Trance (Part 1 of 2)
Feb. 24th, 2012 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tikificTitle: Trance (Part 1 of 2)
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Several of my OCs were acting down and pouty this week, so I set them all loose to play in an alternate NON-METALOCALYPSE universe I wrote a while back.
Warnings: To repeat, no Metalocalypse characters here, sahry
Notes: This is mindless self-indulgence, so I really won't be offended if you give it a pass. More notes after the jump.
Not at all certain where this came from. My brain, I guess. I’ve been gorging on Bollywood lately, so I probably got some of it from those ridiculous plots. I also had a hankering to write something with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Or like Bollywood, a beginning, middle middle middle middle plot tweest middle middle middle ending. Anyway, I had an AU sitting around (which was never gonna see the light of day anyway) and decided to play. Don’t worry, this is the last of it. It's short, but it seemed like it was two parts, so that's how I'm doing it. Don't worry, I already wrote the last bit. And lastly, if you were wondering, the nickname “Tosh” is here pronounced “Toesh.”
Lord Ganesha – Lord of Hosts, Lord Remover of Obstacles, Lord of Wisdom, Lord of Beginnings, Lord of the Dance, Lord of the Devas – rose to greet the dawn. He paused to bestow a kiss upon the very beautiful young man who had shared his bed this past night. This particular one was an up and coming supermodel who had just completed a three page photo spread for Vogue India, and was quite stunning indeed. He was named Rohit or Rohan or some such. (They were inevitably named Rohit or Rohan.)
The lovely man stirred, ever so slightly, long lashes batting over the deep brown eyes. “Sleep on, my dear one,” hushed Lord Ganesha, and then he strode out to his peaceful courtyard, where, beside the reflecting pool which mirrored his quiet retreat nestled in the shadow of the Himalayas, he performed his usual morning yoga exercises. A once chubby child, Ganesha was rather insistent as an adult at keeping up his exercise regimen.
He was up in a headstand when he heard the soft grumble behind himself.
“Namaste, Brahma Uncle,” sighed Ganesha without breaking the pose. Even upside-down it was difficult to keep the annoyance from his tone. Tiresome people were, well, tiresome. And especially his tiresome family members.
“Ganesha! We can expect you at the ceremony today, can we not?” harrumphed Uncle Brahma.
“Have I ever been late to an event, Brahma Uncle?”
“Gallivanting with one of those mortals again last night I see!”
Ganesha skillfully curled back down to earth, and lay, head resting on his hand, impatient fingers drumming on his chin, looking up at the large, fuming red god standing before him. “When have I ever failed in my duties to this family?”
“It is your karma, young one! It is not a matter of checking off a number of tick boxes!”
“There have been rather a lot of tick boxes of late,” grumbled Ganesha.
Brahma’s eyes narrowed, and several pairs of red arms crossed. “If you are finding your duties too taxing, beta, we could always call in your brother.”
Ganesha was on his feet, quick as a cat, now eye to eye with Brahma, for though Ganesha was slim, he was tall. “I will attend the ceremony,” he snapped.
Brahma smiled in triumph and extracted a folded newspaper from beneath one of many arms. “I see the company is up two points in the market. Good job! Keep making us money!”
And then Lord Brahma, God of All Creation, was there no more, nothing left but a few pink pages of the Financial Times, drifting in the light breeze.
Ganesha gathered the newspaper, muttering not for the first time how Brahma Uncle needed to invest in an iPhone so he would cease wasting precious trees, and then, wiping the sweat from his body with a towel, proceeded down to the temple on the other side of the courtyard from his residence. Normally, Lord Ganesha found the rich scent of flowers and incense to be calming, but not this particular morning. Since the war he had shouldered both much of the ceremonial leadership of this family as well as chief operating officer duties at their LLC. He had made those lazy fucks a lot of money, and now all they could do was natter amongst themselves that he occasionally passed some time with a mortal?
Wait until they found out who he had been spending time with lately!
He frowned, hoping they had not found out.
He pressed a hand against a wall on the inside of the temple, adjoining an alter to Lord Shiva and Lady Parvti, and a doorway which had not been visible a moment earlier opened. He nodded to the dancing effigies of his honored parents and entered a small chamber, still lost in thought. There was a small recessed shelf in one wall. He pulled back the curtain and regarded the contents: five splendid ceremonial elephant heads, each set up on its own plinth up on the top shelf, plus a selection of human heads for various occasions on the lower shelves. He ran a finger along the top shelf. Yes, the bull elephant with gold-tipped tusks: that one would do. He carefully plucked off the human head he now wore: the one he customarily used for social occasions among mortals, and placed it carefully on an empty plinth on the lower shelf, and then grabbed the elephant head and set that just as carefully upon his neck, experimentally wagging the elephant ears and blowing the elephant trunk to make certain everything had been set straight.
He replaced the curtain. He would have to send servants to see off Rohan or Rohit (or had it been Raj?). Whatever the man’s name, he would be placed in a taxi and sent on his way never realizing he had passed the night with an actual god.
Meaning that, tonight, after the ceremony, Lord Ganesha would need find himself another mortal. Perhaps a Rahul tonight?
“Where is Sid?”
“Sid is Sid,” smiled Moody. “He is where he is, Jake.”
Jacob paused and counted to ten. He was no longer surprised to find his small living room full of rock musicians, not to mention their musical instruments, groupies, illegal substances and paraphernalia, plus a panoply of hangers on (he was still wondering what exactly was in that briefcase Jerzy Deck’s “main man” inevitably carried). No, what concerned him was that when he actually required their physical presence, these guys, they tended to dissolve into the ether like so many specters.
“And where would that be, Moody? I mean, specifically in this plane of existence?” asked Jacob, light eyes peering over dark glasses.
