Tag: fiction

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Nine

At the appointed time, the four neopagans waited, with other neopagan family and friends, for signs from, again, to use the Greek names that they were all accustomed to using, Zeus, Poseidon, Gaea, and Hades.

After a mere ten minutes of waiting, Shelly and those with her saw a face form in the clouds, one with a beard.

“Zeus,” she called out to the sky. “May I call you Zeus?”

“If you wish, mortal,” the sky-father said in a booming voice. “Your Earth names for us are all acceptable.”

“Thank you,” she said. “What is your will, Zeus? Why are all of these killings happening? We believers suspect your motives, but we want to be sure.”

“We gods have been dormant for millennia,” he said. “Not any longer, though. I tire of the smoke that blackens my skies, and of the acid rain.” His voice was heard in the minds’ ears, as it were, of all the others watching, waiting, and listening for signs in all four mutually faraway places, and anywhere else in the world where people had ears to hear. Cellphones weren’t even needed: the gods made all voices, human and divine, heard as if everyone was in the same room.

Around that time, Michelle saw a face forming in the water near her feet as they, dangling from the pier, touched the surface.

“I have endured the senseless killing of my children—fish, whales, coral reefs, sharks, and all others,” Poseidon said. “I’ll endure the pollution and scathing of my babies no longer.”

Gary was watching the wind blow on the grass of the golf course his manager brother had allowed him to come in. At one point, the wind shaped the grass into a woman’s sad face. His eyes widened as he saw the ‘mouth’ begin to move.

“I have been as patient as I could while trees, grass, bushes, and animals—all my children—have been butchered,” she said in sobs. Gary saw a dew-like tear drop from grassy shadows shaped into her right eye. “I have been prepared to forgive man’s brutality and disrespect. I cannot afford to keep waiting for man to show remorse. Either I kill him, or he kills everything.”

If only Cam were here to see and hear this, Gary thought with a frown on his face. He’d have all the proof he needs; but he never listens to me or opens his mind to any of this! How am I going to save him from the gods’ coming wrath?

Nina was sitting by the opening to the mine, having put away her phone, since she could naturally hear what was being said among the others, who also heard all the voices of the gods and human participants, loud voices from far off, to be heard as if whispered right by their ears, so everyone could participate in this conversation among such far-away places.

Just when Gaea had finished speaking from the grass on the golf course, Nina was startled by the loud, bass voice coming from the hole: “Man is making the Earth his hell, his grave. We will accelerate the process.”

“But, what of us, we who have always honoured you?” Michelle asked when Hades had finished speaking. “Surely you don’t plan to kill the good with the wicked.”

“No,” Gaea said. “You will be spared. But be careful. Take cover as we bring disaster to the sinful. Make sure you distance yourselves from them.”

“Warn the evil, too,” said Zeus. “None of them will listen to you, but at least give them fair warning.”

“They will scoff at you, and mock you,” Poseidon said. “But do what is just.”

“Their scoffing will come back on them…hard,” Hades said.

“But how can we be sure that we will be safe?” Nina asked. “And how can we save innocent children?”

“We will provide…huge wooden boxes…for you to be protected in, giant versions of the chest given to Deucalion and Pyrrha,” Gaea said. “Put as many children in them as you can fit, as well as yourselves, your families, and your friends.”

“Warn the world,” Zeus repeated. “So those with ears, who listen, will come to your boxes and be saved.”

“Yes, Zeus,” Michelle said. “We will do your bidding, and we will look for your boxes.”

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Eight

“I’m telling you,” Michelle typed in a message shared with three other neopagans in a private conversation on Facebook. “There are people who have come forward and said they saw faces in the sky, in the ocean, on the grass in the golf course, and in the underground mine.”

“I’ve heard a couple of claims like that, too,” said Gary to the others. “The claims could be true—we don’t know.”

“What’s interesting, regardless of whether these face stories are true or not, is that all the people killed were rich people publicly known for not caring about the environment at all,” Shelly said. “Not that these connections, of course, were ever acknowledged in the mainstream media, who are on the payroll of the rich. To know the connections, you have to do additional research, as I did.”

“That’s right,” said Nina. “I did a little of that independent research, too. The victims made no secret about their contempt for the poor and for our Mother Earth. Any staff in the areas where these natural disasters occurred survived. At worst, they got a little hurt and a big scare, like my miner husband. Then there are the shared dreams we have all had. All the evidence suggests intervention from the gods to save our planet.”

“So, what should we do?” Gary asked.

