Tag: Culture (Greek)

Flash: Small Wings

Erin Penn

Photo by Tikkho Maciel on Unsplash (Cropped and Color Adjusted by Erin Penn)

Someone wanted him here. The geocache might as well have made for him, taking him from one end of the city to the other on his skateboard for the last four hours. A couple of clues…. well, he had fallen for it.

Raff looked around the empty parking garage, his stomach saying it wasn’t empty. He learned to trust his gut a long time ago. The sibilant hiss of pipes in the ceiling and tires echoing from the streets above seemed too loud. Spreading his legs to drop his center of gravity, he called his true self to the surface, giving his eyes the ability to see elsewhere. As soon as his wings appeared, black snakes rose out of the shadows and raced at him, sliding back and forth on the cement.

His Cupid bow released three arrows before they had closed half the distance, and he hoped for some gender differences between the snakes, or at least a beneficial, to him, sexual orientation, so the lust would distract them. No effect. Snapping down his skateboard where it leaned against his leg, he jumped on it, using his right foot to push it hard, and he beat his tiny wings for what little help they could give to move faster.

The ramps all led up. The final stage of the geocache was in the bottom of the old Sears catalog building, three floors below ground. One of the periodic bumps lifted the board off the ground enough he turned it on edge to use a column to bank, aiming up a ramp. Two lights behind him snapped off; no sparks or flares, just dark. Spinning on the board to look behind, he saw the snakes enter one end of the deep shadows and exit the other end the next instant.

Cheaters.

Well, two can play at that game. Rounding another column, he reached out and crushed a chunk out. Twisting the board around, he took aim and threw the mass of concrete at one.

It sailed through the insubstantial creature.

The way the snakes were acting, they weren’t going to be insubstantial when they closed.

His arrows had hit them.

He likely could hit them too, thanks to his frisky pop’s sperm donation to his mom. Eros, like every Greek god in existence, couldn’t keep it under the toga, and Mom was never what you would call discerning in her choice of male companionship. But Eros was no Zeus, and Raff was no Hercules. Snakes would win if he wrestled. Coils trump arrows.

Making for a bank of bright lights, hoping to slow them down, Raff switched his push leg. Did Psyche send the snakes after him in revenge for Cupid’s wandering ways, like Hera did on Hercules? She hadn’t seemed upset, just tired, when Eros brought him by at age thirteen to get his bow. The one and only time he met his dad.

Maybe one of the other living mortal Cupids were ticked off at the new guy. But he wasn’t the new guy anymore, Shewon over in Tibet had that dubious honor, hitting thirteen last week. At nineteen, Raff was now one of the old guys and no longer the most powerful Cupid and well glad to be rid of it. Were any of the other twelve pissed off at him and had been waiting for his powers to drop?

The lights slowed them down. Though a few of florescent winked out so shadows became available for the snakes to slither through, the deep dark allowing the teleportation they had used before did not result. Raff had vaguely missed that aspect of being the head Cupid once he had his life back; having a life way outweighed the benefits of the extra magic, even if that life mostly focused on earning his GED after six year helping strangers hook up. Now he really wanted to blink up to the afternoon sunlight to keep his life, sad though it was, intact.

The ramp between level B and A was completely in the dark. He jumped off the board, flipped it into his hands and ran up the pavement.

The fastest snake exited the dark at the same time he did, snapping at his feet with its triangular head. Triangle means poison, right? Missing out on all of high school killed everything science. Popping around the world let him see its wonders, but he didn’t understand any of it. Fortunately his high ankle sneakers kept the fangs from breaking skin. Calling his bow back to his hands, he dropped his board, swung the bow to crack the creature on its jaw, then ran once he was free to jump on the board and start moving again. The first shadow snake’s brethren joined it after it reoriented on him.

Too close. He wasn’t going to make it.

(words 807; first published 8/26/2018)

Flash: The Amores

Erin Penn

Arms, warfare, violence – I was winding up to produce a

                Regular epic, with verse-form to match –

Hexameter, naturally. But Cupid (they say) with a snicker

                Lopped off one foot from each alternate line.