“Is Sid ever in this plane, brah?” laughed Moody. The ends of the drummer’s scraggly blond hair were dripping water, and instead of instruments or groupies, this morning he had packed a rather colorful surfboard into Jacob’s living room, where it sat, shedding sand and salt water on Jacob’s already ragged carpeting.
“We have contracts. Contracts!” said Jacob, lifting the piles of paper. “These need to be signed and returned.”
“Don’t be so uptight, man,” scolded Deck, who was, rather unsurprisingly, playing a hand of cards with some of his ever-present retinue, plus Cantrell, their rhythm guitarist.
Jacob had now counted upwards of one hundred. “Mr. Lydecker,” he snapped. Deck suddenly glared up at Jacob through a curtain of many impossibly neat dreadlocks. Deck hated being addressed by his real name. “During you storied career, exactly how many bands have you been a member of?”
Deck slapped his card hand down on the table. “Recorded, or un-recorded?” he grumbled.
“And how many of these bands, Mr. Lydecker, recorded or un-recorded, achieved actual recording contracts?”
“I know!” said Moody, actually raising a hand. “Pick me, brah! It is exactly none!”
Deck’s glare now refocused on Moody. He stiffened, but felt a hand on his arm. Cantrell. “Dude. Mellow. He ain’t worth it.”
“Least I wasn’t in any fucking boy band,” snarked Deck, pretending to return his attention his cards.
“Surfin’ Dogs wasn’t a boy band!” laughed Moody.
“Yeah. Was,” rumbled Hitoshi, their bassist (should the actual band ever get off the ground) who had up until now sat in complete silence, taking up one full love seat nearly by himself.
In fact, in his younger and rather more clean-cut years, a mullet-ed Malachi Moody had sung (and mimed guitar, an instrument he sadly did not actually play) for the band, Surfin’ Dogs’ monster hit, “Whoa Little Girl.” It had unfortunately been the band’s only hit. On the other hand, as a credited co-writer of said abomination unto the world of music, Moody had been kept even since in an altogether decent supply of groupies and drugs.
“Do you say I say
Whoa little girl
Don’t go little girl…”
…sang Cantrell, Deck then joining him.
“We say every day
Whoa little girl
I know little girl”
“OK, you guys now owe me like $375 for that!” insisted Moody. “For that was a clear infringement of intellectual property!”
“I’ll give you $3 bucks,” said Deck, tossing over a chip. To Deck’s surprise, Moody reached up and caught the chip. “What do you need from us, Sulam?” Deck asked Jacob. “I wanna get out of here. I got business.”
“The usual. Just initials and signatures,” said Jacob, now hefting a stack of paper onto the middle of the card table where Deck and Cantrell had set up their card game.
“And this is for?” asked Deck.
“This is so you get paid what you’re owed.”
“Haven’t seen any money, Sulam,” said Deck.
“That’s because you need to record an album first.”
Deck and Jacob locked eyes for a moment. Jacob extended a much chewed ball point pen. Deck instead extracted an expensive-looking fountain pen from an inside pocket in his elaborately braided jacket. He then signed and dated with a flourish where Jacob asked him. He waited for Cantrell to do the same, and then rose, elegant as a dancer.
“Is that all?”
“For now,” sighed Jacob.
Deck did not make any signal that Jacob could see, but suddenly, his entire retinue was on their feet, including the person Jacob always thought of as “Briefcase Guy.” Deck picked up and donned the hat that had been lying on the table and exited, leaving only Tosh and Moody still hanging out in Jacob’s living room.
“You know,” said Jacob, to no one in particular, “if I tried to wear a hat like that, it would look like Grandma’s gardening hat. But on him, it looks cool. How the fuck does he do that?”
“It's called charisma, brah,” grinned Moody, who was really nothing at all like his name.
“He needs a band! That guy needs a contract! I don’t fucking understand you guys sometimes. I don’t understand.”
“Hey, Tosh and I could bring this shit by Sid later, if you want,” offered Moody, waving a stack of papers. “We’ll see Sid.”
“We always run into Sid,” intoned Tosh, in a voice that made Jacob's wine glasses rattle.
“Thank you, Moody. I would appreciate that. Here!” he said, taking out a pad of SIGN HERE sticky notes and starting to affix them to the documents.
“Hey, you know something, Jake?”
“Yeah?” said Jacob, who was momentarily entranced by stickies.
“You know ‘Whoa Little Girl?’”
“Uh-huh. What about it?”
“I don’t tell a lot of people.” Moody inclined his head towards the Great Hitoshi Mountain now standing behind him. “Tosh knows. You know like the writing credit?”
“Yeah, you told me you won it in a card game?”
Moody and Tosh exchanged an amused glance. “I wrote it. All of it. By myself. I was in high school, so I got talked into sharing credit with some shitty producer.”
“You’re kidding me?” said Jacob.
And Moody smiled the smile, the dumb and dopey surfer smile. Then he and Tosh gathered up various belongings around Jacob’s living room and headed out.
“Hey,” said Tosh as they walked to Tosh’s van.
“Yeah?”
“What are you up to?”
“Nothing, brah,” said Moody, carefully sliding his surfboard into the luggage compartment.
“Don't brah me, Mal.”
“What?” Moody finally looked up to see Hitoshi glaring down at him.
“Don’t fuck the manger. Not again.”
And Moody grinned. “Whoa little girl…” he hummed.
Lord Ganesha smoked sullenly, half-listening to the throb of trance music from within the club. Yes, come to the ceremony, Ganesha beta, and then afterwards, we’ll introduce you to yet another utterly boring goddess. Time to quit messing about and think of your family, Ganesha! As if he didn’t spend every second of every minute of every hour of his dreadful life thinking of his horrid, horrid, horrid family.
He cast a glance into the club. He flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the gutter and strode inside. It was time to dance away a few of the day’s cares and worries. Ignoring a number of fetching mortals who cast glances his way, he walked directly to the dance floor. There were glorious smiles all around, and a shifting away. They knew him here.
