Golledge Literature

 I. A Cadillac Fleetwood

In the horizon bordering a vast desert plateau, a leviathan sun continues its strange ascent through quiet air. A small dead town soaks in the glow. Parked along its only commercial boulevard is a black ‘51 Ford sedan, and there’s just one occupant.

Harald Björnsson is the man. The beige Dacron two-piece fits him tightly, especially across the back, but he wears it well. The fedora is the right size and keeps his lengths of blonde-white hair away from glinting eyes. The Ford, like the suit, is second-hand and snug for a man of his mountainous frame.

The car’s suspension groans in relief as he steps out.

The day is cloudless, and he tips the brim of his hat forward to shield his vision from the sun. It’s a still morning in the flat main street, and his car is the only one parked, the only one visible at all. A few humans like phantoms shift on the corners and in the alleys, moving in blurs across his periphery.

He opens a rear door and reaches for something heavy that’s been tightly strapped in with every seatbelt. A historian once told him it was called a Dane axe; Harald only replied, “I am a Geat.”

The handle, nearly six feet long, is laced with thin strips of crisscrossed black leather and hewn from a pale ash tree grown for the purpose. It carries at its top a single L-shaped iron blade inlaid with silver that spells out the weapon’s name in winding runes. Translated, they approximate, “Rain of the Troll-Woman of Strife-Clouds.”

He shuts the door without locking it and steps onto the sidewalk as ragged children fall in behind, jockeying for space under his long, not-inconsiderable shadow. He rests the axe on his shoulder as he walks, and the children jump to catch the portion of its handle bobbing above their heads. He passes the vacant hair salon and abandoned pharmacy on his right before finally arriving at his property.

Taking up the rest of the block is a closed bar. Like the other businesses on this stretch of road, its off-white paint is chipped to Hell, and the one street-facing window, though large, allows in little light through its countless streaks and smudges. Behind it is a broken neon sign that spells out the bar’s name in blocky print. At the suggestion of that same historian, Harald let go of his original idea for the name in favor of something more “recognizable.”

He stops at the heavy wooden door and sees it’s ajar. One look over his shoulder is enough to ward the children back. They take up positions at the window to peer inside the dark interior. They know something he doesn’t, but he’s beginning to suspect.

Harald slides his war axe forward into a wide, two-handed grip. He takes one heaving breath that stretches his suit jacket to its limits. With a snapped pivot he lifts and slams a massive loafer-clad foot (no sock) against the door to send it flying open. He lunges into the darkness with axe-blade held high.

His eyes adjust and the situation becomes clear: Valhalla is filled with Mexicans.

.            .            .

Elsewhere, Las Vegas specifically, an aging comedian is dying onstage. His quick but warbling jokes fall on ears that can only wish for deafness.

“… and that’s why ya can never tell a dame what time it is, am I right?”

The spotlight blinds him from seeing his audience, but he can certainly hear their silence.

“… no? … nothin’?”

Nothing. The red curtain behind him clearly has bullet holes in it.

“Oh, come on! Fine, okay, I’ll take it back to the shop.” He shuffles his index cards looking for the A-material, but his hands shake and he drops three. His ash-colored suit is at least one size too big and wrinkles heavily when he bends down to pick them up, and decades of boozing layer an oily sheen of sweat across his rosy face that glistens under the stage light. After clearing his throat twice, he half-mumbles, “ahh, alright, I think you guys’ll like this.”

But the half-dozen drunks dotted around the small and filthy lounge will not like it.

“So they say Eisenhower wants to finish clobberin’ the Commies before he leaves office. Don’t know how that’s gonna work when they can never get him away from the links! I can see it now, the Commander-in-Chief, still two strokes under par on seventeen when they get the call. I can see the Secret Service runnin’ up to the guys on eighteen, screamin’, ‘the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming! West Berlin’s overrun and the bombers are on their way! Can the President play through?!’”

His eyebrows shoot up on the punchline to underscore how overwhelmed by humor the audience should feel, but the only sound from the black before him is the strain of his own breathing through the microphone amp. He steps back from the stand and considers walking off the stage. After a deep, longing breath, he re-approaches.

“I turned fifty last week. Not sure you can tell, but without the shoe polish my hair looks like a kindergarten chalkboard.”

Finally, a chortle at least.

“The doc tells me I’ve got high cholesterol too. Can’t imagine what that’s about!” he says while slapping his beer gut and sending up his eyebrows.

The source of the chortle can’t offer anything more than a pity laugh this time.

The comic waits, then sighs. “… am I really that bad?”

“You’re fuckin’ terrible!” shouts someone with instant passion. This alone inspires a more genuine laugh from the chortler.

The comic smiles, then pounces. “Yeah, you’re right.  And you know what else? I got a tiny Johnson too!”

The sweetest and most precious thing, a room laugh, blossoms out from the darkness. At its heart is the reformed chortler, the renounced pity-laugher, whose deep bellows of rasping, thunderous hoots drown out the more laid-back responses around him. Overcome by hilarity, his lungs can’t keep up, and he descends into a loud fit of hacking coughs.

Later, as the paramedics are wheeling his fat corpse out the front door, the lounge’s stocky Irish bartender/owner slides a freshly made gin and tonic over to the man responsible for his death.

“Well, George, can’t say ye didn’t kill today.”

George takes the drink and salutes it in the direction of the stage behind him. “To my one and only fan, I hardly knew you.” He downs it in one go.

“So that one’s on the house, because I’m not fookin’ payin’ ye ta kill me customers.”

George halts his spiritual crisis mid-inception. “You mick bastard.”

“Now listen here, I didn’t make ye less fookin’ appealin’ than the devil’s own fookin’ arsehole. This town is only gettin’ bigger, and this establishment is gonna be a leader in its nascent stand-up community –”

He’s interrupted by the sound of a man having an orgasm in the nearby bathroom.

“… is gonna be a leader in the stand-up community for as long as I’m around ta keep bad-luck arseholes away from its good name. I gave ye the chance and it’s fookin’ over. Leave.”

George is too tired to reply with anything more than “good luck,” so he slides off the barstool and makes for the exit. He passes the brunette ticket attendant, an aspiring showgirl from Montana. She’s reading a pulp paperback western and too engrossed to look up from it.

“Catch ya later, Shelly.”

“Piss off.”

The front door opens onto blinding desert light. Slowly into focus arrive the sidewalk, the street, the squat pawn shop across the way, and then miles beyond that the vista’s defining feature, a shimmering city grafted right onto the hardpan. There, titanic mirages of concrete and glass sprawl and heave in states of ceaseless expansion – he can even discern the length of the great casino and theater corridor that cuts through Vegas’ very heart, but that’s only because O’Leary’s Chuckle Hut is located nowhere near it.

Sweating already, George isn’t drunk enough to stop the wave of heavy shame now rolling through him. He remembers the payphone on the opposite corner; from there he can at least call a cab to get him away from the Chuckle Hut.

He steps down from the sidewalk and advances. A car horn blares from his left. He turns and sees through watery eyes a green 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood barreling down the street towards him. Two seconds later -

The fender strikes him at the knees, smashing them in and throwing him to the ground. The front left wheel cuts across his stomach and sprays forward a thick mix of blood and shredded organs. The rear wheel breaks his spine and crushes his hips. The car’s shadow passes silently over his eyes.

His head tips towards the Fleetwood as it speeds away. He means to have one last look at the lovely deep blue sky above him, but his neck won’t move. His suit and shirt are ruined with entrails, but he reminds himself that this and many other worries will soon become irrelevant.

Brilliant white flares at the center of his vision and encompasses everything. This, he supposes, is it.

“Okay,” he whispers, but no one is there to hear his dying word.

.            .            .

Harald is drenched in blood and quite happy. Valhalla’s black-and-white checkered floor is smeared with dozens of bodies whose flesh has been cleaved, whose limbs have been broken, whose innards have been spilled and blended. From walls to ceiling, the crimson grease of human viscera drips from nearly every surface. The Mexicans attacked with clubs, knives, swords, axes, scimitars, spears, garrotes, maces and morning stars and still he killed them all.

It’s in these panting seconds immediately after a slaughter that Harald first takes a moment to shut his eyes and thank the Slaughter Gods. Then, he savors inspecting his war axe. The ashen handle is only lightly nicked after all the parrying, and the blade itself is as pretty as it should be after a fight, sheathed in blood. Stuck to the top between clumps of matted hair is a worried-looking eyeball, which he flicks into the distance with a muscular middle finger. He is unharmed.

Something unexpected near the ceiling catches his attention. He looks up and for the first time notices a large yellow banner spread across the full width of the bar. Painted in and spattered with red is the message: “¡Feliz Cumpleaños!”

Harald looks down and smiles, still disbelieving of his newfound fortune.

The blood’s molten creep withdraws. The solid matter of human remains retreats and reorders, reattaches and reanimates in a wine-dark ballet of time reversed. Trauma undone, bodies become whole, and the spark of life returns to their freshly opened eyes. The thirty-two souls now standing around him are a mix of downtrodden young and old, all breathing calmly. They leave the weapons on the ground and regard their Scandinavian friend with what is unmistakably admiration and love.

Glowing in post-battle contentment, he leans on his axe and regards them back. “Brothers, sisters, you have my thanks – the first round is on me!”

They cheer. But before Harald can pour, they all rush him for a giant group hug.

.            .            .

The light is hurting his eyes, so George turns his head away.

“Wait a sec.”

He turns back towards the light and sees it’s the sun, but in a different spot from where he remembers it sitting only seconds ago. It also appears quite larger.

He brings his wrist to his face and checks the time on his father’s watch, but it’s dead.

“Now that’s funny.”

He sits up with speed and terror. But on and around his person he finds no blood, no entrails.

He’s sitting in the middle of a two-lane blacktop running straight through another flat desert expanse. It meets silver-blue skies at far-off horizons, and the terrain to either side is a hard-packed amalgam of sand, dust and clay scarred by endless networks of lightning-like dry fissures.

He rolls onto all fours and crawls to the road’s nearest edge, ignoring the rough burning under his palms. In the distance there is the faintest watermark of a mountain range.

He rises onto wobbly legs and shuffles back across to examine the opposite panorama, but the sands there have no end he can see. Not a single breeze blows.

Realizing he’ll achieve little else by waiting, George starts to walk far along the road.

II. Diogenes Forever

Some millennia later, he arrives at a few conclusions.

One – There is death and there is Death. The first was simple enough to understand. Body, meet Cadillac. The terms governing the second, however, have been far more slippery. See point two.