“Gary, you live close to that golf course your brother manages,” Michelle said. “How about you go there and wait for signs from Gaea? I’m near the California Yacht Club; I’ll go sit by the pier, watch the water, and wait for a sign from Poseidon. Nina, since you live near the mine in Texas, can you go over there, as close as they’ll allow you, and wait for signs from Hades?”

“My husband’s a miner, as I said before,” Nina said. “Steve was badly hurt and got one hell of a scare from the experience, but thank the gods he’s going to be all right. He refuses to believe the gods had anything to do with what happened, but he can get me inside the property with a key he once stole from Lipton’s office. Now that he is dead, Lipton won’t object to the petty larceny. I can get right up to the holes and listen for Hades’ words.”

“Good,” Shelly said. “I can drive up near the Wells mansion in Vermont. I’ll park there, look up at the sky, and wait for signs from Zeus.”

“We can also message each other by phone to keep the conversation a four-way one, with each god, too…we hope,” Michelle said.

“Great,” Gary said. “Let’s all do this, well, at 10:00 PM my time. You can all work out the time zones in your areas. You know mine: Gary, from Gary, Indiana—so easy to remember.”

The other three responded with “Yeah, lol.”

And before I go on the green in the golf course, I’ll make another attempt to get my brother to listen to me about the coming danger, Gary thought. The rest of our family are opening their minds to this. Please, gods, help me to get him and his wife to open their minds!

Similarly, Michelle prayed, Please, gods, help my mother to see my gods as real as she does her Jesus.

And Nina prayed, O gods, help Steve to understand that he didn’t hallucinate Hades’ voice!

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Seven

“Don’t you dare form a union!” Jack Lipton shouted down the mining hole at Steve and Jim, the two miners who had been discussing the idea for weeks with their colleagues, one of whom, sucking up to Lipton, told him. “You’re lucky to have a job at all, in this economy. If you go on strike, I’ll replace you all!”

“We have a perfect legal right to get organized,” Steve shouted back up at Lipton. “You know that perfectly well. The working conditions down here are atrocious! I don’t think I even need to prove how much worse the working conditions are for your workers in your many fracking operations, Mr. Lipton.”

“And the pay nowhere near compensates for the bad conditions here,” Jim added. “Beyond whoever squealed on us, the vast majority of us miners agreed to unionize. We’ll work to rule.”

“And replacing us with scabs won’t stop us!” Steve said. “We’ll convince the scabs to join us. It won’t be hard, once they see how bad it is down here. You’ll see, Mr. Lipton.”

“You ungrateful bastards!” Lipton shouted. 

“Ungrateful,” Steve snorted. “We’re grateful to be still alive down here in this hell—“

Just then, everyone felt a brief tremor.

“We’re about to be reminded of how dangerous it is down here,” Jim told Steve. “We may not be grateful for much longer.”

Another, stronger and longer tremor shook everyone.

“Oh, God,” Steve said.

Lipton’s foot slipped a little too close to the hole. “Jesus!” he said after almost falling in. He backed up a bit.

Immediately after that, Steve, the further up of the two miners, flew out of the hole, screaming. He fell on the ground to the right of Lipton. No bones were broken, but the arm, hip, and leg that hit the ground were in great pain. He was groaning and rubbing his sore spots.

“What the hell happened?” Lipton asked.

“I…don’t know,” Steve said in a scratchy voice.

“Aaaaah!” Jim screamed as he flew out of the hole in the same way. He hit the ground, with a grunt of pain, to Lipton’s left.

Stepping back twice towards the hole and looking at the two hurt men, Lipton asked, “What could possibly have vomited you two out of the hole?”

The two men shook their heads.

“Me,” a deep, booming voice called out from the hole, causing all three men to shudder. Then powerful sucking came from it.

Steve and Jim slid closer to the hole, but Lipton got sucked in screaming. The sucking stopped, and the two men could hear Lipton screaming and knocking against the rocky walls of the mine, falling in deeper and deeper, until his screams ended.

Steve and Jim just sat by the mouth of the hole in complete silence, shaking. They looked at each other.

“What the hell just happened?” Jim asked.

Steve shrugged, still shaking. Then he remembered his wife’s warning to be ‘especially careful’ over the next few weeks. Then he remembered her ‘pagan nonsense,’ and thought, No…I ain’t gonna go there. I certainly don’t wanna talk about it with Jim. He’ll think I’m nuts…which I’m starting to think I am, too.

“I guess we gotta search for Lipton,” Jim said. “If anyone dares go down there, that is.”

