius? Perhaps it’s because you think you’re better than that, better than them. You are tremendously angry right now, but not with me. Have a pleasant time tomorrow at your mother’s.” he said trying to rile her. Daddy issues made girls interesting, mummy issues made them enthralling.

  “Screw you.” Glory screamed getting out of the car, slamming the door so hard that all the car alarms within a one hundred foot radius went off.

  “Marry me?” yelled Ares who had got out of the car and stood next to his open door. What a charming show of anger from Glory, he could enjoy their parries for a little while longer before something needed to be done. Glory stumbled up the garden path. She fumbled furiously with her keys and slammed the poor door behind her. She dropped her things to the floor and pressed her face against the cold wooden panels. Glory could feel him on the other side of the door waiting for her to let him in. They’d have angry sex in the hallway, knocking over the coat stand in the process. He’d pull her hair hard. She’d feel him for a week afterwards. He’d call her a whore. She’d leave a bite mark on his shoulder. He’d have a bruise. They’d have loved it. Glory slid to the floor and sat with her back pressed to the door as she felt him turn and leave, and then heard his car pull away. She felt the desperate need to self-destruct but that was all she felt. Glory found her phone and dialled a number.

  “Thor, come over.” Glory was no longer able to give Ares what he wanted from her.

  Cruel Britannia

  Victoria daintily placed her Pret no-carb salad on one of Green Park’s benches. She’d hit it hard last night with the guys from her team, batting a few falsies here and there, laughing at unwitticisms. That was, after all, the reason why Victoria had taken her job as a PA at some outsourcing consultancy. It wasn’t because she had a natural talent for project managing some dolt with more breeding than sense. She wanted the ring and the gnome counties detached house. It was summer and the ground was unseasonably dry but Victoria didn’t want to sit down for fear of grass stains on her impeccable, glacially white Zara skirt. It showed off her tan and made her look rich. Besides one never knows what picnic relics the ruddy tourists leave about. Victoria looked across with some disdain at the young woman sharing her bench. She would have normally avoided her type for fear of some sort of ‘counter-culture’ cross contagion but the only other option was sharing with some Mediterranean looking couple swapping gametes. The girl looked like a sea punk with long blue hair, those stupid round sunglasses and a sodding Union Jack t-shirt. She was too far from Camden, Victoria thought.

  ***

  Britannia was still slumped on the bench she had fallen asleep on the night before. She’d been out with some of her nympho sea goddess sisters and they’d been reminiscing about their past glories. Britannia’s glories were fortunately for most of mankind now past tense and she could feel herself fading away; either that or it was her hangover: the Apocalypse, end of day’s hangover. Britannia glanced over at the girl next to her. They don’t make women like they used to she thought. Here was some silly little thing whose only concern was owning silly little things. Where were those good time girls who would strip naked, cover themselves in wode and burn down Colchester at the drop of a hat? Why didn’t they make them like that anymore? In fact she thought that was half her problem. That and no-one really believed that she existed at all. Britannia really needed to submit a complaint form to someone higher up about that one. She had clearly been swindled over the last fifty years. But hey, fuck it, she was still a bit drunk and quite frankly a mess. Britannia decided that what she needed was not a pity party but the pity piss up to end all self-indulgences and this poor mortal sat on the wrong fucking, fucking uncomfortable, fucking bench.

  ***

  Victoria had barely had a nibble on some of the super food, super fun kale that she had paid a lot of money for, when she became alarmingly aware of Britannia’s interest in her. Britannia had taken her glasses off and was looking at her with the strangest eyes. They were almost golden, but Victoria could have sworn they flashed red, if only for a moment. Victoria hated those coloured contact lenses: so vulgar. Britannia sat there, a waiting tempest that’d end up drowning in her own tea cup storm. Victoria had tried her hardest to operate resolutely within the Established Londoner’s Code of Social Interaction as normally applied to commuting – essentially pretend that everyone else has died quietly and you are the solitary soul left to bear witness to the ineptness of the District Line. They’re fooling no one, there’s no such thing as a good service – and yet the tomblike pale face of Britannia looked upon hers with the same predatory glee that a savage fan girl would have in mercilessly pinning down a member of One Direction in a remote public toilet. Victoria’s last hope was to light a quick ciggy and pull out her copy of Grazia.

  ***

  Typical, Britannia thought. The girl smoked. She had a death wish. Nice to see someone still got the devotees. It really irked her that Hades was doing so well when she was the one who had put the leg work in. Well her bloody useless daughter Glory had had a minor hand in it, not that Britannia would ever publically give her any credit whatsoever. Britannia was, after all, the one who had insisted that tobacco would be equally as fun to bring back as potatoes, or that’s what she was claiming at least. It was a shame how it ended between her and Hades, but hey Britannia couldn’t help it if she’d been shagging his little brother too for a while and neither of them knew about the other.

  Britannia leaned in further towards Victoria “So, carcinogens is that your thing then?”

