Dominion

by Bentley Little

  They emerged from between two mutated pink pair trees. Penelope walked slowly forward, wiping the swe from her face. This was Olympus? She had expect Greek buildings, green fields, flowers. Instead, there we bodies floating on the lake and, several yards down, cluster of rude huts made from plywood and dead branches.

  Dionysus was nowhere in sight.

  “What do we do now?” Kevin asked. “Wait for him show?”

  “We find him,” Penelope said.

  They started walking along the shore of the lake towa the huts. The water was dirty, brown, polluted not oalji with bodies but with the wreckage of boats. The mi smelled of sewage.

  Kevin gagged, plugged his nose.

  The plants were no longer as brightly spectacular they had been on the climb up. They were still strange! but the colors seemed off, the bold designs closer to mutations than miracles. It was as if the closer they came the center of the wheel, the closer they got to the god, more things seemed as though they were beginning to unravel.

  They trudged silently through the sludge until thej reached the small assemblage of makeshift structures! Here, bodies were not only floating in the water, the^ were buried in the mud, stiffened arms acting as post’ supporting the bottoms of plywood walls. The stagna air seemed unusually heavy, the atmosphere forbidding*!

  What had happened? It had not been like this whe she’d seen Dionysus before. Then the atmosphere been festive, seductively hedonistic, the opposite of dour oppressiveness. Was he spreading himself too Was he losing his power because of some inner strugj gle? Was he simply too drunk and dissipated to functie properly?

  Or had he intended his new Olympus to look like this? No, she didn’t think so. She walked forward slowl^f The huts were all small, six feet high at the most, the of storage sheds. One of them had a facade that looked like a smaller version of the Parthenon—the plywood and . tree branches metamorphosed into white marble—but the attempt was halfhearted, and there had been no similar effort made with the other structures.

  Penelope stepped around a naked leg protruding from the mud and looked inside the open entrance of the first hut.

  Mother Margeaux lay naked in the mud on the floor of the darkened shack.

  Penelope stepped back, startled. But she did not look away, and she instantly moved forward again, stepping into the small structure.

  Mother Margeaux lay curled in a modified fetal position, her face contorted in agony. Her body was bloated, nearly bursting, the filthy skin stretched taut over a fat face, overstuffed arms, enormous legs, grossly distended abdomen. She screamed, straightened, thrusting bloody hips into the air, then slumped back, the scream turning into manic laughter.

  “Mother?” Penelope whispered.

  Mother Margeaux stopped laughing. She looked up, smiled slyly, knowingly. “It’s Zeus. He’s growing inside me.”

  Penelope froze, cold washing over her. She knew instantly what had happened. She had not been willing to mate with Dionysus and give birth to the other gods—so her mother had offered herself to Dionysus instead.

  But Penelope could tell by looking at her mother that it had not worked.

  Mother Margeaux was pregnant, but she would not give birth to a god. She was not able to.

  And the pregnancy was killing her.

  Her mother laughed again, wildly. She reached behind her, into the shadows, and drew out a wineskin, holding it above her face and letting the red liquid squirt into her mouth. “God, what a cock he has!”

  Penelope took another step into the room. Her head was buzzing, although she didn’t know if it was from the wine or the stress. A ray of sunlight streamed in as she moved out of the doorframe, and for the first time she saw why her mother’s thighs were bloody.

  There was a huge hole torn between her legs.

  She’d been split open.

  Inside the hole something white and slimy moved| squirmed.

  Kevin pushed past her, screwdriver raised, but Penelf ope held him back.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “But she’s—”

  “She’s dying.”

  “She’s giving birth!”

  Penelope’s head was pounding. She smelled bloody tasted wine, and she wanted to fuck, wanted to kill. She imagined jumping on her mother, digging her nails her mother’s skin, biting her flesh, ripping out her he She closed her eyes. No. She couldn’t give in. She ha to save it for Dionysus.

