by R. E. Vance
The man lifts his hand up and cries out, “No, please! I beg you! Please!”
The jackal guard wants vengeance, not mercy. And not just for the sins of the father, but also for the life he is forced to live. For his gods abandoning him, for his brother dying. For being forced to live on this Earth, without purpose. Without meaning.
Aau wants revenge.
He lifts his hand over his head, seeking to extinguish the man’s life … then he stops.
Aau is not vengeance. Tekemi was. He is mercy. Tekemi was anger. He is forgiveness.
No—that is not right either—Aau was mercy and forgiveness. He was pity. Now he is … something more. In this new GoneGod world, Aau is both vengeance and mercy. Hate and love. Anger and forgiveness.
Standing above the man, his scythe still high above his head, Aau throws his snout to the sky and releases a howl so great that the ground trembles. Aau knows that Anubis, wherever his once-upon-a-time god is, can hear his servant’s cry.
He brings his jackal face close to the sniveling man. This unworthy guardian smells of piss and fear. Revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth, the jackal guard says, “I am Aau of the Fifth Hour. I was once the guardian of RE. Now I am the guardian of the child who lives across the way. Hurt him again and I swear by all the GoneGods and all that is now holy to me—I will end you.”
He returns his scythe to his belt and folding his arms once again, Aau leaves the terrified man to his tears and self-pity.
↔
Once upon a time, Aau was the guardian of the Fifth Hour, protector of the great sun god RE.
Now, Aau stands at the precipice of his kitchen window, staring across the alley into the bedroom of a little boy. He knows that whatever he once might have been, he is now this child’s protector. The child is laughing as he wanders around his room, picking up things and putting them down. The boy picks up a doll and carries it to the window, showing it to Aau with a big, bright smile on his face. The boy is happy. The boy is safe. And he just wet himself. No, matter—his mother will be along soon to change him. For now, Aau will just have to endure the sickly sweet smell as best he can.
This will be a good life, he thinks.
Good enough.
Paradise Lot: Interludes
Prologue
The night before the gods left, Dionysus threw the greatest party the divine world had ever known. Sparing no expense, the god of wine, ecstasy, ritual madness and theatrical pursuits tapped into the then-unlimited well of magic and burned tens of thousands of years, ensuring that every drink, light, cushion, chair, party-streamer and cocktail-wiener was perfect. No detail was too small for his attention. And why not? After all, the world everyone knew was ending.
“Let us party like there is no tomorrow ... for there truly is no tomorrow!” he cried out, raising a glass of ambrosia poured from a bottle he saved for a very special occasion. And what could be a more special than all the gods leaving? He drank heavily from its rim. He smacked his lips as he examined the iridescent, green bottle with great pride. It was delicious. No—delicious was too meager a word to describe the fluid that passed through his lips. It was exquisite, enchanting, divine. And far stronger than anything he had ever distilled before. As it should be—this ambrosia was corked at the dawn of time.
Looking down at his party, he watched as his brothers and sisters danced, sang, made love—each of them enjoying their last moments on Olympus. Truly, this is my greatest achievement to date, he mused. And what an achievement it was … he was, after all, responsible for some of the classics—Pompeii’s Inauguration, the Sinking of Atlantis, Y2K … and who could forget Sodom and Gomorrah?
Dionysus did not know what tomorrow held. All he did know was that after tomorrow, he would no longer live on Mount Olympus. He would live with the gods somewhere new.
“For a tomorrow that never will be,” he cried out drinking deeply again—this time straight from the bottle.
↔
But tomorrow did come. At least it did for Dionysus. Waking up in the stirred remnants of his perfect party—a party in which he passed out far too early—he looked around and saw that everyone was gone. The gods had left. And what was worse, they had left him behind. At least his bottle of special ambrosia was only half drunk.
Then it started: “Thank you for believing in us, but it is not enough. We’re leaving. Good Luck.” Damn Hermes—always so economical with his words. An event like this deserved flair, pizzazz. Joy. Something like—
Dionysus did not have time to mull over the message he would have delivered—not with all the shaking. Olympus trembled. Or was it his head? Dionysus was not sure.
Staggering to his feet, he tried to remember where they went and if there was a chance for him to catch up. He tried to burn time and connect with them, but there was no connection, no way to reach them. They had already left.
“Damn it!” he cursed aloud. If only Dionysus had listened to Zeus when he explained where they were going, he could have followed. But instead, Dionysus was drunk and let’s be honest … when that old static fart started talking, he could just go on and on and on. Blah, blah, blah—GrandExodus this, new beginning, that. Who could sit through that drivel? Certainly not Dionysus and that was why he’d planned to latch onto Athena and follow that diligent little godly pet into the ‘Place Beyond’.
But you have to be awake to latch on, and his sister was probably so busy preparing how she was going to kiss the Lightning Bearer’s ass in a new setting that she forgot all about him. Or he forgot to tell her…
He honestly couldn’t remember.
The halls of Olympus started to crumble.
They’ll be back, he thought.
The pillars that once held up the Great Hall cracked.
I’m the life of the party.
The darkness from beyond was approaching, consuming Olympus in a tidal wave of nothingness.
