Tag: literature promotion

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?