He let himself feel the beat, let it become him first. Backstep – backstep – turn…. A few of the regulars fell in and followed. It was impossible not to follow Lord Ganesha when he was in the mood. And he was definitely in the mood. The dancers drifted in step, though none could match the lovely precision of his hands, the cleanness of his footwork.
Fingers reaching out to grasp
Can’t find you
Just missed you round the corner
Disappearance
No mortal could match him, that is. But she was here now, suddenly spinning into his arms like a miracle. Though blessed with remarkable dark hair and white creamy skin, she was not the most beautiful woman there. But there was something about her, something dark and mysterious.
Wake up half remembered
All forgotten
Bright flash devil’s magic
Gone forever
Lord Ganesha’s mood brightened as he ran his hands down the lovely curves of her body. She was wearing ridiculously expensive shoes, but little else. They suddenly spun apart, and she matched the intricate footwork as if it were second nature.
Where are you my god my goddess
Searching over
Unforgotten
Bright forever
Unrelenting....
“If only you were a goddess, Lady Raziel,” Lord Ganesha remarked as he and the mysterious dark-haired woman retired to the bar.
“Why should I take a demotion?” she laughed, patting his arm. She hopped up on a barstool and poked her drink with a straw for a moment then scowling up at him. “They weren’t matchmaking you again today were they?” she asked, raising one elegantly plucked eyebrow.
“Oh, it’s all so tiresome!” sighed Lord Ganesh, his ire rising immediately as if this evening’s joyful interlude had never happened. “Goddesses are boring! Gods are boring!”
“I don’t find you boring, Ganesha dearest.”
“Oh, but you know whereof I speak! Why can’t we be more like you?”
“That is true,” she remarked, “angels are rarely boring. Of course, I haven’t introduced you to any Cherubim yet.”
“They can’t possibly be as boring as goddesses.”
“You would be surprised. Look, it’s none of my business, but if that’s all that matters to your family, why don’t you just let them find you a consort and then go on with your life?”
“I should live a lie? Like my parents?”
“Not a lie exactly. More like a convenient untruth!” she mused.
“I have done every conceivable thing for my family. Every breath I take is for my family. I shall not marry for them as well.”
Her dark eyes drifted around the club. “Did you need to find a distraction? What about that one? He’s awfully pretty!”
“Mortals are boring!” sulked Ganesha.
“Oh, no, don’t say that!”
Ganesha sighed and sat back. “I apologize, Lady Raziel. I find myself in a terrifically bad mood today. Let us move the conversational topic to happier matters! What of you?”
She shrugged. “Same old same old, I guess. Wotan says hi!”
“Yes, pray say hello to Uncle for me.”
“He misses you! You ought to come up! He said he’d take you on a hunt!”
Ganesha rolled his eyes. “Kindly tell Uncle Wotan for me that not everyone has three months to take off for a wild hunt! Some of us must work for a living!”
“Some of you,” Raziel chuckled.
“Yes, the some of us who don’t have an unutterably rich boyfriend,” said Ganesha, crossing his arms.
“It’s just as easy to love a rich man,” she giggled.
“Is that why you were late tonight?” asked Ganesha.
“Oh, shopping? Yes, I rather cut a path of destruction through Milano's fashion district, I’m afraid. Nothing left but scraps!”
“Do you ever actually wear any of those clothes you buy, Raziel?” demanded a pale figure.
Raziel hopped down from the bar stool to air kiss the new arrival. Although he was not a tall person, she still had to go up on tiptoe to do so.
“Your new boyfriend lets you leave the house looking like that?” he said, pointing up and down at her outfit (or lack thereof).
“He thinks I look rather fetching like this.”
“Then why isn’t he out disco dancing with you?”
“Oh, you!” she said, playfully pounding his chest. “Wotan refuses any dance originated after the Seventeenth Century. I have an old fashioned guy.” She turned to her companion. “Lord Ganesha, have you met my completely tiresome brother, Sariel?”
Sariel appeared to frown at Raziel, although his exact expression was difficult to read behind darkened glasses. He extended a hand towards Ganesha, although he continued to regard Raziel. “Jacob,” he said, a bit testily.
“Oh, don’t give him your silly human name,” Raziel scolded. “He’ll just change it five minutes from now!” she told Ganesha.
“Any name is fine, I am certain,” said Ganesha, still grasping the pale hand. The skin, so fine and smooth. “I am most charmed to make your acquaintance.”
Sariel regarded Ganesha for a moment, seemingly confused. “Uh, sure,” he said. “Raziel, I need to talk to you.”
“Am I busted for dancing on a Sunday?” she giggled.
“Raziel,” said Sariel. “Important.”
“Oh, he lives to interrupt my fun,” Raziel told Ganesha. “I’ll leave you now, dear,” she said, hopping off the barstool again. “Go find a cute mortal,” she whispered in his ear as she stood up on tiptoe to kiss him goodbye.
“Er. I’ll see you again. I mean, both of you?” asked Ganesha.
Sariel once again looked mildly confused, but Raziel cast a knowing glance at Ganesha. “Well, perhaps you will need my brother’s services, Ganesha. He is a lawyer!”
“Huh?” said Sariel.
“Oh, er, yes, I do feel I will have a need for legal services. Soon. In the near future,” commented Ganesha.
Sariel extracted a small case from his jacket and pulled out a business card. “Well. I don’t know Indian law. But here.” He nodded to Ganesha, and then Raziel had him in her small grasp and was dragging him out of the club.
Ganesha looked after them until they had disappeared from view. Then he looked down at the card in his hand. “Jacob Sulam, Attorney at Law,” it said. There was a small logo beside the name. It looked a bit like a ladder. Ganesha put ran his thumb over the raised type on the card, caressing it as if it were a rare treasure. He put it to his face and let the scent enter him.