Two – Time doesn’t work like it used to. Take decay, for example. The clothes George arrived in have withered away to skimpy tatters, and his bare feet continue their monotonous padding centuries after his loafers gave up the ghost. There’s also the emaciated state in which cold turkey and several eternities of perpetual hunger and thirst have left him. His previously moist, drooping features have dried and hollowed into a face both sun-scorched and skull-like, visible only between his ankle-length beard and crowning bushel of white trapezoidal frizz. The frizz has now attained such mass and density that the heat it traps is near-unbearable, but, despite these agonies, he continues to walk – see point three.

Three – Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t suffer.

His perception of time alternates between a grinding awareness of every atomic pico-second and a drawn-out Godhead-view that makes the passing of ages seem rushed. The dull ache of consciousness remains constant. Sobriety hasn’t helped, except in the clarity of his now borderline religious belief that this road must lead somewhere.

Not for the first time, he cranks his head back and shouts into the simmering daylight air above, “It never ends!”

Not that there wasn’t incident along the way. There was the abandoned gas station, the empty bus station, that diner with the cherub Clyde, plus more than a few cycles into the afterlife’s abyssal night.

When the sun finally zigzagged below the horizon in front of George for that first time, the sky passed through a somewhat ordinary array of sunset vibrancies, the kind that would inspire awe in anyone less spiritually deprived. But by then already accustomed to eternal plodding and never one for lateral thinking, he simply continued to plod. He never turned to examine the finer details of darkness and light rising behind him.

An infinite starfield opened ahead. He privately conceded it was somewhat impressive. A wind picked up and strengthened. A comet shot over him, and, when he turned to trace its path to the opposite horizon, he finally saw the much greater glory.

A planet. Not the kind that would typically be indistinguishable from a star when viewed by the naked eye, but a gargantuan body, greater than the grandest mountain, slowly lifting into the blackened night sky around it. The sand-colored sphere was accompanied by enormous rings, and breath left George’s body in such quantity he believed he’d died again.

“What the fuck is this shit?!”

His legs gave and dropped him to his hands and knees. Hyper-ventilation set in. He turned and crawled away as more celestial phenomena rose and loomed over his progress. He tried not to look up. Never one for follow-through, he frequently looked up. He saw more planets, moons, nebula and quasars, stars exponentially increasing in number, size and colors of light.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus …”

He clawed his fingernails bloody into the pavement so the heavens wouldn’t pull him off the ground. It took a few decades to get used to – no sleep, no rest for the dead, not yet.

George smiles at the memory now. Casually ignoring the pillar of fire twisting across the road in front of him, he even fondly remembers …

His memory doesn’t work as well as it used to. He remembers enough, though, enough to know to keep walking. Of course, it occurred to him he might have made the wrong choice at the start of all this. The road runs in two directions – did he pick the wrong one?

“It never ends!”

.            .            .

“As-salaam alaikum!”

“You too, bud,” George replies, surprised he has no trouble understanding the man in black’s language. The understanding seems to go both ways. He considers whether the white horse carrying the man understands as well.

“Where ya headin’?” he asks of the man, not the horse.

Loose histories are exchanged. His name is Ahmad ibn Ayyub, and in life he hunted Roman soldiers across the Levant. He found some, and then found himself with a spear rammed through his stomach and out his back. Should have ducked left when he ducked right. His horse Yazid died in the same battle, and the two, always close, emerged together in death. They journeyed about looking for more Romans to kill and eventually succeeded in their quest.

There’s a vast plateau up ahead, he claims. Land of the “dead-faces.” Reach the top and not far in is a mostly vacant town, but one with a bar that’s open and very much in use. It was there Ahmad found his Romans, and it was there he killed them.

In an unclear passing of verb tenses, he then remarks that killing them “grew boring” and that he has since decided to literally find God instead. No dice yet, but, kitted out and so confidently vested in both tunic and cloak, he surely looks up to the task. He perks up excitedly at George’s mention of the pillar of fire; even Yazid stamps his hooves in abrupt impatience.

After chastising him for not speaking with the Creator and giving a brief but mystifying warning about “demons,” Ahmad rides past with zealous urgency, disappearing into the heat shimmer beyond.

On a faint wind George hears one last brotherly “As-salaam alaikum!”

.            .            .

The road disappears cleanly into the escarpment at the base of the plateau, as if the mammoth formation was gingerly placed on top of it. Standing there at the meeting of the two, George sees to his left and right an endless wall of sun-drenched rock with only the barest hint of its angling away from him. And nearly two thousand feet above, thin through the haze and abutting empty sky, is the distant lip of the plateau’s edge.

The first impression was a poignant one. The sun was setting, but instead of disappearing behind the usual flat-line meeting of land and sky, it set behind that subtle point of angled cliffs, surrounding it with an amber halo. George almost cried – the road led somewhere!

Less poignant was the incident that took place later that evening. Approaching from his left through that interminable night had been a short procession of dark-haired children, no more than a dozen, all in suits and dresses and ranging between what he guessed to be four and thirteen years of age. Each held a small, lit candle. Flickering light danced across the white and black paint covering their faces. Their heads were lightly bowed, presenting dense crowns of blossomed marigolds.

They crossed the road in front utterly silent, and he saw their faces clearly. They were painted to look like skulls. The last in the file, a young girl holding hands with an older girl, looked up from her candle and cast him a sorrowful gaze. He had to look away.

Night re-enveloped them as they continued their slow march across the sands, but George could still make out the flecks of light each carried into the distance. He watched as all their lights then vanished in a gust of darkness.

He said a quick prayer and resumed his hurried walk, too afraid of both dead-faces and demons to look back once.

A few lifetimes later he avoids the memory with well-honed skill. He’s still standing at the foot of the plateau, contemplating whether to search left or search right for the easiest route up. The sun continues to beat and bake above him.

Relishing in the long-forgotten embrace of one of his favorite emotions, impatience, he scrambles forward and begins to climb.

.            .            .

George, now a burnt speck of pathetic flesh, is stranded a thousand feet up the sheer escarpment. He draws comfort from the knowledge he’ll at least find out what happens when someone dies again. See point one.

The initial gravel and slate incline was manageable enough. He possesses a firm grip, and a much-reduced body weight, but his potent blend of cowardice and stupidity kept his gaze locked forward as he clambered up the mostly vertical rock-face grasping for whatever handhold in reach; he didn’t plan his path and needed to double-back often. So now he stands frozen on a dime-wide ledge, clinging to and checkmated by the smoothness of the wind-blasted rock ahead. He’s too scared to open his eyes as that same hot wind rips and tears at him.

“You fucking idiot, you stupid son of a bitch-whore, you –”

His foot slips off the ledge, a split-second give in the needed tension of his legs. He’s losing strength, possibly consciousness, or just giving up. He rests his head against the rock and tries not to cry.

“It never ends.”

He waits for his body to collapse.

“You should never give up!”

The voice hails from somewhere above. Annoyed at having his suicidal mood spoiled, George looks but sees nobody. Now doubly annoyed, he considers jumping if only to avoid whatever this next hassle is.

“Who said that?” he asks of the air.

“Look up and to the right.”

That voice! It’s male, thin, but aged and underscored by a touch of resonant gravel. It’s approachable and unrushed. It’s also unabashedly, patriotically American.

George immediately trusts it. He does as he’s told and notices for the first time a barren tree growing horizontally out of the rock face maybe forty feet away. Was it always there? And is this man hiding behind it?

The voice again: “There’s some good grips nearby you can’t see. Why don’t I guide you the rest of the way, friend?”

“I still can’t see you.”

“Here, let me steer you closer first. You can relax, we can chat, and then we can make some real introductions.”

One slow, fraught step at a time, George is guided nearer to the tree. Its details become clearer. The rock carrying it is cracked apart by slithering roots. The trunk has been curved down by gravity, but its branches are thick, strong and sharp. End to end it isn’t much longer than fifteen feet. It’s old but still holds firm against the wind swaying it.

He’ll soon be close enough to touch it, maybe even sit on one of the branches. He made his peace early on with the fact the voice was coming from the tree itself, not behind it, and now only focuses on following its directions. He’ll wait to bring up the sit. As for the voice’s true origins, the biblical implications at play are not completely lost on him.

“Alright! Last stretch here and then maybe we can get you on the trunk for a nice lie down, how does that sound?”

The climb has taken its toll, so George only offers a quivering nod that vibrates the whole of his head frizz.

“Hey, why don’t you take a minute first? Besides, I was just thinkin’ to myself, and the guys’ll give me grief if I don’t ask, where were you even headin’ to land yourself in such a pickle?”

“Well –”

“Oh, lemme guess! You were on your way to Björnsson’s place, weren’t you?”

George has put his arms over a small ledge, giving himself a chance to catch his breath. “I might be? I met a guy on a horse, and he told me I could find a town with some people –”

“Ha! I knew it! I just knew you were headin’ to Björnsson’s! Of course that’s not its actual name, but I don’t like to say that out loud.”

George isn’t sure how to reply.

“… So, where you from?” the tree asks.

“Oh, Vegas. Well, no. Guess I should say Jersey. Yeah, New Jersey born and raised.”

“Ya don’t say! Had an uncle from there.”

George isn’t sure how to reply. “Um, mister, my legs are gettin’ tired, and I was wondering –”

“Did they have movies when you died? What year was it?”

“What? It was … 1961 when I died. What about movies?”

“Yeah, of course, film! Such a great medium.”

Confusion and irritation. Suicide’s appeal surges in strength.

“Here, you’ll appreciate this,” the tree continues, “Remember Hitler?”

“… Yes, I remember Hitler.”

“Well, then of course you remember all the young soldiers who fought in the great war against him!”

“Buddy, what are you gettin’ at?”

“You ask me, the best film ever made to showcase their heroic bravery is Saving Private Ryan.”

“I have absolutely no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Last time I went to the theater was for a nudie flick at two in the mornin’.”

“It came out past your time, ’98 to be exact, but it’s such a great film. Easily director Spielberg’s best work, and all the acting, I mean ALL the acting, is completely superb throughout. It’s a damned shame how it was treated at the Oscars that year. A damned shame. Of course, it’s an insult it lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love, but I think a lot of people missed the other, just, you know, just real bad calls all on down the line. Best Actor’s a great example. The prize that year went to Roberto Benigni for Life is Beautiful, and that floppy-faced piece a shit didn’t even come close to outperforming the lead in Saving Private Ryan. Not even close! Does that make sense?”

George hasn’t been listening. “I can’t say … how’d we get to talking about this?”

