Posts tagged shortstories

All of a sudden there was a sudden stench of rotting bandages and rotting flesh. That was never good, but being business partners with the god of the dead it was expected time to time.

The door between Osiris’ office and Zeus slammed opened as Osiris hovered into the room. He always hovered, something about how he was to divine to ever set foot on mortal soil, and he always slammed doors when he went through them, something about not knowing his own divine strength on this plane.

Like I said total dick.

“Zeus! The all mighty Osiris has come to speak with you about the current state of the bank!” He announced as he hovered himself into position in front of Zeus’ desk. “Things are not looking good.”

Zeus stroked his beard and gestured toward the chair.

“Take a seat Cyrus.”

“I shall gladly take a seat for it is my divine right!” Osiris positioned himself hovering over the chair in a seated position and Zeus had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. “As I said things are not looking good.”

“The last financial report said we were still sustainable for another ten or even twenty years though Cyrus, we’ve had this discussion. I even had Jesus look it over ten times to make sure. You need to stop worrying about this partner.”

“I cannot! For I am Osiris and all possible outcomes are open to my eyes!”

“You’ve been talking to Thoth again haven’t you?”

“He’s my financial adviser what can I say!?”

Zeus threw his hands up in the air and left them hanging in the air, prostrated toward his business partner.

“I thought we agreed not asking any prophetic gods for advice on this venture Cyrus!” Zeus got up from his seat and walked toward his window. “We agreed on just running a normal mortal business, one where we could have as much power as we used to, but still have it within mortal means.”

“If I, the all powerful Osiris, had not gone to Thoth before, this bank would have gone under centuries ago.”

“Cyrus!”

“I do not apologize, it was necessary.”

Zeus put his head in his hand. When Jehovah had ousted all the other gods but himself from the professional god scene they were all rife for purpose. This whole thing had been Zeus’ and Osiris’ coping method. An effort to “fit in” amongst the mortals, and Osiris had been ruining it for who knows how long.

“What’s the news from beak-face Cyrus?” Zeus said with a hint of defeat.

“In five years a financial downturn will hit the United States and many banks will go under, only to bought out by larger banks. Ours will be one of them.”

“So what? We’d be working with mortals?”

“We, and more importantly I, would be working under mortals Zeus. They would be our superiors.”

“Fucking hell.” Zeus shook his head. “What do we do? How do we avoid this?”

“Thoth has told me that it is unavoidable.”

“So why are you even telling me this? Let’s stay in business for as long as we can and just sell the bank when it starts going down.”

“No one will want to buy us out before we are completely ruined along with several other banks. It is inevitable.”

“Great Cyrus, you’re being a real help.”

“The only course of action is to liquidate our bank now.”

Zeus crossed the room and rolled his chair back to his desk. He slowly sat down in it and leaned back with his hands behind his head. He never thought in a million years he’d ever be where he was right now. Still throwing lightning bolts and striking people down but now he got paid to do it. It was a good way to spend an immortal life he thought as he sat forward and rifled through the mail he had gotten this morning. A certain manilla envelope caught his eye, and he opened it up to find it filled with more paperwork.

“Christ!” He shouted as he let the contents spill onto his desk.

A few seconds later the door to his office opened and a clean shaven handsome man in his mid-twenties walked in.

“Yes Zeus?” He asked while fingering through a stack of forms in his hands.

“Jesus I thought I told you to fax these forms three days ago. Why were they in my inbox?”

“Oh,” Jesus looked up from the forms and gave Zeus a calm collected look.”I faxed the forms as soon as you gave them to me, those are your personal duplicates. I’m sorry I didn’t get them to you earlier Zeus.”

Zeus simply grinned and gave a little chuckle.

“It’s quite alright Jesus.” He gathered the duplicates together in a neat pile. “My fault for assuming you’d actually make a mistake.”

Jesus smiled back at his boss, nodded, and walked out of the office. Jesus Christ, the PA from heaven. He was Jehovah’s kid, and that might have bugged Zeus a millennium ago, but at this point in time he really didn’t care. The guy did good work and he was constantly on top of things. Zeus had actually forgot that he had needed duplicates of his faxed forms. Jesus was constantly picking up on things like that.

Zeus always needed duplicates because all the original faxed forms got sent to Osiris in the next office over. If Jesus was the PA from Heaven, Osiris, well let me tell you. Osiris was the business partner from hell.

Literally.

Zeus tugged on his braided beard several times before signing off on the last form. He gathered the papers up and tapped them lightly on his desk so they would all fall in place before sliding back in his chair and filing the form in his cabinet. Still in his chair, he slid across the room to the closet where he kept his lightning bolts. Carefully opening the door he looked at them with complacency. Once they had been the most feared weapon in existence, now they were just the high powered tools of a bank executive.

He removed one from its stand and felt the weight, or there lack of, of the bolt. Always so effortless, so majestic, so…sparkly. The bolt crackled with energy as it touched his hand. He took a few careful steps across the room and opened the window behind his desk. The sprawling city scape of New York city lay before him. He took a breath of air as a breeze sixty stories high swept into the room, and even up this high in a damn skyscraper it still smelled like feet. Mortals always smelled like feet.

Shaking off the smell he hefted up the lightning bolt like a javelin and took aim that had been practiced for millennium. The target was a small house on the outskirts of Boise, Idaho. A couple thousand miles was an easy shot. It were the ones he had to get to go around the planet that were the hard ones. The curvature to the shot was always the most difficult, and sometimes he ended up just striking a tree instead. Damn trees. Pulling back his arm he threw the lightning bolt out the window and it instantly disappeared from his hand.

He leaned out the window, hand cupped around his ear, and listened for the inevitable response. A resounding CRACK followed by “No! My house!” shouted in a heavy sounding accent.

“You should have really paid your mortgage Mr. Estavez. Foreclosure is always a large danger.” He said as he chuckled to himself, while miles away Mr. Estavez heard the same shout as a resounding boom.

So was the business of the Zeus and Osiris Bank.