Day One Deities
by Kathryn Reilly
“What should we do with the body?”
“Let’s create a world.”
“Come again?”
“Well, I mean why not? Let’s create an entire new world and be its deities.”
“That’s crazy.”
“More crazy than the Aztecs’ Tlaltecuhtli or the Mesopotanians’ Tiamat or the Vikings’ Ymir?”
“In those stories the sacrificed were gods. This body is human. Sorry. Was human. This body was human. Plus, it’s spongey.”
“Okay, so we’ll make a smaller world; it doesn’t need to be as big as Earth. What if we just create two oceans and three continents and a handful of lakes and rivers and a lot fewer rocks and stuff.”
“There’s no magic in this body.”
“Just because humans forgot they came from magic and lost the use of it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“Fair point.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“So, you’re in? It’ll take the two of us.”
“Yup. On two conditions.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Okay...get on with it then. Name the conditions.”
“First, I want to be the god of all weather stuff, but no beard. People need the weather to survive, so I want them to worship me for my rain and sun and wind and all that jazz. I’ll use the sun to burn them. Sun burns suck. Second, we’ll never be naked deities. I’ve seen those ancient Greek statues and I’m not sure if it’s hard to accurately depict a penis in stone, but no one is disrespecting my anatomical gift. I mean, I know mine doesn’t look like theirs, but I don’t want any gross misrepresentations.”
“Fine. I’ll be the goddess of art and inspiration and sex and creativity and discovery and logic.”
“Wait. I want to be the god of sex. I’ll totally inspire our new humans.”
“Nope. You had your chance and named your conditions. I get sex.”
“Just because I didn’t think of it right off the bat doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get a shot at it.”
“That’s exactly what it means; it wasn’t important enough to you to claim it. I claimed it. It’s mine.”
“Whatever. Fine. I’m adding pleasure to my god powers. I’m claiming sensual pleasures.”
“Childish, but I’ll let you have it.”
“Let me?”
“Ready?”
“Sure.”
“Wait! What if this human was horrible? What if their vileness taints everything?”
“They’re all a little vile don’t you think? Gasses and fluids leaking out all the time, and they’re pretty self-centered. Oh, wait, you mean what if this one killed people? We’ll just make sure vileness isn’t allowed in our world. Pavlov training and such. Besides. What if they’re born with darkness and choose light? Then we’ll know we’ve done something correctly; we’ll be great gods.”
“God and goddess.”
“Sure.”
“Okay. So on three we’ll both think about the coordinates and pop over to that part in space. I’ll hang out and you sort out any gravitational stuff that needs to shift since we’ll be building a planet. Two moons will be there, so that will be cool. Then we’ll each start grabbing parts and calling out what they’ll become.”
“Sounds good.”
WHOOSH.
“Here we go. Oh my god, this is gross. Pulpy and wet. So squishy. It stinks with open skin. How long has this body been dead?”
“Not sure? A little bit. I don’t think anyone knew it was dead. Think about the world. Rinse your hands off later.”
“Spine for the world core!”
“Eyes for the stars!”
“Eye crustiness for sand!”
“Hair for grasses!”
“Teeth for the mountains!”
“Wait, how many teeth do humans have?”
“I’m counting 31. It looks like one is missing”
“31 mountains isn’t a lot. Did you make mountains or mountain ranges?”
“Mountains.”
“Will that be enough?”
“I don’t really care. They get what they get.”
“Right. Okay. Nostrils and ears and belly button for caverns!”
“Blood for oceans!”
“Oceans can’t be red. They should be blue.”
“They’re only blue on Earth, remember? Earth oceans are actually clear; they just reflect stuff. Well, unless something is growing in them like algae and then they could be green or red or pink.”
“You just made our oceans blood red, actually it’s darker. This blood is kinda stagnant.”
“It’s a new world; I can make them any color I want.”
“Blood is thicker than water and it’ll feel weird.”
“Maybe, but we don’t have to get in it, so not really our problem. Besides, the water on Earth is so polluted with other stuff at this point, it’s thicker than it should be. No one will care. Besides, they can frolic and drink from the rivers I’m going to make from tear duct matter.”
“Point. Let’s wrap this up. Can we just think everything else? It’s so much quicker.”
“Yup.”
“This place is pretty gorgeous! I like your idea to use the nails for trees. The clear trees look pretty next to the redbrown waters.”
“Thanks! I loved how you took the joints and made them connectors between the continents. That was clever.”
“I thought the connectors were brilliant; now everyone can walk everywhere. Good exercise means no obesity. I love how all the tiny microbes are huge animal versions of themselves. Kinda weird and wonderful.”
“Oh my goddess! We FORGOT to make the people! Who’s going to worship us?”
“Let’s go find some bodies.”
“Okay, but living ones. I don’t want to breathe life into clay replicas or Frankenstein them together.”
“If we did the molding and breathing thing, we could make them more equal! Wait. Hear me out. We could make them like clownfish and they could change sex when they wanted. Or maybe model them after the yellow-bellied water snake. Parthenogenesis seems pretty cool.”
“Okay. So we could do it ourselves or just grab clownfish and yellow-bellied snakes and some humans and mush everything’s DNA together. We’ll make better humans.”
“Deal. We’ll have to watch them for a while to choose rightly. Let’s choose ones with happy pets; they’ll be good people. This should be fun!”
“We’ll have to bring the pets though.”
“Of course.”
WHOOSH.
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About the Author
By day, Kathryn helps students investigate words’ power. At night, she reads retold myths and sometimes spins new ones. Enjoy her poetic adventures in Shadow Atlas, Willow Tree Swing, Blink Ink, Whiptail Journal and more. She has short stories forthcoming with Elly Blue Publishing and Oddity Prodigy Productions. Her rescue mutts Savvie and Roxy Razzamatazz hear the stories first. Twitter and Instagram: @katecanwrite