  “I had him before you did!” Mother Margeaux cackle “Even if you fuck him, I had him first! And I’m carrying his baby! I’m carrying his father! I’m carrying Zeus!”

  Penelope held on to Kevin’s arm, pulled him out of I hut. “Leave her.”

  “I’ll kill her if you can’t.”

  “She’ll die anyway.”

  “She might not.”

  He was right, she realized. As uncaring as she want to be, as dispassionate as she’d been about April’s pron ise to kill her mothers, as sick and empty as she felt about Mother Felice, she could not bear to see Mother Ma geaux die. As an idea, as a concept, she could deal witi it, but seeing her mother here, she felt her pain. She stij retained feelings for her, and that was why she was equ” vocating, rationalizing, stalling.

  Silently, she let go of Kevin’s arm.

  She stared at the ground as he walked back into the ha part of her thought that her mother would rip him ap No matter how sick and hurt she was, she was a nad. He was a high school kid. But Penelope would go in there, would not help him. Whatever happened pened. It was out of her hands.

  Then she heard her mother screaming. There was laughter this time, only pain, and there was another low sound, a deep, wet gurgling.

  Zeus?

  A moment later, a hand touched her shoulder, a bloody hand that felt warm and sticky on her skin, and she saw Kevin. His face was white, blanched. He had left his screwdriver behind.

  She said nothing, he said nothing, but the two of them walked through the circle of huts, peeking inside the other structures, seeing only mud and blood and bones. The other structures were empty.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, tried to stop the pounding in her skull.

  It hadn’t worked.

  That’s what struck her most about it all. It hadn’t worked. Dionysus had returned, but he wasn’t Dionysus anymore. He was this … half god. He was there, in that body, but Dion was too. The old gods might have planned to be resurrected, but they had not been able to see into the future and had not foreseen what this world would be like.

  Their plan had failed.

  And Holbrook and his fellow keepers of the flame had turned out to be little more than glorified pen pals, not the guardians of the earth they obviously aspired to be. They might have been the first to understand what was going on, but they’d had no idea how to stop it.

  Wasn’t that always the way of it, though? So-called experts planned for emergencies and convinced themselves and everyone else that they were prepared for any contingency, yet when something happened, they were inevitably shoved into the background by some nobody who rose to the occasion.

  Like her.

  Although she wasn’t exactly a nobody. She was involved. A minor player perhaps, but a player nonetheless.

  And now it was up to her to finish this off.

  She opened her eyes, glanced around. Where was Dionysus? He didn’t seem to be here. Had he gone back down to the valley? Her eyes searched the perimeter of the lake.

  Nothing.

  She moved forward, past the last hut.

  And there he was.

  He lay passed out on the ground, nearly hidden in trees that bordered the shoreline, his feet protruding tween two bushes that were half normal and half alter their transformation obviously halted in midstream.

  She glanced over at Kevin. Could it be this easyf Could they really have gotten this lucky? After ever thing they’d been through, after all of the difficultie they’d faced, was the ending going to be this simple? Wa Dionysus going to be handed to
them on a silver platterl It felt almost anticlimactic.

  And then he stirred.

  They stopped walking, stood unmoving. There was roar, a yawn, and the big feet shifted.

  The god stood. He saw them.

  He stared at Penelope. She stared back.

  He was starting to fall apart, and it wrenched her hea to see him. The flesh on his expanded frame was beginning to wrinkle and droop;

  capillaries had burst in bi| skin, leaving flowery tendrils behind. His face nov looked like neither Dion’s nor Dionysus’. It was more an unsuccessful hybrid of the two, closer to the boy on moment, closer to the god the next.

  Her reaction to him must have been obvious, becaus he backed a few steps into the trees, trying to hide in shadows. “The timing’s off,” he said, and though hi^ voice was loud, it was no longer as commanding as it ha been. There was something puzzled and vulnerable in it| “Everything is … happening … quicker than it should. f Penelope nodded.

