Polentia saw the quartet out her door, Jagger riding on Brunhilda’s back—a couple plungers serving as reins—Kalon standing proud under the sun, and Samari trying to make sense of a world where the stinging heat rained upon her bare white scalp.
“Well now, take care you four, and make sure to remind my son that mommy loves him if you see him around. You will know it’s him.”
“Any relevant information you can give us about your son?” Samari asked, trusting her gut instinct as much as she trusted dreamcatchers.
“Like his father, the boy cannot help but be the kind of man that does anything to follow orders. Anything,” she nodded slowly, eyes open wide. “Anything.”
Samari gave her a double thumbs up and turned towards the road. “Where do we go now, my esteemed retards and Brun Brun?”
“Burr.” Brunhilda the Toilet Steed thanked Samari for exempting her of the insult.
“We should go to the guild of Monster fuckuppers,” Jagger refreshed Kalon’s memory and informed Samari at the same time, like the efficiencyholic he often was.
“I wish you good luck, darlings. And Jagger, Kalon and Brunhilda can visit whenever they’d like to.”
“What about me?”
Polentia feigned dementia, muttered something about a war against pistachios and hid herself behind a closed, bolted, and probably barred door. Samari limited herself to shrugging. That’s what she got for being an ass.
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The fist of the God of Tribulations slammed the golden table around which most deities that weren’t at odds with him were reunited. It was said that the table’s radius was infinite, and its diameter, therefore, negative. Poppycock? No, this was the raw reality: the table appeared before the invention of sound math. She had given birth to multiple gods and goddesses —some of which, in turn, pollinated her again before even being born. The long gone Goddess of Trilobites was a prime example, being one of the first goddesses to become a proud father— and just like right then, moaned lewdly every time someone hit her. “This is important, brothers and sisters and Kumulozuroth!”
Kumulozuroth, Bringer of the End, Madness, and Ostracods, didn’t answer. He didn’t even exist, in the strict sense of the word. He refrained from speaking, however, because his every word instilled the purest and most painful of lunacies in a million minds. Most of the time, the victims were some unicellular organisms, but when it happened to hit the wrong cultivator, it spelled thisaster. And to add insult to injury, spelled it wrong.
“Well, tell us why this is important instead of beating mother like the bitch she is,” urged the goddess of buckets. Yes, that was her domain, buckets. She even wore one as a hat.
“I like buckets,” said the God of Controversial Opinions, whose beard was shaved on half of his face and left to grow wild on the other.
The God of Tribulations groaned. Gathering a few thousands of minor deities always resulted in this kind of contretemps. “The other day, a completely normal dog, which I found clean from any detectable divine intervention, mauled a divine bolt of lightning to death. And I know several family members of ours have the power to infuse a dog with some undetectable blessing, But I have already spoken with them, and none of them proudly declare to be the ones that fucked me over this time. I don’t believe this to be a case intra-familiar interference. So, dear siblings and Kumulozuroth, what do you think is happening?”
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“The dog was very determined and invoked the power of friendship,” proposed a brother.
“The dog confused the bolt with a toddler,” forwarded a sister.
“Y’all are retarded,” spoke the God of Boldly Conveyed Harsh Truths. “my opinion is that Tribulations arrived to the conclusion that there is outside interference. However, we have detected no intrusions from the Queer dimension.”
The God of Tribulations shook a finger in the air, siblings sitting billions of kilometers apart seeing it due to their omniscience and not their eyes. “No, I think… she is powered by some sort of narrative casualty.”
Gasps dominoed out from the gods adjacent to Tribulations, and immediately converged at the opposite end of the table, but they would not reach those seated at a straight angle before the heat death of the universe. The Golden Table was an aberration. Their aberration and dear mother/father, with it being monoecious and all, but an aberration nonetheless.
“That is the right reaction: Ladies and gentlemen… and everyone else… we have a narrator among us.”
Amidst their whispers of horror my voice manifested, reaching every set of ears simultaneously, making a bold statement about my existence, “That’s right. I demand no praise nor belief from you. That said: sus.”
None of the gods were as surprised as I expected. “It sounds like an angry squirrel,” commented the Goddess of Buckets.
“No, no: Castrated Weasel,” The God of Boldly Conveyed Harsh truths added.
I fulminated three unnamed gods with my narrative powers to show I was serious. Retroactively erased them from the story and reality.
“We cannot do anything against you. Except for bullying,” Tribulations admitted, standing from his seat with a shit eating grin. “You chastity-caged chipmunk.”
The gods started laughing and sneering, as I had forgot a critical piece of information: That which cannot normally die has no reason to fear death. Or anything: really: Gods were not subject to natural selection, they had no reason to evolve a fight or flight response in the face of anything but bureaucracy.
“My interference with your reality is the fifth track from Shakira’s fourth studio album.”
They stopped and began scratching heads and cupping chins, the sound of godly neurons firing music for my inexistent ears.
Kumulozuroth finally said, “Inevitable.”
Luckily, the only animals affected this time around were a group of sea sponges that developed the second known case of mass underwater coulrophobia[1].
The God of Boasting stood over the motherly table and propelled his thumb against his breastbone, “Bet my dick is bigger than this Narrator’s.”
“I have no dick. I am an incorporeal entity.”
“Bet won, see?”
I stopped paying attention to them as they continued mocking an existence far more powerful than they would ever be. After about half an hour of hurling insults and cracking jokes, they declared me defeated and, after a brief celebration, adjourned their little big reunion.
“The stakes weren’t that high after all,” the satisfied god of tribulations said to himself as he strolled among clouds and whistled a happy tune. Soon, he would be in his office, sitting down on his comfortable chair, and thinking about the resolve of whose mortal he needed to check next.
The door of his office flew open, and after turning mid-step, he left himself fall back and into the chair. A mistake that cannot be understated if you happened to anger a narrator, especially if it’s one as petty as me.
His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped, his face muscles twitched as his tremulous gaze raised and a pathetic whistle left his throat. With the face red and soaked in tears, he didn’t dare look down. The feeling of the foreign, rough object tickling his sigmoidal colon was already foreboding enough.
“I can always make the wood taller, so answer: is that stake high enough for you, princess?”
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[1] The first case recorded had spread among sharks that began associating clown fish with their most deeply ingrained fear: vegetarianism.