“Nasty young brat,” I told him, “whom made you Inspector of Metres?

                We poets come under the Muses, …. – Ovid (translated by Peter Green)

****

“we’re not your mob …” The young beatnik continued urgently, never grokking when The Amores switched  from high poetry to erotic love imagery.

Theodore looked at Nika. The young-looking brunette had put her hand over her mouth when the pretender had stepped up to the mike. A regular like themselves, they knew the boy never wrote his own poetry, and barely understood anyone else’s.  Nika’s hand was now sideways so she could bite the fleshy part to keep from laughing. Or moaning in pain.

It would be rude to laugh. Moaning in pain would be worse.

“you can’t keep your arrows idle – They’re so hot.” Emotive angry rage shot the lines into the crowd.

Coffee snorted out of Theo’s nose. Wiping his greying beard with a napkin, he hid his moving lips behind the cloth. “Can it get any worse?”

Nika left off from gnawing her hand. “I’m waiting for ‘I’m no sexual circus rider’.”

“Zeus and Mercury, that is part of the first poem, isn’t it?”

A giggle-moan of confirmation escaped Nika as she went back to biting her olive-skinned hand.

Eventually the torture, or comedy routine, depending on one’s love of poetry and toleration of youth, came to an end.

Theodore had gone earlier in the evening with one of his limericks. The earnest creative writing crew from the local college never knew how to deal with them. The short poems were always clever, requiring a deeper understanding of English which the children treasured. But the rhymes, however good they were, were still limericks, an affront to their lofty art. Since he was a best-selling author who often spoke on campus, they silently drank their coffee and clapped politely when their professor nodded permission.

The two stayed through last call at the coffee house and the final poem. Two poets continued to show promise, one from the college who somehow was not being stifled by the esteemed professor, and a high schooler who was out way too late on a school night.

Poetry readings were Tuesday. The coffee house had various musicians come in over the weekend. The guitarist on Sunday was the best of that mediocre lot. Nika didn’t have a vested interest in them, so they rarely attended the performances.

Tossing a fifty onto the table to cover drinks and an inflated tip for the hard working waitress who would get nothing from the students, the two left.

“I think I should underwrite a book for Sindee and one for Hampus too.” Theodore commented as they walked hand-in-hand through the quiet parking lot to their truck.

Nika considered, her wide hips swaying to brush Theodore’s long legs. They had the money to spare. “Hampus, definitely, needs to be removed from the cutting machine before his creativity is crushed. … Sindee, hmmm, she’s local. I may be able to inspire her directly.”

Startled, Theo pointed out. “She is still a little young for that in this culture.”

“It’s no always about sex. … Although the child is a dark desire to drink.”

Theo leaned against his truck. He ran a finger across his lover’s lips.

Nika opened her mouth to let the finger enter. Closing her plump lips, she swirled her tongue around the finger. Theo slowly slipped the finger out, hissing as Nika lightly closed her teeth around the end just before he pulled out completely.

Groaning, Theo slipped his hands into the back pockets of Nika’s jeans and grounded his arousal into his personal inspiration. “But it is about sex between us at least, my love.”

“Always, my favorite wordshaper.”

Theodore drowned Nika in a kiss, before the female pulled away to whisper the closing lines of The Amores, Book 1 properly. Theodore knew it was coming. The Muse had to heal the affront to the poem she had nurtured in Ovid.

“ergo etiam cum me supremus adederit ignis, vivam, parsque mei multa superstes erig.” The words steamed between them, promising Theo an immortality unique among the mortals the Muses chose.

“So when the final flames have devoured my body, I shall survive, and my better part live on.”  

(words 742 – originally appearing at Breathless Press 9/17/2013 for the 4/15/12 Sunday Fun – See the picture that inspired the story! – As I do not know the copyright permissions, I have not copied it here)

Passages of The Amores, Book 1 come from Ovid, the Erotic Poems: The Amores, The Art of Love, Cures for Love, On Facial Treatment for Ladies, translated with an introduction and notes by Peter Green. Published by Penguin Books in 1982. A copy can be purchased at Amazon, but clicking on book description.

Latin version from http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.amor1.shtml.