Well, that was unexpected. [Tag: Dionysus]
It had been a stressful few weeks: stocks were down, weather was shit, the elevator in the condo was out for maintenance. One of his neighbors had a kid with some form of screaming illness like colic. He thought about buying them out, maybe tearing down the wall between his condo and theirs and putting in a home theater. One of those super swank ones with recliners and a popcorn machine. But then he remembered that stocks were down and he couldn't afford buying a 2 million dollar condo then adding another couple hundred thousand in renovations on top of that.
And then he remembered he wasn't actually Peter Keagan, philanthropist-trust-fund-stock-market-guru. That was his mortal identity. He was once Prometheus, a Titan. A God. Of course, that hadn't been true in centuries. And more and more recently, is inability to do anything great, to make any statement larger than what any average mortal could do was weighing on him. If he still had his power, he'd use it. Stop some injustice, punish some serious hubris, anything he could to change what he saw as humanity's death spiral. He was a father watching their child do every messed up, wrong thing possible, and he could do nothing to stop it. Of course, this had been Zeus' true punishment. Not that Prometheus thought Zeus had thought that far ahead in things, but it had the same effect. A thousand years ago, it would have filled Prometheus with rage, it would have made him want to storm the gates of Olympus and take control. These days though? It just made him homesick. Repentant.
In an effort to console himself, Prometheus decided to do one of the few things that still made him content. He turned his stereo on, cranked the volume so that he would be able to feel the deepest bass notes in his bones, and sat down at his clay working bench. He could lose himself for hours on end here, making countless things: statues, pottery, whatever he felt would be useful or artistically moved him. Lately, he'd made a lot of hands. Statues of hands, bowls that looked like hands or had hands holding them up. He wasn't sure why. They'd been getting increasingly detailed, too, and the one he was working on now reminded him of the kind of work he used to do with Pim. His twin would have liked today's hand. It had long fingers and a double jointed thumb, which Pim was always obsessed with double jointed things. After a few hours work, Prometheus sat back to admire what he had made. It looked far to real to sell or trade to his usual art co-ops. It was propped up on it's own fingers, like a pianist's hand ready to play a concerto, fingers at the ready above the keys. He chuckled to himself as he was suddenly reminded of the hand from The Addams Family.
Then the hand twitched. It's fingers flexed and pushed, and it skittered across the work table like a 5 legged spider. Prometheus did what any sane, rational individual would do; he screamed like a girl, fell backwards off his work bench, flailed around for anything that could be used as a weapon, and beat the clay hand to death with a hammer.
Once the mangled mess of clay was safely in the kiln where it could skitter no longer, Prometheus took a few deep, calming breaths and grabbed his cell phone. He flicked through his contacts to find the only person he could think to call at this moment and dialed. Answer your damned phone, Dionysus...