“I guess the whole thing brings me back to Björnsson – my friend, why go to some upstart’s shack in the middle of nowhere when there are so many other more deserving places for a smart guy like you? There are whole kingdoms to explore and … experience.”

“Okay, pal, Mister Tree, I’ve dealt with hustlers before. But now you’ve officially given me the willies too, so I’m gonna go ahead and take my chances climbin’. But good luck with whatever it is you got goin’ on with you right now you fuckin’ creepo.”

“Aw, c’mon! I’m just trying to broaden your horizons a little, friend! If you’ll follow my directions, I can take you through the earth, beneath it, and into all the secrets of how death truly lives!”

“Leave me alone!”

“Fine!”

The tree erupts into flame but does not burn. The heat drives George to climb as fast as he can. Not looking back, he mutters once again and again, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus …”

“Not like you think, Baxter!”

In a great roar the flame is sucked back to a single point and disappears as quickly as it ignited. The tree seems to have finally run out of things to say.

Whole universes have taken shape and collapsed within the yawning chasm of non-time between this moment and when George last heard his surname. Unexpectedly, it was painful to hear it again. And, speaking of unexpectedly, how did –

No. Best not to ask questions.

Onwards and upwards!

III. Enter Chimalma

“¡Valquirias del mundo, uníos!”

The thirty Valquirias surrounding her on Valhalla’s front sidewalk all snap to attention under the late morning sun. These women have no uniform beyond comfortable work clothes and an easy air of authority they all share.

“Alright,” the young, slightly more neatly dressed woman continues, “this should be by-the-numbers, so let’s just make sure we all know what we’re doing and get it done. Lucía, Penelope, Gabriela, I want you three on blade detail. They went heavy on the sabers last night, so let’s get a head start on restoring them in case folks are still in the mood.”

“¡Sí, Señora!” the three reply in pointed unison from their scattered positions in the group.

“Mei, Emma, Natasha, your turn on bathrooms – good luck!”

Crisp nods.

“We were down a few Valquirias last night, and the main hall is in bad shape. So, I need the rest of you getting furniture fixed or replaced, the fabrics washed, and all the floors mopped as priority one. You run out of something to do, come see me.”

“¡Sí, Señora!” they all shout.

She dismisses them and the work begins, quiet chatter rising as they enter the building. She pulls aside a promising, slightly younger Valquiria named Rachel and asks for a headcount on those still sleeping it off on premises. The owner has a mind for expansion, so any hard data on the number of souls even temporarily taken on will be useful.

A new Valquiria named Abeke approaches and asks for the protocol on cleaning the kitchen, which is tucked behind the wooden double doors at the far end of the bar.

“Go in there to refill water buckets or get more rags or soap,” replies the Señora. “The kitchen staff will take care of anything else.”

“Got it.”

The Señora ties her black hair into a firm ponytail and starts chopping lemons and limes at the bar.

An ancient and miniature grandmother of dozens approaches. “Señora, una pregunta.”

“Berta, call me ‘María,’ you know that.”

“Sí Señora. If the Russians come back tonight, I don’t think there’s enough vodka to last until morning.”

“Right. I’ll put in an order when He gets in.”

She resumes her cutting. The scents of soap and citrus sit in the air alongside the older smells of dried alcohol and caked blood. The sounds of wiping, washing, sporadic singing and low conversation buzz on.

Once she’s sliced enough quarter-lemons and quarter-limes to make two decent piles, she takes a moment to survey the progress around her. Minimal hands-on supervision is necessary as the Valquirias know their duties and perform them well. They all met brutal ends in life, so the opportunity to work towards meaningful ends within a cordial sisterhood is one embraced (by some) with enthusiasm.

María looks to the front window – the inside of it is dirty again, and it matters to her that the admittedly broken neon sign for the bar at least be clearly seen from the outside.

She finds an unused rag and spare soap water bucket. One day she’ll find someone who can work neon, and then Valhalla will properly advertise itself to wandering souls in need of good fortune. But, for now, it’ll be enough to wipe away the grime and let in the sun. She climbs into the booth next to the window and waters down the pane.

“Every time I think I get this clean …”

With extra elbow grease she makes her first serious wipe across the glass. The face revealed on the other side makes her jump away.

“¡Mierda!”

He might be the oldest man she’s ever seen. He’s smiling desperately, flashing chaotic teeth from the ziggurat of bleached frizz surrounding his head.

Alarmed by their Señora’s cry, a squad of four fully armed Valquirias runs up ready to fight. She stands them down with a sturdy hold of her open hand.

“¡Tranquila!” she commands, “I think it’s just a newcomer.”

Locking eyes with him, she points to the heavy wooden door to his left. He nods in understanding and they both step towards it.

The armed Valquirias reaffirm their grips on clubs and knives. María is grateful for their presence but moves to the door unafraid. She turns the locks, opens it a touch, and then mildly regrets it. This man is entirely naked.

“Another philosopher,” she mutters before fully opening the door.

“Women!” he nearly shouts in reply.

“Do you need a place to stay?”

He responds by falling onto his face like a tree felled by chipmunk farts. Blood pools out from where his nose and teeth smashed into the linoleum, and he snores, sleeping for the first time in the very many years since he was killed.

María sighs but doesn’t complain or make a show of looking put-off. They had all needed help, and it’s a refreshing change of pace to finally be the one offering it instead of the one begging for it.

.            .            .

His sleep resembles death, but not the death he experienced. It instead resembles the one he fantasized about as a middle-aged man, and as an actual dead man – complete dark, no worries.

The dream of rest fades and George awakes.

He’s in a low-roofed, dirt-floored white adobe room, lying on a cot beneath a small circle frame window. Outside is bright midday. Sitting in a wooden chair across from him is a young Mexican woman wearing dark slacks and a white button-down shirt.

He rises onto his elbows, noticing for the first time that he’s wearing a pair of gray sweatpants. “How long was I asleep?” he asks, still blinking his eyes open.

The woman only shrugs.

“… right. Time,” he says.

“Doesn’t work like it used to.”

George nods sadly.

“I’m guessing,” she continues, “that you know what this is and why you’re here.”

He swings his legs over the edge of the cot and slips his blistered feet into the white flip-flops waiting for them. “I’m dead.”

She smiles. “Then you’re off to a good start. My name’s María.” She leans out and extends her hand. Quickly remembering his manners, George takes the hand and shakes it.

“George, nice to meet you.”

“Mucho gusto.”

They sit in silence. George is unpracticed at making small talk with his fellow dead; the situation being far less uncomfortable for María, she glides into her next question.

“Do you want anything to eat?”

He nods without realizing how long it’s been since he’s eaten anything. She steps outside and returns carrying a plate stacked with tortillas on one side and black beans on the other. He tucks in with his hands.

She waits for him to mostly finish. “You can ask questions if you like.”

He needed permission. “… how did you, um, get here?”

“That’s a long story, but the short version is I died when I was twenty-three.”

“What year was –”

“1968. And I’m from Mexico City.”

“Are you an angel now?”

She laughs. “No! Why do you say that?”

“You’re being very helpful.”

A shadow appears at the open entrance. It’s an exasperated young Rachel. “Señora, the Russians are back.”

“Right,” María says, standing. “Hey, George, come with me and I’ll catch you up on some things.”

They file out of the house and into a narrow lane between more stout adobe homes. She leads them through the dusty pueblo with Rachel bringing up the rear and George munching on his final bean tortilla between them.

It’s simple enough, as María explains it. Some time ago, a dead Scandinavian fellow, for reasons unknown, opted out of the more traditional resting places of his forbearers. After some wandering, he opened a bar here in the desert. It’s called Valhalla and operates roughly along the same lines of its namesake, especially the parts about incessant gluttony and joyful, deathless carnage. The establishment has since proven a hit.

“It’s not for everyone,” she admits.

It attracts a type. For those who died under tragic, violent circumstances, usually at the hands of the spiteful, usually after a lifetime of incessant misery, Valhalla can offer a measure of release. Fortunately for business, the number of souls throughout history to have met their ends under “tragic, violent” circumstances after a lifetime of “incessant misery” is, to put it mildly, significant.

“But why’s everything so … Mexican?” George asks. His stomach rumbles for more beans.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Because we were his first patrons. Well, I say ‘we’ –”

He stops in his tracks. “And why am I even hungry? If I’m already dead, then why –”

María turns, remains patient. “George, when you’re in a dream, do you ask questions, or do you go with the flow?”

“… I go with the flow.”

“Right. You’re hungry now because that’s the flow around you. Go with it and maybe you’ll even have a good time.”

She nods to encourage him as he swallows the last bite of his dream-tortilla. Around them the pueblo impresses with its silent and meditative reserve. A middle-aged man sits in front of a low wall with a vacant stare, reflecting on his life of sin. A young woman cradles her son while they both wonder when the father might join them. Others move as if they live, preparing food, improving their homes, pursuing tradecrafts and modestly growing things. They also seem to avoid unnecessary conversation. Maybe it’s the heat. Further down the slope, the pueblo gives way to a barren hillside leading to the more 20th century town containing Valhalla. George squints to take it in.

María follows his gaze. “We were his first patrons,” she repeats, “by sheer luck of where he settled. He found the town, because apparently places can die like people can. He opened up shop, and all it took was one family of farmers, a family whose hearts were all cut out at Tenochtitlan. They didn’t feel like going on to Mictlan after all the trouble it caused them while they were alive, so, they stumbled on the town, found the bar, and like that!” She snaps her fingers. “The place was a smash.”

First it drew only more Aztecs, but the violence caught on and word spread. It was those early “Mexicans” who constructed the pueblo George and María now stand in; her father had been one of the later Mexicans.

“But he saw the real potential in Valhalla!” she says.

“Why him?”

“Because he was a great historian! At least to me he was. He was a professor at the biggest university in Mexico. It was actually the biggest in all of Latin America! Anyway, he was also a militant atheist, which probably explains why he didn’t go to the pearly gates after he died. Once he found Valhalla – it wasn’t even called that until my dad got involved!” María looks to George and sees he’s reached his limit of new information. “Long story short, now we’ve got Russians.”

He nods in semi-comprehension. Rachel stands impatiently behind him.

María notes her protégé’s restlessness. “Listen, Rachel and I need to deal with some things at the bar. Why don’t you hang out here, do some thinking? Clear your head and join us after sunset. Just follow the noise!”

She pats his shoulder and walks away with Rachel down the hill. He stands there for a few seconds in empty thought before turning back towards the pueblo to look for more tortillas and beans.

Around to its opposite side, facing desolation beyond, he finds Berta seated on a large stone arranging something in front of some assembled children. Thinking it might be food, he walks closer, craning his neck to look over the backs of their heads.