  “I was supposed to have a year.”

  She cleared her throat. “I know.”

  “The season’s over already.”

  He was dying too. They were right. His coming thrown off and speeded up the seasons. But though was the cause of it, he was not in control of it. He was victim of it.

  “I know why you’re here,” he told her. He glanced ward Kevin. “Both of you.”

  Kevin’s voice was quiet, the certainty gone. “Dion?” |

  “Not anymore.” He reached into the tree next to bin withdrew an oversize wineskin. “Fuck, I need a drink.” He held the pouch to his face, ripped it open. Wine gushed into his mouth, spilling down his chin and onto his chest. He sighed heavily, satisfied, and emerged from the trees, stepped onto the shore. He grimaced, concentrating, and there was a ripple in the air, a shimmering. His skin smoothed, his muscles flattened, the burst blood vessels faded.

  He walked toward them. His penis was hard, and he was stroking himself, staring at Penelope’s breasts. Despite everything, she wanted him. She knew she couldn’t have him, knew she had to kill him, but she wanted to lay down before him and have him mount her. She wanted to be ripped open like Mother Margeaux. She wanted to be impregnated with his seed.

  He smiled as if he knew what she was thinking. “Yes,” he said.

  She shook her head weakly. “No.”

  He smiled at Kevin. “Both of you. I’ll love both of you.”

  Kevin spat. “I always had my doubts about you, Dion.”

  A frown passed over the god’s face. And something else. A human expression. A look that seemed defiantly out of place on the oversize features. His lips started to speak—a retort—but then the impulse was squashed, the face smoothed out.

  Penelope felt sick. Dion was still in there.

  “We can break the cycle,” the god said. “It’s a new world. The old rules don’t apply.” He smiled lustily. “You can give birth to me, and I’ll never die.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll fuck you—”

  “It won’t work.”

  He had reached them. He touched her, picked her up. She did not struggle. He held her, licked her breasts with his enormous tongue.

  Despite her desire, it did not feel good, as she’d expected. It felt coarse and at the same time slimy.

  That gave her the strength to twist out of his grasp.

  He was surprised, as much by the attempt as by her strength, and she fell to the mud in front of him, quickly scrambling away.

  “I’d give birth to the other gods, to Zeus and Hermes and … whoever. I

  can’t give birth to you.”

  “Yes, you can,” he said excitedly. “I can do it.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “You’ll have to do it.” His face was a frightening amalgam of rage and resolve and lust. “I’ll make you do it.”

  Dionysus, she understood, was like a child. A spoiled, petulant child.

  His needs were simple, his actions obvious. There was no subtlety to his behavior. He was easily predictable.

  Holbrook had been right. These creatures weren’t gods. Monsters, maybe.

  But not gods.

  But had his power waned enough for her to fight him? She didn’t think so.

  She wished she’d drunk the entire bottle of wine. The maenads were supposed to tear apart Dionysus. As a strong maenad against a weak god, she might have had a chance.

  Could she have enlisted the help of her mothers?

  Would they have done it on their own anyway?

  Either way, it was too late to do anything about it. Hindsight was always 20/20, and though she’d do things differently if she’d known then what she knew now, at this point she could only move forward.

  She closed her eyes, let herself go, letting rage fill her. She held nothing back, took off all of the emotional restraints she’d been carefully trying to maintain. She was a maenad. It was about time she started acting like one.

  She leaped at his crotch.

  She acted instinctively, her rational mind now at the mercy of the wildness within her. Her nails touched flesh, and she dug in, clawing crazily, feeling the invigorating heat of blood, hearing the delicious sounds of pain. She squeezed a giant testicle with both hands, and then she was thrown by an astonishing bolt of power that threw her back into one of the huts. She lay there stunned as the mud surrounding her melted and blackened into glass.

  Dionysus rushed her. There was lust in his eyes, an unfathomable anger in his countenance. And then … it was gone.

