Angry Gods

The night it started to rain, the sky was indigo with purple ringed around it in a sort of fringe, bruise-like, with fingers of black creeping slowly through the center. Grimly, and steadily, the thick ricocheting slaps of this atmospheric hemorrhage reached the concrete balcony, turned the beach below into mud, and inscribed the footsteps of those out walking, oh so poetically, like a love letter along the edge of the island.
The darkness had arrived in the usual way, descending like a theatre curtain, and stamping out the remains of the sunset, which smeared lazily out above the horizon; a washed-out watercolor. The crash of the waves against the beach, coupled with the wind howling overhead made for a violent marriage of forces, and caused a disturbance, the likes of which, Em had never quite experienced.
In her room, as she lays, half on/half off her hotel bed, unshakeable sand still coating her feet, Em's body is stretched and taut. Her hand holds limply onto a pen that has yielded nothing in weeks; her imagined monologues remain unborn, like unrealized acts of creation. Her hip bones jut out, and the skin covering them has dried and cracked, like fossils in the sand, dehydrated. Her thoughts are of the artist, Pygmalion, and of the writer Virginia Woolfe. The first, who had disregarded the consequences of sacrilege and had become a more-than artist—sculpting his wife from the dirt, and basing her appearance on the goddess at the temple—had become a Creator; had made his own happiness where previously there'd been none. The second, however, the writer, had committed suicide by walking into the river Ouse, distressed from her inability to write, plagued by the isolation of maddening voices and poor health; had known happiness, but had decided thatit had become unattainable. Em stretches her legs and rubs at her eyes.

She feels empty and sick and her heart shivers within her frighteningly painful tight chest, matching the crash of the ocean against its shore, like some sort of calling. She imagines that if it could speak, her heart's voice would ripple, like sound through an oscillating fan, its mouths gurgling oxygenated blood. Her eyelids, still coated with the the sea spray that had whipped around her earlier, like an assail of kisses, begin to flutter, weighed down with the sedative effects of sun and gin. The walls of the hotel are thin and she can hear the seashell windchimes hanging from the open balcony at the end of the hall, singing out a spell, tinkling a lullaby in the wind.
Em had spent the evening with her traveling companions, several married couples from work, perched on the edge of a canopy-covered table watching the storm gather energy, drinking island drinks, as palm fronds flapped wildly above them. In time, as the waves seemed to strain foward against the blackness of the night, spewing salt water and making Em's head spin, she had stretched out, propping a pillow behind her back, and listened, as the conversation turned philosophical, religious even, as it sometimes does when workmates, separated from the norm of anti-social office environments, attempt to guage eachother's personal beliefs. Tuning in, she had watched Shaun, his eyes serious, shake his head at Tim and continue what he was saying:
“Hey, I'm the least religious guy around, right? But, I'm just saying, everyone's got some sort of energy, right, that keeps us alive. Life is just accumulated energy. So, when you die, where does that energy go?”
“Don't know. Ever seen that movie 21 grams? It had the idea that when you die, you lose 21 grams, everyone does. Like you get rid of everything you don't need anymore. Guilt; resentment; love, even. Like it's meant to be the weight of your soul.”
Tim's wife shifted uncomfortably for a moment and adjusted her earring. She had bought them on the beach, little champagne colored pearls from the men who walked up and down the edge of the water all day long, waving their souvenirs and haggling prices with sun-seeking tourists. “Damn! I lost the back to one of them.” Kim's hands moved over the table top in search. Everyone turned their heads from left to right, then down to their feet, half-heartedly, but helpful.
“Hmmm,” she sighed, after a moment, pocketing the pearl and settling her hands primly in her lap.
“Oh well. How much is 21 grams?”
Em, her eyes half closed, but listening, managed to think, Love, Resentment, Guilt? And muttered, “Not very much. Hardly anything at all.”
Julie considered and poked Shaun, whose arm hung lazily around her. “Yeah, remember when we'd get like, 100 grams of that really thin sliced meat at the deli. That wasn't really much.”
“It's not really meant to be much, I guess. The idea that the soul could weigh anything at all is crazy. And that it escapes, is, I don't know...” he shook his head and stared out at nothing really.