She’s preparing crowns of marigold blossoms. He stops and looks at the children’s faces for the first time. They’ve been painted to look like skulls. And, as before, they’re dressed in the best approximation of formal attire their current situation can allow. Daylight makes clearer details the night previously obscured: many of the boys’ suit jackets, already comically small in some cases, are torn at the seams, and the dresses fit the girls hardly at all. For several Berta’s had to make do with tying them tightly around their waists with frayed ribbon. In their pockets the boys carry candles for when night comes.

George backs away, finding it hard to swallow, feeling all too pointedly the daylight dying around him.

The children are adorned with their crowns. They pair up and hold hands. Quietly, they then march into the empty distance. George takes a seat on the ground next to Berta, and together they watch the troop inch towards the horizon.

“Why?” he asks.

It takes her a moment to realize he’s waiting for an answer. “There’s a day back home when we make altars for our dead children. It will have all the things they loved. We hope it will help them find their way back to us.”

George ponders. María did say Valhalla isn’t for everyone. “How do they know someone’s waiting for them?”

“They don’t.”

He returns to a state of no-thought. After what may have been years, the sun’s imminent setting can no longer be ignored. He creakingly stands and straightens himself, noticing for the first time Berta’s left. Maybe she’s at the bar, he wonders.

IV. Bésame Mucho

It’s a sound like deep whispering that grows louder with every flip-flopped step he takes. Before long, the whispering becomes a fractious symphony of frenzied conversations between legions of happy drunks. There’s shouting, singing, swearing, indistinct voices proclaiming eternal love and ordering more rounds. An old piano churns out hit after hit. Glass breaks, followed by great cries of laughter. Occasionally punctuating the merriment is the zesty wet crash of a violent death, followed by more laughter.

The night’s embrace total now, the horizon over the ghost town still harbors one stubborn glow, that familial bonfire glow of Valhalla. Others have marked the sight as George has, and together they make their scattered way towards the light. Squatters crawl from the darkness inside buildings and join the pilgrimage; others walk in from the desert beyond. The aroma of warm food wafts through the dry evening air to beckon them all closer.

The collective origin of everything they could want in death is revealed. It’s the same bar George remembers stumbling up to the day before, but now the front window is steamed over by the shared heat of animated bodies packing its dimly glowing interior. A few drink and chat outside by the entrance, where the door’s been propped open to let in the air and let out the slurred roar of humanity. The bar seems too small to produce this much clamor, or even accommodate all the wanderers straggling in, but behind the structure even more light can be seen warming the night sky above it.

George smiles. “Who needs Vegas?”                                             

He walks past a couple of friendly men holding pints of ale but doesn’t notice one’s a Frankish serf and the other’s a Cambodian peasant. He does notice the unconscious Roman centurion on the ground behind them – George knows the look well because he’s seen Spartacus twenty-three times. He’s then reminded of Ahmad ibn Ayyub and wonders if this is one of the Romans he “killed.” He’ll ask the centurion about it later if he sees him.

Fighting the gravitational pull of quality entertainment, George waits his turn to walk inside. An opening in the file of pilgrims presents itself and he enters the bar.

.            .            .

A veteran drunk evaluates the sparsely candle-lit terrain: red leather booths line the three walls flanking and including the entrance, but on the right side they give way to a fantastically well-stocked bar. Excellent. At its far end are wooden double doors leading into a kitchen, which means food. Marvelous. Parallel to the kitchen is a wood-paneled hallway leading to a larger space in back where music can be heard playing.

As for the crowd: it’s been some time since George last took a history class, and the blending of those hazily remembered high school lectures with Hollywood pictures makes for an occasionally vivid but almost entirely inaccurate sense of the world’s past. Despite this, the temporally diverse nature of the clientele quickly becomes apparent.

Naturally, among history’s miserable, the peasant and working classes are well represented. Lots of bad teeth and broken dreams. Also, loud. But the poor are only guilty of disproportionately attracting bad luck, of being born into crosshairs. In the final equation, bad luck does not discriminate. So here they gather, unlucky victims of slavers, Mongols, Fascists, Communists, Christian armies, Muslim armies, Romans, Persians, Greeks, Spanish, British and American empires; even some shell-shocked veterans of the Great Roboto War of 2132 have claimed a corner of the room just for themselves. And those are only some of the big names. Few history books are written about the day-to-day murders, the ones that reveal little more than the petty psychopathies coursing like rivers of shit through every human being. But in Valhalla, these poor souls never had it so good.

This all goes well over George’s head, so he beelines it to the bar.

“What’ll it be?” The bartender is a squat woman with cropped and curly gray hair. Under a black vest her red dress shirt sleeves are rolled back to reveal powerful forearms. Watching her mix and pour drinks reminds him of striking vipers.

He finds an open stool in the throng and sits. “Can you do a martini?”

“Sure. You care ‘bout the gin?” she asks while serving someone’s mead.

“Not right now. Wait, I don’t have money.”

“We trade, and we’ll take anything, doesn’t matter how small.”

George takes a beat, then leans down, removes a flip-flop, and places it on top of the bar as if he’s proudly displaying a ruby. She takes and throws it into a cardboard box under the counter with other bartered items, which a barback will collect once full.

“That’ll get you food and drinks for the rest of the night. You wanna put in a food order now?”

“I … haven’t seen a menu.”

“Menu’s whatever you want. Just ask and we’ll bring it out in a few.”

“… can I get a cheeseburger?”

“Sure, how you –”

“Medium rare, please.”

“Comin’ right up.”

The martini arrives first, his first drink in over seven quintillion years. It’s the single most delicious and refreshing beverage he’s ever tasted. He immediately weeps over that and much more.

He’s half-way through and still sobbing when his cheeseburger arrives. He eats, drinks, keeps crying. Afterward, it’s as if the burden’s been lightened, if only a touch.

Not bothering to wipe the food from his beard, he looks for someone to schmooze with. Everyone nearby is already engaged except for the bartender.

“That was one good burger!”

She looks up from the palm-wine bottle she’s uncorking. “Glad you liked it.”

“My compliments to the chef!”

A subtle grin crosses her face. “I’m sure He’d love to hear that.”

“Yeah, please tell him.”

“Why don’t you tell Him yourself?”

George never misses an opportunity to get to know staff at his favorite establishments, so he readily hops off the stool. “Glad to! What’s his name?”

“Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Come again?”

“As in The Christ.”

Thanks to the work of his Italian mother, long-dormant Catholic pieties begin to resurface. It occurs to him this might be the reason for his ages of wandering, to be brought now before his Lord and Savior. It would at minimum justify the anguish that accompanied the wandering. It also makes sense based on the available evidence – the burger was just too good.

He floats in an increasingly guilt-stricken haze towards the double doors at the end of the bar. He pushes through and is greeted by blinding light. He shuts his eyes and prepares to repent.

“Hey, you!”

He keeps his eyes shut but raises his eyebrows, unsure of whether the “you” was directed at him.

“Yes, you! The methamphetamine Gandalf-lookin’ motherfucker.”

He opens his eyes, realizing they just needed to adjust to the bright fluorescents of Valhalla’s sprawling white-tile kitchen. Manning its center island, standing over several open flames, is a bearded man in chef’s garb, long brown hair bunched up in a black hairnet, and he’s screaming.

“You got business here string bean?!”

“Um, I was looking for Jesus.”

“Okay, here I am, what the fuck do you want?”

“Uhhh …”

The kitchen staff surrounding Christ, all twelve of them, race and sweat through their various duties in a desperate attempt to keep up with the waves of new orders coming in. Some prepare ingredients, others cook, some bake. Some specialize even further: Andrew, James and John focus on seafood. In a corner by himself, Judas washes dishes forever. Throughout this, the King of the Jews continues to sauté parsnips.

Distracted by the bustle, George can’t verbalize any cogent thoughts when a hunched over Apostle humbly approaches the center island.

“My Lord, we’ve run out of flour.”

Jesus shifts his rage from George. “Really, Tom? You wanna start this shit again?”

“No, my Lord, it’s just –”

“Did you check the flour cabinet?”

“Yes, my Lord, it was empty!”

“Did you remember to say a Hail Mary before opening it?”

“Uhhh –”

“You dumb motherfucker.”

Thomas withdraws, giving Jesus a chance to bark some orders at his sous chef Peter before getting back to George, who has finally found something to say to the Redeemer.

“I really liked the burger.”

“I know, get the fuck out.”

The bartender’s tearing up mint leaves when she notices George approaching. “How’d it go in there?”

His old seat filled, he’s forced to stand and project his voice over the top of someone’s head. “Honestly, I thought He’d be nicer.”

A seat at the bar opens when a young man is strangled to death with a leather belt by his friends. They carry off the body to draw cocks on the face, leaving George with his window to slide in on top of the vacated stool. Once again desperate for conversation, he sees the middle-aged man on his right is only occupied by the last of his red wine.

“So, what’s your story?” George asks amiably enough.

“I was tied face down and force-fed rich food until I was lying under heaps of my own shit, which they mixed with honey all over my body to bring flies and maggots. Then the flies and maggots bored into my intestines and ate my flesh. It took seventeen days for me to die.”[1]

George considers this and then flags down the bartender. “Barkeep! Another round for me and my friend.”

.            .            .

Strong booze has worked its magic, no question, but this blackout feels deeper than most, prompting George to review his steps.

It was ten rounds and much commiserating before he and Astrepus finally hugged good-bye. The piano music from earlier turned especially fetching, so George navigated towards it. Halfway through the hallway in back, he found himself standing next to a kitchen service window on his right and a bathroom door on his left.

Keen to luxuriate in the act of urination, he stepped through the bathroom door and branched left to the men’s side. Though the amenities were pleasantly 20th century, many of the occupants were not, and some fared better with the technology than others despite the multilingual instructional posters covering the walls. Finding no shortage of urinals, he took a cleansing hour-long wee before washing his hands and returning to the party.

The piano player was racing across the keys then, belting out his lyrics with spit-fire gusto.

… Brenda and Eddie were still going
Steady in the summer of '75
When they decided the marriage would
Be at the end of July
Everyone said they were crazy
Brenda you know that you're much too lazy
And Eddie could never afford to live that
Kind of life
But there we were wavin' Brenda and Eddie
goodbye …

Previously, the hallway would have ended in a smaller room with wooden tables and wooden chairs. Rather than settle for such a modest arrangement, management tore down the back wall to create an entrance to the hollowed out remains of the large sporting goods store adjoining the original bar. In the center of that space now danced the most welcoming bonfire in the universe, and above it the ceiling was removed to reveal said universe in all its absurdly starry grandeur. Around the fire lounged hundreds on carpets, cushions and sofas, swaying in mass intoxication as dedicated Valquirias ferried their food and drinks. To George’s delight, the walls on both his left and right were lined with more bars. On a stage against the back wall the piano player roared with breathless abandon under a ghostly spotlight.