He smiled and pocketed the card, and with a last sip of his drink, headed back to the dance floor for his encore.
Two of them there were, crouching on a rooftop, wings flapping lazily in the cool night breeze.
“Raziel.”
“What?” she asked, wings dark as the night, smile mysterious.
“People are talking,” he told her. His wings were odd. They looked grey, almost silver. But perhaps it was the moonlight.
“People will talk,” she sighed. “Which people, exactly?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“You know. The grapevine.”
“The grapevine?”
“Raziel. You and a god of earth? Are you fucking nuts?”
“Wotan likes me! And Iike his money. It's a match made at Headquarters.”
“Do you want to be cast out?”
“Oh, He'd never cast me out. He hasn't the guts.”
“You don't know what it's like!”
“No one blames you for the Fall, dear. You know that. It was just … politics!”
“You don't know how pissy He can get when you cross Him.”
“He can cross this,” she smiled, waving her left hand. On her finger appeared a single silver ring.
“Oh bloody Jesus, no!” said Sariel.
“I think the appropriate salutation is 'congratulations,” Raziel sniffed.
“Raziel!”
“And what is happening with that silly little band of yours?”
“Things are progressing!”
“So they’re all rock stars now?”
“They all think they’re rock stars now. And I think we’re on track. I just…. I feel like I’m refereeing a civil war sometimes. The guitarists and the rhythm section act like two factions. They all get along with Sid, but he’s just never around when I need him. And to make matters worse, the record company that was interested just got bought out, and I can’t get my calls returned. I haven’t told the boys, but I’m worried-“
“You know, I didn’t send you to law school so you could mess around with this silly rock and roll music, anyways. It's a fad, you know!”
“You just spent the whole night dancing to that dancey trancey shit!”
“I know, isn't it wonderful?” Raziel frowned and studied Sariel. She inclined her head. Sariel first shook his head, but then finally leaned forward, and she removed his dark glasses, revealing the dark bruising around his left eye. She held his chin for a moment while he glared at her.
“Who?” she asked, her mood suddenly darkened.
“It doesn't matter,” he muttered, snatching back the glasses.
“It matters to me.”
“It wasn’t his fault!”
“Your face smacked into Uriel’s fist?”
“He didn’t- I didn’t say it was him!”
“Who else would be your grapevine?”
“Who else would have a Fallen? It’s not as if I can fucking be picky, Raziel.”
“Who else? Are you Fallen or just stupid? Ganesha was ready to hump you in the bar! Two minutes ago.”
“Ganesha? That Bollywood loser you hang out with?”
“He comes from a very good pantheon!” she sniffed.
“Exactly! He’s a … he’s a god of earth, Raziel!”
“Oh, now you’re just being an angel,” she scoffed.
“I am an angel! Have you forgotten what you are?”
Raziel didn’t reply, she only scowled.
“I need to get back,” he grumbled. “For once, think about what I’ve said. For once, think!” And he was off. She remained on the rooftop, wings now jerking rhythmically in irritation.
She heard the beep of her phone, and dug into her purse for it. “AGREED 2 MRRY BORING GDSS. NOW WE R BOTH ENGGED. CNGRTS.”
She glowered at her phone. No, this wasn’t good. None of it was good.
This would not happen.
Raziel would not let it.
“You’re late, aren’t you?”
Sariel had cringed when he’d seen the light on in his living room. “Yeah. I was out. Doing stuff.”
“Doing what exactly?” demanded Uriel, crossing brawny arms.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now. I didn’t know you were coming over….”
“Oh, you had other plans tonight? Maybe with one of those mortals?”
“I manage those mortals!”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with them,” Uriel told him.
“We’re trying to get a band off the ground. It’s a lot of work! And stress!”
“Still only live for earthly fame? No wonder you’re Fallen.”
“That’s not- Look, I just want to do something with my existence. It doesn’t matter. Why are we fighting? I’m here now, OK? I'm here now. Maybe we could-“
But then Uriel had him, gripped tightly by the chin.
“Uriel, that hurts…”
Uriel took a long sniff, and then pushed Sariel aside. “You stink of mortal,” he grumbled, turning to leave.
“Uriel!” said Sariel. He heard the door close. “Bastard,” he whispered. “Bastard bastard bastard…” He was still muttering as he got to his bedroom. He said “bastard” as he unbuttoned each shirt button, and then....
“HI JAKE!”
Sariel waited for his heart to begin beating again. “Uh. Sid. Hi there,” he said to the figure who was now hanging upside down from his bedroom light fixture. “Uh. Yeah.”
“I signed the papers, Jake!” announced Sid, waving a stack of contracts at Sariel.
“OK. Uh. Yeah. OK,” said Sariel, taking the papers with still shaking hands, and hoping to god Uriel hadn’t spotted his lead singer sneaking into his bedroom.
“Who was the big guy?” asked Sid, who now dropped down to the floor. “Was he a friend? Because he didn’t seem very friendly.” Sid was wearing leather pants and not much else. He had a shock of jet black hair that seemed to stick out every which way.
“He’s a friend. But you’re right, he’s not very friendly sometimes,” sighed Sariel, looking through the contracts, and counting himself very, very lucky if Uriel didn’t spot this feral creature in his bedroom.
“Friends should act friendly, I think! I think of things when I’m upside down. It improves circulation. Did you know that?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s probably true.”
“You need better friends. Moody and Hitoshi gave me the contracts.”
“Well, that was nice of them.”
“Yes, they’re nice friends. And you’re a nice friend,” said Sid, now wrapping a very surprised Sariel in a hug.
“Uh. Yeah,” squeaked Sariel.
“I’ll catch you later. Sariel!” said Sid, making his way for the door.
