The Story Begins Here

Monday, November 1, 2010

Chapter One

Something just felt wrong. Hephaistos wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong, but he had a sick feeling in his gut. He looked around, trying to spot the problem. All he could see was a woman at the end of the aisle, looking pale and drawn in the fluorescent light, trying to decide whether to get turkey or beef flavored instant stuffing. He couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, just the usual sounds of a grocery store. Crying kids. Piped in music. Rattling carts and the occasional “can I help you find anything?” He couldn’t smell anything unexpected. Just a grocery store.

Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

Hephaistos moved on, picking up the rest of the stuff on his list. Eggs, juice, Mac & Cheese, and so on. The other shoppers looked more or less normal. Certainly not any stranger than usual. He didn’t notice anyone acting shifty.

“Are you finding everything OK today, sir?” someone asked him. He jumped.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Hey, is something weird going on here? Something just seems wrong.”

The clerk took a good look at Hephaistos, and decided a tactful retreat from the large, panicked looking biker might be the best choice. He might be on PCP or something.

“Nothing weird going on here, sir. Uh. Have a nice day!”

Hephaistos watched him hurry away, back to the safety of the produce section. Weird.

Outside, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual waiting to jump out and surprise him. Just a lot of SUVs and people not paying attention to the world around them. Hephaistos pushed his shopping cart over to his motorcycle. He walked around the bike, looking for anything out of place. It was immaculate. There wasn’t so much as a stray drop of oil under the motor. Just as he’d left it. Good.

Loading the groceries into the sidecar and securing a tarp over them took a couple of minutes longer than it really needed to, since Hephaistos stopped what he was doing every few seconds to look around and try and spot whatever it was that was about to go terribly wrong. When he had the groceries secured, there wasn’t much he could do except start the bike and head home, so that’s what he did.

The key slid into the ignition with a series of precise clicks, like always. He turned the key to the ON position, and the lights came on as expected. The brakes felt good, and the clutch lever pulled in smoothly. Hephaistos thumbed the starter button, and the motor leapt to life, settling immediately into a mellow idle.

Something was wrong. What was it? He looked around the parking lot again, certain he would see some kind of threat. A lurking enemy, waiting for him to lower his guard.

Hephaistos shifted his motorcycle into first gear, rolled on the throttle and eased out the clutch. He pointed the machine towards home. The weather was fine, a good day for a ride. The sun was high and bright in the desert sky, but not too hot to be uncomfortable in black leather on a black motorcycle.

He blasted past a slower vehicle as though it was parked, determined to get home and figure out what was bothering him. Anxiety did not suit Hephaistos. Anxiety was for the employed. For mortals.

In the distance, he could see black smoke rising in to the sky. Great, inky clouds, presumably full of toxins and greenhouse gases, like burnt offerings to what? Commerce? Industry? He hoped everyone was OK, wherever that was.

He looked back to the road. His roommate, Scroat, should have the house opened up by the time he got home. Scroat had ridden ahead while Hephaistos stopped for groceries. They’d just spent a couple of months riding around Texas with a few old friends. It had been fun, but it was damn good to be home again. He was looking forward to getting his forge fired up later that night.

As he slowed down to turn off the highway and on to the dirt road that led to his house, he noticed that the smoke was coming from somewhere along this road. He wondered what on earth his neighbors could be burning. Before long, he’d ridden past his neighbors’ house. They stood in the front yard, looking up at the tower of smoke coming from some place further down the road.

Hephaistos sped up, throwing up great clouds of dust behind him. He was suddenly very anxious to get home. He came around a curve in the road, and let off the gas.

On the side of the road, about a quarter of a mile ahead, he could see Scroat’s bike parked to one side, and Scroat standing next to it, looking up at the very large plumes of black smoke billowing from their yard. Hephaistos came to a stop next to Scroat, and looked as well.

Their house was engulfed in flames, along with the garage, and Hephaistos’s workshop. The heat coming from the fire was so intense that neither of them could bear to get any closer. A bush close to the house burst into flames, adding its own smoke and heat to the fire.