… They lived for a while in a
Very nice style
But it's always the same in the end
They got a divorce as a matter
Of course
And they parted the closest
Of friends
Then the king and the queen went
Back to the green
But you can never go back
There again …

Everyone agreed the music was perfect. It shook the night air alongside the sounds of high spirits, sporadic fucking and deadly fighting. Ecstasy guided George to one of the bars, where he sat and drank eleven more martinis. It was only a matter of non-time before he started telling jokes.

“Hey, barkeep!” he slurred after his first audience member left.

A woman who’d eaten the flesh of her dead son’s face when starvation overwhelmed her sanity[2] turned to him with polite openness.

“No accountin’ for taste in some people! But stop me if ya heard this. So! They say Eisenhower wants to finish clobberin’ the Commies before he leaves office. Don’t know how that’s gonna work when they can never get him away from the links! I can see it now, the Commander-in-Chief, still two strokes under par on seventeen when –”

A tankard flew in and clocked George in the temple.

“Ow,” he said, though more concerned about the fresh martini he was holding. He turned to face his attacker with practiced resignation – this wasn’t the first time someone had hurled something at him to get him to shut up.

A fat man in a business suit approached with murderous intent. In his right hand he carried a stiletto.

“At least let me get to the punchline, pal!” George cried.

He recognized him all too late – it was his one and only fan, the one who choked to death on his own laughter back in Vegas so long ago.

“I knew it was you!” the fat man raged, “Your shit jokes killed me on the first day of my first vacation in over twenty years! HYAH!”

He lunged and punched the stiletto point into George’s neck, spilling his blood in great gulping pulses.

“I was gonna get laid!”

Grabbing him by the frizz, he then drew out and stabbed the blade into George’s neck five more times in quick succession before spitting in his face.

For his part, George could only welcome the blackout darkness that enclosed him. He broadly prayed for its permanence. Perhaps he would finally rest, but now a small part of him was unsure he wanted to. This restless posture opened his awareness to one last tableau from the scene around him as he fell off the stool.

On velvet cushions not far away sat one of the largest men George had ever laid eyes on, holding court with a high tale of glory before an enthralled audience. His right hand swung an overflowing goblet to punctuate the story’s different beats; his left rested on the handle of an enormous war axe. He was sharply dressed but relaxed in bearing. Good stubble.

“Nice hair,” George whispered before dying.

“George!”

The blackout fades.

“We need to stop meeting like this,” the friendly blur taking shape before him says.

He realizes he’s on his back again, only this time his pillow is Berta’s lap. She’s gently stroking his forehead. María reclines on some pillows next to them, drinking a beer and enjoying a break from supervising the Valquirias. The womb of the bonfire’s glow envelops them all.

“So, how was it?” she asks.

George sees no reason to sit up. “How was what?”

María draws a sharp line across her throat with her pointer finger.

“Oh! That.” Profound contemplation. “You know, it wasn’t that bad. I feel pretty good, even.”

“A Valhalla special! You won’t find that deal anywhere else, so don’t go starting fights off the premises. This establishment is enchanted by powerful magics.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious, George. There are other forces out there. There are dangers.”

A flaming tree flashes through his mind. “… like what?”

Berta crosses herself. María hesitates before continuing at a more cautious pace. “Some say they’ve encountered a malevolent spirit in the deserts near here. A fallen God amongst their eldest, a Lord of Death. Vain and cruel. Known by many names across time, nowadays it seems to go by … tom-Hanx.”

“… tom-Hanx.”

“tom-Hanx.”

“Okay.”

“And that’s not all. But first, I think you have a drink to receive.”

George reflexively sits up when a Valquiria brings him another martini. “Compliments of the gentleman at the bar,” she says. He looks over and sees his overweight murderer there, restful and contemplative, offering a mild toast of his margarita in George’s direction before taking a breath and returning to his thoughts.

George returns the toast and drinks. Then, he thinks.  “Why is he still fat? Why isn’t he any older?” he asks.

María finishes her beer and makes to resume her duties. “With the mountains behind you, when you started walking here, did you make a left or right?”

“Left.”

“Ah. Should have gone right. Might have saved you some steps.”

“… oh.”

“Point is, you shouldn’t venture too far from here. And why would you? Here you can’t die. Out there … anyway, I should check on the Russians. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Wait!” George stands to scan the revelers around them. He points. “That! Who is that?”

María turns to follow the direction of his point. She smiles. “That, my friend, is the founder and owner of Valhalla, Harald Björnsson.”

“Harald … Björnsson?”

“That’s it! He’s the best.”

“Then why’s he sitting alone?”

Indeed, he is, under an outcrop of mangled ceiling near the store’s perimeter, at a square folding table across from an empty chair, holding a wooden cup and occasionally speaking to no one George can see.

“Oh, he’s not alone,” María says, “he’s chatting with his fylgjur, the embodiment of all his ancestors who invisibly accompanied him his entire life. But once he died, she became visible to him. How ‘bout that? They’re probably reminiscing about the family tree.”

“Gotcha.”

“I think you’re getting the hang of this, George!”

“Wait a second,” he says, trying to connect the dots in front of him. “Why … why would he do any of this?”

“He found a market. From a certain point of view, that’s all he did.”

George grabs the spot on his neck where the stiletto penetrated.

“Hey! It’s okay.” María steps in and lays a reassuring hand on his bare shoulder. “Breathe. Then look around.”

He does as instructed.

“In fact, take a look right over there. Tell me what you see.”

“I see a young girl, Chinese I guess, and she’s, uh, beating an older guy to death with a construction hammer. She’s screaming, crying, covered in blood, and there’s another Chinese girl standing next to her, watching, nodding, and also crying. And the first girl just ripped out one of the guy’s eyeballs, but it was already mostly out, ‘cause of the hammer.” George looks away and takes a sip.

María sighs. “Troops under the command of Ögedei Khan gang raped that girl and her sister every day for the many weeks it took to bring them and the other princesses from Kaifeng to Karakorum.”[3]

“Yikes.”

“But look now.”

The girl has dropped the hammer and run into her sister’s embrace. The two sob together while the previously murdered gentleman gathers his wits and gives them space.

“See? This is cathartic for them,” María says with casual assurance. “Harald used to be a raider. He saw how bad it can be. If I had to guess, this is how he pays it back. We need this place.”

“I … think I need another drink.”

“Well, you’re in the right spot!”

She claps her hand on George’s back and leads him to one of the bars.

.            .            .

The cacophony of pleasure is diminished by where Björnsson sits. He keeps a managerial eye on the festivities, pausing only occasionally to regard his wooden cup of mead. Both the wooden cup and the mead are reminders of simpler times. He drinks.

“More revels.” She says it with unmistakable contempt.

He’s too drunk to offer serious resistance tonight. “It is my birthday.”

“It was your ‘birthday’ last night.”

His jaw tightens. “There are revels in Valhalla.”

“Valhöll,” she corrects him.

“And what will be the difference?”

Her response is wordless. The contempt morphs into pity, but her stare remains.

He can only look away and drink. She’s dressed in the traditional garb of their kin, colorful wool and silver jewelry, but her upright posture and lengths of golden hair impart a looming presence he sometimes finds difficult to bear. Moments pass and his mead cup empties.

She looks again upon the revels. A hard-working Valquiria catches her attention. “You mock the Gods. You mock those who came before.”

“I am as my fortune left me.”

“The words of a coward. Here you will not find fortune or glory, trading our ways for trinkets from the weak.”

“If only I was welcome in the Great Hall.”

“Then make yourself welcome.”

“I am already welcome here.”

Another silence. She stands to leave. “Perhaps you are correct. The All-Father needs many warriors, but even He does not need one as fearful as you.”

His grip tightens on the war axe sitting across his lap. “You are a wolf-hearted woman.”

“And you are unmanly.”

She disappears. A commotion stirs near the stage, and he turns in time to watch a bearded, emaciated old man topped by mountainous white frizz ascend into the spotlight.

.            .            .

George and Berta made tender love, tiny Johnson be damned. He takes to the stage awash in drunken confidence.

“Good evening, Valhalla!”

There’s no microphone, but he quickly realizes his voice is being magically projected across the space. Of course! Everyone cheers in response, and that’s all he needs. He slips his left hand into a sweatpant pocket and gestures with the martini-holding right in a way that would have played well on television.

“Here’s to you! Here’s to us!”

More cheers. Even the bonfire seems to roar louder. This time he leads with the A-material.

“So, you guys hear ‘bout the tallest Jew in Denver?”

George efficiently delivers setup and punchline. While many Jews in the audience shift uncomfortably in their seats, everyone else laughs hysterically, even the ones who didn’t know what a Jew was at the start of the set.

Emboldened, he goes rogue. “And don’t get me started on dames! You ever try tellin’ a dame what time it is?”

There are many women in attendance whose patience for such material has worn thin. Furthermore, the ability to tell exact time is a relatively recent one from George’s perspective – most in the room don’t grasp the concept, and he bombs hard. Sweating in terror, he retreats to the A-material.

“Um, they say Eisenhower wants to finish clobberin’ the Commies before he leaves office …”

Joan of Arc is still stewing over his “dame” material. His subsequent attempt at humor leaves her with no choice as she sees it. She grabs a nearby spear and rises to her feet. With a sharp cry of “Montjoie Saint Denis!” she launches the weapon in a mighty arc over the heads in front of her. It flies down and impales George through the face with a moist thud, earning him the biggest laugh of his career. He’s surprisingly okay with this.

A kindly Valquiria unplugs the spear and helps him to his feet in time to see a much larger violence begin.

Fallout from his “Jew” material has led to some heated exchanges in a section of the crowd. In keeping with the Björnsson Method, those involved elect to resolve their dispute by fighting to the death. A long night of reveling has put many of those watching this in a similar mood, so those many all pick up weapons and join the fight.

The reasons stop mattering and the butchery blooms outward from there, seen clearly by George from his vantage point on the stage. Some in the crowd are too out of their wits to participate. Some are content to have wild sex under the rain of blood. Most want to kill.

