"Dragon 2" by Jill Brooks

See Jill Brooks’ custom floor cloths at http://www.myspace.com/jbfloorcloths

Consulting Hermes
by Sam Leng

“It’s a joke this Mount Olympus business. I’m at the bottom of the food chain!” The Greek God tosses a small rock at a towering potholed wall. The whole chamber is constructed of cold, grey stone strung with vines and foliage roots; a gloomy, chilling cavity of pure immortal presence. For a journalist, this is possibly the biggest scoop to have ever come available for claiming, and it’s me, Ray Williams, who has claimed it!

“Oh, I see,” I say, in a highly professional manner, allowing none of my internal surprise to surface. “And why do you feel this way? Surely a few of the others must show some sympathy.”

“Pah!” Hermes spits sarcastically. “Sympathy! I’ll tell you who gets sympathy and you can damn well quote me on this. Poor old lame Hephaestus, that’s who. Dragging his limp foot behind him while emanating self-pity and pure righteousness, offering his craft projects to our mutual father, the all-mighty Supreme. He’s a creep, a suck-up. He makes me sick.”

Hermes spits a globule of mucus onto the bare ground below us, and I sidestep to avoid the sticky, coagulated mess. The Godly messenger is not what I expected. I’ve done my research of course, as all good journalists must, but no mythological reference book has ever mentioned an unsatisfied and disgruntled deity. In fact, my studies had led me to believe that Hermes was one of the more benevolent and pleasant-natured Olympians. Ha! If that’s the case I dread to think what the others must be like.

“So you have no associates whatsoever?” I continue, undeterred. “No friends? You like no one?”

“They’re all irritating morons,” Hermes slams brusquely. “They all think they’re better than me, just because they’ve got their shining auras and their Godly titles. And what am I? I’m the lowly messenger and the Underworld guide, that’s what. I’m the son of Zeus. Yeah, that’s my biggest claim to fame, living in my father’s shadow. But not even that is a decent proclamation, is it? Almost every known God and Goddess in the cosmos are the progeny of my adulterous father.”

“Well,” I coo, my tone as tactful and understanding as possible, “a messenger is an important job. And you’ve got your flight sandals and your inventiveness. And then there’s the Medusa incident…”

The God shakes his sunhat adorned head and laughs humourlessly. “The Medusa incident. Oh dear, your attempts to cheer me are so incredibly feeble, aren’t they? May I remind you that I’m merely an afterthought in the Medusa incident. It was Perseus, that floppy haired excuse for a hero, who conquered the Gorgon. I leant him my sandals and I offered my potency, but the repellent slayer claimed the victory as his own. Truth is, he would have become lunch if I weren’t there. Medusa had a big appetite, easily big enough to devour Perseus’ ego.”

Hermes flutters the miniature wings that embellish his perfect feet in frustration.

“What about love?” I ask him, eager to move on. “Is there no object of your affection?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Hermes lifts his hat slightly and scratches his curled hair before proceeding. “You’d be wrong, of course. Don’t fool yourself. No Olympian has ever fallen in love. On the contrary, they simply become consumed by lust. They all get married and have kids. They’re all inbred! Well,I don’t even class myself as a true Olympian. Far from it! I’m an outsider. I feel more at home with Hades and Cerberus. I’m telling you, the Olympian family tree is nothing but chaos! Earth would have expelled us by now. Honestly.”

“But Aphrodite, your sister, she’s the Goddess of love, so surely love must exist within Olympus.”

Hermes cackles, perhaps half-amused. “She’s the Goddess of lustmore like!” he yells, apparently attempting to be heard by our topic. “She has had her wicked way with just about every God in Olympus, and a fair few mortals too! She’s a hussy! As I said, Mr Williams, don’t fool yourself, it’s not healthy.”

