D didn’t go to the bar to drink, of course, but he had to go somewhere after a meeting, and he liked his neighbors. He wasn’t the only one who went to the bar and didn’t drink: John from down the road was sober for decades, and both the manager and the head bartender stopped drinking months ago. Besides, there wasn’t anything else happening tonight. He made a mental note to check if there were any events this weekend. The bartender would probably know.
The bar was well-lit, with a decor of blonde wood finish. There were pictures on the walls of celebrities, both local and international. The celebs were mostly posing with the original owner, who had retired years ago. The selection of bottles was moderate, but not ostentatious; not that D had any use for them. There were a few taps, and a few bottles of day-old wine, both slowly going as sour as his mood.
As he walked in, the bar was on the right, near the wall; to his left as he walked down towards the far end of the bar were low round tables. On the wall beyond them were a few wall-mounted bicycle racks.
The bartender seemed busy for a bar that wasn’t that full, but that was her way. She wasn’t very tall, with a brown complexion and a thick braid of black hair that went just past her shoulder blades. She tossed D a smile as he walked in without breaking her rhythm.
D felt worse than usual as he sat down in his customary corner. He looked at himself in the bartender’s mirror, the one that lined the bar behind the top-shelf bottles, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He tried to shrug it off, but couldn’t.
Sometimes a person can walk into a place and feel relaxed and comfortable. The next time they went into that same place, every hair on their neck might be standing straight up. They might never know why.
D usually knew why. Usually, in fact, it was because of him or his family. As D caught a whiff of that feeling, he thought to himself this can’t be good news. Sure enough, he looked to the door just in time to see them sauntering in.
They walked in like middle-aged life coaches who had been high school football stars, but still didn’t realize that high school was over. There were only a handful of people at the bar at this time of the day, but each one became visibly shaken as the pair walked by them. Most suddenly paid their tabs and left. D knew these two were brothers, but they certainly didn’t look like it.
The first of the two looked like a lawyer, or a stockbroker, or maybe a stockbroker’s lawyer: he was dressed in an expensive charcoal suit, with a tie that seemed somehow to shift from one violent color to another. As nice as his clothes were, and as slick as his short black hair was, he still managed to look like something that had crawled out from under a rock.
The one behind him looked like the underside of the rock itself. His hair was a mottled grey, and it hung down to his shoulders like he had just stuck his head in a vat of cooking grease, which for all D knew was exactly what he had just done. His clothes were dull and worn: it was impossible to know what color they were when they were new. Somehow he made it look like those clothes were created old and shabby.
D would’ve professed his hatred of these two to the Gods, but then they would hear it, and they’d only make it worse. Fucking bullies. Fucking punks. At least he was sitting at the end of the bar, so they couldn’t flank him the way they’d been brought up to by their father. Say what you will about their bastard father, but he knew his combat tactics.
Instead, they sat in the next two open seats, like the locals that they weren’t. The worst of the two sat next to him, of course. He smelled like cheap aftershave that was made out of blood. His brother sat in the far seat. Not far enough, unfortunately: the bastard smelled like someone had pissed on a rotten head of cabbage.
“Hey, look who it is! It’s the half-breed runt,” announced the one next to him.
“The half-wit, hur hur hur” his brother burbled. His voice sounded like a drowning man’s last cry for help. D swore he could see the drool coming out of the side of the fool’s mouth.
“Half-wit, huh? That’s rich,” D leaned over to speak around his new neighbor to the dim one. “You know, Mead, most people say you have shit for brains, but you and I know that’s not true. You’d be much smarter if you did.” D returned to a comfortable position and looked at the new arrival. “And to what do I owe the sad day that brings you in here, Fee?”
Mead – short for Diomedes – just glowered at D instead of answering. He wasn’t the first Diomedes, of course. That psycho was dead, and good riddance. Leave it to his half-brother to name the dumbest stumpfucker of an offspring after him, though. Even worse, leave it to the little snot to become better at his job than the first Diomedes was.
“Look,” D continued, “I’ve already had a long day. What do you two want? Have you nothing better to do? Is scaring children too hard for you, that you have to find drunks to frighten now too?”
They just looked at him. Fee sneered, and Mead gave him an empty look. They ignored his taunts, like bullies that know they’d win a fight if one jumped off. Not showing weakness was almost a religion with these two. Funny, thought D, how the “strongest” ones were the most afraid to show weakness.