“I assume you can show yourself out,” Sariel sighed. And then he frowned. “Wait, what did you call me…?”
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Several of my OCs were acting down and pouty this week, so I set them all loose to play in an alternate NON-METALOCALYPSE universe I wrote a while back.
Warnings: To repeat, no Metalocalypse characters here, sahry
Notes: This is mindless self-indulgence, so I really won't be offended if you give it a pass. More notes after the jump.
Not at all certain where this came from. My brain, I guess. I’ve been gorging on Bollywood lately, so I probably got some of it from those ridiculous plots. I also had a hankering to write something with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Or like Bollywood, a beginning, middle middle middle middle plot tweest middle middle middle ending. Anyway, I had an AU sitting around (which was never gonna see the light of day anyway) and decided to play. Don’t worry, this is the last of it. It's short, but it seemed like it was two parts, so that's how I'm doing it. Don't worry, I already wrote the last bit. And lastly, if you were wondering, the nickname “Tosh” is here pronounced “Toesh.”
Lord Ganesha – Lord of Hosts, Lord Remover of Obstacles, Lord of Wisdom, Lord of Beginnings, Lord of the Dance, Lord of the Devas – rose to greet the dawn. He paused to bestow a kiss upon the very beautiful young man who had shared his bed this past night. This particular one was an up and coming supermodel who had just completed a three page photo spread for Vogue India, and was quite stunning indeed. He was named Rohit or Rohan or some such. (They were inevitably named Rohit or Rohan.)
The lovely man stirred, ever so slightly, long lashes batting over the deep brown eyes. “Sleep on, my dear one,” hushed Lord Ganesha, and then he strode out to his peaceful courtyard, where, beside the reflecting pool which mirrored his quiet retreat nestled in the shadow of the Himalayas, he performed his usual morning yoga exercises. A once chubby child, Ganesha was rather insistent as an adult at keeping up his exercise regimen.
He was up in a headstand when he heard the soft grumble behind himself.
“Namaste, Brahma Uncle,” sighed Ganesha without breaking the pose. Even upside-down it was difficult to keep the annoyance from his tone. Tiresome people were, well, tiresome. And especially his tiresome family members.
“Ganesha! We can expect you at the ceremony today, can we not?” harrumphed Uncle Brahma.
“Have I ever been late to an event, Brahma Uncle?”
“Gallivanting with one of those mortals again last night I see!”
Ganesha skillfully curled back down to earth, and lay, head resting on his hand, impatient fingers drumming on his chin, looking up at the large, fuming red god standing before him. “When have I ever failed in my duties to this family?”
“It is your karma, young one! It is not a matter of checking off a number of tick boxes!”
“There have been rather a lot of tick boxes of late,” grumbled Ganesha.
Brahma’s eyes narrowed, and several pairs of red arms crossed. “If you are finding your duties too taxing, beta, we could always call in your brother.”
Ganesha was on his feet, quick as a cat, now eye to eye with Brahma, for though Ganesha was slim, he was tall. “I will attend the ceremony,” he snapped.
Brahma smiled in triumph and extracted a folded newspaper from beneath one of many arms. “I see the company is up two points in the market. Good job! Keep making us money!”
And then Lord Brahma, God of All Creation, was there no more, nothing left but a few pink pages of the Financial Times, drifting in the light breeze.
Ganesha gathered the newspaper, muttering not for the first time how Brahma Uncle needed to invest in an iPhone so he would cease wasting precious trees, and then, wiping the sweat from his body with a towel, proceeded down to the temple on the other side of the courtyard from his residence. Normally, Lord Ganesha found the rich scent of flowers and incense to be calming, but not this particular morning. Since the war he had shouldered both much of the ceremonial leadership of this family as well as chief operating officer duties at their LLC. He had made those lazy fucks a lot of money, and now all they could do was natter amongst themselves that he occasionally passed some time with a mortal?
Wait until they found out who he had been spending time with lately!
He frowned, hoping they had not found out.
He pressed a hand against a wall on the inside of the temple, adjoining an alter to Lord Shiva and Lady Parvti, and a doorway which had not been visible a moment earlier opened. He nodded to the dancing effigies of his honored parents and entered a small chamber, still lost in thought. There was a small recessed shelf in one wall. He pulled back the curtain and regarded the contents: five splendid ceremonial elephant heads, each set up on its own plinth up on the top shelf, plus a selection of human heads for various occasions on the lower shelves. He ran a finger along the top shelf. Yes, the bull elephant with gold-tipped tusks: that one would do. He carefully plucked off the human head he now wore: the one he customarily used for social occasions among mortals, and placed it carefully on an empty plinth on the lower shelf, and then grabbed the elephant head and set that just as carefully upon his neck, experimentally wagging the elephant ears and blowing the elephant trunk to make certain everything had been set straight.
He replaced the curtain. He would have to send servants to see off Rohan or Rohit (or had it been Raj?). Whatever the man’s name, he would be placed in a taxi and sent on his way never realizing he had passed the night with an actual god.
Meaning that, tonight, after the ceremony, Lord Ganesha would need find himself another mortal. Perhaps a Rahul tonight?
“Where is Sid?”
“Sid is Sid,” smiled Moody. “He is where he is, Jake.”
Jacob paused and counted to ten. He was no longer surprised to find his small living room full of rock musicians, not to mention their musical instruments, groupies, illegal substances and paraphernalia, plus a panoply of hangers on (he was still wondering what exactly was in that briefcase Jerzy Deck’s “main man” inevitably carried). No, what concerned him was that when he actually required their physical presence, these guys, they tended to dissolve into the ether like so many specters.
“And where would that be, Moody? I mean, specifically in this plane of existence?” asked Jacob, light eyes peering over dark glasses.
