wildcat

"Bathtub gin," she said as she lay back in the femur-dry tub with the notable ring of soap scum running along the sides. "I want to be changed into bathtub gin." She wore the scandalous red top that hung off one shoulder to reveal her black bra strap, she wore the sharp black pants and the red sandals, sandals so red they belonged in one of the grimmer Hans Christian Anderson stories. "Look, look, this isn't exactly some shocking request, I want to be bathtub gin, I want to be drunk in the classical sense." She smirked, and then gave off a burpish chortle like a porpoise in heat.

Apollo sat on the toilet with the lid down. Apollo: God of Light, Poetry, Music, the Sun. You could tell all of this from the way his ringlets of blond hair burned and scorched the air, you could tell from the shimmer running down his chest, the way his treasure trail sizzled. He looked, for a God, distracted and disturbed. "What, bathtub gin? Not a flower, a river, a nice chianti?" Since he'd arrived in a bluster of divine music and the harrowing of walls by sunlight - yes, sunlight - Apollo had sat upon the toilet as though a throne and questioned her demands. "I could turn you into a lark if you like. Or a songbird of some kind. You seem like a mockingbird girl to me--"

"Bathtub gin." It was really very simple: turn her into bathtub gin already, be done with it, don't fuck around with heavenly eyes and a smile like that. She'd performed all the correct rituals, the supplication, the debasement of herself in honour of him and his. She'd summoned him from above, from Olympus, with seven hours to go before she was expected back at the office supply store and there was no coffee in the house.

"It's just that. Well. Don't you have better things to do than be an alcoholic beverage? Especially one of dubious, ah, lineage?"

"I should have summoned Dionysus, you know. Bacchanals and such. Sparagmos."

"Eating raw animal flesh can be a little..." He shut his mouth, opened it again, and shut it. He kept fingering the strings of his lyre in a particular way, a peculiar way, and he seemed more inhibited than he was supposed to be.

"Shouldn't you be trying to have sex with me or something by now? I know about Daphne. You, look, you gods are supposed to be prone to absolutely fucked up responses to situations and you're coming over all reasonable on me here. How difficult is this? I want to be bathtub gin. Wave your fingers and get out of here already."

"Daphne's old history. I have, as they say, grown as an individual, even if my father hasn't managed it. As it stands, you're displaying terrible hubris, miss, and can't call me down here to do whatever you please. I'm the boss of you."

"So punish me, already!"

"Punish you by changing you into, say, bathtub gin, right? You expect me to be predictably goaded into it like old Zeus or Hera. We Gods, we punish as befits the crime. We punish according to the laws of poetic justice."

"If Dionysus were here I'd already be smelling like juniper berries by now."

"Yes, I suppose you would. Very well: I shall punish you."

And he flicked his fingers, oh - snap! And thus, with the underwhelming song sung in Greek, she transformed, her limbs fluid, her hair dissolving, all of her essence dispersing into a pool of lite beer.

And Apollo was gone.

(c) 2006 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved. // What, you expect great art? I wrote this in five minutes!