As an excuse to ignore him, Fee took the time to order shots of Jack and Bud for him and Mead. It was all that the bartender could do to come over and take their order. D knew the bartender – Cristina was her name; she was strong, and didn’t show fear very often. D could see it, though. He could smell it. How could he not? But really, it wasn’t her fault. The guy next to him literally embodied fear.
Fee ended his order with: “… and get a glass of your finest vino for our friend here – oh no, that’s right: he can’t drink! Sorry, D. Another time, eh?” He laughed like someone who needed to be hit in the dick with a hammer.
“Aww, you aren’t sad, are you? You gonna cryyy?” he asked, pushing it even further. Naturally, this brought more laughs from both of them.
This bastard’s laughter was ugly enough, but when Diomedes laughed, he looked like a fourteen year old whose grandmother had given him a funnel cake and a hand job at the same time. It was every bit as horrible and disturbing as it sounds, and D really wanted this conversation to be over. One of us has to go soon, he thought. Unfortunately, D wasn’t particularly a fighter, and these two were. D found himself wishing his girls were here.
D shook off that line of thinking immediately. Part of the whole reason he’d gotten the short stick for so long was that he wasn’t very good in conflict, and if there’s one thing his family was known for, conflict was it. Every day is a new day, wasn’t that how it went?
“Once again, weren’t you two on your way somewhere? Please don’t let me hold you up. Once you’re gone, how ‘bout we go back to not talking to each other for another thousand years?”
“What, can’t we visit our cousin?” asked Fee with a leer. “We wanted to see how you were doing, Dionysus. ” he added.
“Of course you did, Phobos.” Thanks for fucking doxxing me, he thought, but a glance towards Cristina showed her as far away as she could be – evidently the bar glasses were suddenly in need of individual molecular sanitation. “Well, I’d sure be doing better if you two were gone. How ‘bout it?” he asked, with a meaningful look towards the door.
“Aww, don’t be mad just ‘cause we could pivot and you couldn’t. We found whole new things for people to be afraid of. And you know what’s awesome? How well we work together,” Phobos – or Fee, as D preferred to call him – gloated as he looked at Mead. There was hunger in that look, but no affection. “The more work he does, the easier mine gets, and vice versa. People line their houses with guns, and the more guns they have, the more scared they are. And of course the more guns in a house full of fear, the more likely they are to get used by … accident.”
“Hur hur hur,” Mead added. He really was every bit as ugly as his laugh sounded. And as much as D would have loved to call the Furies down upon him, he knew that if Mead died unexpectedly, that job would just get taken over by someone else, the same way this asshole got the job. Mead would either have to be taken out by a major god – a process not unlike taking out a made man – or for people to stop following him for long enough that he would fade away on his own, like Zeus.
Fat chance of that. Not in this country, not in this time. As long as people were horrible in the name of hate or fear, then Phobos and Diomedes, and countless of their siblings and relatives, would continue to do just fine. No, it was people like Dionysus that were struggling. No good deed, etc.
“You know what’s the best part? We’re doing all this in their own God’s name! They get to think they’re doing His work when really they’re doing ours! He gets weaker and we get stronger! It’s so much fun!” Fee downed his shot and waved for another. Cristina glanced at D, who shrugged. If he were going to trash the place, he’d’ve already done it, said that shrug.
D sank his head into his hands. “Really, why are you two here? Just to gloat? Cause the door’s still right over there. Honestly, don’t let me stop you two from fucking off. Surely there’s a baby whose candy needs to be stolen…?”
If there were more evil to be seen in Fee’s eyes, it would have been then. “Oh, we’re doing that already, my friend. That, too, is in their new god’s name! We’ve got them so afraid of their own shadows we’ve got people in the suburbs worried about foreign invasion! Like Hamas gives a fuck about Doncaster! I never thought I’d have a reason to say this, but it looks like we’ve done our work too well.”
Head still in his hands, D asked a question he knew he’d regret: “What are you even talking about?” he sighed. He looked up at Cristina, not really knowing why, except maybe just to see something that wasn’t as vile as the faces of the two godlings next to him.
