Sloth

by Hildred Billings

  Her corner of the subcommittee office was smaller than her personal one upstairs, but she didn’t care, as long as there was ample room to do her bookwork. She leaped up and down from her seat, dithering with this and working with that. The men scratched their heads.

  “Mercy’s lost it,” said Charlie, a man with a bald spot.

  “Must be her time of the month… the manic part of her bipolar month.,” said another.

  “Hey, if she wants to do our work, why not let her?” Bill, the man always in Mercy’s space and flirting with her face, said. “More free time for us. Anyone see the new Star Wars movie? How about them special effects?”

  This went on all day, with Mercy filing, typing, calculating, and creating enough charts to choke her laptop. When she wasn’t scribbling something, she was mumbling to herself, wasting more energy that she could never get rid of, so help her God. “If it’s going to be done right, then I’m going to do it,” she said, picking up a stack of folders and delivering them to the chairman. She promised to have a full report for the budget by the end of the week. Mr. Slater slowly nodded, and asked Mercy if this was really her own work. Of course it was! Didn’t he say that she was the most productive member of the board? Of the world?

  “Mercy,” said a soft voice the moment she closed the chairman’s office door.

  “Huh?” Mercy turned, meeting the concerned countenance of her subcommittee leader, Rashid. “Can this be quick? I have work to get back to.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. If you have time, of course.”

  “Time? Who has time for anything? I’ve got receipts to go through and a shitton of math to calculate. Do you know calculus? Because I’m about to take a crash course in it.”

  Rashid pulled his lips back into a wary look. “Are you getting enough rest?”

  “Excuse me?” For the first time all week – possibly all month – Mercy stopped to focus on one bite of information.

  “I don’t mean this in any demeaning way, Mercy, but…” He should have probably stopped right there. “You’re looking a bit… haggard… recently.”

  “Excuse me?” What was this? A beauty pageant?

  Rashid looked up and down the hallway before continuing. “I mean that you’re exerting an awful amount of energy, and I’m afraid it’s going to bite you in the ass. Your eyes are bloodshot, your skin is pale, and it looks like you haven’t brushed your hair in days. How many hours of sleep are you getting?”

  Mercy stood back, aghast. “I get enough sleep!”

  “How much?”

  “I’ll have you know that I slept three hours last night.” She tried to make it two, but a very stirring sex dream kept her in bed an extra hour.

  “Three hours?” Rashid nearly dropped the folders in his hands. “Is that how much you’ve been sleeping every night?”

  “What? Like I don’t have shit to do?” Clean the house, cook meals, masturbate with her new, high-powered sex toy, go over the budget, read the business journals and magazines, masturbate again, deal with idiots like Bill, blah-dee-blah-blah…

  “The human body isn’t meant to only sleep that much every night!”

  Mercy would hardly call herself human anymore, having been blessed by two deities. Lust gave her ceaseless physical energy while greed made her brain work 24/7. What did Rashid want from her? To go to hypnotherapy? As if! She was the only woman on this team, and like hell she wouldn’t use this change to up her productivity! Yet she couldn’t exactly say this to Rashid, now could she?

  “I’m taking care of myself,” she insisted, turning away from the man who told her what to do on the subcommittee. She headed back to the main office, where she would stash herself away in her cozy corner and shut out the world around her. What a nosy sonnuva…

  Speaking of sons of women of ill-repute, Bill was up to no good again.

  “Hey, Mercy!” Bill called, as she hoofed it to her corner office. “Thinking about slowing down there anytime soon?”

  She glared at him.

  “I take that as a no, eh? Damn, you sure have a lot of fire in you lately.” He leaned back in his seat at a community table in the middle of the main office, where employees of all stations were encouraged to “collaborate.” Mercy never sat there. Too many people. Too many men like Bill attempting to use it as a chance to flirt. “I do like that in a woman. They say the best lovers are those with crazy energy.”