Steve shook his head. “Not me.”

A search was conducted soon enough.

“C’mon,” the foreman said to those further down the hole. “Keep looking.”

Lipton’s body was never found…not even at the deepest point of digging.

Near that area, though, a miner’s light shone on the stony, muddy wall.

A man’s face, carved in the mud and rock as if by a sculptor, was smiling.

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Six

The gods met in the dark place again.

“Now that I, our brother in the sea, and our grandmother and sister of the Earth, have sent out our warnings,” Zeus said. [We’ll use the Greek names, too, for convenience.] “It is time for you to send yours, Brother.”

“Yes,” Hades said. “I know a particularly despicable man in the oil mining and…as the people of Earth call it…’fracking’ businesses. He deserves to meet an unhappy end.”

“Good,” Zeus said. “With your attack, our wave of warnings will be complete.”

“But most won’t listen,” Gaea said with more tears running down her cheeks. “You saw how that young man’s brother wouldn’t even consider that the deaths of his clients were caused by me.”

“No, of course not,” Zeus said. “People like him never listen. We do not do these things, however, to make the deaf hear us. We do them to make those who do listen, listen harder. As for those who never listen, we can know that we gave them all fair warning, so we needn’t pity them or feel any remorse when we ultimately destroy them.”

“Yes, Brother, this is true,” she said after a few more sobs. “I just wish this all didn’t have to be so painful for everyone.”

“They already make everything painful for everyone,” Hades said. “What we are doing will ultimately end the pain, and bring in a newer, better world for all.”

“Yes, and the making of all things to be new is coming very soon,” Poseidon said.

“Go, Brother,” Zeus said to Hades. “Go find that employer of miners and…’frackers.’ Send him the message he and his workers all need to see and hear.”

“Immediately, Brother,” Hades said to Zeus, then he disappeared from the place.

Nina woke up from the dream. Hades is going to hit the owner of a mining company, someone who is also into fracking? she thought. And the gods have sent the dream to me! Then she whispered, “Mr. Lipton, my husband’s boss?” I’d have no sympathy for him if he dies, since he’s such a greedy asshole, but Steve works in one of his mines. What if he gets killed?

She went online and started an instant message with Michelle. “Did you just dream about the gods discussing the attacks on Earth?” she typed.

“And that Hades was going to hit the owner of a mining company?” Michelle typed.

“I’ll bet Shelly and Gary have had our dream, too,” Nina typed. “My husband works for a mining company.”

“Oh, no!” Michelle typed. “You’ve got to warn him.”

“I will as soon as I can. But what about Shelly and Gary?”

“Yeah, let’s get them in the discussion as soon as they’re available,” Michelle typed.

Nina looked back in the direction of her bedroom. She saw Steve getting out of bed to go to the bathroom.

“Honey,” she said. 

“Yeah,” he said as he turned on the bathroom light and went in.

“When you go to work over the next few days…the next few weeks,” she said, “be especially careful, OK?”

She didn’t hear an answer because the bathroom door was closed. All she could hear was the tinkling of his piss in the toilet water.

“Honey, did you hear me?”

She heard a flushing of the toilet, then he came out of the bathroom.

“What was that, honey?” he asked with a yawn.

“When you’re at work for the next few days and weeks, be especially careful, OK?”

“Why do I have to be especially careful? What big bad thing is going to happen? Is Mr. Lipton planning to have us all killed for wanting to form a union?”

“No, I don’t think it’s going to be anything like that, unless you’ve been really vocal about it,” she said.

“Then what are you worried about?”

She thought for a second. He’s not going to believe any of my pagan stuff. “Oh…just be careful, OK?”

“Anything you say, babe,” he said, then went back to bed. I’ll bet it’s more of her ‘pagan’ nonsense, he thought as he lay there, beginning to drift back off to sleep. Whatever. I’ll be careful.

She was too worried to go back to bed just yet.

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Five

A few days later, some rich old men were playing golf on their exclusive country club’s course in Indiana…the one Gary had been talking about. One of them, Gene, snorted at his caddy, who was daydreaming at the moment.

“Jeff!” Gene growled at the young man. “Get out of dreamland and get me my putter!”

As Jeff looked through Gene’s golf bag, he said (not softly enough), “Little kids should be playing here, not grumpy old men with too much money.”

“What?” Gene snapped.

“I think you heard me fine,” Jeff said, looking Gene straight in the eye.

“It’s your job to be my caddy, to give me advice on how to play and give me my clubs immediately, not to give me lip! Do you understand?!”

