1) Back to the grindstone.

Thursday: 3:38 am. My Apartment.

As normal, I wake up still feeling tired.

My contribution of Ambrosia to my Pantheon bought me nearly two hours of sleep from Hypnos. Deep dreamless sleep.

I wanted to roll over to try to rest just a little bit more, but I knew that all too soon the pain would come.

If I don't work, my muscles will cramp, and then begin to spasm.

Work’s my thing. I have to do it.

The gift of Hypnos is divine and it’s the only thing that ever allows me to rest, it's been that way since the position of Ponos, the god of endless toil found its way to me after the Tribulation.

I had been baptized as a child, but other than weddings and going to see babies getting dunked, I had never been much of one for churchgoing, so I didn't get torn through the roof of my apartment on a golden beam of light and pulled up screaming into the sky like my neighbor on the day the Big G decided to collect his toys and abandon the rest of us to whoever felt like showing up.

Mortimer had been a pretty good guy. He always grabbed my deliveries for me while I was out so the porch pirates didn't get them. I hadn't even known he was a Christian until I talked to his family. Apparently, he had found his faith after his wife died and he realized he had to clean up his act if he wanted to join her in Heaven.

“Hope she was waiting for you Mort.”

My right leg had already begun to cramp up, so I threw back my covers, which are more for the weight than warmth, and rolled out of bed.

Sitting on the edge of my mattress, I look up at myself in the mirrored sliding door of my closet.

I’ve been a god for four months now.

The constant work had worn away every inch of the chub I used to carry from eating junk food and playing video games when I wasn't working my three part time jobs last summer. All in an effort to gather up tuition money for school while I had the time before classes started.

Not that I was able to enroll. Attending classes turns out not to be considered work by whatever rules govern gods.

Besides looking nearly gaunt from the lost weight, I mainly looked tired.

Washed out dirty blond hair, dull brown eyes with dark bags underneath. Short with wiry muscles, and looking years older than I am.

And like I always will be. Immortality is one of the things the myths got right.

Along with not having to worry about getting cold, or hot, or thirsty, or hungry.

As long as I work, if I don’t then I get to suffer without being able to die.

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Rubbing at the twitch in my leg, I realize I’ve rested on the edge of the bed for too long. I get up and stretch. I don’t have to work out anymore, and it doesn't count as work anyways, but I can at least stretch to wake up.

Then it’s off the shower in my meticulously clean bathroom.

Cleaning is work, even when it’s for myself.

I take my bike to work. Bike as in two petals, not motor. It's quicker and cheaper than driving a car, and I can claim it because I care about the environment. It's a little harder to go on a date, but that has never been much of an issue for me since I moved to the big city for school.

Now that school isn’t an issue I wonder why I stay here, but it’s not like I can go home.

My family and I don’t get along. Me putting four states between us was a relief for everyone involved.

I get to work at the Diner a bit early and open the place up to get some prep work done before the rest of the staff and the customers begin to drift in.

The Dark Horse used to be an old time bar before a past owner lost the liquor license, rather than try to turn it into a coffee bar, of which the city has all too many, the new owner turned it into a place to get a hot meal.

Nothing fancy, or trendy that anyone would post a picture of. Just some good eats for people who don’t have the time to make a meal for themselves, or worse, never learned to cook.

First I make something for myself. Two eggs, over easy, lightly peppered. Two slices of toast with real butter and banana jelly. A glass of orange juice from concentrate. Three strips of bacon with powdered garlic sprinkled on.

I don’t consider the banana jelly fancy, just odd. The owner likes trying new things, then after trying them decides to let everyone else get the chance to try them too.

It’s the first time I tried it, might be nicer with peanut butter.

Cooking is work, and I can at least benefit from it. I don’t need to eat anymore, but it’s nice to have something in your stomach to start the day.

Alice, the owner showed up next as she came downstairs from the second floor apartment. She’s a skinny woman in his fifties with graying hair. She always looks a little hungry “Good morning Peter.”

I give her a nod in return as I make up her plate without saying a word. It’s the same as mine but three times the food. I’m not sure where she puts it. She understands that I’m not a talker, it's an effort for me, and under most circumstances, it doesn't count as work.

She lets me do my job, pays me, and then I get to go home, or at least get to leave. I wish more of my bosses were like that.

Maybe that is why the divinity came to me.

Phil comes in next and immediately walks up next to me and stands there beaming up at me until I acknowledge her. I sigh. “Morning Phil.”

She hugs me, at least she makes it quick. “Good morning sunshine.”

Then she starts talking to, or rather at, me and Alice about what she and her friends got up to last night. All the while acting like I paying attention. I've been working with her for the last two months and I still don't know if she's clueless or just pretending that I’m involved in the conversation.

Then the early morning crowd begins to roll in. Or in Elwood’s case, just seems to appear on his regular stool at the bar.

“I wish to devour the unborn.”

Elwood makes me look fit and well rested. Besides wanting plain toast to go with his two daily hard boiled eggs, he is typically dressed in a black suit and hat, regardless of the weather, with a tie and a white shirt along with his constant cheap plastic framed sunglasses like a Blues Brother cosplay.

He isn’t much for conversation either, which makes him my favorite customer.

I have to remove the shells from the eggs for him, cooking them isn't enough, I have to prepare the food for him in my role as a god.

It is what brings the customers, the food of the gods, for the gods.

I don’t know what name Elwood was given, or Alice either. Phil embraced her name Philotes and is from the same Pantheon as me. Something that was absorbed by the Olympians in mythology after the Flood and didn’t have a name anymore.

The Primordials was suggested on our forum as something for us to go by, and we’ve gone with that.

Philotes was some kind of disembodied goddess of good things, like friendship, relationships, and kindness. All of which makes her really good at being a hostess.

I kind of hate her, she's an extrovert who literally feeds on socializing. But she was just so nice, genuinely nice.

“Bah.”

Elwood looks up from the egg he's sliced up thin before layering on his bread, looking over at Phil, he nods in understanding. He gets me.

The rest of the creeps and ghouls drift in and order their meals. Most of the people we get before dawn are the night crew. Gods, goddesses, and others of the less nice aspects who like a touch of despair with their food.

It's an even trade, they get food made by a god, and I get to work for other divinities which is worth more for me than doing a mortals yard work.

Then the sky begins to turn a pastel pallet of colors as the sun begins to rise, and the morning rush begins to fade away. I collect my tip jar of nickels, dimes, obols, and small bones for Alice to add to my paycheck, offer up at the Temple of all Gods, and pass on to the harvest god that works here in the evening for his mulch heap, respectively, and then go and sit in the back booth.

The one that the sun never touches.

It was time for my next job.