Valhalla becomes a slaughterhouse. He watches a girl of six gnaw with her baby teeth on the crushed hand of someone who’s already been slain. A roughly severed penis lands by his feet. Red mist rises as greasy organs spill to the floor. Many are shoved into the bonfire and scream.

One who isn’t drawn into the melee is a young woman dressed in black. George sees her through the flames, leaning against the far wall with folded arms. She’s unmoved by the chaos and even rests her head back. She brushes away dark hair, their eyes meet, and George thinks he recognizes her.

No time to ponder. The Valquiria who pulled the spear out of his head hands it back to him before drawing out a machete from under her shirt. The wave of clanging, squelching bloodshed is breaking at their feet. She bellows a war cry and jumps off the stage swinging. Once again trying his best to go with the flow, George leaps after her into the massacre, howling and killing like the rest.

V. Valhöll

The leather and chainmail protecting him must be tightly fitted. His short spear, shield and sword must be in perfect condition. Another time, another place, young Harald prepares for War.

The chill morning air bites at him through the cotton tent, but his mind is already cool. Though he’s experienced in raiding and combat, leading a shield wall across an open field towards an assembled enemy line will be a new responsibility for him today, one typically carried out by his father Gunnar in clashes past. Time, however, drew up new plans for the campaign when arthritis stopped Gunnar from even holding his great war axe properly. Today, it will be a horse on top of a hill for him. He hasn’t complained much – it’s well understood at his age how time works. Besides, a son ready to take his father’s place on the battlefield is seen as a rare gift from the Slaughter Gods in these dark times.

Harald has already killed a great many, so his cool now hardens into ice as a matter of course. Fortune rides with him, he knows. The daggers of his eyes will tell you.

He puts on his helm of terror and exits the tent.

A slave brings him a war horse from the mostly empty bivouac surrounding them. Though he thirsts for heart-blood, Harald first pauses and listens to the quiet morning sounds of the wood around their camp from atop his mount. He smells the air. He’s travelled farther than most in his day, but he’s never forgotten the sensations of home.

It's a short ride through the wood to the battlefield. Sunrise has broken through the clouds above the dew-sprinkled dale where the armies have mustered, their spear tips up and gently swaying like strong wheat in a breeze. Good positioning has given Harald’s forces a modest high ground, so he gallops to the front, down the slope where the gathered hundreds of his fellow mail-clad warriors can all see him.

They show their respect by beating their spears against the broad circular shields they all carry, faster and louder as he settles into a proud stance before them. On a hillock near the wood behind the troops, King Gunnar sits beside various family members and aides de camp on a neat line of horses and watches the assembly with stoic anticipation.

Harald takes the deepest conscious breath of his life. Arrayed in front of him are masses of his fellow Geats, roiling to take the day. Behind him are pitiable non-Geats. In a moment, he’ll dismount and take his place on the frontline to commence the advance down the hill. The sun warms his face, and he feels the power of the army flowing through the earth. He feels the roots of his ancestors strengthening him. A raven caws in the distance, and he suddenly can’t help himself.

He rears his horse onto its hind-legs and punches his spear point at the sky, war-crying from the deepest part of himself. The corpse-greedy men scream in horrific harmony. Gunnar’s heart sings.

Sadly, perfection like this doesn’t last.

He rears too far back. The sword sheathed at his hip slides out of its scabbard when he leans forward to reverse the fall, and, in a fleeting moment of perfect balance, it’s waiting for him point-up as both horse and rider come crashing down.

Harald stands as quickly as he can while the horse trots off, now disinterested in the whole affair.

He looks down – the blade has impaled his right leg and cleanly lanced both testicles, tearing open his femoral artery in the process and dousing the grass beneath him with torrents of his own blood. Having inflicted similar wounds on many, he knows he has only moments left to live.

The adrenaline-pumped thought of what to do with that time clarifies when he looks back at the distant image of his perplexed father on horseback. Harald struggles but just manages to pick up his spear, spitting his every breath through agony-clenched teeth. His shield is still attached to his floppy other arm.

“To Valhöll!” he yells as he starts to limp bleedingly down the slope. Before he can get far, the foot attached to his uninjured leg steps into the entrance of a rabbit warren, and he trips, breaking the ankle with a loud snap. The butt of his spear then catches on the grass in front, propping up the point in time to pierce him awkwardly through the neck. Sheets of released neck-wine course down the shaft as his body slides in halting spurts to a stop still two feet above the ground.

“Fuck my balls,” he sputters before pissing and noisily shitting himself.

The last sound Harald hears as he bleeds to death is the breathless, tear-stained laughter of his enemies echoing throughout the valley.

.            .            .

George wakes in the back seat of a black ’51 Ford sedan, and he’s its lone occupant. The bleaching light of day pours in through the open windows.

More hazy memories. He stopped counting drinks around his forty-seventh martini, and, with regards to how the evening ended, it came as no surprise to him he’s less adept at murder than he is at stand-up comedy. He fatally stabbed someone in the back with his spear, felt ambivalent about it. A shoulder check from an unseen attacker sent him sprawling onto an already very angry child soldier, who made quick work of him by cutting him off at the knees with a cutlass. George spent the remainder of the fight being bled on and trampled to death. The line between head trauma and intoxication then danced away, and a deliciously warm sleep overtook him, a quilt-sized dream-tortilla wrapping him up and making him safe from all that violence only to unwrap him here in the backseat of this mysterious vehicle for his gentle awakening.

And best part, no hangover!

He yawns like a contented baby. His head frizz makes for a lovely pillow, and passing out in strange places is nothing new for this seasoned lush. But then he hears the soft crunch of heavy footsteps on desert earth outside the car, and suddenly he’s more concerned about his present circumstance.

He waits and listens. The steps fade and then disappear behind the springy sound of a screen door opening and closing shut. After a good amount of non-time has supposedly passed, George sits up enough to peek out the bottom of the window.

The Ford is parked inside the entrance of a small trailer park. The black asphalt connecting the trailers is split and broken in large chunks, and, as far as he can tell through the wind-blown dust, the trailers themselves are abandoned. They don’t look maintained, and the rust-colored slate filling the yards around them is scattered wide. A few mailboxes stand at crooked angles in front of their corresponding homes, but most lie in pieces on the ground. A wind chime sounds in the near distance. He’s reminded of Vegas.

The screen door to the closest trailer doesn’t stay shut, instead drifting open and closed on its creaky hinges with the breeze. George hoped to go back to sleep but is now too annoyed by the sound. He steps out of the car and does some hip rotations. Then, still wearing only one flip-flop, he shambles towards his new nemesis the screen door.

The sound grows louder as he approaches, not just the creaking, but the snoring behind it as well.

Once at the door, he tries pressing it in to keep it from flapping open, but something on the other side of the torn screen catches his eye. It’s a propped-up man-sized war axe, one that he knows he’s seen in action recently.

Old schmoozing instincts gently take over. He opens the door and steps inside.

“Hm. Double-wide.”

Whoever designed the trailer’s interior never made it past “brown” at the concept stage. The cramped kitchen area to his right is structured by peanut-colored cabinets and shaded with the yellows and pale beiges of dirty counter tops and tarnished linoleum floors. The stovetop looks as if it hasn’t been used in a century. To his left is the living room area, boxed in by walnut-colored paneling and shag carpet to match. Whereas the curtains in the kitchen were drawn back, here they’re shut against the light. The distance between the two spaces is roughly twenty feet. Beyond a short corridor past the living room is the trailer’s bathroom and bedroom, he imagines.

He finds the source of the snoring – on a reclined corduroy Lazy-Boy in the center of the living room slumbers a fully naked Harald Björnsson, nestled among dozens of empty Corona beer bottles. A fly buzzes near his head. On top of a dresser with no drawers, a small oscillating fan does its best.

George recognizes a peaceful post-binge sleep when he sees it. He stops counting Harald’s tattoos and returns to scanning his surroundings, eventually wondering if there’s more booze in the fridge. But then he’s drawn back to the giant axe leaning against the wall in front of the entrance. He moves to pick it up.

A rusty dagger flies to and impales his hand just as it’s in reach.

“Ow.”

Too focused on his wounded hand, he only hears the Lazy-Boy de-recline and the empty bottles shift in the wake of some large movement. A shadow covers him.

Harald grabs George’s wrist with gentle strength and swiftly draws the dagger out.

“It will heal,” he reassures before walking into the kitchen, “do not touch the axe.” He opens the shit-brown fridge door and rummages while George watches his wound close.

“Do you want drink?” Harald calls.

“Do you have gin?”

He returns with two six-packs of Corona and gives George one. Before George can react, Harald re-takes his throne and opens his first bottle with meaty palms. Reading the room, George heads to the couch lining the wall next to the Lazy-Boy, in front of the closed curtains and their medium glow outline. He sits and pops the top of his first bottle on the low wooden coffee table between them as Harald spins his seat around with his feet.

As if it was already a decades-long tradition, they raise lights toasts to each other and drink.

Harald kicks the Lazy-Boy back into full recline mode. “Here’s to you. Here’s to us,” he says.

It takes George a second to recognize his own words. He sees Harald’s face is carrying a sly but tired smile. “Ah! You were watching. I hope you enjoyed the show.”

Harald nods. Both are content to let their voices rest.

“Um, sorry about falling asleep in your car,” George offers after they’ve opened their second round.

Harald brushes hair out of his eyes. “I did not want to wake you.”

“Well, I gotta tell ya, that’s quite the place you’re running over there. I’ve seen some venues, but none of them kicks like Valhalla. I’m lucky I didn’t pass out in front of your wheels.”

George flinches at the memory of a Cadillac Fleetwood. He looks for distraction and finds Harald’s tossed off suit strewn further down the couch. Harald’s fedora sits on a cushion between. He thinks about reaching for it, but, remembering a rusty dagger, decides to take a big sip from his Corona instead.

“You’ve got a nice place here, too,” he continues, filling the silence.

“Worthy of a king,” the Norseman says, “thwarted by rabbits.”

George doesn’t understand the reference. “Well, it’s bigger than the trailer I had. Better carpet too.”

Harald realizes George isn’t mocking him. “Where are you from?”

“Las Vegas, most recently. It’s a city in a desert kinda like this one, right down to the trailer park.”

“What was your trade?”

“Stand-up comedy!”

Harald nods. “A fool.”

George bristles and drinks. “No more than anyone else in Vegas.”

Harald doesn’t understand the reference. “I have never been to Las Vegas.”

“Oh, it’s fantastic. Bright lights, lotsa gambling, great food, great drinks, great women. Really goin’ places. It gets hot during the day, but nothing’s perfect. You can always catch a show, and if you think you gotta a good enough act, you can probably put it on if you know the right people.”