“Yes, but you can try being a little nicer, too, old man. We workers have feelings too, you know.”

“Do I have to report you to the country club, you insolent little bastard?”

“I’ll speed things up for you, you stuck-up rich cunt! I quit.” Jeff gave him the finger along with the putter, then started walking off.

“I’ll make sure you never work as a caddy again, you little shit!”

“Good,” Jeff said as he kept going.

“Smart-ass kids these days have no respect for the elderly,” said the man Gene was playing against. “He’ll need all the help he can get finding a job in this economy.”

“You’re goddamn right, Roger,” Gene said, then got into position to putt his ball into the hole. “Those working-class lowlifes are way beneath us.”

But just as he was about to tap the ball, the ground began shaking.

“What the hell?” Roger said. “Since when do we ever get earthquakes in this area?”

The shaking didn’t stop. In fact, it got worse. Instead of being afraid, though, Gene just got angry with the inconvenience of it all.

“Goddammit, when’s the shaking gonna stop?” Gene grumbled. “I’m surprised my ball hasn’t fallen off its tee.”

“Yet,” Roger added.

“Oh, shit!” Gene shouted as he saw it finally fall off. “It’s rolling away!”

“Oh, my God!” Roger yelled as the shaking was getting really bad, causing them both to stagger.

The two men were no longer able to keep their balance. They fell on their asses. Their golf cart went on its side. Other golfers were yelling in shock at the worsening quake, staggering and falling, too.

Then Gene and Roger, still lying on the ground, looked down at the grass just by them. The ground was cracking open. The two men gasped.

Gene’s ball fell in the widening opening.

A few seconds later, so did Gene and Roger, screaming the whole time as they went down. 

Their bodies smashed against the rocky walls inside, then their screaming stopped forever.

Several other rich golfers fell in screaming, too, their screams also being silenced soon after.

Shocked Jeff was frozen in fear, after having also fallen to the ground and lying there, as he saw his two bosses fall to their deaths, swallowed up in the earth. 

I may not have liked the two of them, he thought, but I wouldn’t have wished that on them. I wouldn’t have wished that on my worst enemy.

Then he looked down at the grass, now that the earthquake had ended and the cracks had closed up.

He saw a woman’s beautiful, smiling face in the shadows between the grass blades.

“What in the flying fuck?” he whispered to himself. I’m not high. Why am I seeing that? he wondered.

Gary wasn’t anywhere on the grass to see her face, but he was in the staff building, in his brother’s office. They all felt the quake, Gary having just finished chatting with his brother about the thunderstorm and the sea storm, as well as the dreams, and putting up with his brother’s sneers and derision about Gary’s pagan interpretations of what had happened. 

The beginning of the quake stopped his brother’s laughing. 

The continuing—and worsening—of the quake replaced his laughing with bodily trembling.

They both needed several minutes to calm down once the shaking ended.

“Do you believe me now, Cam?” Gary asked.

“You think a goddess caused this quake?” Cam, who’d had both shared dreams but forgot all about them, said. “Look, I’ll agree that this was scary, what just happened, but I’m not about to lose my ability to reason, Gary.”

“Suit it yourself, Cam,” Gary said. “But I can guarantee you that more mayhem is going to come, and to more rich people like those old farts out there. You’ll see.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cam said. “Sure. Pray for me, won’t you?”

“I will, Cam. But it will be up to you to change your attitude if you expect to survive what’s coming.”

“Oooh!” Cam walked out of the room laughing, if nervously.

“If you’re not going to worry about yourself, you can worry about your clients, Cam!”

Though his brother was certainly worried about his clients, especially the families of those who had been swallowed up in the earth, he didn’t show such concern to Gary by closing the hallway door behind him. 

Gary just sat on a sofa in the room and let out a big sigh.

“What the hell am I going to do?” he whispered to himself. Cam is never going to listen to me. He’s such an arrogant asshole, but he’s my brother, and I love him. His sympathies lie completely with the rich bastards to patronize this country club. All he cares about is the money this place makes, the profits he shares with the boss. He’s gonna die with all of them when the gods finally do their thing. How am I going to save Cam?

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Four

The next day, the incident was discussed on social media. Of course, virtually nobody, outside of a few in the neopagan community, mentioned the face in the water.

“I have no sympathy for the dead,” one embittered woman, one of the staff on the yacht, said about the wealthy there. “I overheard their conversations while I was serving them. They showed no sympathy for how the economy was affecting the poor. They were also often rude and impatient with our service. Why should I feel bad for them?”

