LITTLE GODS
by
Caitlin McColl
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PUBLISHED BY:
Little Gods
Copyright © 2011 by Caitlin McColl
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LITTLE GODS
‘Next!’ yelled Rhiannon as she pulled the massive leather bound book closer to her. A man walked up to the table.
‘Are you new or old?’ she asked the man.
The man held out a numbered slip, which told her everything.
‘Old,’ confirmed Rhiannon. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Thomas Reed,’ said the pale, thin man looking quite sickly. Rhiannon flipped through the pages and ran her finger down the page, finally finding the entry. ‘And how long have you been told you’ll be here?’ she asked the man.
‘One hundred and seventeen years,’ the man answered.
‘Oh,’ said Rhiannon. ‘Well, that’s not too long you know,’ she said kindly, trying to be reassuring. ‘And who knows. Maybe next time you won’t end up back here,’ she said giving the man a small smile. She wrote down the number 117 by the man’s name. ‘Hold on one moment,‘ she said, excusing herself and heading to rows upon rows of shelving that went on for as far as the eye could see, the shelves rising up so high that your eyes watered if you tried to see the top.
She grabbed a ladder on wheels and pushed herself down the shelving which was full of small square drawers. She stopped, opened a drawer and pulled out a scroll tied with a ribbon. She brought the scroll back to the table and opened it slightly. ‘Thomas Reed,‘ she read at the top. ‘You‘ve been sent here, to the Underworld because you attempted to kill someone.’ she said out loud. ‘Hmm,‘ she said to herself, and then wrote that beside his name in the large ledger. ‘You can go to the express line now, since you’ve been here before,’ she said, pointing to a line of people further away that trailed off into the distance.
The man shambled slowly, grudgingly away to join a line of upset and angry looking people.
‘Next!’ Rhiannon shouted again, sighing.
Another man walked up to her. ‘New or old?’ she asked again.
‘New I guess,’ answered the man. ‘I didn’t think I’d be coming here,’ said the man, slightly nervously.
Rhiannon simply nodded, trying to give what she thought was a sympathetic look. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the man.
‘John Andersen,’ the man replied. Rhiannon flipped to the front of the volume and penned his name down alphabetically. ‘And how long have you been told you’ll be here?’ she asked.
‘Ten years,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ she said brightly. ‘Well that’s nothing at all, is it?’
The man shrugged.
‘What did you do just to have ten years?’ asked Rhiannon curiously.
The man shrugged again. ‘I don’t really know. I tried my best to be a good person during my life. But then I had quite a short life, I guess. I didn’t plan on getting sick,’ he explained.
Rhiannon nodded and wrote the number ten by the man’s name. ‘Okay, please fill out this form,’ she said pushing a scroll towards him. The scroll unrolled and rolled off the edge of the table, and kept unravelling for what seemed like a very long time.
‘What is this?’ asked the man incredulously looking at the paper still unrolling itself across the floor, people stepping over it as it went.
‘Your life,’ said Rhiannon. ‘There’s some short answer questions, some essays, some multiple choice, some aptitude questions.’ she said. ‘Whatever you can think of, it’s there. We have to screen people you know. Find out why they end up…here,’ she said gesturing around her. ‘And hopefully,’ she leaned forward and whispered almost conspiratorially, ‘try and help them to not come back here.’
The man looked glum and nodded.
‘I want to try to get everyone to go up there,’ she said, pointing up to what could have been called the ceiling if you could see it. ‘When you’re finished, bring the form back to me and I’ll add it to our files,’ she said indicating the rows of little drawers behind her.
The man headed off a small ways away to fill out the form, which had only just stopped unrolling itself.
Rhiannon sighed, and placed a small sign in front of her proclaiming ‘closed - next assistant please.’ The never ending line of people lined up in front of her grumbled and moved over to the small creature that was working next to her. The little blue demon gave her the evil eye and yelled in a raspy voice ,‘Next!’