“Stand-up comedy.”

“Exactly. And if your luck hits at the right time, oh boy – money, fame, respect, all that and it’ll be a party the entire way.”

“Like Constantinople.”

“Way better than Constantipople. Forget about that place. My advice, find your luck in Vegas instead. The martinis will taste better too.”

Harald is struck by George’s phrasing. He leans forward and stares at him with odd tension.

“In Las Vegas, did you ever see my good fortune?”

George is confused by the sincerity of the question, and by the implication that good luck was an object that could be misplaced. He hesitates before answering.

“What did your fortune look like?”

“Norse. And tall.”

Then there’s the praying in the eyes. George strokes his beard and answers as gently as he can. “I don’t think so, buddy. When’d you last see it?”

“Him.”

“Him, right.”

Harald tries to calculate an answer but shakes his head when he can’t. He leans back.

“Sorry,” George consoles, understanding all too well now the nature of time beyond time. “It’s only fair to say a lotta people lose their luck in Vegas too.”

“Did you find yours?”

“… nope.”

They both drink knowingly.

“Name’s George, by the way.”

“Harald.”

They toast to each other and drink again. Harald finishes his and throws it onto the pile of empties.

“Would you like to see my horde?” he asks.

George empties his own and goes with the flow. Harald puts on a terrycloth robe and sandals before they leave the trailer with more beers in tow.

Most of the other trailers in the park are stacked up to their ceilings with all the random baubles and trinkets Valhalla’s patrons pay with to receive their service. Other trailers are empty and waiting to be filled. Working refrigerators stocked with more Coronas are stationed throughout most.

“Who’s your supplier?” George asks as he pops open his nineteenth beer on the arm socket of a mannequin covered in ancient Egyptian necklaces and PlayStation 2 wires.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Figures.”

The tour continues, surveying the countless tons of knick-knacks, hand-me-downs, throwaways and castaways that have drifted into the desert from across humanity, now warehoused and gathering dust next to steady supplies of cold premium Mexican beer. There’s a great number of shoes, so, with Harald’s consent, George replaces his missing flip-flop. But it’s in only one of the trailers he finds something able to snap him out of his booze / schmooze loop.

He picks up the ukelele with a kinder smile on his face than he’s worn in ages.

“Do you play?” Harald asks with a mild drunken sway.

“I did, but people weren’t into funny songs when I was comin’ up. Makes sense, since most of the ones I knew I learned from my mom.”

Harald remembers. “My mother taught me songs as well.”

George blows the dust off, revealing more clearly the 1923 Lyon & Healy bell soprano underneath.

“Play us a song, then,” Harald commands.

George has never been one to resist the call of a willing audience. He tunes the instrument and retreats into his memories. It takes a moment, but finally his fingers start to dance along the strings, and his voice sails merrily through the air to Harald’s great delight.

The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun
And donned his most truculent sneer,
Downtown he did go where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir …

VI. The Inferno

Meet me outside. NOW! the note reads.

The Valquiria tending bar lets George know the woman who passed the note to her to give to him was last seen exiting Valhalla through the old entrance to the sporting goods store / orgy den where he’s currently sipping his Nth martini.

Though he can’t tell how long it’s been since he first arrived in town, it’s been long enough for personal routines to develop. He’s helped launch a support group for those who’ve been flayed alive, which every night convenes to share stories and heroin, among other opiates – to his pleasant surprise, only in Valhalla can one indulge in grand-scale drug abuse with zero negative consequences.

He’s learned some of the routines around him too. Mornings are slow, with many like him dozing next to the muted bonfire until well into the day while Valquirias restore the bar around them. Some drift to unknown abodes in town, the pueblo or beyond. The informal start to festivities is the ever-growing in attendance birthday celebration for Harald, meaningless so far as the “birthday” is concerned, but sincere in its appreciation of both him and the pleasures he provides.

Then light service resumes, mimosas aplenty, but the party doesn’t really start until after sunset. By then those who’ve needed to scavenge and barter in the wastelands for whatever treasures they’ll use to pay for the next round have wandered back. The last of the comatose have risen. Buzzes re-ignite. Rinse. Drink. Repeat. Sometimes the evenings end in mass murder (or orgies) and sometimes they don’t.

George has finally let go of his stand-up aspirations, a decision perhaps made easier by the community’s subsequent embrace of his re-awakened ukelele skills. This embrace has been led by the Top Dog Harald Björnsson himself. Their acquaintanceship survived George’s attempt to call him “Harry,” and Harald has since been happy to attend George’s performances whenever his hosting duties aren’t demanded elsewhere. George never plays for more than a dozen or so at a time while they feast, so he also never fails to notice when the manager is watching. With that kind of inside traction, he’s feeling for the first time like he might be going places.

“Better than Vegas,” he often slurs between sips.

It’s in that spirit he wonders if this note is from a rival musician who wants to combine talents for a two-piece act.

He downs the last of his martini and makes for the exit. It’s early evening, and the mood is still relaxed, so it’s an easy time navigating around the bonfire, the patrons, and their attendant Valquirias. He moves through the revolving doors.

Those in search of extra peace mill around in the twilight, casually ignoring George while he looks for someone carrying a musical instrument and looking jealous. Maybe in one of the abandoned storefronts across the street? He flip-flops into the dim quiet.

He almost doesn’t see her.

“Hey, Dad.”

His heart leaps into his throat, cinching his windpipe.

At a minor crossroads some fifty yards from Harald’s property, a young woman dressed in black is sitting on a bench next to the faded sign for a long-forgotten bus route. Valhalla’s glow gently touches her profile, highlighting the open hand she’s patting on the empty spot next to her.

“Have a seat,” she says, like she’s about to chastise him for being late to work too often.

He approaches as directed, her voice carrying a force of command he’s unable to resist. The walk to the bench takes years, though maybe only from his perspective. He sits not terribly close to her, but close enough to feel her warmth. Valhalla hums a short distance away. He can’t look at her.

“Took me a minute to realize it was you,” she says, not looking at him either. “First it was that stupid Eisenhower joke, but I figured you could just as easily have stolen that. But then you started with the ukelele.”

A vacant-eyed nod from George.

“‘A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps, 'neath the light of the cold northern star. And the name that she murmurs in vain as she weeps, Is Ivan Skavinsky Skavar,’” she sings, carrying the tune ably. “I used to love it when you’d sing that to me.”

“You always felt sad for the maiden,” he recalls without intonation.

“I feel sad for all of them now.”

Daylight dies and stars ascend. Valhalla’s buzzing deepens.

“Be honest,” she says while plucking at the edges of her sweater, “do you recognize me?”

He brings himself to look directly at her, first seeing the face that glared at him through the fire his first night in Valhalla, then the DNA underneath. The details filter through. They’re in the color of her eyes, her mother’s eyes, in the angle of her ears and the curve of her nose – all the signs of lineage now present in a daughter at least two feet taller in the time since he last saw her, the same amount of time since they last spoke. It’s so obvious now. Tears of shame threaten to form behind his weary eyes, but he quickly chokes them back.

“I do.”

“At least that,” she says, more to herself than to him. “You know, I tried to get your attention sooner. I sat in the audience when you played, I sat next to you when you drank and annoyed people. I even killed you a couple times.”

He doesn’t react to this.

“That didn’t help as much as I thought it would … aren’t you going to ask about Mom?”

The cat has his tongue again.

“She didn’t remarry after you left, but she did her best. We had each other. We just never had enough money, so when the doctors told her she had cancer …”

George is struck by the sudden urge to kill himself.

“… there wasn’t much we could do except let it happen. It wasn’t easy trying to take care of her. Didn’t leave much time for myself.”

“I didn’t know,” he wheezes.

“Well, you didn’t check, did you? I also don’t exactly remember you leaving a forwarding address either.”

He stares at the black asphalt in front of them. Her ankle-length skirt has a stitching of elephants along the hem.

“And what about you,” she asks, “did you finally make it big? Was it worth it?”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“Fucking asshole.”

Moments pass. George turns to his daughter and can’t help but observe her confidence and poise. “Well, at least you turned out okay –”

He’s unable to finish the thought before she whips a revolted stare at him. Eyes red, bordered with tears, she seethes, “Do I look okay to you?”

He doesn’t answer.

She takes a sharp intake of air through her nose and expels it out her mouth. She nods at the darkness past town limits. “They say there’s a city past the mountains, a city on a bay, with the bay leading to an ocean. No one who’s ever crossed the ocean comes back, but maybe that’s the point. They say there’s a boatman who’ll take you if you can pay.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Why would I stay here? One, I’m sober now. And two, you think turning victims into psychos is some kinda good deed?” She openly cries. “No, Mom’s out there, and I can’t leave her, not after everything she’s done for me.”

“I get it,” he says. “Don’t give up.”

She regains her composure. “This did nothing for me.” She stands to leave.

He looks up at her. “Why’d you meet me? I don’t deserve it.”

“… I wanted to see if any part of me still cares about you.”

His eyes plead, but she shakes her head. “You don’t get it.” She leans forward and down, bringing them face-to-face like the inverse of her old baby photos. “I killed myself, and I blame you.”

She straightens, turns, and leaves. He sits in resumed shock, watching her walk down the empty road and disappear into the encroaching night. They won’t see each other again.

“Bye, Sarah,” he says to nobody.

He wanders back to Valhalla. He’s welcomed inside where a great disturbance is rising, for out of the bonfire flame the Lord of Death has come.

.            .            .

“Where is he?! Where is Björnsson?!”

The black-fabric monk’s robe exposes only his head, but that alone is enough to cower the fainthearted. For rank sulfuric malice churns behind his soulless obsidian eyes, eyes pinned below a bed of dark, tight curly hair. Round nose, big forehead. He is tom-Hanx.

He paces like a restless tiger in front of the bonfire, seemingly unbothered by the heat, corralled by four brave Valquirias all with halberd tips trained on him. Behind them the crowd of patrons is transfixed and growing. The music’s stopped.

“I demand satisfaction!” he shouts.

It doesn’t take long. The crowd parts and Harald steps forward, jacket off and sleeves rolled up. He’s brought his war axe, but leaves it posted on the floor with one hand high on the handle.

“Welcome to Valhalla,” he says as the Valquirias slowly stand down, “may we get you a drink?” His eyes speak of less peace than his words.

“There he is! You have trod on my toe, Björnsson.”

Harald doesn’t reply or move.

The Lord of Death steps closer, keeps his voice low. “Leave it to you to finally build a fire so big I can’t play nice anymore. These flies you attract, they were destined to be mine long before you arrived. This you know.”