“Hey Hep,” Scroat said.

“Hey,” Hephaistos said. So this is probably what had been bothering him. “Any idea what happened?”

“Nope. I got home and found the house like this. Well, not quite like this. It’s gotten worse since I’ve been here.”

“Jeez. Did you try to put it out?”

Scroat looked away from the fire and at Hep for the first time. “Sure. I pulled a fire extinguisher out of my ass and hosed the whole place down. It didn’t do a lick of good, though. I guess next time I’ll buy one that comes with a money back guarantee.”

“I don’t understand how the house could have caught fire before we got here. The gas was turned off, right?”

“Yeah, uh, there’s a funny thing about that.”

Scroat looked uncomfortable.

“Funny how?” Hep asked.

“Well, I told a friend he could housesit for us while we were gone. Didn’t I tell you? It must have slipped my mind,” Scroat said.

“Which friend?”

“Inktomi.”

“Damn it. Where is he?”

“Well, not in there, the lucky son of a bitch.”

“Did you see him?”

“Nope. I got here, the place was on fire, and you showed up. No sign of Inktomi anywhere. Well, except for the house burning down.”

“Damn it.”

They watched in silence while the house burned before them. After a few minutes, a muscular looking man in a black t-shirt and black leather pants appeared on the road next to them. He had a murderous gleam in his eyes.

“Hey, Ares,” Hephaistos said. “What the hell are you doing here? Did you have something to do with this?”

“No, I heard about it through the grapevine. Word travels fast, you know.” Ares said. “No idea who’s responsible?”

“Well, Scroat here let Inktomi housesit.”

Scroat looked as though he was going to protest, but then thought better of it. He had, after all, offered their house to Inktomi to use for a couple months.

“Oh, man, that was a bad decision. I wouldn’t let that guy anywhere near my house. Do you want me to kill him for you?” Ares was almost bouncing up and down with joy at the possibility.

“No,” Hephaistos said. “Thank you. Though if you bump into him, maybe you could ask him what happened, hey?”

Ares looked disappointed.

“Yeah, whatever. So do you need a place to stay? I can see if anyone in my part of town has room.”

Hep looked at his burning house, and then considered who they might have to room with if he took Ares up on the offer. Ares’s friends weren’t always the most reputable.

On the other hand, staying with a disreputable friend of Ares was a lot better than camping in front of the burned out wreck of his house. And Southern California was a nice place to visit, now and then.

“Sure, let me know what you can find. I guess I’ll give my neighbor’s these groceries and we’ll start riding your way, once we’re sure the fire is out. Thanks.”

“Great! Good luck with that, I’ll see you soon,” Ares said, and then vanished.

Hephaistos sat in silence for a minute, trying to wrap his mind around all of this chaos. Inktomi stayed in the house, now the house is on fire, Ares shows up for no apparent reason offering a place to stay. Something wasn’t right.

“Did that seem a little weird to you?” Hep asked Scroat.

“Ares seems more than a little weird to me every time I see him,” Scroat said. “That fucker gives me the creeps.”

“Yeah, but I mean, his timing was a little strange, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. And Ares has never struck me as the concerned, helpful type. Though, he probably thought you’d actually ask him to kill Inktomi.”

“It is sort of a tempting offer,” Hep said. He could see his tools, wooden handles burning, just where he’d left them. He’d finally gotten his workshop arranged how he liked it, and now it was burning down. At least most of the tools could be cleaned up and repaired.

“I hear that,” Scroat said. He was less concerned about Hep’s tools, and more worried about his collection of pornography, thoughtfully curated over the years, now only so much ash, sooty staples, and bits of melted plastic.

Inktomi was going to be in a lot of trouble when they caught up with him. Hephaistos hoped he had a damned good explanation for what happened.

The two of them waited and watched until the house was nothing but glowing embers, with bits and fragments of their belongings poking out here and there. When Hep was satisfied that their house wouldn’t be responsible for a statewide fire, they got back on to their motorcycles, and headed west towards Ares’s house.

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