By the bar, the resort attendants shuffled, watching, unsure why the tone of the young tourists had so changed, had become tired and weighted, as though the shift in weather meant that something was about to happen; that something was about to change; things could get carried away in storms like this.
The five people at the table were silent for a moment, lost in their own thoughts, anchors away and drifting off from eachother in an awkward pause filled in only by the hollow wail of the wind through the heaving waves.
Sirens, thought Em, her head all vapor. The storm had begun to scare her. She had not grown up by the ocean, nor had she ever been on a tropical island. Images of being swallowed up in the night by the encroaching water, lapping hungrily against the beach, began to fill her mind. Shaun, not willing to drop the conversation, had pressed on.
“I mean, if you know that you're going to die someday, and your soul's just going to go somewhere, you think you'd like, really try to do something while you're here. Leave a mark. Be useful.”
Em had opened her eyes, drunkenly, one at a time. Laughter. “Still alive, then?” Tim had smiled. She'd nodded slowly, making an effort not to slur her words as she spoke. “I think that humans should create things while we're here. Draw. Write. Invent. It's important. Like, become the creator. Divine.”
Her voice had trailed off, lost in the gale. Julie's head shook. “Geez. It's so loud. I didn't catch that last bit. I hope this isn't a hurricane.”
“Yeah,” agreed Kim. “The islands haven't had much luck around this time of year. Like the tsumani in Thailand happened around Christmas time too, right?”
4 heads had nodded in agreement.
“It's so fucked up though, if you think about what we've just been saying, like about being useful and stuff.” Tim's eyes had cleared. “I mean, it just seems like such a systematic purging of people.”
“Yeah, man,” Shaun nodded, eyes wide, “It's not right. It's not like they could have all been that bad, that useless to the world. Shit.”
“Angry Gods.”
“What?” They'd all turned to look at Em, surprised she was speaking at all.
“In most ancient mythologies, natural disasters and stuff happened because the gods were angry. Like, in the Odyssey, Odysseus kills the cyclops and ends up wandering around for 10 years, away from his wife, aimlessly fighting demons, trapped on some island with a witch, all because the Sea God was pissed off. He couldn't control his own fate. Couldn't even die if he tried.”
Em had looked down at her hands as she spoke, not really certain why she'd bothered speaking at all. In truth, she had begun to feel misplaced, a fifth wheel, and a rickety one at that; she had convinced herself as she'd packed her bags to leave a week before, that traveling here, to this tropical paradise, by herself, was acceptable behavior, that being single was fine, that she wasn't going to be carted around like extra baggage.
All week, however, the resort staff had joked with her about finding a man on the island. Only that morning, Roy, the bartender had sashayed up to her, given her a big gummy smile, and had begun, with hands in constant motion, to tell her about his own boyfriend, insisting that if he, Roy, could have a boyfriend, then, Em, with her pretty eyes and trim figure should have no problem. Em had nodded, smiled politely, and did her best to explain to Roy that not having a boyfriend wasn't something he should consider a a deficiency on her part.
“I just like to have my own life,” she'd said. “I don't like to lose myself in others.” Be eaten up, she'd thought.
She had believed herself as she'd spoken the words, but her mind had turned back to the night before at the bar, when she'd been abandonned by her friends for a supposedly “quick 5 minutes” that had bled slowly into 2 hours. Deciding to drink more, and talk with the people seated around her, Em had held her ground, determined not to be desperate. But, at the end of the night, when the man with dreadlocks and skin the color of bronze had leaned over and kissed her softly, she had felt his pulse beat through her cracked lips. When it was over, she'd looked at him, and wordlessly, pulled away, parched, to watch the bar's fire dancer spin a scorching path for her, like a phoenix' tail, against the black of the sky.

“It's really getting bad out here.” Julie said, wrapping her shawl around her sunburnt shoulders. The wind had picked up.4 heads had nodded in agreement.
“Let's leave the angry gods to it, then, shall we?”Shaun joked. “'Night guys.”
They made their way up their respective staircases, and closed their doors behind them.

As Em had unlocked her own door, her long, fine hair whisked around her like a shield in the wind. The waves worked themselves along the shore like fingers, tickling, beckoning. She'd pocketed the key and cast a slow, final look, bidding goodnight to the ocean. She'd gone to lay on her bed, Pygmalion and Woolfe, streaking the walls of her mind as she'd drifted off on the waters of dream, where the waves, stirred like a frenzied lover, opened wide its many mouths, hungry for anything expendable.