Published: 12 Dec 2019

Apotheosis

“Who are you?” My voice was slurred from the booze I had drunk and fuzzy from the sleeping pills I’d taken.

“I am Nemesis,” the boy answered.

“Uh huh, yeah.” I grunted. “Since when is the Goddess of Divine Retribution a twelve-year-old boy?”

The boy looked funny at me. “I am not a goddess! I’m a boy. And, yes, I’m the god of Divine Retribution. How would you know anything about—”

“Look, I don’t mean to interrupt,” I interrupted. “But this is my dream, and if I’m dreaming about a cute, half-naked 12-year-old boy, I don’t need any retribution getting in the way of my erection.”

The little boy looked at me. His eyes were obsidian black and obsidian hard. “You’re disgusting! And you’re not dreaming. The booze and the pills suppress the dream state. You’re … awake … as awake as you can be after all the crap you stuffed into your body today. You were about to die … you were going to choke on your own vomit while you were askeep.” He looked … smug, I guess that was the best word.

“Fuck you!” I said. “Speaking of which, since you’re a dream, how about taking off that … whatever it is you’re wearing?”

“It’s a chiton, you … you jerk,” the boy said. “And I’m not a dream, and I’m not going to disrobe to satisfy your carnal lust.”

I heard kī t’on and disrobe, and carnal lust. What a little prick! “Then, go away, and let me sleep.” I rolled over, punched the flat pillow, and tried to think sleepy thoughts. The boy wouldn’t let me.

“I told you, I wasn’t a dream. I’m Nemesis, and you’re my replacement.”

There was a long pause while I collected my thoughts. And then, I sat up. This was either an eerily real dream, or I was really … dead. I wasn’t sure. I thought I was in my room at the “by the hour or by the month” motel in a Chicago slum. I thought I felt the rough sheets on my skin. I thought I saw the digital display of the clock radio that got only one station. I thought I was awake.

Of course, I wasn’t awake. Of course, this was a dream.

“Mark Anthony? Right? He wrote about the guy who takes the place of Death. I read that years ago. Good story. Erotic, in places.”

That’s why I’d liked it. Think about it. Death as an avatar. Able to go anywhere and do anything. Judge of the souls of all the gay teens who’d killed themselves. I really wanted to do something like that. All my life, I’d dreamed about being able to reach out to a gay boy who was about to take his life, and offer to be his friend, to be the one who loved him, to be the one who saved him from that horrible fate. I never had the courage to follow up, even if I had been able. I was such a wimp … such a loser. The boy seemed to agree with me.

“Piers Anthony, you idiot, not Mark Anthony!” the boy’s eyes sparked. Yes, sparked. Flashed with fire. This was definitely a dream.

The boy continued. “Anthony was close, and he figured out a lot. But Death is a different avatar. I’m Retribution, and you’re about to feel that.”

There was a definite chill in his voice. And then it got hot. Really hot.

I saw and I felt the stuff I drank to forget. The nightmares were the reason I took sleeping pills. I knew they suppressed dreams.

I saw all the things I’m still ashamed of. Every evil thing I ever did came back to haunt me. It wasn’t a casual “flash before my eyes.” I was put in the place of those I had hurt. There were a lot of them, and it was in slow motion. Then, it started over. I lost track of the number of times I re-lived each event, each hurt, each pain. Eternity couldn’t have lasted that long. Dante Alighieri, himself, would have pitied me, I think. I hope. Before it was over, I’d traveled all the circles of his hell. I saw my own dark, rank, raw soul.

When I woke, back in the motel, the mattress was soaked with sweat; my throat was parched. The kid handed me a plastic cup of hot tap water. I thought of the Koran’s promise that the evil dead would be made to drink from a fountain of boiling water.

“I’m evil, but you said I’m supposed to replace you?” I asked.

“Yes,” the boy replied. “Who better to be the instrument of retribution than one who has been the instrument of pain?”

“Someone who was the target of pain?” I asked.