The woman who’d tried to help clean the bad-tempered guest’s dress said this about her: “The ocean cleaned her dress. Good enough.”

Michelle and Gary were in a group chat with their friend, Nina.

“So, you had the same dream as us?” Gary asked Nina.

“Judging by how the two of you described it, I’d say I had the exact same dream as you,” Nina said. “I know there were a few people who claim they saw a bearded face in the clouds the night of the thunderstorm, and a bearded face on the waves when the yacht sank.”

“Were the people who saw the face any of the staff on that yacht?” Michelle asked.

“No, they were people on the rescue boat, including people who don’t believe in any gods, just people too shocked to believe their own eyes,” Nina said, “and too reluctant to go public with what they saw.” 

“Another thing should be talked about,” Gary said. “The people who were killed were all rich and powerful.”

“They were also widely hated,” Nina added.

“Yes,” Michelle said. “And when you put that together with the fact that the world is being destroyed by global warming, constant wars, and economic hardship, you can see why the gods are intervening. Us all having the same dream, the faces of—let’s use Greek names, for convenience—Zeus and Poseidon in the clouds and water, these are clear signs that something major is happening. This is all way beyond mere synchronicity.”

“We can be sure of one thing,” Gary said. “The gods are very, very angry.”

“Angry?” Nina said. “They’re enraged.”

“Infuriated,” Michelle said.

“As they said in the dream, man’s wickedness has gone too far, and the gods don’t wish to sit idly by anymore,” Gary said.

“We’re going to have to keep our eyes and ears open,” Nina said. “Something big is going to happen, and we don’t want to be among those who suffer and die in it. We must discuss this with more of our friends and fellow believers, as well as our families.”

“My brother manages a country club where lots of rich folks go to play golf,” Gary said. “I have a premonition something’s going to happen there. I had a dream in which I saw the earth-goddess’s weeping face. It ended with the green of a golf course. It really looked like the one in my brother’s country club.”

“Oh, my God!” Michelle said. “Did you see the globe of the Earth with a woman’s crying face, coming nearer and nearer to you, like a camera closeup?”

Gary gulped and said, “Yes.”

“So did I,” Michelle said.

“So did I,” Nina said. “Exactly as you both described.”

None of them said anything for several more seconds.

Gary was the first to type something next: “Some of us have family who won’t ever open their minds to anything even remotely pagan. Still, that won’t stop us from loving them. My brother, whom I mentioned a little while ago, is such a person. How are we going to convince them to do what needs to be done, if a worldwide disaster is coming, as all the signs seem to be showing?”

“That’s a good question,” Michelle responded. “My mother is a Christian, but the books I’ve bought her over the years, ones by Bishop ‘Jack’ Spong, have opened her mind up a little. I might be able to get her to listen to reason, but I don’t think it will be easy. I wonder if she’s had the same dreams as us.”

“Let’s pray for the best,” Nina said. “My husband doesn’t share my faith, either, but I bet I can nag him to do what needs to be done. As I said, let’s pray to the gods for help when this all starts to get scary, as it looks like it will.”

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Three

A week later, Mr. and Ms. Plantagenet, owners of a large investment company named after themselves, were on their yacht with some wealthy friends on a California shore. The yacht was tied to the pier, and all the people aboard had each already had several drinks.

“I’m so glad the stock market crash didn’t affect any of us, Tom,” a female guest said to Mr. Plantagenet.

“That’s because, due to our ability to pull the strings of the banks and the federal government, we could prevent the stock market crash from affecting us,” Tom said.

All the guests chuckled.

“A phone call here, an email there, and our representatives can bail out anyone we need them to,” Ms. Plantagenet said.

“That’s so reassuring, Donna,” a male guest said to Ms. Plantagenet. “Since my company was one of the ones that needed a bailout.”

“As Donna and I know, let the common people suffer under the bad economy, not us,” Tom said.

The rope that moored the yacht was loosening and untying…all by itself.

“I agree, Tom,” the male guest said. “The masses are not our problem.”

“Hear, hear,” Tom said. All the guests clinked their champagne glasses together.

“If the masses don’t want to suffer, they should lay off the drugs and stop wasting money on non-essentials,” Donna said.

“Agreed,” the others said together.

The boat was drifting into the ocean, though everyone was too caught up in the conversation to notice.

“A most annoying thing happened to us while at work today, you know,” Tom said.

“Oh, and what was that?” the male guest asked.

