“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 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.

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 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.”