“No,” the boy said. “The target is going to hold a grudge. Only the person who caused the pain, knowing the pain he caused, can mete out justice. And, justice is the goal.

“Yes,” the boy giggled. “You’ll be Retribution, but you’ll be Justice where it counts. Oh, and to make it more complicated? The Goddess of Justice is Die-Key. It’s spelled d-i-k-e, but pronounced Die-Key, like Nye-Key, the Wingéd Victory. She’s your boss. Don’t mispronounce her name and don’t piss her off!”

“You … you were like me?” I asked.

The boy nodded, and I saw pain flash across his face. I knew he could no more tell me what he had done than I can say all I had done.

The transition was instantaneous. One minute I was a 46-year-old guy in a sleazy motel room about to drown in his own vomit from too much booze plus a couple of sleeping pills. The next minute I was a 12-year-old boy with a great honking sword and immortality. I was still in a sleazy motel room, though.

The boy had explained about the immortality part. Although I was immortal, there was no way I could keep this job forever. At some point, I’d burn out, and have to turn it over to someone else. That’s what had just happened.

“Where will you go?” I asked the boy. He was already kind of misty, like he wasn’t all here.

“A good place. You’ll understand, some day.” he said and vanished.

A shaft of sunlight popped through a hole in the curtains, the signal it was morning. I looked at the mess: clothes strewn about, liquor bottles in the trashcan and on the nightstand, half-eaten fast food in Styrofoam boxes. At least there wasn’t a body. I’d rather vanish than be found that way.

I didn’t want to leave the room the way it was. I took off my chiton (that and sandals and the sword came with the job – maybe a sense of responsibility, too) and started cleaning up.

Two hours later, I showered and put on the chiton and sandals, stuck the sword in its scabbard, and left the room. My first goal was to find Dike – Die-Key – and get her take on all this. The notion that the criminal could be the best judge made a weird sort of sense but I needed to talk to someone about it. I also wanted to know what the boy meant when he said I was “one” of the Nemesises … Nemeses … whatever. Oh, and what the heck was I supposed to do next?

Nemesis

It didn’t take long to figure out what I was supposed to do. I hadn’t taken ten steps from the motel when I got a call.

The motel was on a hill above an abandoned shopping center. It was one of those places Sprawl-Mart had built a store, attracted tenants in out-parcels, milked the place, and then shut down when the neighborhood went to crap. A storefront church that preached prosperity gospel – like, “God wants you to be rich” – had given it a go. Their signs were still in the windows, covered with dust and fly shit. Trash, liquor bottles, beer cans, and used condoms littered the parking lot.

The only storefront still occupied was a bottom-feeder – a payday loan place. There was one car parked in front of it. I watched a car turn off the street and drive behind the strip of stores. Somebody’s gonna get a blow job, I thought. It was something I had seen often enough from the motel window. There was only one person visible in this car … already getting it, I thought. I was about to turn away when I felt pain and fear, and realized it was coming from the car.

I felt the pain and fear, and understood I had a job to do and it had something to do with Retribution and with the car. I started running. The chiton flapped in the breeze. The sword banged against my leg. I grabbed the sword with one hand, and tried to hold the chiton down with the other. The damn thing didn’t go more than an inch below my butt. Holding on with both hands slowed me, so I turned loose of the chiton. Screw it; I don’t care of someone sees my bare butt. Actually, I’d caught a look at it in the mirror while I was cleaning up the motel room. Okay, I had stared at it. It was a cute butt.

I barely finished this thought when I rounded the corner and saw the car parked in the dubious privacy of a loading dock. The fear and pain were stronger. I saw the driver, and watched his hand rise and then fall swiftly. There was a burst of pain. He’s just hit someone. I complimented myself on my brilliance, and jerked the handle of the driver’s-side door. The door was locked; the handle came off in my hand.

Way cool, I thought. X-Person Super-strength. While I was admiring my new-found ability, the driver, alerted by the sound of the door handle being ripped off, turned, saw me, and reached for the ignition switch. I didn’t think, just pushed my hands through the glass of the window, grabbed his head, and pulled. I felt the bones of his neck break. I heard his last gasp. I felt his death.