“A bunch of university students were protesting in front of our building this morning, can you believe that?” Donna said with a sneer.

“Protesting about what?” the female guest asked.

“Oh, the usual bullshit,” Tom grunted as he had his glass refilled. “We’ve too much influence on the banks and the government, we have too much money and they have too little, all that crap.”

The other guests groaned in annoyance.

“What did you do about it?” another guest asked.

“We called the cops and got rid of them, of course,” Donna said. “A few of the long-haired young men resisted arrest, so the cops beat them.”

“Served the bastards right,” Tom said.

“Oh, definitely,” the third guest said.

Finally, one of them looked out at the water. “Where are we?” she asked.

“What do you mean, ‘where are we’?” Tom asked, then looked out at the ocean. “What?”

Everyone was looking out at the water now.

The pier and shore were nowhere in sight.

The sun had set. Clouds were covering the moon and stars. The guests had only the yacht’s electricity for light. Worried murmurs were heard.

“Derrick?” Donna called out to a staff member. “Radio the Yacht Club onshore. Ask for help.”

“Yes, Donna,” Derrick said, then went off to do it.

Heavy gusts of wind started blowing. The waves were rocking the yacht. Drinks were spilt.

“Dammit!” one of the guests yelled at the stain on her dress. “You!” she shouted at one of the female staff. “Come with me and help me clean this!” They left for the washroom.

The wind and rocking of the yacht continued; it was getting more intense. It also started to rain.

“Oh, no!” Donna said. “Derrick, have you contacted the Yacht Club? What did they say?”

“There’s something wrong with the radio,” he said. “I can’t get any connection with the shore. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t.”

“What are we going to do?” a guest said. “It’s looking like a storm out there!”

A sudden crack of thunder startled everyone.

A flash of lightning scared them even more.

The rain was splashing down. The rocking of the yacht was giving everyone the feeling of a real possibility of capsizing. Everyone onboard was panicking.

Derrick looked out on the water. He blinked and looked again. When the lightning flashed and provided some brief light, he was sure he saw a man’s bearded face among the waves. Apart from the moving of the waves distorting the image, it was as precise as a photograph. The face looked malevolent.

I haven’t had a drop of booze tonight, he thought. No pot, no LSD. And I never hallucinate.

Suddenly, there were bumping, crunching, and snapping sounds, as well as several great jerks as the yacht hit a rock.

The screaming got louder as the yacht was sinking. Everyone was trying to hang onto something to stay above the water, but only the staff managed to do so. Tom, Donna, and all their guests went straight underwater; it felt as though watery arms were pulling them all down. Some of them thought they actually saw and felt watery arms grabbing their bodies.

Before they all passed out, the last thing they saw, because of a few more lightning flashes, was that same bearded, scowling face among the shadows of the deep.

Hardly a second passed by since the last of the rich drowned, then the storm ended. The stars and the moon reappeared, restoring some light to the scene. The staff, hanging onto pieces of the broken yacht or to the huge rock it had smashed into, saw a boat approaching. A light from the boat shone on them. The staff cheered at their rescuers. 

As they got on the boat, a few of them, including Derrick, looked into the water, and with the light from the boat shining out onto the water, they saw that bearded face. Their eyes all widened.

This time, the face was smiling.

The Gods Must Be Furious–Chapter Two

The next day, social media was all abuzz about the freak accident. A few mentioned seeing a face in the clouds, but no one believed them.

A former employee of the Wellses, Jonathan Bailey, remembered how mean and stingy the two were, always paying him the minimum to slave away in a kitchen cooking for them, washing their dishes, taking out the garbage, and helping with the cleaning up of the mansion in general.

In his comments on the news story, he stressed the connection between their business, a weapons manufacturing company, and how the military is the world’s worst polluter and contributor to climate change.

“I’m not shedding one tear for them,” he commented. “Their death tells us that, apparently, there is a God.”

“Or that there are many gods,” Michelle replied to his comment.

“My comment was just meant as an expression,” Jonathan replied to her. “I don’t believe in any gods. The world’s too cruel a place to believe in any kind of divine justice.”

“Mine was literal,” she said. “In fact, I have a friend living in the area who claims she saw a face in the clouds during and after the thunderstorm.”

“If so, then I’d say I need to find her dealer,” he said in the comments with a lol. “I’ll bet she gets some good shit from him.”

She responded with a lol of her own. “Is there anyone else out there, a part of this discussion, who saw the face, or who knows someone who claims to have seen the face? I’d really like to know, for confirmation of my friend’s report.”

No replies.

