The Gods Are Out Inn E-Book

M. L. Buchman

• Herausgeber: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

-a Deities Anonymous story- Sometimes even the most tolerant of Goddesses can’t deal with the shortcomings of the Gods. After 14 billion years as the Devil Incarnate, Michelle just wants a quiet beer with her friends. • But the Norse Goddess Freyja is on the verge of a nervous breakdown brought on by Odin and his odious son Thor. • Macbeth’s witches are in the corner chortling over a new collection of dirty tales. • The bartender, a diminutive angel with a speed-talking disorder, has a mind of her own—which was not standard issue. Who does Michelle have to banish to get a drink at The Gods Are Out Inn?

Leseprobe

The Gods Are OutInn

a Deities Anonymous story

M. L. Buchman

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Contents

The Gods Are Out Inn

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The Gods Are OutInn

“That doesn’t look like a beer and a bump.” Michelle glared at the glass Henrietta set atop the battered oaken bar and tried to figure out what it did look like. The light was dim enough that it was hard to see exactly what it was, but it definitely wasn’t a beer andbump.

There was a general blueness to the drink—like a glass full of Windex—that was likely to be Curacao, an orange-flavored and typically bitter liqueur. Floating about in it were balls of red that weren’t cherries, but might have been congealed Campari, an herbaceous liqueur that was also bitter. The deep-red globules slowly rose and fell in blue Curacao as if theywere…

“It looks like sunsets,” Henrietta’s tiny expression was round-eyed with wonder as she gazed into the curvaceous Hurricane glass that overtopped her by several inches. “Don’t you just love sunsets? I do and who wants a beer and a shot of whiskey when they can have sunsets? Really, Michelle. You must have more imagination. Look, see, now they’re rising now. Sunrises!” Her voice practically squeaked with joy. The foot-tall angel was so pleased that her wings lifted her several inches off the bar for a moment. Once she landed, she took one last admiring glance at her creation, then walked down the bar to serve the latest arrival. As she walked along, she gathered up Michelle’s scattered peanut shells and stood up on her tiptoes to tip them into an emptybowl.

Michelle sipped at the drink reluctantly and it felt as if her face—her entire head—was trying to shrivel into one giant pucker. She hadn’t noticed the thin layer of pure lemon juice that floated atop the Curacao. It must represent light gray clouds or some such; Henrietta hadn’t explained and now that she was on to other things, there would be no point in asking either. The drink was surprisingly close to sucking on a bitter lemon.

Michelle took another cautious taste and decided that it wasn’t quite as bad as that but it was close. Maybe she was getting used to it. She poked at a rising sun of Campari with her straw and sucked it dry. With its center gone, it imploded, much as a black hole would. The combination of the bitterness of a burned-out sun, the cosmic power to collapse it, and the high alcohol content was growing onher.

Of course, being the Devil Incarnate, she was used to wielding cosmic power, even if she was here in this bar trying to forgetthat.

“Hey!” The newcomer called out. “Come back here. This isn’t what I ordered.”

Michelle looked up to see her old friend Freyja glaring down at her drink as Henrietta fluttered off to check on one of the tables. Michelle glanced up to make sure the ceiling fans weren’t running—Henrietta had never really understood fans and would often get sucked up into them and have to be extracted. There was nothing in all creation worse than a dizzy angel with a speed-talking disorder.

“What did she giveyou?”

Freyja scowled down at her glass causing her long sun-blond tresses to fall down and cover her perfect breasts; the mortal artists had always rendered her naked from the waist up and now she was stuck with thelook.

Michelle and Joshua the One God had been around since before the boot-up of the Software That Ran the Universe fourteen billion years ago and she’d thankfully avoided the whole horns, red skin, and tail thing that mortals came up with later—though there were times that she thought a tail might have been fun. Still, she was happy with the Amazonian body that made men—mortal and not—weep, long dark curly hair that curled too much when it was humid, and her own choices for clothing, mostly from the Levi’s store.

“Hard apple cider,” Freyja grimaced as she took another sip. “I am not Iounn—no matter what Richard Wagner said in the Ring operas. I am not the keeper of the golden apples of youth. I am the Norse goddess of sex, war, and death. I don’t want hard apple cider. I don’tli—”

“Have you ever won an argument with Henrietta?”

Freyja sighed and took a sip of her hard cider, “No. But I hate apples.”

“I’ll trade you,” not that Michelle was a big fan of hard cider either, but the Norse goddess looked as if she’d had a hardday.

Freyja eyed Michelle’s drink and shook her head in a sullenno.

Business was slow at the Gods Are Out Inn, but it would pick up soon. When Michelle had designed the place, she’d embedded a fire-and-brimstone mesh in the walls—which had other uses than leveling Sodom and Gomorrah. That had all been a terrible misunderstanding that Joshua still didn’t like to talk about. The mesh made her bar the only place where Universal God-fi didn’t reach. No godly commands could be issued from in here, but far more importantly there was a complete block on inbound prayers, supplications, and other importunings. It was the one place a god or goddess could go and find a little mental peace and quiet.

No constant begging for forgiveness after cheating on the diet, the stock market, or a spouse reached through the walls. No whining prayers for special help with the diet, the stock market, or someone else’s spouse made it in either.

A small choir of angels fluttered in from the back door, giggling and teasing each other as they arranged themselves in one corner of the bar. Soon they were rocking out a version of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor in nine-part harmony. They tended to sing alphabetically so they’d be into Muddy Waters soon which was good—the Mass was a little heavy for a evening of drinking—though she was sorry to have missed the Motley Crue and Motorhead that they must have sung last night.

Over the years the bar had built up an impressive collection of artifacts until the room was pleasantly cluttered with paraphernalia taken from some god or other. It gave the place a nice homeyfeel.

Wotan’s shattered staff hung from rafters that were carved from charred remains of the One Tree. Parvati had taken away Shiva’s sword after he’d used it to cut off his son Ganesha’s head and replaced it with an elephant’s. The sword now hung above the breadboard, though Michelle occasionally used it to shave the meat for gyros when she was in the mood. Moses’ whicker baby basket that had floated him safely down the Nile now sat on the end of the bar with a handwritten sign that said “Tips” in Aramaic, written in Mary Magdalene’s fine script.

“Speaking of the Devil!” Jesus’ wife sat on the stool between her and Freyja. Mary offered Michelle a sideways hug and even Freyja seemed a little cheered by her presence.

Henrietta fluttered back from where Macbeth’s trio of witches were telling bawdy stories in Old Welsh about Taliesin the Irish bard. The angel’s cheeks were flaming red as she fluttered to a rest in front of Mary and delivered a glass of lightly-chilled Chardonnay.

“Thank you, Henrietta.”

The little angel only nodded before fluttering off, too discomfited to even speak—a historic first in Michelle’s experience. She was definitely going to have to join the witches shortly and hear some of those stories herself.

“How did you get that?” Freyja still sounded grumpy.