“Is Sid ever in this plane, brah?” laughed Moody. The ends of the drummer’s scraggly blond hair were dripping water, and instead of instruments or groupies, this morning he had packed a rather colorful surfboard into Jacob’s living room, where it sat, shedding sand and salt water on Jacob’s already ragged carpeting.
“We have contracts. Contracts!” said Jacob, lifting the piles of paper. “These need to be signed and returned.”
“Don’t be so uptight, man,” scolded Deck, who was, rather unsurprisingly, playing a hand of cards with some of his ever-present retinue, plus Cantrell, their rhythm guitarist.
Jacob had now counted upwards of one hundred. “Mr. Lydecker,” he snapped. Deck suddenly glared up at Jacob through a curtain of many impossibly neat dreadlocks. Deck hated being addressed by his real name. “During you storied career, exactly how many bands have you been a member of?”
Deck slapped his card hand down on the table. “Recorded, or un-recorded?” he grumbled.
“And how many of these bands, Mr. Lydecker, recorded or un-recorded, achieved actual recording contracts?”
“I know!” said Moody, actually raising a hand. “Pick me, brah! It is exactly none!”
Deck’s glare now refocused on Moody. He stiffened, but felt a hand on his arm. Cantrell. “Dude. Mellow. He ain’t worth it.”
“Least I wasn’t in any fucking boy band,” snarked Deck, pretending to return his attention his cards.
“Surfin’ Dogs wasn’t a boy band!” laughed Moody.
“Yeah. Was,” rumbled Hitoshi, their bassist (should the actual band ever get off the ground) who had up until now sat in complete silence, taking up one full love seat nearly by himself.
In fact, in his younger and rather more clean-cut years, a mullet-ed Malachi Moody had sung (and mimed guitar, an instrument he sadly did not actually play) for the band, Surfin’ Dogs’ monster hit, “Whoa Little Girl.” It had unfortunately been the band’s only hit. On the other hand, as a credited co-writer of said abomination unto the world of music, Moody had been kept even since in an altogether decent supply of groupies and drugs.
“Do you say I say
Whoa little girl
Don’t go little girl…”
…sang Cantrell, Deck then joining him.
“We say every day
Whoa little girl
I know little girl”
“OK, you guys now owe me like $375 for that!” insisted Moody. “For that was a clear infringement of intellectual property!”
“I’ll give you $3 bucks,” said Deck, tossing over a chip. To Deck’s surprise, Moody reached up and caught the chip. “What do you need from us, Sulam?” Deck asked Jacob. “I wanna get out of here. I got business.”
“The usual. Just initials and signatures,” said Jacob, now hefting a stack of paper onto the middle of the card table where Deck and Cantrell had set up their card game.
“And this is for?” asked Deck.
“This is so you get paid what you’re owed.”
“Haven’t seen any money, Sulam,” said Deck.
“That’s because you need to record an album first.”
Deck and Jacob locked eyes for a moment. Jacob extended a much chewed ball point pen. Deck instead extracted an expensive-looking fountain pen from an inside pocket in his elaborately braided jacket. He then signed and dated with a flourish where Jacob asked him. He waited for Cantrell to do the same, and then rose, elegant as a dancer.
“Is that all?”
“For now,” sighed Jacob.
Deck did not make any signal that Jacob could see, but suddenly, his entire retinue was on their feet, including the person Jacob always thought of as “Briefcase Guy.” Deck picked up and donned the hat that had been lying on the table and exited, leaving only Tosh and Moody still hanging out in Jacob’s living room.
“You know,” said Jacob, to no one in particular, “if I tried to wear a hat like that, it would look like Grandma’s gardening hat. But on him, it looks cool. How the fuck does he do that?”
“It's called charisma, brah,” grinned Moody, who was really nothing at all like his name.
“He needs a band! That guy needs a contract! I don’t fucking understand you guys sometimes. I don’t understand.”
“Hey, Tosh and I could bring this shit by Sid later, if you want,” offered Moody, waving a stack of papers. “We’ll see Sid.”
“We always run into Sid,” intoned Tosh, in a voice that made Jacob's wine glasses rattle.
“Thank you, Moody. I would appreciate that. Here!” he said, taking out a pad of SIGN HERE sticky notes and starting to affix them to the documents.
“Hey, you know something, Jake?”
“Yeah?” said Jacob, who was momentarily entranced by stickies.
“You know ‘Whoa Little Girl?’”
“Uh-huh. What about it?”
“I don’t tell a lot of people.” Moody inclined his head towards the Great Hitoshi Mountain now standing behind him. “Tosh knows. You know like the writing credit?”
“Yeah, you told me you won it in a card game?”
Moody and Tosh exchanged an amused glance. “I wrote it. All of it. By myself. I was in high school, so I got talked into sharing credit with some shitty producer.”
“You’re kidding me?” said Jacob.
And Moody smiled the smile, the dumb and dopey surfer smile. Then he and Tosh gathered up various belongings around Jacob’s living room and headed out.
“Hey,” said Tosh as they walked to Tosh’s van.
“Yeah?”
“What are you up to?”
“Nothing, brah,” said Moody, carefully sliding his surfboard into the luggage compartment.
“Don't brah me, Mal.”
“What?” Moody finally looked up to see Hitoshi glaring down at him.
“Don’t fuck the manger. Not again.”
And Moody grinned. “Whoa little girl…” he hummed.
Lord Ganesha smoked sullenly, half-listening to the throb of trance music from within the club. Yes, come to the ceremony, Ganesha beta, and then afterwards, we’ll introduce you to yet another utterly boring goddess. Time to quit messing about and think of your family, Ganesha! As if he didn’t spend every second of every minute of every hour of his dreadful life thinking of his horrid, horrid, horrid family.
He cast a glance into the club. He flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the gutter and strode inside. It was time to dance away a few of the day’s cares and worries. Ignoring a number of fetching mortals who cast glances his way, he walked directly to the dance floor. There were glorious smiles all around, and a shifting away. They knew him here.