We walk a little way further in silence. Hermes appears to be pondering over something. His eyebrows are knitted together and his athletic, semi-naked body sparkles with beads of sweat, which are out of place as far as I’m concerned. The temperature in this cavern is in the minuses, and seems to be decreasing ever more with each step we take. I shiver abruptly and press on with the interview.

“So, Hermes, tell me about your inventions.”

Hermes shrugs, as if indifferent. “My inventions are the subjects of ridicule,” he tells me. “I invented the lyre, you know; that musical contraption that Apollo so proudly lugs around. Mine was created from an empty tortoise shell strung with sinews, but that wasn’t good enough for the God of music, was it? Oh no, he had to have a golden one!”

“And your invisibility helmet…?”

“Stolen by Perseus!” Hermes exclaims. “You mortals reckon I leant it to him, don’t you? That’s what your erroneous mythology hardbacks say. Well more fool you, eh? The overrated hero nicked my helmet, and I’ve never seen it since. And Odysseus—don’t even get me started on him! Over a dozen books he has ‘borrowed’ and failed to return. They’re all as bad as each other. Never trust a hero, mate.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks.” I express appreciation for the advice though my own philosophy begs the question “if you can’t trust a hero, who can you trust?” I have an inkling, however, that it will pay off to hold this query internal. Best to keep the ranting herald sweet, I should think. “What about Zeus and Hera?” I ask him.

He scowls; a sure sign that his mood is in no danger of improving. “No idea about Hera.” The messenger rubs the back of his neck in carefree relaxation. “She’ll have nothing to do with me, which of course makes me like her even less than all of the others. My father is an egoist and an unfaithful one at that. He lets his supremacy and kingly position get to his head, even though everyone knows the birth of the Universe was a joint effort between Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Poseidon keeps his distance from the rest of the flock. Perhaps if I were forced into choosing a favourite fellow Olympian, he would be my preference. He spends most of his time underwater though, and who can blame him really? I’ve thought of drowning myself on numerous occasions, I can tell you. If I weren’t blessed’ with immortality, I may very well have gone through with it.”

Hermes ceases his grousing as we arrive at a deep, black river which separates two shores. The coast opposite us is the opening to a tunnel that leads far down into the bowels of the Underworld. The temperature here is intolerable, far below freezing and yet the river runs thawed.

“We’ve come as far as I can take you,” Hermes informs me. “Charon will ferry you across Acheron.”

I glance at the edge of the shore where a stumpy ferryman, balding and crooked, is waiting for his next cargo of souls. “Surely there must be some mistake!” I choke. “I came here to interview you! I was just driving home and…and…”

“And I came to fetch you,” the messenger confirms. “It’s easier, sometimes, for people to trust they’re going to return to Earth. The prospect of an interview led you here quietly. You wouldn’t believe the fight that some spirits put up! I’ll do anything for an easy life. Can you blame me? And anyway, I delivered the goods, didn’t I? I gave you all the information you wanted, and more besides! I don’t know what you’re moaning about. ”

“But you arranged the interview with me two weeks ago,” I protest. “How could you have known?”

Hermes shakes his head with a glint of wry amusement twinkling sadistically in his eyes. “I know everything, my friend. Besides, I needed to give you an ample amount of time to research me. What kind of topic would I have been if I simply turned up out of the blue?”

A lone tear drips down my freezing cheek, marking a wet path on the surface of my skin. “But I’m so young.” I wail, begging for my own release.

Hermes nods sadly. “That you are. It’s a shame about the crash really. Your interviewing technique is one of the best I’ve come across. You have just the right blend of compassion, but at the same time you subject your interviewee to an in depth probing, and a horde of personal questions. Good stuff. You would have done well in life had you not died.” Hermes turns away from me and begins his trek back to the Mount. “Savour your deathday, Mr. Williams!” he calls back in uncaring dismissal. “It’s something I’ll never experience.”

Visit Sam Leng’s fiction and poetry webzine at http://www.neonbeam.org and personal MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/sammileng