Tag: Culture (Greek)

Flash: Thebe Loses Day Job (attempt 3)

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Surviving the first three days of the Nymphs and Satyr club’s Halloween competition meant Thebe needed to call her day employer and beg for time off. She hadn’t expect it to go well, and she was right. Bryson fired her.

Fortunately the $3,000 she had already pocketed from making it this far would easily cover her until she found another retail position. Her night job had given her a week’s vacation before signing in, so she had something if she was kicked out tonight.

Thebe wished she could talk to Rhene, her best friend who dragged her into this mess. But since Rhene had pulled a blue and white domino and Thebe’s mask was the green and black of forest, her confidant was on a different team. Celestial to her team of Nature nymphs. Their two teams, plus Fire and Water, made the four-way competition. No contact or collusion between teams except during head-to-head matches.

She really could use an ally. The competition was not only between teams, but also had one winner. Each day saw another woman kicked off each team. Thebe still wasn’t sure how her two hundred and forty pound ass had gotten this far. Sure her six foot frame distributed the weight so she wasn’t a butterball like Cristina on the Fire team who weighed the same but was an entire foot shorter, but Thebe knew her teammates hated her chunky butt. The mix of team and individual results drove paranoia within and without the teams. The high-scoring Water team was pulling away from the pack in more ways than one. Thebe gave them one more day before self-destructing.

Having used up her one personal call for the competition, and her daily break from one-way mirrors and web-cameras, Thebe returned to her team’s room for a quick shower as the rest of the girls got their daily privacy break.

Thebe played it up for the camera as water sluiced over her. She was pretty sure she had gotten a following on the members-only website. No way her teammates hadn’t put her head on the chopping block. Yes, Daisy had been a no-brainer the first day, but since then … According to the other girls, who have actually watched this competition on the web, ejection votes were only part of the mix. The winning team gets to “immunize” one member from each of the other teams. The object is to weaken their chances by forcing the other nymphs to keep weak players.

The balance of the decision came from audience. People could pay up to $100, $10 per each keep vote. Anyone making it five days gets to take home 10% of their supporter’s payments as a bonus. So Thebe soaped up her D-cups, trying to find the balance between titillating and tawdry. 

Meryl was tawdry and had come screaming in the room yesterday. Once during the week each competitor can find out how the vote work – she could find out how everyone voted on every team for that day only, or she could find out how her team voted that particular day plus her standings for every day before. … Meryl’s slutty and superior behavior was playing well for the hard-porn audience the competition catered to, but not her team. After Meryl’s initial rant about how many ugly and fat girls were in the competition this year, including but not limited to Cristina and Thebe, Thebe hadn’t changed her eject vote once.

Heavy breathing echoed through the speakers signaling the next competition. Thebe wrapped a towel around her and rushed into the main room.

A photo shoot, each girl dressing up as the winner. The Nymph Mistress to a Satyr Master. The shoot would be in the Elemental mask and nothing else.

Seeing no reason to dress , Thebe followed the other women into “magic” room. Today it was a …

(and this again is too much for a simple flash I am aiming for)

(word count 643; first published 3/3/2019)

Flash: The Archer (Part 1) – The Action

Erin Penn

Image from freedigitalphotos.net

 

The archer stopped just past the bus’ commuter card swipe. So this is what humanity has come to. They who challenged the gods. They who ripped deity from Olympus and claimed equality.

 

They who discovered the great burden divinity carries. To be responsible for oneself and others. Not a single face carried joy. Those by the dirty windows watched the grey world with defeat. Those in the middle seats fixed their eyes on the floor and bore holes to Hades’ realm. Reaching back to pull two arrows from his quiver, he compared what he saw with Charon’s passengers. Charon’s clients appeared more animated.

 

He had toyed with the thought of not following through with Lachesis’ request. After all, humans had pushed them away. But the Fate was right, even when the worshippers leave their gods, their gods cannot forsake their worshippers.

 

“I have a chance to add some brilliant color to the tapestry.” The Moirai had said when she had tracked him down in the marble halls. “If these two threads can just be twisted together, they will brighten a whole segment.”

 

She had played with the strands until they would be side-by-side for a moment and asked him if he could fix them together. He had agreed … for a favor. A favor from a being older than the Titians is something to be seized whenever possible.

 

The male Lachesis had manipulated came beside the empty bus seat and turned his head to examine the window seat occupant. The arrow’s shaft rested against the ash wood for only a second before its whistling release. No one noticed the missile’s flight or its piercing of the man’s back.

 

The archer had asked Lachesis what would happen if he did not bond the threads. With her typical pragmatic temperament, “Together the brown threads take on the Iris’ hues and bring attention to the colors around them. But separately … brown threads abound. My sister will need to cut one shortly, likely both.”

 

The seated woman raised her head from something the man was asking. A miracle as far as the archer was concerned. No one on the conveyance looked anyone else in the eye and his magic required eye contact.

 

Eros quickly loosed his second arrow and watched in satisfaction as it buried itself in the woman’s heart. Everything else is up to the would-be-gods. May they and others like them return the gift one day.

 

(words 405; first published 12/5/2012; republished 2/3/2019)

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.