I turned loose of the man, and looked farther into the car. Crouched on the floor was a boy, about my age. I mean, about the same as my new age. My new body, that is. Twelve, that is. His nose was bloody; his eyes were wide. He stared at me, and then fainted.

I heard a car door close and looked behind me. A man stepped out of one of those boxy land-cruiser-jeep things. I ignored him.

I pressed the unlock button on the driver’s armrest and then ran around the car and opened the passenger door. The boy nearly fell out, head first, but I grabbed him before he smashed onto the pavement. You’re still a fuck up! I thought as I laid him on the ground. By this time, the guy from the boxy car was beside me.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

I looked at the guy, and then at the kid. His face and shirt were covered with blood. “No shit,” I said. “He’s been beaten; he’s got a nosebleed.”

“Not him … his nose has stopped bleeding. You. Your arms are cut—”

I looked, and realized I’d sliced open my hands and arms, up to the elbows, when I broke through the car window. Now that I knew it, it hurt! Another car door closed. I looked.

It was a black Mustang with heavy tint on all the windows. A real badass car. I knew instantly who it was. Even if I hadn’t read Anthony’s book, I would have known. It was Death. Come for the soul of the man I killed.

The man from the Mustang walked up to me. “You know better than to kill indiscriminately…” he said, and then looked hard at me. “You’re not … you must be new. When?”

I knew exactly what he meant. “Uh, about two hours ago, sir. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” he interrupted. “The Nemeses are the only ones who wear chitons and carry that particular sword. Two hours? And you’ve already killed someone?”

I got a little defensive. “There was a boy in the car, sir. He was being beaten. I … I felt him, sir.” I don’t know why I kept calling him, sir. It seemed like a good idea, though.

I stepped aside as Death approached. He reached through the broken window and into the dead man’s chest … and pulled out his soul. It was solid, and it was black. Death looked at the soul, and then looked at me. “Okay, you messed up, but not badly.”

He stuffed the soul into one pocket and took a baggie of white powder out of another, and threw it on the dead man’s lap. “Take care of the boy. And get some instruction!”

“You,” he said to the guy from the boxy car. “Help him.”

He went back to the Mustang and drove away.

Gary, Driver of the Boxy Car

I figured the man from the Mustang was a drug dealer. I watched him reach through the broken window, and into the man’s shirt and pull out something. He spoke to the boy, and then threw a baggie of what looked like cocaine into the car. I was sure, then, he was a cop, setting up the scene for an arrest. Mine, to be specific. Then he told me – ordered me – to help this kid, and drove off.

I was confused, but the boy in the T-shirt had grabbed me to keep from falling and was bleeding on me. I was trying to keep him upright when he fainted. Taking care of him and the boy he’d pulled from the car, that was my first priority. I would worry about the guy from the Mustang and the cops, later.

I picked up the two boys and put them in the back seat of my Land Rover.

I didn’t see the man from the payday loan place staring at my car as I drove away.

Nemesis

When I woke up, I was in the back seat of some guy’s car, leaning against the door. The boy I had rescued was leaning against me. We were driving through Chicago traffic. My arms hurt like Hell. Well, not quite that bad. I knew – I’d been there and remembered everything. The guy saw me in his mirror.

“I’m guessing you two don’t want to go to a hospital, but you’ve got to be taken care of. We’re going to my home. Hang in there … just a few more minutes.”

We reached a suburban neighborhood. He pulled into a driveway and punched a remote. The garage door opened.

“Can you walk?” he asked. When I nodded, he picked up the boy. “Come on … follow me.” I did.

We present another story by David McLeod. This one has nothing to do with the “World” series of stories… Well, almost nothing – A small (very small) piece of “World” may have escaped and made its way into this story. Regardless, we hope you enjoy this darker tale of a romp through the Greek Pantheon. Write to David and let him know your thoughts! David dot Mcleod at CastleRoland dot Net.

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