“Some bint near Yorkshire saw a pack of paragliders and thought she was being invaded by Israel. And she’s not alone! People all over this country, too! Even in this town! They’re all losing their minds! This is part of why my man Mead here is doing so well – he’d pivoted to deadly weapons a while back. Me, I still run Fear, but I dialed it up to eleven all across the board! We’ve got people doing hate crimes out of fear alone!”
Come on, JC, he thought. Make this wine. Hell, make it a brandy while you’re at it. No such luck was his: his water stayed water. “And what do the new bosses have to say about all this?” he asked, with his eyebrows raised.
“Nothing! Not a damn thing! And every time they do try to reach their followers, one of us – Plutus, Mead, or me – gets there first and corrupts the message. And the very very best part of all is that we get to do it in His name! He just fades back and mumbles something about prophecies and free will or something, and for all I know He just sits around listening to his choir. Not that I care – as long as I get free rein!”
D looked at him slowly. “You’ve got to be running on borrowed time, no? This goes against everything He preaches.”
This only brought more derisive laughter.
“Who cares? He’s getting weaker anyway. For all the people who say they’re his followers, most people really worship one of us. Always have. He gets weaker by the day, and don’t even get me started on His son. I bet He couldn’t even tear wet cardboard by now.”
Phobos pulled at his beer. “Well, that guy Martin Luther turned the tide for a bit, but then my dad stepped in. He kept them fighting each other, all right. He even had them using guns and bombs, most of the time.”
This brought another round of disturbing chuckles from Mead. “So, yeah, fuck the current guy,” Phobos concluded. “We got this. We could cause another mass shooting tomorrow – anywhere we wanted – and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. How’s that for power? You got anything like that? No. No, you don’t. We could even take you right now if we wanted to, couldn’t we?”
Phobos didn’t even try to look to Diomedes for support; he was relying on his power. But fear didn’t work on the drunk anymore than it did the evil – and D may not have been drinking these days, but he was still the Drunken God.
Also, by this point, D had had enough. “Interesting theory,” he said quietly. “Shall I call my Maenads and see? They’d love a place like this. They’d have a howling good time. Would you like that? I don’t think even Diomedes would be enough for all of them, and they’d take absolutely no notice of you. Either way, I’m ready. You leave, or we find out.”
D hadn’t looked up at all during this delivery. He heard the bar, which by now had grown very quiet indeed – everyone else had left. Cristina was still behind the bar, but as far away from them as possible, still cleaning an already clean bar. D decided to count to twenty, just to take into account how slow and stupid these two were.
He made it to sixteen when they abruptly got up, knocking their stools over from spite.
Dionysus leaned back a little on his stool, gave a sigh, and looked at the bartender. “Sorry about those bastards, Cristina. Feel free to eighty-six them next time; I’ll be glad never to see ‘em again.”
Cristina came back to his side of the now-empty bar. “And on top of that,” D noticed, “they left me with their tab. Triple bastards.” He pulled out a few bills and dropped them where the goons had just been, making sure he left her plenty extra. She didn’t deserve the last few minutes of her life, and after all, it was kind of his fault that the bar was now vacant.
He was about to ask for another club soda when a half-baked memory from earlier occurred to him, and he looked back up at her. “Hey,” he asked, “Isn’t there something going on this weekend?”
“Yeah, there’s that street festival tomorrow, here in town. They’re shutting a few blocks down. Bunch of people, wine tasting, live music, you know. Bouncy house for the kids.”
Once again, D put his head in his hands. Of course. How the fuck did I forget that, he asked himself angrily. That’s why those swine came in here. To taunt me. Not about my not drinking, but for those that are. Wine tasting. People crowding the streets. Bouncy houses.
God damn it.
Speaking of whom, he continued in his head, Christ: if I fix this, you’re giving me a glass of fucking wine, you hear me? Whether I drink it or not. He looked up at Cristina with urgency and resignation in his eyes.
“Sorry, m’dear, it looks like I gotta go too. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think they’ll be back. You get your bar back – for the weekend, at least.”
“Why, what’s up?” she asked him with only mild concern. “You gotta go somewhere?” She was more or less back to her usual self by now; again, Cristina was made of solid stuff.
“Yeah,” he said, with the fatigue of thousands of years. “Looks like I have to go prevent a mass shooting.” He climbed off the barstool and started moving, answering Cristina’s bemused expression with a helpless shrug of his own. “See you on Sunday.”
Moth to the Flame 