He let himself feel the beat, let it become him first. Backstep – backstep – turn…. A few of the regulars fell in and followed. It was impossible not to follow Lord Ganesha when he was in the mood. And he was definitely in the mood. The dancers drifted in step, though none could match the lovely precision of his hands, the cleanness of his footwork.
Fingers reaching out to grasp
Can’t find you
Just missed you round the corner
Disappearance
No mortal could match him, that is. But she was here now, suddenly spinning into his arms like a miracle. Though blessed with remarkable dark hair and white creamy skin, she was not the most beautiful woman there. But there was something about her, something dark and mysterious.
Wake up half remembered
All forgotten
Bright flash devil’s magic
Gone forever
Lord Ganesha’s mood brightened as he ran his hands down the lovely curves of her body. She was wearing ridiculously expensive shoes, but little else. They suddenly spun apart, and she matched the intricate footwork as if it were second nature.
Where are you my god my goddess
Searching over
Unforgotten
Bright forever
Unrelenting....
“If only you were a goddess, Lady Raziel,” Lord Ganesha remarked as he and the mysterious dark-haired woman retired to the bar.
“Why should I take a demotion?” she laughed, patting his arm. She hopped up on a barstool and poked her drink with a straw for a moment then scowling up at him. “They weren’t matchmaking you again today were they?” she asked, raising one elegantly plucked eyebrow.
“Oh, it’s all so tiresome!” sighed Lord Ganesh, his ire rising immediately as if this evening’s joyful interlude had never happened. “Goddesses are boring! Gods are boring!”
“I don’t find you boring, Ganesha dearest.”
“Oh, but you know whereof I speak! Why can’t we be more like you?”
“That is true,” she remarked, “angels are rarely boring. Of course, I haven’t introduced you to any Cherubim yet.”
“They can’t possibly be as boring as goddesses.”
“You would be surprised. Look, it’s none of my business, but if that’s all that matters to your family, why don’t you just let them find you a consort and then go on with your life?”
“I should live a lie? Like my parents?”
“Not a lie exactly. More like a convenient untruth!” she mused.
“I have done every conceivable thing for my family. Every breath I take is for my family. I shall not marry for them as well.”
Her dark eyes drifted around the club. “Did you need to find a distraction? What about that one? He’s awfully pretty!”
“Mortals are boring!” sulked Ganesha.
“Oh, no, don’t say that!”
Ganesha sighed and sat back. “I apologize, Lady Raziel. I find myself in a terrifically bad mood today. Let us move the conversational topic to happier matters! What of you?”
She shrugged. “Same old same old, I guess. Wotan says hi!”
“Yes, pray say hello to Uncle for me.”
“He misses you! You ought to come up! He said he’d take you on a hunt!”
Ganesha rolled his eyes. “Kindly tell Uncle Wotan for me that not everyone has three months to take off for a wild hunt! Some of us must work for a living!”
“Some of you,” Raziel chuckled.
“Yes, the some of us who don’t have an unutterably rich boyfriend,” said Ganesha, crossing his arms.
“It’s just as easy to love a rich man,” she giggled.
“Is that why you were late tonight?” asked Ganesha.
“Oh, shopping? Yes, I rather cut a path of destruction through Milano's fashion district, I’m afraid. Nothing left but scraps!”
“Do you ever actually wear any of those clothes you buy, Raziel?” demanded a pale figure.
Raziel hopped down from the bar stool to air kiss the new arrival. Although he was not a tall person, she still had to go up on tiptoe to do so.
“Your new boyfriend lets you leave the house looking like that?” he said, pointing up and down at her outfit (or lack thereof).
“He thinks I look rather fetching like this.”
“Then why isn’t he out disco dancing with you?”
“Oh, you!” she said, playfully pounding his chest. “Wotan refuses any dance originated after the Seventeenth Century. I have an old fashioned guy.” She turned to her companion. “Lord Ganesha, have you met my completely tiresome brother, Sariel?”
Sariel appeared to frown at Raziel, although his exact expression was difficult to read behind darkened glasses. He extended a hand towards Ganesha, although he continued to regard Raziel. “Jacob,” he said, a bit testily.
“Oh, don’t give him your silly human name,” Raziel scolded. “He’ll just change it five minutes from now!” she told Ganesha.
“Any name is fine, I am certain,” said Ganesha, still grasping the pale hand. The skin, so fine and smooth. “I am most charmed to make your acquaintance.”
Sariel regarded Ganesha for a moment, seemingly confused. “Uh, sure,” he said. “Raziel, I need to talk to you.”
“Am I busted for dancing on a Sunday?” she giggled.
“Raziel,” said Sariel. “Important.”
“Oh, he lives to interrupt my fun,” Raziel told Ganesha. “I’ll leave you now, dear,” she said, hopping off the barstool again. “Go find a cute mortal,” she whispered in his ear as she stood up on tiptoe to kiss him goodbye.
“Er. I’ll see you again. I mean, both of you?” asked Ganesha.
Sariel once again looked mildly confused, but Raziel cast a knowing glance at Ganesha. “Well, perhaps you will need my brother’s services, Ganesha. He is a lawyer!”
“Huh?” said Sariel.
“Oh, er, yes, I do feel I will have a need for legal services. Soon. In the near future,” commented Ganesha.
Sariel extracted a small case from his jacket and pulled out a business card. “Well. I don’t know Indian law. But here.” He nodded to Ganesha, and then Raziel had him in her small grasp and was dragging him out of the club.
Ganesha looked after them until they had disappeared from view. Then he looked down at the card in his hand. “Jacob Sulam, Attorney at Law,” it said. There was a small logo beside the name. It looked a bit like a ladder. Ganesha put ran his thumb over the raised type on the card, caressing it as if it were a rare treasure. He put it to his face and let the scent enter him.
