Atlas Shrugged

I was sixteen years old when the whole mess with The Vatican Archives and the summoning of The Great One went down, and even when I said I was sorry there was little in the way of forgiveness from the parties affected. Sure, the humans had some reason to be upset, but I think they went just a little overboard. Besides, The Great One only took over a small fishing village in Boston and made the locals into fish-mutants, hardly worth getting riled up over seeing as he didn’t even kill any of them. In some cases, the people of Port Merton were granted better lives as fish-mutants; I even tried arguing that to one particularly annoyed mortal, and he slapped me with a flipper.

As for The Powers, the ones who sealed The Great One away in the first place, I can understand their frustration to an extent, but threatening to strip me of my divine powers and make me into a mortal just felt too far. The Grand Arbiter told me how much of a pain in the arse it is sealing monstrous beings into books; when I asked about sealing them in something easier, a jar or a box for instance, he slapped me with a book.

Life, my mom, and Death, my dad, sat across from me in the waiting room and refused to make eye contact with me or with each other; they hadn’t been divorced for long, and they rarely saw eye to eye on many matters as it was, but they both agreed on one thing: I was in deep trouble for what I had done.

When it came to parenting me, they split responsibility and took very different approaches. Mom was good with the caring and comforting side of everything, but I knew that what dad taught me was the uncomfortable truth about everything that I really needed to know at my age. He was the idol of fear for so many, a terrifying truth laying just beyond the veil of their mortal existences; mom, she was the glamorous, golden glowing goddess with good natured intent to drag me into shape as her heir.

“I’m not angry…” was the first thing either of them said to me, it was mom who had broken the silence, “I’m just very disappointed.”

Dad leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs theatrically; I just know he’d have rolled his eyes if he had any. “I thought we raised you better than this.” He took off his sunglasses, and the fiery red pits of his eyes burned into me. He had a way with it, channelling the fear of Hell into his telling offs, but it stopped working on me when I was twelve. He’d use it whenever I was out of line, and a dozen years of it just lessened the effect.

Dad was an intimidating guy in the right light, a seven-foot skeleton with long black hair who always wore a black top, studded leather jacket, and denim jeans, and who rarely left the house without his scythe. Either he’d sling it over his shoulder like a guitar, or carry it in both hands like a rifle, as long as he had it he felt like the man in charge. He hadn’t brought it today, he knew he was not in charge.

Mom was about the same height as him, with blonde hair that touched her lower back and a white dress that glowed slightly, but she had the perfect, porcelain skin of a Greek sculpture complete with the blank eyes and unmoving expression.

I was their only child, and I was an uncomfortable blend of them. I was a marble skeleton; while I took more to dad’s style, I always followed mom’s outlook, I was quiet and unassuming like dad, but I made sure to try and help people like mom did all the time. My hair was brown, and hit my middle back which wasn’t difficult as I was only six foot tall. I had always been short compared to other children of Powers, a fact my cousin, Zelda, loved to point out.

“Atlas, do you understand the seriousness of this situation?” Mom asked, very seriously. She flicked a piece of hair away from her face and patted my dad on his shoulder to try and calm him down; it was odd, it was the first time I’d seen them so much as touch since the divorce. Her touch seemed to calm him down, his eyes dimmed from that eternal red to a deep, pitch black.

“Yeah, I guess.” I shrugged.

The door at the top end of the waiting room creaked open, and my soul ran cold. The doorway had been built ten foot tall, and even then the woman who emerged had to bend under the lintel to get through. My mom was in charge of all things life, my dad in charge of all things death, and the woman looming over us, The Arch Power, was in charge of both of them. She was the boss’s boss, the boss of reality itself, and she made sure all knew it.

“Will you please enter my office?” The Arch Power beckoned.

Dad rose with an audible gulp, and mom just silently passed by her boss. I stood by her and looked up, offered for her to go first, but an inexplicable gust of wind forced me inside. I had never met The Arch Power, and she had only ever heard of me, so she was showing her power full force to make a good first impression.

The Arch Power was, arguably, the most ‘human’ of The Powers. I don’t mean she acted human, because that was far from her remit, but she looked a lot like those humans I had met on my many visits to Earth over the years… including the one that landed me in so much trouble, but that’s not the point.

“Do you,” her voice, for lack of a better descriptor, had the quality of a hurricane about it; she spoke with power, drive, and every word seemed to come out on the throwing wave of a storm, “understand, Atlas, what you have done?”

“Oh yes, Ma’am, she understands.” My dad awkwardly babbled; it was honestly somewhat pathetic.

“I am talking to your child.” The Arch Power’s mighty blond eyebrows furrowed, and her pale blue eyes beat down all of us. “Atlas,” she restated, “do you understand the seriousness of this situation?”