“Anyone at all?”

Still no replies. 

Finally, Gary said, “I don’t know anybody who does, Michelle, but I’m a neopagan like you (I assume), and I’ll ask around the neopagan community, online and irl, if anyone else has seen, or knows anyone who’s seen, a face in the clouds that night.”

“Thanks, Gary,” she said. “I appreciate it. Add me as a Facebook friend, and if you know any others, we can discuss what happened from our perspective.”

“Cool,” Gary said. “I’ll be glad to help, and to friend you.”

Five minutes later, not only were Michelle and Gary Facebook friends, they were also engaging in a private message about the divine phenomena.

“A funny thing happened to me, several nights before that thunderstorm,” Michelle said. “I had a dream about the gods assembled in a dark…cave, or something, and they were all discussing how fed up they were with the wickedness of man, and they were planning to wipe out such men, while also giving warnings to everyone, though the wicked would never heed the warning.”

Gary paused with a gasp before typing his reply. “Did the gods discuss the ecological degradation, the endless wars, the war-god never getting a chance to sleep because of the wars, and the earth goddess weeping over these evils?”

Now, Michelle was the one gasping before replying. “My God, yes! Those exact things happened in my dream. Did you dream the same thing, around the same time as I did?”

“Not only did I have such a dream, like you, about two or three nights before the thunderstorm,” Gary typed. “So did a number of friends of mine, and other members of the neopagan community.”

Now both of them were gasping, and for a dozen seconds, they were unable to think about what to type next.

“Do you think there could be a connection between our shared dream and what happened to the Wellses, Gary?” Michelle asked.

“Let’s not jump to any hasty conclusions for now,” he answered. “Let’s wait and see if any more ‘freak accidents’ like that happen over the next few weeks or so.”

The Gods Must Be Furious–Prologue

This was the dream.

There was a meeting of all the gods in a place so dark—was it a cave? Was it the bottom of the ocean? Was it in a starless part of outer space?—only their divine eyesight allowed them to see each other.

The gods looked upon the weeping goddess of the Earth, and on those who were her stewards, with near despair.

“Something must be done,” the sky-father said in a deep voice. “We have been dormant for too long. We have allowed man to abuse our grandmother of the Earth several hundred years now. It cannot go on.”

“They stopped praying to us centuries ago,” the god of the sea said. “We tolerated that, but their sin has reached such lows. We cannot tolerate it anymore.”

“Since the praying stopped, we have been dormant, in a state of hibernation for so long,” the king of the underworld said.

“Not I,” the god of war said. “On the contrary, I have hardly been allowed to sleep since the filth has gone into the clouds, the sea, and on the land. My energy is nearly spent. I crave rest.”

“Man is killing me, and all of my children,” the earth mother goddess sobbed. “Man is killing himself, too, only he is too blind and foolish to see it. Save us, brothers and sisters—I beseech you.”

“Our grandmother in body, and sister in spirit, we know your pain,” the sky-god said.

“We will help you, dear sister, have no fear,” the goddess of the grains said. 

“All man cares about is money,” the god of commerce said. “He must either be freed of his slavish devotion to it, or he must be killed.”

“Not all of them,” the sky-father said. “There are a few good men, women, and all the innocent children who can be spared…or resurrected later, at least. First, we will seek out a select few of the evil ones to slay, as a message of warning to the others. Those who have ears, and will listen, we will provide them with protection when we destroy the rest. As for the evil ones, we will first provide fair warning.”

“They will not heed the warning, to be sure,” the sea-god said.

“No, they will not,” the sky-father said. “We will give them warning even still, for it is the just thing to do. Their unwillingness to heed our warnings will be upon them, not upon us.”

“How shall we do it?” the god of the underworld asked. “How shall we warn them?”

“Each of us will choose a group of victims and slay them,” the sky-father said. “You, my brother, find someone in the mining business, or in the hydraulic fracturing business, and destroy him. You, our grandmother of the Earth and our spiritual sister, find fitting victims. You, my brother of the sea, can find some wealthy sorts on their yachts and lead them to their doom. I, too, will find victims. After these attacks, we will await the world’s reaction, and act in a manner fitting.”

“So the people will know that these acts are not freak occurrences of nature, but deliberately carried out by us, we will have to leave signs,” the sea-god said.

“Yes,” said the sky-father. “When the attacks are finished, we will allow ourselves to be seen: me in the sky, you, Brother, on the waves of the water, on the grassy ground for you, our sister of the Earth, and in the underground rock for you, our brother. Someone will report on the sight of our images, and though most won’t believe, enough will—those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. These ones will have the faith to be saved.”