  “Sorry, erm, beg your pardon” Victoria was staring intently at Grazia. Her strategy hadn’t worked one jot and this punk looked like she desperately needed something from her. She’s going to ask me for a light, Victoria prayed silently to herself. No one would dare mug a girl in such a public place at 12:49pm on Thursday lunchtime right?

  “Well you clearly have a death wish, but darling if you really m
ust then smoke a cigar. I knew a man once who smoked cigars. Lovely chap, not sure what ever happened to him.” The poor lamb, Britannia thought, she did have to go and say ‘beg your pardon’. She was working class after all. No use buying a Longchamp and hiding those loose northern vowels if you don’t change your vocabulary. Britannia had never worked out why her lot were so fascinated with class. She had thought once that it was the product of her compulsive need to make others feel inferior and it had somehow filtered through. Not that any of her finer qualities had made an impression on her drunken, passive aggressive rabble.

  “How funny, you know my love that if you really must dye your hair then please at least let it be blonde. Although I do admire your choice, it is so brave of you to turn your hair blue. And those gold coloured contacts, why I could not get away with it, but you, you really try.” Victoria gushed explosively as if she had swallowed a verbal laxative. That’s really, really done it now, she thought. Where the Hell did that silly little speech come from? Victoria always got defensive over her nicotine habit but never to the point of suicide.

  Britannia laughed. Rude little whore she thought. Victoria had piqued her interest now. She had a spark and the right sort of desperation that meant that ultimately she’d do quite well out of this life, but probably not the next. Although Britannia was in the mood to let it slide, the blue hair comment was slightly below the belt, she was an Oceanid after all. It’s why she liked ships so much. “Well darling, a century ago I would have smote you for that, but as it stands I’m bored and in need of amusement. Amuse me. No, I shall amuse you. I’ll tell you all about the time I owned the world.” Britannia relished going all Shinto and spilling her guts out to this girl. A hari kari confession: what a blessed relief. She was sure the mortals knew who she was but they couldn’t be bothered to make it into a daytime TV biopic. They couldn’t even be bothered to teach it properly in schools any more. They even mercilessly took her off the fucking fifty pence piece. No one knew her name.

  Britannia cleared her throat. She didn’t need to. Of course she didn’t, she’s a goddess, but she believed it to be customary before one makes something along the lines of a speech. Her mental approach to all this was akin to the self-deprecating actress who firmly doesn’t believe she deserves the Oscar but appears to have a little something rehearsed. And thus she started:

  “Right, well. Well I suppose it all began about five hundred odd years ago because I had quite had enough of everyone else crashing in on my party. Firstly the Olympians and then the Norse, I had well over a millennium of it and quite frankly that was it. Now don’t get me wrong about the Picts, oh and that Pendragon bloke – I should never have lent my sword to him – we would have spats but they were mostly jocular, but no one day I snapped and said no I shall stand up for myself, they will respect my sovereignty. There is always that fine line where the bullied becomes the bully. Sometimes I ever so briefly wonder whether I momentarily crossed that line. I probably didn’t but who can tell. It’s all academic.

  In the beginning you see there was the nation state, now your lot were so intent on that Jesus chap so I wasn’t going to get you to worship me the old fashioned way so I had to get inventive. There’s very little difference between religion and state and darling I should know, I practically invented recreational addictions. I put the idea into Henry VIII’s head, brute of a man but I have a weakness for a red head. So that was that sorted. These movements tend to grow organically as weeds in bi-polar crazy paving. Square one, as I believe they say in board games.

  So then it was pirates. Darling do you like pirates? I adore them. Theft, sails and desperate young men: three of my favourite things in this entire universe, let alone all the parallel ones; just my cup of tea. I got my dashing young sailors all hungry for riches, girls who weren’t their second cousins and adventure. I’m frightfully adventurous. I’ll try anything once. So that carried on for a bit and then eventually the mortals got their shit together and formed a proper navy, complete with these adorable little uniforms and everything. They did have some cracking jaunts; Jenkins’s Ear that was a jolly. Oh and Napoleon, lordy that was a laugh. But by then I had to coerce the neighbours into joining the collective celestial enterprise, but I really think they all enjoyed it too. There is a reason after all darling why the Jamaican sprinting team sounds like they should be from either the Valleys or the Highlands.

  And the theft, it continued. I have the stickiest fingers, like they’re covered in sugar: sweet illicit sugar. I did tell you darling that I invented recreational addictions. Sugar, caffeine, opiates, mass produced crap, cheap labour. Darling I’d steal land, I’d steal resources, heck I’d steal people. I like to think I also stole hearts. Look what I did to India, Africa, America, that funny island with the kangaroos and the other one next to it where they filmed Lord Of The Rings. This whole miserable rock, I owned that bitch. I mean for fuck sake they took me off the fifty pence piece. I pushed you miserable amoebas. You have your silly democracy, your machines, your medicine, your science, your civilisation, your superiority complexes: your country. I even gave you tea, tea. And you take me off a silly little coin. I am modernity itself for which I am proud. And you, you should be fucking grateful that you aren’t French.” Britannia said in true soap box fashion.