They wouldn’t … leave me behind?
A platoon of talos centurions entered the Great Hall, confusion on their bronze metal faces. “My lord,” the lead guard said, “What is going on?”
“Don’t you know?” Dionysus said, “Olympus is over. Now is the time of the mortals!” As the words left his lips, he knew that was the message Hermes should have delivered. Now is the time of the mortals. That was exactly what was happening.
“What do we do, Lord?” the guard asked, his copper-colored face showing signs of greenish rust—a sure sign of fear for the metal soldiers.
“What any good mortal does,” Dionysus said, waving his hands and opening a portal between Olympus and Earth. “We run!”
Dionysus is not a leader. Never was, never will be. He jumped through first, followed by thirty very scared talos centurions who fell to Earth like pennies from the sky.
↔
For the first three years of mortality, the talos centurions followed Dionysus around like lost puppies. They defended him during the Great War between the AlwaysMortals and the newly-made ones. Some even died, defending their once-upon-a-time god, believing Dionysus had stayed behind because he was loyal to them. After all, he was the youngest of the gods and the only one with a mortal mother. Perhaps he embraced the part of him that was always meant to die. None of them knew the truth, and Heaven forbid that Dionysus would ever correct them.
When the war settled down to distrust and malice, the centurions hid him. They knew that AlwaysMortals and Others alike would like nothing more than to capture the only god amongst their midst. They would pester him for answers he did not have and when he refused to answer because he could not, they would use torture. Or worse—force him to sober up. And to what purpose? To find out why the gods left and where they went. Dionysus may have been a god, but he had absolutely no idea where they went. As for the other question—who knows why the gods do what they do?
Dionysus and his whittled-down platoon moved from hiding place to hiding place, until eventually they settled on a dire little slum called Paradise Lot. It was the onl
y place on this godless green earth that seemed to accept them and their kind. They found accommodation and did their best with the little they had.
The talos centurions stuck around for a while, but Dionysus was no leader and one by one they abandoned him, seeking to make a go at what the AlwaysMortals called life. Still, they were a loyal bunch—each giving him a monthly tithe from something they referred to as their salary. They even brought him a little all-seeing window called iPad so that he could order food and what passed as wine in this dimension without having to leave his apartment.
Occasionally Dionysus would put on his coat, fedora and sunglasses, and wander the streets of Paradise Lot incognito. But that did little to alleviate his boredom.
Alone and imprisoned by his once-god status, Dionysus was not only devastated by his new mortal existence, wrecked by his brothers and sisters abandoning him and traumatized by the drivel AlwaysMortals drank—he was also bored beyond belief.
↔
That was then and this is now …
Dionysus sips his wine as he wanders the streets of Paradise Lot, hiding his face from the world around him. He is not an unusual sight here. Alone, drunk and wearing far too much clothing seems to be the typical uniform to these lost Others.
As he walks, he occasionally catches the eye of another Other and sees what he always sees—no joy, no happiness. No hope.
He pulls hard on his bottle. Cider, they call it. More like fermented piss. Bahhh—he misses his wine cellars, his liquor cabinets, his fields of grapes and barley, wheat and a thousand other fruits that he would distill, ferment and brew to make his drink. But on this realm …
He pushes the thought out of his mind. It is too depressing and Dionysus doesn’t do depressing.
Instead his mind wanders to the lost creatures of Paradise Lot. They are so unhappy, living a life without delight, without ecstasy, without revelry. Each of them crying out in silent, tearless misery … But why?
Why has their existence become so damn miserable?
Is it because they miss their gods? That might have been the case before, but now that the world knows the gods abandoned them, missing them was long ago replaced by anger. No, it was something else.
They, like he, mourn the loss of their once carefree life. They, like he, age under the strain of incessant worry over silly little things like money and food and shelter. And drink.
They worry about survival.
They worry about tomorrow.
Well, what if tomorrow will never be? Would that bring them joy?
Chapter 1
Champagne Problems
“I already told you … I don’t want the banisters removed.” I looked down at the dwarf who was about to demolish the stairwell’s railing with a pickaxe. He was the foreman of the construction crew I hired to get the Millennium Hotel ready for opening. And he was driving me crazy. I looked round the hotel’s foyer for support, but the angel Penemue and the human teenager EightBall—two creatures that just happened to live rent-free in my hotel—did not come to my aid. Instead, Penemue watched as he drank sickly sweet Drambuie and EightBall smirked.
I returned EightBall’s grin with a sarcastic, ‘Thanks a lot’, scowl of my own.
The dwarf lifted his pickaxe over his head and growled, “But it is metal twisted to look like a garden. A garden!” He was referring to the cooper mural that acted as the lower catchment of the hotel stairwell railing where each metal section was twisted into an outdoor scene. You know, stuff like a picnic, a man cutting down a tree, a fox hunt. Outdoorsy stuff. Dwarves, who typically live their entire lives underground, hate gardens. Metal, on the other hand, was something they loved and that was why he wanted to destroy the mural. Metal artwork depicting the outdoors was hideous to dwarves.