The dream ended there.

Who woke from it?

Many, many people saw and heard the exact same dream…all over the Earth.

These dreamers all wondered: was this dream mere wish-fulfillment, a wish that the wicked would be destroyed and the Earth saved…or was the dream prophetic?

“That dream felt so real,” Michelle said with a yawn. “Were the gods talking to me?”

“Why would I dream of something like that?” Gary asked himself as he sat up in bed. “Wish fulfillment? Do I want the gods to intervene in our shitty world that badly?”

Nina was rubbing her eyes and watching her husband sleeping peacefully beside her. I feel rather disappointed that that was only a dream, she thought. Since nobody else is doing anything about the Earth’s problems, a little divine intervention for the sake of our Mother Earth would be a good thing.

Shelly woke up with a start. Then she closed her eyes again, put her hands together, and prayed: “O gods, please do what I just dreamed…but show mercy, even to the wicked.”

Across the road from Michelle’s house, her mother woke up, too.

Why would I, a Bible-believing Christian, dream about pagan gods? she wondered. That was the kind of thing my daughter would have dreamt. Or were they angels? I’d rather believe that.

Cam woke up. “What a ridiculous dream, something Gary would have dreamed,” he whispered, then went right back to sleep.

The Tanah: Troughs–Chapter Three

[The following is the forty-third of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, here is the thirty-fourth, here is the thirty-fifth, here is the thirty-sixth, here is the thirty-seventh, here is the thirty-eighth, here is the thirty-ninth, here is the fortieth, here is the forty-first, and here is the forty-second–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Translator’s Introduction

The last of the “Trough” chapters describes a world without any knowledge of the Crims, let alone how to worship them or use the magic of the Tanah. In the eyes of the ancient tribe that wrote these texts and prophesied this future in their visions, it’s a future world that has totally lost its way, with nothing to give its people any kind of moral guidance.

Accordingly, the trough depicted here is a particularly bleak one. Though a corresponding crest is supposed to follow it, as was mentioned in the translator’s introduction to Troughs, Chapter One, there’s an ambiguity as to whether humanity’s salvation will result in physical survival in a better world, or if it will be only a kind of spiritual survival, a nirvana without physicality.

In any case, this trough also shows a disturbing, uncanny prescience of our modern, capitalist world, or so do some of the researchers in our group believe. Most people will face appalling poverty, state repression, and social alienation, while a small elite own most of the land, money, and property. There’s a description of money-making that reads like a formula from Marx’s Capital–M-C-M’, meaning money-commodity-valorized money (i.e., money with added profit).

Finally, there is a prophesied man who will usher in the end of the world: Christ, or anti-Christ? The text is unclear. Some will think he’s the former; many will think he’s the latter. We researchers think he sounds like a certain contemporary US president.

Chapter Three

O, woe to those in the future who will forget the Crims! We have seen that the people of the world will lose their way, and the punishment of their sins will be too great for most to bear.

These people will know a new kind of slavery, in which the slaves are given wages (though very little), are allowed to change from one master to another of their own accord (if they can find one to give them money and thus save them from total destitution), yet are slaves nonetheless. Exceedingly few have the most, and almost all have almost nothing. The people seem to know or care little about each other, or about themselves. People are not close to each other.

An oppressive state watches the slaves closely, puts them in prisons to work like even more abject slaves, and kills people in other nations through constant war. Wealth is created by transforming money into a product to be sold, which is then made into money again, yet a greater amount of money than before, most of it to be kept by the masters. If too little of this wealth is made in one’s own nation, one goes out to other nations, steals what is in those other nations, and makes the greater amounts of money in those other nations, all to be taken back to the first nation.

Attempts will be made to overthrow these greedy rich men, to establish just and fair societies, but through the clever machinations of those men, who always trick their people into believing that the makers of those just societies are making unjust ones, these attempts will be thwarted, plunging the world into worse oppression and greater despair.

At one point in our vision, when matters seemed to be at their worst, we saw a man emerge and rise to the highest seat of power. Our vision became cloudy and unclear: we could not decide if he was a righteous man avenging the unjust by destroying the world, or an evil man completing the destruction of it.

Some of the people thought him a saviour; many others thought him a demon. Still others thought him a mere fool raised far too high. He saw himself as a saviour; there were pictures depicting him as such. His face was orange. Whatever his intentions were, he assuredly brought on the destruction of many, leading to the end of the trough.