He smiled and pocketed the card, and with a last sip of his drink, headed back to the dance floor for his encore.
Two of them there were, crouching on a rooftop, wings flapping lazily in the cool night breeze.
“Raziel.”
“What?” she asked, wings dark as the night, smile mysterious.
“People are talking,” he told her. His wings were odd. They looked grey, almost silver. But perhaps it was the moonlight.
“People will talk,” she sighed. “Which people, exactly?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“You know. The grapevine.”
“The grapevine?”
“Raziel. You and a god of earth? Are you fucking nuts?”
“Wotan likes me! And Iike his money. It's a match made at Headquarters.”
“Do you want to be cast out?”
“Oh, He'd never cast me out. He hasn't the guts.”
“You don't know what it's like!”
“No one blames you for the Fall, dear. You know that. It was just … politics!”
“You don't know how pissy He can get when you cross Him.”
“He can cross this,” she smiled, waving her left hand. On her finger appeared a single silver ring.
“Oh bloody Jesus, no!” said Sariel.
“I think the appropriate salutation is 'congratulations,” Raziel sniffed.
“Raziel!”
“And what is happening with that silly little band of yours?”
“Things are progressing!”
“So they’re all rock stars now?”
“They all think they’re rock stars now. And I think we’re on track. I just…. I feel like I’m refereeing a civil war sometimes. The guitarists and the rhythm section act like two factions. They all get along with Sid, but he’s just never around when I need him. And to make matters worse, the record company that was interested just got bought out, and I can’t get my calls returned. I haven’t told the boys, but I’m worried-“
“You know, I didn’t send you to law school so you could mess around with this silly rock and roll music, anyways. It's a fad, you know!”
“You just spent the whole night dancing to that dancey trancey shit!”
“I know, isn't it wonderful?” Raziel frowned and studied Sariel. She inclined her head. Sariel first shook his head, but then finally leaned forward, and she removed his dark glasses, revealing the dark bruising around his left eye. She held his chin for a moment while he glared at her.
“Who?” she asked, her mood suddenly darkened.
“It doesn't matter,” he muttered, snatching back the glasses.
“It matters to me.”
“It wasn’t his fault!”
“Your face smacked into Uriel’s fist?”
“He didn’t- I didn’t say it was him!”
“Who else would be your grapevine?”
“Who else would have a Fallen? It’s not as if I can fucking be picky, Raziel.”
“Who else? Are you Fallen or just stupid? Ganesha was ready to hump you in the bar! Two minutes ago.”
“Ganesha? That Bollywood loser you hang out with?”
“He comes from a very good pantheon!” she sniffed.
“Exactly! He’s a … he’s a god of earth, Raziel!”
“Oh, now you’re just being an angel,” she scoffed.
“I am an angel! Have you forgotten what you are?”
Raziel didn’t reply, she only scowled.
“I need to get back,” he grumbled. “For once, think about what I’ve said. For once, think!” And he was off. She remained on the rooftop, wings now jerking rhythmically in irritation.
She heard the beep of her phone, and dug into her purse for it. “AGREED 2 MRRY BORING GDSS. NOW WE R BOTH ENGGED. CNGRTS.”
She glowered at her phone. No, this wasn’t good. None of it was good.
This would not happen.
Raziel would not let it.
“You’re late, aren’t you?”
Sariel had cringed when he’d seen the light on in his living room. “Yeah. I was out. Doing stuff.”
“Doing what exactly?” demanded Uriel, crossing brawny arms.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now. I didn’t know you were coming over….”
“Oh, you had other plans tonight? Maybe with one of those mortals?”
“I manage those mortals!”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with them,” Uriel told him.
“We’re trying to get a band off the ground. It’s a lot of work! And stress!”
“Still only live for earthly fame? No wonder you’re Fallen.”
“That’s not- Look, I just want to do something with my existence. It doesn’t matter. Why are we fighting? I’m here now, OK? I'm here now. Maybe we could-“
But then Uriel had him, gripped tightly by the chin.
“Uriel, that hurts…”
Uriel took a long sniff, and then pushed Sariel aside. “You stink of mortal,” he grumbled, turning to leave.
“Uriel!” said Sariel. He heard the door close. “Bastard,” he whispered. “Bastard bastard bastard…” He was still muttering as he got to his bedroom. He said “bastard” as he unbuttoned each shirt button, and then....
“HI JAKE!”
Sariel waited for his heart to begin beating again. “Uh. Sid. Hi there,” he said to the figure who was now hanging upside down from his bedroom light fixture. “Uh. Yeah.”
“I signed the papers, Jake!” announced Sid, waving a stack of contracts at Sariel.
“OK. Uh. Yeah. OK,” said Sariel, taking the papers with still shaking hands, and hoping to god Uriel hadn’t spotted his lead singer sneaking into his bedroom.
“Who was the big guy?” asked Sid, who now dropped down to the floor. “Was he a friend? Because he didn’t seem very friendly.” Sid was wearing leather pants and not much else. He had a shock of jet black hair that seemed to stick out every which way.
“He’s a friend. But you’re right, he’s not very friendly sometimes,” sighed Sariel, looking through the contracts, and counting himself very, very lucky if Uriel didn’t spot this feral creature in his bedroom.
“Friends should act friendly, I think! I think of things when I’m upside down. It improves circulation. Did you know that?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s probably true.”
“You need better friends. Moody and Hitoshi gave me the contracts.”
“Well, that was nice of them.”
“Yes, they’re nice friends. And you’re a nice friend,” said Sid, now wrapping a very surprised Sariel in a hug.
“Uh. Yeah,” squeaked Sariel.
“I’ll catch you later. Sariel!” said Sid, making his way for the door.
“I assume you can show yourself out,” Sariel sighed. And then he frowned. “Wait, what did you call me…?”