  “Do they?” Mercy was only half-listening to him. Bill was always harassing her. Used to be it pissed her off. Now? She was too focused on her work to give a shit what a cheating scumbucket said or did, as long as he didn’t touch her. “I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that, then.”

  Bill’s feet slipped off the table when he attempted to swing them onto the surface.

  He tried to ask her out a few more times that day, but she ignored him every time. Eventually, the other board members and management goons began making fun of him, goading him that a “smart bitch like that isn’t ever going to fall for your shit, Bill,” and other forms of teasing. Mercy chose to ignore it. Deep down she registered it, but what was she supposed to do? Clap Bill on the back and say, “Good job! Your persistence has paid off and now you get to fuck me!” He’d probably want to do it in the supply closet. He probably thought that was kinky.

  It was dark outside by the time she realized most of her coworkers had gone home and left her with unpaid overtime. Again.

  “Mercy,” Rashid said from the office door. “You really should go home soon. It’s almost seven. Come on, the cleaning crew is going to be up here any minute and they complained the last time you were in their way.”

  How was that Mercy’s problem? How could Rashid not see how important it was for her to get this mess sorted? “Fine.” She flipped her binder shut and turned off her desk lamp. She put on her jacket and picked up her bag. “I’ll go. I have to clean my house, anyway. Haven’t cleaned it from top to bottom in two days.” She needed to perfectly assess what she was going to do with the empty spots on her wall. A gallery had come into town, and she wanted to make a few purchases to show off at her next party. Whenever that would be… Possibly next week, if she stayed up an extra hour every night to prepare for it. Showing off her wealth was more important than anything. Well, except maybe sex.

  Rashid walked with her out of the office. “Are you driving home or taking public transport?” he asked in the elevator. Couldn’t this thing go any faster? Mercy watched the numbers tick by as she listened to her supervisor.

  “Driving. Public transport takes up too much time.”

  “I see. I thought you were into being frugal?”

  “Doesn’t matter now. Public transport takes up too much time.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Because it’s true!”

  Mercy definitely didn’t have time for Rashid’s asinine comments. She bolted from the elevator as soon as she could, locating her car in the parking garage and zooming toward traffic.

  She went through everything she wanted to do as soon as she got home – which would be soon enough, since she weaved in and out of the lanes. “I need to make dinner,” she muttered, honking her horn at a molasses-slow Volvo right in front of her. “Do the laundry. Iron my clothes. Organize my closet. Clean everything!” The next vehicle to get a honk was a pickup truck going the speed limit. What was everyone’s problem? Couldn’t they see that some people had things to do? Not her issue if everyone else was content with letting life creep by! Besides, Mercy once heard on some science channel that the faster someone moved, the slower they aged. Or some mumbo-jumbo theory-of-relativity shit like that.

  By the time she reached her house, she had nearly worn a hole out of her gas pedal. She swerved into her driveway and opened the car door before turning the damn thing off.

  “I’ve got so much shit to do,” she mumbled, switching on the foyer light and dumping her bag by a plastic plant. Her stomach rumbled, but there was no sense feedi
ng it now when life demanded so much of her! Frazzled, Mercy turned toward her living room, intent on finding her handheld duster.

  The moment she entered the dark room, she kicked something that sent her stumbling to the floor.

  Of all the things to make Mercy’s life flash before her eyes, did it have to be this mess of a klutzy moment? As she thrust her hands in front of her to catch her fall on the coffee table, she saw images of events and people she never wanted to think about again. Being bullied in middle school because of my braces and my locker covered in pictures of Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. That one always made her grimace. Losing my virginity in the back of a bad butch’s pickup truck, who was soooo awful at sex that I wondered why I bothered. She liked to think she made up for it. Had she, though? Tripping and falling in my college graduation robes when I was called up to get my diploma. Not her finest moment. Farting during my interview with my company. They must have still liked her enough to hire her. The fetishists. Meeting Marissa at a lesbian mixer where the margaritas flowed a little too freely. The way Marissa left her, after making sure to destroy Mercy’s self-esteem and slap her around a few times.