  He reached her, picked her up, and his touch was surprisingly gentle.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  His voice was Dion’s.

  She started crying. It was too much. She didn’t know what to do, she didn’t know how to react, she didn’t know … anything. One moment he was letting her go, the next moment he was trying to kill her. She knew Dionysus was a divided, schizophrenic god—the result of the wine—but she hadn’t realized that it would throw her so off balance.

  No, it wasn’t anything to do with Dionysus. It was Dion. If this had been anyone else, she wouldn’t be so confused. She wouldn’t feel so …

  conflicted.

  He kissed her gently on the top of the head. “I love you,” he said.

  She blinked away the tears. “I love you too,” she admitted.

  He turned his head. “I’m sorry!” he called to Kevin.

  She looked over and saw that Kevin that been thrown into the water of the lake and was furiously paddling between two dead bodies, trying to reach the shore.

  They’d gotten a break. Anger, fear, love—something had allowed Dion to maintain control of the god’s form for a lot longer than ever before.

  She knew it could disappear at any second, so she quickly took his huge face in her hands and said, “I have to kill you.”

  “I know.” He looked into her eyes, and she saw an echo of his old self.

  She recognized the way he blinked his eyes, the way his eyebrows moved.

  She started to cry again, and he used a finger to wipe her tears. “I was going to ask you to kill me. I won’t fight.”

  There was so much she wanted to ask, so much she wanted to say, but there was no time. His tentative hold could slip at any second, and then they’d be dead.

  “Your mother loves you too,” she said.

  And she tore him apart.

  As promised, he did not put up a fight She let loose, and even she was shocked by the power within her, by the extent of the wildness, by the violence of which she was capable. Like a cartoon character, like a whirlwind, she burrowed into him, through him, rending flesh, breaking bone, slashing organs. She kept moving—kicking, clawing, grabbing, digging—and she was screaming and crying at the same time, the saltiness of his blood mingling with the saltiness of her own tears, and she continued on, unable to stop, tearing apart not Dion but the thing that had stolen Dion, the thing that had taken him from he
r.

  She collapsed, exhausted. Her vocal cords were hurt from screaming, but the tears were still streaming down her blood-soaked face. There was nothing left of Dionysus. There was no head, no hand, no foot, no finger. Nothing even remotely recognizable. There were only bits of bone and flesh, scattered over an amazingly long section of shore. And blood.

  A lot of blood.

  Kevin stood staring at her, still in the water. There was fear on his face, fear of her, and though she wanted to reassure him that everything was okay, everything was all right, she did not.

  She had killed Dion.

  She had loved him.

  And she had killed him.

  Already she felt different. Tired. She wondered what was happening down in the valley. Were the people still drinking, still partying, still celebrating? Or with the god’s influence gone, were they shaking their heads and coming to, as if awakening from a bad dream, wondering where they were and what had happened? She looked up. The trees and bushes had not changed back. The ones he had transformed were still in the shapes he had made them.

  What had happened to the satyrs and the centaurs and the nymphs?

  God, she felt tired. She leaned back, her head resting on soft, cooling flesh.

  Kevin walked over, stood next to her. He looked down at her form, but there was nothing sexual in his gaze, only 1 worry. She realized that she did not feel anything sexual ^ either.

  Not even when she thought of Dion.

  “What’s to stop him from coming back?” Kevin asked finally.

  “There are no maenads left. Only me.”

  “But he’s a cyclical god, right? He dies each year and is reborn?”

  “He never brought the others back. There’s no one to bring him back. He was a god of flesh, and his flesh is no more.”

  “That’s all then? That’s it?”

  She nodded tiredly. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess it is.”

  She lay there for a while, Kevin still standing next to her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds—she thought. But when she opened them, it was dark, it was night. Kevin was still standing above her, watching her with concern.

  She sat up, her head thumping.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah,” she said, and surprisingly, she did feel better. “I