To each their own. Only thing was … this wasn’t their own. This was my hotel. I liked the mural and I wanted to it stay. Not that that mattered to the dwarf who continued to argue with me. “A garden is for outside. Inside is for things that are solid, strong and forever. Trees die. Plants fade. Metal is immortal. And whoever thought that it would be good to combine the two was … was—”
“I like it,” I cut in.
The lead dwarf looked at me with an expression of utter indignation, and then he dismissed me with a waved hand and a dwarven giggle that came out in a series of pap, pap, pap sounds.
“So, you don’t like it?” I asked, knowing the answer. The entire crew of dwarves nodded in unison. “You think the décor is ugly.” The dwarves stomped their feet in agreement. “Fine, I get it, but regardless of what you think, it stays. For safety reasons.” I pointed straight up. The Millennium Hotel was a circular building with a hollow center. Each floor looked out onto that very empty center and one could look all the way down to the reception desk, seven stories below, which meant that a top floor dweller could fall all the way down. Onto my reception desk. And, if I was really lucky, on me.
Unless, of course, you had wings.
The dwarf was about to protest again when Penemue chimed in, “Jean-Luc, it seems that you two are having a clash of cultures. Do you mind?” He gestured down at the dwarf.
“By all means,” I said.
Penemue, the fallen angel who lived on the seventh floor, strolled over to the dwarf. Being eight feet high and built like Mr. Olympus, Penemue could not have been more opposite to the four-foot nothing, stoutly-built dwarf. Whereas Penemue had lush golden hair that rolled down his back, the dwarf’s head looked like it was covered with steel wool. Whereas Penemue wore a tweed vest with a pretentious pocket watch chain that latched onto the top button, the dwarf wore blue-jean overalls with a red balloon on it that I am fairly certain he got from GAP Kids. And whereas Penemue had massive, white feathered wings, the dwarf had, well, nothing. He did carry a comically over-sized pickax though.
The angel reached down with one of his massive talon-fingered hands and picked up the dwarf from the tuff of hair on his head. He lifted the creature so that they were eye level. “Is that really necessary—“ I started, but Penemue lifted a finger, silencing me. The dwarf did not look like he was in pain and after fourteen years of dealing with Others, I knew enough to let these little cultural exchanges play out.
The two of them just stared at each other, eyes locked.
“What’s going on?” EightBall asked. EightBall was the only other human that lived in the hotel. A kid no older than eighteen, he used to run with an Other-hating gang called the HuMans. Now he worked for me and although his Other bashing days were behind him, he still had that distrusting fire in his eyes.
“A meeting of minds,” I said.
“Actually, we’re having a debate,” Penemue said, not taking his eyes off the dwarf. “And this is how dwarves settle debates. Not with fists or insults, but rather with a test of will. He who stares longer, wants it more. Rather civilized, don’t you think?”
“And if you lose?” I asked.
“Then the mural goes.”
“What?” I said, “But you’re drunk.”
“Jean-Luc, I’m always drunk … now if you don’t mind, I’m in the middle of something.”
The two Others stared at each other for what must have been ten minutes before the dwarf—still not taking his eyes off the angel—nodded. “There,” Penemue said. He put down the dwarf who scurried off with his crew and went back to work—which, thankfully, did not involve removing the railing. Thank the GoneGods for small miracles.
“Thanks,” I said to the angel, “I think.”
“Don’t mention it,” Penemue said as he uncapped a fresh bottle of Drambuie and drank half of it in one gulp.
↔
“Man,” EightBall said to me, “You got a lot of patience. I think I would have kicked the little guy in his marble sized nuts.”
“You would have tried,” Penemue said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder, “But after tens-of-thousands of years of being the creature who bigger creatures think they can just kick, dwarves have gotten ve
ry good at retaliating.”
“Oh yeah? How?”
“For one, they’d scale you like a mountain and plant their pickax in your skull. Of all the creatures I’ve tussled with in my long, long life, dwarves are pretty high on the list of beings I never want to fight again.”
At the word ‘fight’, EightBall’s eyes narrowed, “You’ve been in a fight with a dwarf?”
“I’ve lost a fight to a dwarf. And a fairy, a nasnas, a hill giant—you name it, I’ve had my … what’s the term you humans are so fond of?”
“Ass handed to you.”
“Indeed,” Penemue sighed. “Humans—masters of the mortal tongue.”
“What’s the toughest creature you fought?” EightBall asked with a bit too much testosterone-filled enthusiasm for my liking.
“Come with me and I’ll regale you with tales of victory and defeat…”
“Ahem,” I fake-cleared my throat.
EightBall looked at me in disappointment and in a downtrodden tone said, “I would, but I got work.”
“Really?” Penemue lifted an eyebrow at me.
I looked around the hotel. It was slowly being pulled together into something livable. The dwarven construction crew fixed structural damage and general aging, fairies cleaned the rooms and two genies washed the windows from the outside. All in all, I had over forty Others working in the hotel getting it up to speed … and I needed it open as soon as possible. The electricity bills alone were killing me. And as for paying for this crew … I had to take out a loan and now I owed so much money to the bank that it made my head spin—an irony not lost on me given that my account manager was literally a demon from the third level of Hell.