  Why did she have to see that before she crashed against her coffee table?

  Mercy didn’t die, though. The worst that happened was rolling her ankle and bruising her hands when they caught her fall. She yelped, before sinking to the floor where the darkness still reigned.

  What was that about?

  She turned on the lamp by the couch, expecting to see the rug bunched up against the entrance to the living room. Maybe she left something there in her frenzied cleaning, but what she did not expect to see, as the light illuminated the living room, was the lifeless body of a young woman lying face down on the floor.

  2

  “Jesus!” That was it, time to call for her maker and His son. A dead woman in her house! Was this from a botched robbery? Did this woman come into Mercy’s home with accomplices and was killed off while they ran away? Mercy held her head in her hands as she stared upon the scene in horror. The woman was unresponsive. Definitely dead! I should call 911. Mercy grabbed her cell phone out of her pocket and almost dialed for emergency services.

  She looked at the woman again.

  A dead young woman. Yes, she must be, not that Mercy could see her face. Dark hair, vivid and healthy, covered it. The skin on her arms and feet were as smooth and unwrinkled as any woman Mercy had slept with those past few weeks. That should mean something… What really tipped Mercy off that something was amiss, however, was the dress enshrouding the woman’s figure. Yellow. No, gold. Airy. Wrapped around her body and looking so fine that it had to belong to someone with incredible means. Plus, it hardly looked like the type of outfit someone would wear to a home invasion. A fashionista wouldn’t bother. Mercy hadn’t heard of many women wearing prom dresses to the scenes of their crimes.

  “Hey, you.” Mercy gently nudged the woman with her foot. The hair moved to the side and unveiled a round face. When Mercy beheld it, she was instantly struck with the realization that this was no ordinary woman.

  Shit. One of them!

  “Um, Miss Deity…” Mercy knelt beside the golden woman and poked her arm. “Are you okay? I’m really not comfortable having sex with you like this.” What? It was going to come up at some point!

  The woman did not respond. Mercy pressed her fingers against the deity’s throat to check for a pulse. Wait, did goddesses have pulses? Furthermore, why was Mercy concerned that this woman might be dead? She was technically dead already! Oh, God, did that make Mercy a necrophiliac all this time?

  Maybe she should leave this woman here. She was clearly in some sort of distress, but Mercy had no idea what to do. “Not my problem, anyway,” she mumbled, stepping over the body. She still had work to do. Like hell she was going to sit around and perform first aid on a person who wasn’t technically alive.

  Mercy didn’t get two steps toward the foyer when a hand snatched her ankle.

  “Holy!” She looked down, meeting the languid eyes of a sleepy woman. “What the!”

  “You…” A dreamy voice rose into the air and barely penetrated Mercy’s ear. “You must be Mercy. Welcome home… Mercy.” The woman released Mercy’s ankle and splat her face upon the carpet again. Mercy swore she heard snoring.

  “Fantastic.” Also, almost heart-attack inducing. Mercy stumbled toward the kitchen, ignoring the goddess taking up precious, dangerous space in the living room. Maybe she could make it through the night with a deity without having to do any work.

  While the woman continued to sleep on the floor, Mercy threw together dinner and ate it in silence. She attempted to focus on the chores ahead of her, but her mind kept returning to the mysterious sinner in her living room. Even while she did her dishes, she couldn’t stop thinking of her… who was she? What was her sinful agenda? Besides the sex, anyway. By that point, Mercy knew to expect sex of some kind with every woman knocking down her door. With the lust flowing through her, it was welcomed.

  She peeked into the living room once more.