I had my hands dug in the pockets of my hoodie, and I could barely stand to so much as be in the same room with that giant without shivering like a dog in a thunderstorm. I was terrified, if my marble bones could sweat I would have been lashing by now.

“Sure.” I shrugged again. “I get it.”

It seemed that shrug set something off; the room went cold and dark, it was like a winter’s night over the ocean complete with a shin high wafting of mist that didn’t seem to thin in any place, it was constant, thick, and growing up my legs like vines.

“The freeing of monstrous beings is a crime, punishable by the stripping of your divine powers. How do you plead?”

“Arch Power, she-” my dad began again.

“Silence.”

When I next looked over to dad, he was making an odd mumble and groaning loudly. It only took one word, that one demand, and his teeth, top and bottom, had fused together. I didn’t know a skull could show fear, but he did.

“Retribution will be passed. I may either strip you of your divine power, or order you on a mission of extreme stakes, of risk so beyond your comprehension that its mere mention would drive you mad…” The Arch Power went on like that for a while, I didn’t really take note of what she said after the first hour. I did, however, click back into focus when she wrapped her little presentation up. “The Great One is one of the few monstrous beings capable of destroying a Power, as such we don’t want to risk more lives than necessary. Will you, guilty one, promise to embark on a mission to put The Great One back into his prison.”

I glanced over to my parents briefly. For the first time in her life, my mother looked terrified; my dad had crossed his arms and was mumbling about not being able to talk.

“Okay, I’ll-”

Before I could finish, the mist grew up my body and my vision went black. I felt like I was falling, tumbling free through something for so long that I had no idea where or when I would land. Sudden gravity latched onto me and took me back to my feet, and before me was that town, the little fishing town in Boston that my stupidity brought to the eye of that eternal horror.

“It’s her,” screamed one particularly fishy local.

I sidestepped his attempt to flipper me to death, and I got to watch as he lost his footing and slid across the dock like a bowling ball being flung down an alley. He flapped a few times, flopping about like, well, a fish.

“Oh, Great One,” I called into the cold darkness, “I bit meeting with you.”

The ground shook as The Great One spoke, his mighty tongue throwing every word with a trembling, rapturous power.

“Speak.”

I recovered from the shaking ground and steadied myself on a barrel, then I looked up into the starless sky again.

“I bid ye appear.”

“Turn around.” He groaned.

I had to do a little double take as I turned slightly and saw his form looming above the village, how I’d walked in and not seen that was a mystery to me. He was taller than any mountain, more tentacled than any squid, and more horrible than any wad of chewed gum I had ever passed my hand over while visiting the realm of the mortals. He stood with two, tree sized arms crossed. ‘Cocky bastard’, I thought, looking up at him.

“Right, there you are.” I cleared my throat. “Do you fancy getting back in the book?” I asked, hoping he would maybe just climb back in if I was nice enough. I had landed with the book tucked under my arm, and held it open in front of me invitingly.

“Go away.” He boomed, dismissively waving me off with a wave so hard that the following blast of wind nearly took me off my feet.

“Please?” I pleaded.

“I could kill you if I felt so inclined.” He reminded me.

I thought for a moment, if he decided to hit me I’d have all inclinations of immortality dragged away from me with all the pomp and fanfare of someone killing a spider. If I walked away, The Arch Power would have my divine status and send me down to earth permanently. Not that there’s any real permanence to mortal life, I suppose, but it still sucks when you spent your whole life being promised life eternal.

I looked into his three hundred black beady eyes and gulped. He blinked them all one after the other, by the time eye three-hundred blinked the first one would have already closed again and started a new round of blinks.

“So…” I paused, looking around the dock for something a little better than a book, “you’ve not killed me, so clearly you don’t want to.”

“What are you saying, foolish girl?”

“I’m saying I want to make something of it.” I said, all the cocky faux-confidence I could muster pouring out of every word. Safe to say, I needed it, I’d asked a demi-god out for a fight.

One of The Great One’s chimney sized legs came up out of the water, his foot was bigger than any boat and hurtling down to crush me terrifyingly fast. I was like a deer in the headlights, watching powerlessly as the barrelling mass came closer and closer and closer and…

Why did I free The Great One? Well, it was an act of childish rebellion, I suppose. I’d been a good girl for too long and wanted to do something that would make an impact, something people would remember. Sure, little acts of naughtiness are fun and all, but there’s a whole new level of thrill as you open the pages of a book bound in human skin and use one sentence to free a demi-god from his sleep.

How did I seal him up again? I just used something easier than a book. Fishermen love jars, and now The Great One is in the deepest depth of the securest vault in existence swimming amongst pickles.