  Victoria looked at her ranting companion, who hadn’t drawn breath in three minutes and thought quite simply ‘fuck’. The gleam in her eye had grown manic, tempestuous and precarious. Now either this woman/thing/monster next to her was on a very bad trip or she was confessing to be a sociopathic, narcissistic, genocide-committing, drill sergeant surveying the march forward along time’s linear parade into the appalling abyss. She clearly believed every flippant word that came out of her mouth. A mouth that was at once both charmingly seductive and terrifying cruel. It was a mouth too wide, with teeth too sharp. You could be consumed by her in a moment.

  “Are you seriously telling me that you are the personification of all that evil bullshit that was the Nineteenth Century? Pax Britannia my arse, you’re a geopolitical whore. I can’t even like you ironically.” said Victoria calling this nut job’s bluff. She could see the rabid mixture of greatest pride and deepest unhappiness emanating from Britannia. It smelt like that dummy nationalism that comes out fighting with spittle flying everywhere in the comments section of left-wing articles on the EU: it was divine trolling.

  “Yes,” was Britannia’s maniacal reply, “so you have a history degree. You’re right. Pax my arse, there’s nothing quite like slitting throats, slitting veins and slitting wrists. Go on, say it. Say it. Say that I’m brutal, say that I was so awfully, terribly, frightfully wrong but nothing comes into this world that isn’t caked in parasitical blood. I maimed maternally, I spent centuries in labour giving birth to this: to your freedom and your people.”

  “Well you’re right about that, you did make my people. I am the genetic product of your heroic escapades.”

  “Ah you’re a colonial aren’t you? Well sort of. I can see the Warwickshire peasantry in your forearms, but there is something else.”

  “My father’s Jamaican.” Victoria said.

  “And yet you look Greek, or Algerian, maybe even a Spaniard? Has anyone ever said that you look Israeli? That whole Middle East thing was me again, I was a little drunk. So how do you like being ethnically ambiguous? Hybrid vigour? I bet you can sing, no gospel please, we’ll have none of that blasphemy here. Why aren’t you on the Team GB hurdling team? That’s the perfect place for you half breeds. Oh, do you have a brother? You do, wonderful. Has he ever mugged anyone? Is he in one of those gangs? Do you actually know your father? Oh darling no, no, no, I don’t think post-colonial angst suits you. I don’t think yellow would suit either, or paisley for that.”

  “Post-colonial angst? Do you really think this is about my lack of empire empathy? You had my name from me, and then proceeded to mock me with it too. Do I look like an English aristocrat, because there’s a family with my name, a coat of arm
s and a Georgian horror house of Palladian proportions built from the blood of my blood. I carry your brutality as a proper noun” Victoria said passionately.

  “So you say you hate me then, do you? I hate me, but you, you adore me. You just can’t admit it. You’re proud of me. Wilfred Owen makes you cry in a way that only your bitch of a mother has the cruelty to and you love to cry, you love to think of your great grandfather in that squabble’s squalor. Do you think there was an ecstasy of fumbling? Face it darling you’re a middle class parody that relies on my history to define you. You – with your bunting, and Jane Austen sad act, lady wank, and your afternoon teas – are mine. You say you hate me and yet I give you outline, I’m that boyfriend who went too far when you were seventeen, but you’ve kept all the stubs from the concerts he took you to. Now, may I suggest that you desist before I kick your fucking face in?” Britannia said. Any pretence now smashed like a piece of Worcester on a cold parlour floor.

  “What?” Victoria asked shocked.

  “Did you mishear me? Shut the Hell up and agree.” Britannia said as she stood up from the bench in a stately manner. She needed a good stretch after her over acquaintance with one of the park’s finest chaise longues. Britannia rolled her neck, lifted her arms above her head, touched her toes and gave her wings a bloody good shake. She picked up her trident and threw it to the sizeable militia of pigeons that had assembled to feast on the mangled remains of a soggy sandwich. There were no fatal casualties; Britannia didn’t like pigeons all that much. One of her feathers floated into Victoria’s half empty salad box and stuck to the hummus left splattered on the side.

  Victoria stared at the goddess in front of her, then at the salad box and back again into those immortal eyes filled by a very mortal fear. Everyone else in the park appeared oblivious to Britannia. Victoria had read enough Ovid (in translation, she went to a dodgy comprehensive after all) to know to shut up or be turned into an animal, plant or mineral. For all her lofty lefty ideals, she knew she was a hypocrite. Her soles bore the fruit of the new corporate colonialism and her soul was bored into by Girl Guide guilt. Shut up, put up, and run away. “I see. Well I was jolly annoyed when they took you off the fifty pence piece. I wrote an angry letter to the Royal Mint about it and everything. Huge letter it was, reams of paper, it was practically a small novella. Frightfully mad I was. Oh look is it really that late. I’ve got to dash I’m outsourcing a load of jobs from Birmingham to Delhi today, lots of calls to make.” Victoria said as she grouped her things together in haste.