  The woman had dragged herself to the couch, but never quite made it all the way up. Her arms splayed against the cushions, while her golden skirt pooled onto the floor, her head thrown back and hair covering half her face as it looked up toward the ceiling. Admirable. She exerted enough energy to get that far before passing out again. Mercy crossed off necrophilia and instead decided this woman had narcolepsy.

  Yet Mercy wasn’t about to leave the golden goddess by herself.

  “Excuse me.” Mercy entered the living room. “I said… excuse me.”

  Eyes blinked open. The woman rubbed them with the back of her hand. “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what?’ You’re passed out in my living room! Who are you, and what do you want from me? Are you one of those goddesses come to fuck me?”

  Muscles tensed and fabric crumpled as the woman heaved herself onto the couch. Her hair fell limp around her face, and the rest of her body sagged forward as she yawned and teetered back and forth. “Slow down,” she said, smacking her lips. “I can barely understand you. You talk way too fast. Relax.”

  Mercy ignored such requests. “Who the hell are you? You have a name, don’t you?”

  The woman patted the seat next to her. From the silence she kept, it was clear she would say nothing until Mercy sat. So she did.

  “I am Sloth,” the goddess said, as Mercy reached into a container of pistachio nuts she kept on a small end table. Cracking them open and chomping with her teeth was a good release of her extraneous energy. “Yes, I am one of the Seven Sinners. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Sloth, huh?” A nut cracked open. “Your mother gave you that name? Unfortunate.” It made her think of mossy mammals that traveled as quickly as a slug.

  “I don’t have a mother.”

  The pistachio was bland on Mercy’s tongue, but it gave her something to do. She dropped the shell into the trashcan beside her couch. “Wait,” she said between crunches, “how can you have sisters, but no parents? Do I want to know?”

  Sloth rocked back and forth as if in a dreamy haze. “We are sisters in name only. We were created for our purpose. Acedia bore us from her soul to give gifts to women who lost the ones God gave them.”

  “Great. What’s your gift, hm? Turning me into a narcoleptic?”

  Sloth opened her hands. “Although you have been blessed with the gifts of lust and avarice, they are fighting within you. You are unbalanced. Everything is at war to take control of your body, your physiology. You do not sleep. You do not rest. A human such as yourself cannot function without caring for your body. You must be refreshed to sort your thoughts. Without sleep, you will die.”

  “I’m doing fine.” More shells disappeared into the trashcan.

  “We have been watching you. You do not sleep. The sleep you do give yourself is inferior. When you are awake, you work your body so hard and run your mind so ragged that you will surely fall into ill-hea
lth soon. This is inconceivable, and a detriment to your healing. That’s why I am here.”

  Mercy picked something out of her teeth. “So, like I said… you’re gonna fuck the sleep back into me, huh?”

  “If you would like to put it that way, I suppose.” Sloth teetered hard enough that she collapsed into Mercy’s lap, snoring.

  “Least you could do is give me something-something down there.” Mercy cracked open another pistachio, the shell landing in Sloth’s dark hair. Mercy shrugged and picked it out without disturbing the sleeping deity.

  How long they stayed that way, Mercy had no idea. It seemed like infinity, but that may have been because there were things to do, damnit. Mercy didn’t know why that night must include a visit from one of Acedia’s avatars. On one hand, she could have some hot sex with a lovely goddess. On the other, while Sloth was pretty like her sisters, she wasn’t exactly an invigorating companion so far.

  The moment she thought that, Sloth sat up with a start, declaring she had a dream about an elephant packing her off to an amusement park.

  “Congratulations.” Mercy ate the last of the pistachios in her jar. Now she would have to go and find something else to do with her energy. Fucking Sloth was one option. There’s an out-of-context line to come back to haunt me later. Or she could go upstairs, take a shower, then fuck herself in bed. That’s how most of her nights ended now.

  “Oh, I suppose we should do that thing.”

  “You mean have sex?”

  Sloth pursed her lips. “We will make it toward that destination. There are many other things to do first.” She sighed. “I’m so tired…”