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Other Gods

For all the victims of senseless violence.

Light shines in the high windows above the iron rafters, tracing a path through the glass bodies of a row of beer and pop bottles so that it pools on the ground in an array of reds, browns, and greens. Despite all the empty space, the air is musty and dull; motes float by the corners of my vision. In all, I have the impression of standing in the nave of a Cathedral.

I suppose that’s appropriate; I’ve come here seeking a God.

Memphis is exactly the type of God you’d expect to find in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of an English town where the railway, now retired, had once been the spine of a flourishing industrial-park. He, like the building, is forgotten and rusty, and passersby avert their eyes in favour of whatever view is directly opposite the disagreeable creature.

“Memphis,” I whisper into the warehouse. Faint echoes of my voice come back to me. I hate that I’m here, leaving tracks in the undisturbed layer of dust on the cracked concrete. There’s something sacred about this place; it’s not a virgin structure — quite the opposite — but it has the innocents of age, of the elderly. Regardless, I call again.

“Memphis.”

A form huddled against one of the steel walls, covered by a pile of threadbare fabric, shifts. I walk to it, unconsciously rising to tip-toes to avoid making noise.

“Why do you sneak?” comes a rattle of a voice from beneath the blankets.

“I don’t sneak,” I reply, still a whisper.

“You’ve come to devour me again?” Memphis asks. The blankets shake with his laughter.

“No. I came because you called.”

Memphis has a habit of forgetting how this works: he’s the God, I the servant.

I spend most of my free time roaming, seeing the world, and every once in a while I begin shivering; yearning to be elsewhere. Elsewhere always turns out to be Memphis.

I don’t know why he calls himself that. It’s possible he doesn’t call himself that at all, and he just finds amusement in having me use the fictitious title. He’d once implied, looking longingly into a pint of ale, that he’d been born there. But Gods aren’t born, they’re made. Perhaps he’d been placed there, created there — I must admit, though I’m a divine being myself, I don’t know the inner workings of heavenly matters. I’m a peon. My divinity is a gift I’m not permitted to question. I was created distinctly without the impulse to question my own existence, much.

Laughter turns to snoring and I give the lazy God a kick.

Memphis stretches and stands. The blankets fall, blowing up a cloud of dust that makes me wonder how long he’s been lying here. Before me, as the last veil of fabric falls, stands a tall, thin woman wearing a pink and yellow show-girl costume, complete with tiara and feathers.

“You always wake me.” His voice still rattles with old world masculinity and a the damage of too many cigarettes.

“Where will it happen today?” I ask, watching him put on a pair of strappy pink heels.

“Vegas, of course. Why else would I dress like this?”

I hate rhetorical questions. They make my skin itch.

He waves me off with a distinctly feminine gesture, accompanied with batted eyes and a dimpled smile. He begins strutting out of the warehouse.

I follow, my own clothes changing; my jeans and gray dress shirt exchanged for a policemen’s uniform. I’d be relieved for not having to put on a show-girls outfit, or something equally ridiculous did this uniform not make my skin itch even more. I finger the holstered gun on my hip.

“It will be bad?” I ask.

“It will be marvellous.” His voice is high and pretty now, with an accent I can’t place.

We exit the warehouse, and though I had only entered the dark, cavernous building moments before, I find myself raising my hand against the bright sun. Memphis, who’d presumably been a hermit as of late, is unaffected by the brilliant September air. He sticks his face in it and shakes his feathers at it, daring the sunlight to outshine him.

Beside us, resting against the building, are a pair of dirty unfortunates; homeless, taking refuge here. They hadn’t moved from their hunched guard when I’d entered, and they didn’t move now. They sit like Gothic gargoyles before their holy shrine.

My cell phone begins to vibrate and I take it from my pocket. There’s a text message, from whom I can only assume is a higher power than myself, which consists only of a list of names. I scroll through the list, dismayed.

“So many.”

“A concert this time,” Memphis says. Then he smiles. “You know, they’ll worship me more in this form than in my own.”

I can feel him already reaching out to the void. He’ll search for our location then pull it toward us. That’s the sensation; like it’s moving to us instead of us moving to it.

“Who?” I risk asking.

“You ask so many questions.” Memphis accuses me in the way he raises his brow: a gesture I recognize well despite the slender female form he’s wearing. “A lone shooter,” Memphis says, deciding to answer me.

“One man? But so many names…can’t we tell someone? Stop it before it happens?” This time I deserve the look he gives me. I don’t always remember things the way I know I should. My thoughts get scrambled, and it only grows worse each time I’m called to Memphis. But somehow I know that this is a question I’ve asked before.

“That isn’t the job of Gods. Not Gods like us, anyway.”

A concert. Crowded venues are always tragic. Of course, Memphis and I seldom get together in the absence of tragedy. He is, after all, the God of silent heroes. That’s what he calls them: heroes who spring up from their normal mundane lives. I imagine this occasionally includes those who get kittens out of trees or perform the Heimlich maneuver at restaurants, and I guess Memphis sees his fair share of these instances. But I’m not around for those. So long as everyone is breathing, I’m not needed.

I’m no God of silent heroes. My sole responsibility is to guide retched souls to their next vocations, whatever that may be; my status doesn’t make me privy to such things.

I say retched because I take only the innocent and murdered souls. Accidents and health problems are the domain of some other deity. I take the wronged souls, often never to be avenged.

They are, more than anything else, confused. I hope someone at their destination explains it to them. I hope, one day, someone will explain it to me.

I put my phone away. I can feel the void growing near and Memphis starts to walk towards it. Vegas is approaching with all its lights and music and gaiety. Screams brake out before the concert ground fully arrives and I can already feel the souls gathering, confused and afraid and not yet aware they’re dead. I can see people throwing themselves on top of one another; Memphis’ silent heroes are here in force.

Time warps around Memphis and I. As I finish collecting the names on my list I look around for him. My job is always done far sooner than his. I spot him in the arms of a man carrying him away from the human wreckage. I watch the man. He has no idea he’s carrying a God in his arms. His God. At least for today.

I wish to stay, to help, and for a moment question again why we couldn’t have done something, but I don’t have the will to question my purpose for long. My responsibilities are heavy about me. I gather them up, all the sad, confused souls, and call for the void.

I spare a final glance for Memphis. He’s sprawled in the back of a pickup, blood on his shoulder, head resting against a woman who’s hugging him. His eyes are closed. He’s lost some of his feathers.

I step into the void and let it bring back to me, only for a moment, the warehouse. I let the souls spread out around the space, step into the dusty light of this empty, skeletal structure, and just exist. I learned long ago that in this state souls share my plight of being unable to question their own existence. I like to let them be for a while before they move on; to be without so much as an implied question before they receive, like it or not, all the answers.

I leave them to it while I sit outside by one of the gargoyles, sharing a ship from a bottle of bitter nectar, and think about the silent heroes still at work.

It becomes clear to me why I manage to keep myself, more or less, together, while Memphis losses his mind: without tragedy, there can be no heroes, not even small, silent ones.

But even this clarity, I’m sure will be forgotten. Next time I’ll ask the very same questions again. I always do.

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