She walked into the break room and flopped down on the small couch, narrowly avoiding a large metal spring poking up through the cushion. ‘Why do I have to be here, of all places?’ she whined. ‘I didn’t ask for a placement in the Underworld!’ she complained.
A young man seated at a small round table playing a solitary card game looked up at her. ‘High turnover here,’ he said.
‘But why couldn’t I be something like Mother Nature!’ she exclaimed. ‘She’s a great goddess, making the world beautiful.’
‘You’re not a mother, though, are you?’ asked the man, not much older than Rhiannon herself.
‘Well, no…’ Rhiannon started.
‘Well, there you go then,’ the young man said, as if that explained it all. Then he continued ‘And you couldn’t be Mother Nature anyways,’ he said. ‘You’re not a full Goddess, remember? Just a demi-Goddess.’
Rhiannon looked at him in disgust . ‘I’m not just a demi-goddess!’ she pouted tossing her long beautiful demi-goddess hair over her shoulder.
The man shrugged again. ‘Well you know us demi- gods. And goddesses,’ he added, ‘We can only ever be assistants to the Gods, because we aren’t full blooded Gods.’
Rhiannon sighed. ‘I know,’ she sighed and nodded, adjusting her long flowing gown.
He continued, ‘So even if you got a job as an assistant for Mother Nature, you’d probably just be making sure there was enough plant seeds in stock, or making sure that there wasn’t an overstock of rain, or meting out the right amount of volcanoes or earthquakes in a year,’ he said.
Rhiannon looked at the boy and said, ‘Did you ask to be here, Luke?’
Luke put down his cards. ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘There’s good benefits.’
Rhiannon shook her head, ‘But its so morbid and…’ she struggled to think of a word. ‘Cavernous.’
‘At least you’re always toasty warm here,’ said Luke laughing. ‘And you don’t have to pay for the heating bill. Besides, I was named after one of the gods of war and all that stuff, so I guess being somewhere like this is in my nature.’
Rhiannon looked at him quizzically.
‘Lugh. He’s an old Irish God from way back sometime,’ said Luke. ‘He was into war and magic and stuff like that.’
‘But dealing with all those sad and angry and upset souls, every day. Its so depressing.’ Rhiannon gestured to a hunched figure in the corner of the room. ‘And there’s him too’ she said, in whispered tones.
Luke turned around to look at who she was meaning ‘Oh, you mean Death?’ he asked.
Rhiannon put a finger to her lips in a gesture of silence and nodded.
‘Oh he’s harmless,’ said Luke. ‘He just keeps to himself.’ Rhiannon glanced over at the small hunched figured enrobed in black, his face covered by a cowl. He was reading a magazine that had been on the little side table beside him. The cover read ‘101 Ways To Die’.
‘Plus,’ continued Luke, ignoring Rhiannon, ‘Up there,’ he gestured to the non-existent ceiling, ‘its too boring, everyone is too nice. And its drafty, way up in the sky like that, being on a mountain and all. You wouldn’t get to toast marshmallows up there I bet,’ he said laughing again.
‘I still don’t know why th
ey placed me down here as a record keeper,’ whined Rhiannon. ‘Do I look like someone who should be down here in the stupid underworld?’
Luke ignored her and went back to his cards.
‘Everyone has a purpose,’ said a voice. ‘Some people just don’t know what it is yet.’
Rhiannon jumped. The voice came from the dark figure in the corner. Death still had the magazine raised in front of his face. Rhiannon had just started to wonder if it had been Death that had spoken to her when the voice spoke again. ‘I’ve said before my name isn’t Death,’ said the figure. ‘It’s De Ath. It’s Eastern European, I think,’ it said. ‘Like Von Something-or-others,‘ the figured waved an arm in a vague gesture. ‘Somehow, over the centuries, people have forgotten that and they now think it’s just one word - Death.‘ It sighed. ‘And that isn’t my title by the way. I’m a Soul Retriever. Not a collector or anything else sinister sounding like that. Someone has to do it. Soul’s can’t live forever in human bodies - humans are finite. Temporary.’ De Ath explained.
‘Did you know what