Harald remembers a word María’s father taught him. “I am an entrepreneur.”

“AND I WILL FILL YOUR MOTHER’S CUNT WITH THE SHIT OF A THOUSAND CAMELS!” roars tom-Hanx, then realizing by the surrounding looks on people’s faces he may have overplayed his hand.

“But that’s not why I’m here,” he continues. “And you’re right. Audiences make choices, and we can only try our best to bring ‘em in. Let’s help this audience make an informed one, hm?”

María arrives. She notes the stand-off and draws a freshly sharpened wakizashi. Harald notes her arrival, and they exchange quick nods – they have each other’s backs. She’s already ordered the other Valquirias to discreetly arm themselves (if they weren’t already). Service has been stopped, and some guests have been evacuated, but most choose to stay since their loyalty to Harald is no lightly taken thing.

Out from the crowd a young and distinctly un-armed Valquiria steps forward, blonde, pale, and calm. She’s probably in her mid-teens. Her eyes are wide and unfocused as she approaches the Lord of Death, but she’s in no trance. She takes his side.

Harald doesn’t visibly react, but doubt has entered his mind. María doesn’t hide her confusion or anger at what is looking like betrayal.

“Ah, thanks,” tom-Hanx says in greeting his new companion. He addresses the crowd in a similarly affable fashion. “Before we get to the main event, I first need to take care of something.” He turns to Harald and points at the axe. “That does not belong to you."

For the first time in however many eternities María has known Harald, she sees he’s afraid.

The Lord of Death projects his voice so all can hear. “As the only Supreme Regent of the Underworld, I take my responsibilities very seriously. And where I come from, graverobbing is a very serious offense. Tell us, Björnsson, don’t you think your father wants his axe back?”

Harald bares a thin line of gritted teeth.

“He never gave it to you. You had to steal it from under the very mound your own family built for him in Paradise. Everything he needed was there for him, most importantly the axe!”

Harald looks to his friends and sees subtle shifts in their bearing towards him.

“But you wanted it! What an opportunity for an entrepreneur. Or maybe you just knew this was the only way you’d ever touch the honor of your forefathers.”

Harald war-screams and slams the axe blade onto the top of tom-Hanx’s skull. It glances to the floor with a heavy and awkward drop.

“Harald, please don’t interrupt.”

The Valquirias realize there’s not much use for their weapons.

“So, by the power vested in me,” the Lord of Death declares, “I reclaim what rightfully belongs to the Dead.”

Harald’s preparing another strike when his father’s war axe incinerates in his hands. The flash of light blinds him, and the heat from the surge of flames pushes him back.

His vision restores in time to see a few gray ashes float down, all that remains of the Rain of the Troll-Woman of Strife-Clouds. Where the rest is, he can only guess. He looks down at his badly burned hands and arms. They’re not healing, nor is the pain abating. He starts to sweat through his shirt. Shock and fear spread through the crowd. Some leave while they still can.

“Now let’s get to that main event!” tom-Hanx turns to the Valquiria still standing patiently next to him. “I think Emma here has something to say.”

He speaks only to her. “Go on. I’ll make sure they hear you.”

She offers no reply, for she’s now too busy staring at Harald. He meets her gaze. He doesn’t remember her name, and he doesn’t understand her evil purpose now.

María remembers her name. She’s also rediscovered her stabilizing sense of outrage. She may not be able to kill tom-Hanx, but perhaps she can kill the traitor Emma. Soft-spoken but hard-working, she was an able Valquiria. María never asked about her past because the past is often a delicate topic in Valhalla; all that matters about her now is the Betrayal.

What stays María’s hand is the sudden look of recognition on Harald’s face. His expression goes blank, and his head gently tilts to the floor. He doesn’t share her anger, and she needs to know why before she strikes. But she stands ready.

“You,” Emma begins, pointing at Harald. Her voice is barely above a whisper, but everyone hears it as if it’s only inches away. “I remember you. Do you remember me?”

“Yes,” Harald says. Everyone hears his voice as well, though it too is spoken quietly. “You were a slave.”

A sick laugh falls from her lips. “Do you remember which one?”

He nods.

“Some chief of yours had died, an uncle, wasn’t it? They needed a slave for his pyre.”

“It was your choice.”

“You promised me Paradise.”

“Have I not tried to give it to you here?”

She doesn’t listen to the question. “And I didn’t know what you would really do to me.”

The Lord of Death can barely contain his hunger over what will happen next.

“You made it easy at first. Servants and feasting, endless drinking. I was fucked so many times leading up the funeral I could barely walk when the day came. Remember?”

No response as her voice grows louder.

“You brought me on the ship, you all took your turns fucking me again, and it still wasn’t enough. You forced that drink down my throat …” A bloodlust rises within her, flushing her pallid features. “I still hear the thunder made by all the men bashing their spears against their shields so they couldn’t hear me scream. I still feel the nails on that bloody witch pushing my head below the deck.”

She closes her eyes and clenches her jaw so tight her teeth nearly break. Tears of madness escape and her voice grows into a shout.

“You held me down next to that fucking corpse! You and your kinsmen raped me!” Her eyes shoot open. “And you, Harald Björnsson, you strangled me while the witch finished it with a knife!”[4]

Her hands fly to the spot between her ribs where the old woman stabbed her the first of many times. “Then you burned the ship! All that so I could clean your fucking toilets!” She rakes her nails down her neck and screams.

“The Devil’s in the details, my friends,” purrs the Lord of Death.

Harald looks up and around for the first time since she began. He can see the changes in how the others look back. María, for example, now glares at him with dead-faced hatred. Others are merely consumed by doubt. But unseen in the crowd also stands Harald’s fylgjur, tall, radiant and imposing. She’s watching him intently, but what the true feeling is behind those blue eyes, he can’t say.

“Wait!”

The first discordant note in tom-Hanx’s symphony of suffering sounds from behind. The Dark Lord spins and sees an old man in sweats and flip-flops approaching.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Baxter! How’s that stand-up career going?”

“Look, I get what you’re doin’ mister, but nobody’s perfect, and people deserve chances to –”

tom-Hanx’s hand flies out with inhuman speed, but Harald’s warrior eye spots the glimmer that flashes across one long fingernail. Its slice unzippers the flesh of George’s torso from his groin to his throat in less than half a second, shearing off most of his beard. He stands for a half-second more in suspended shock before falling onto his back, blood and guts gurgling out of the wound in gross amounts.

Harald waits for resurrection, but it doesn’t come. He drops to his knees.

As for the most recent Final Thoughts of George Baxter, they are this time entirely of his daughter.

“It never ends …”

He expires.

“Are you ready for your final curse, Björnsson?” the Lord of Death taunts as panic boils over.

Harald only wants to die.

“Your final curse is to live!”

The bonfire explodes outward, engulfing the hundreds still standing around it in a holocaust of fire and shrieking. In the absence of Gunnar Björnsson’s war axe, there are no more powerful Norse magics here to protect them.

But Harald doesn’t burn. He remains knelt, wind-swept by the force of the heat, still able to watch everyone around him burn in a torture no worse than the kind he himself inflicted on many others in his day.

Emma welcomes the fire and perishes as satisfied as she can be given the circumstances.

The Lord of Death climbs to the top of the bonfire absolutely giddy with himself. He surveys the pain, raises his arms and sings.

And as the years go by,
Our friendship will never die
You're gonna see it's our destiny
You've got a friend in me
You've got a friend in me
You've got a friend in me …

.            .            .

The morning arrives centuries later.

Valhalla and the block surrounding it have been reduced to a quarter mile heap of smoking ash and rubble. A few survivors have extracted themselves from the wreck and either wandered off or gathered in small groups to dig for more survivors. tom-Hanx is nowhere to be seen. Christ and some remaining apostles tend to the wounded as best they can.

They all ignore the Unscathed One, who’s still kneeling next to María’s charred remains. But it’s George’s final words that haunt him most.

… people deserve chances to –

Chances to do what? he wonders.

His psychology fundamentally limits the possibilities he can explore here, but he also possesses a basic awareness of this fact. The experience of managing an establishment with such diverse clientele has equipped him with a certain fatalism about the cultural differences of people and places in time, a concept he can only grasp through the word, “ways.”

“Their ways made them weak, son. Our ways made us strong,” his father once said before drunkenly waddling off to rape a slave before bedtime.

Harald also believes ways can change. Changing his ways allowed him to find a home in the desert. Changing his ways allowed him to find a family to fill it with.

Granted, some ways are easier to change than others, and no doubt there are some that can’t be changed at all. Valhalla sought to navigate this terrain by always pursuing the path of least resistance, the path of most commonality – sex, food, non-sobriety and violence – and it was by that path it found its success, a success great enough to bring tom-Hanx’s jealous fury down upon them.

Harald turns the situation around and over again in his mind. By the ways of his people, raiding, enslavement, and sacrifice were harsh but necessary measures against their own extinction in this world and the next. Yes, he can see the excess now, but for him it was enough to have moved on to other things. He enjoyed being exposed to the lives of those he previously regarded as little more than chattel. They introduced him to new kinds of killing instruments and taught him how to drive cars and dress better. He loved the way they loved him. Maybe the fact he kept so many details of his past ambiguous reflects some deeper moral consciousness on his part, but by that point he’s reached the extent of his capacity to consider such things.

With regards to stealing his father’s war axe, Harald never felt proud about that.

He pivots to the more familiar, more comforting terrain of the Björnsson Method. Though he lacks the ability to willfully pursue certain trains of thought, he still remembers how to deliver on a few universal human satisfactions, Bloody Vengeance in particular. He entertains a small hope – more than avenging the once-again dead, maybe such an offering will appease those who hold him responsible for whatever it is they hold him responsible for. As for how to kill the Lord of Death, he can only promise to do his best. The attempt alone will ease his own pain at least.

Still on his knees, Harald digs for weapons.

.            .            .

tom-Hanx dwells below the mountains, like he always has.

At a finely finished mahogany desk, with a goose quill dipped in orphan blood, writing on parchment wrought from human skin, he draws up a list of souls to be brought before him for his evening molestations.

His chuckling echoes throughout the mile-high cavern throne room. The millions of eternally lit candles lining the soot and skull covered walls dance in perfect unison with the ebullience of his mood.

He’s still tickled by the drama at Valhalla, though it occurred so long ago. What a fantastic performance that was! Roberto Benigni would have done a much worse job.

He adds the Italian’s name to his list, again.

Valhalla’s destruction soothed his ego considerably, but the fact isn’t lost on him that Björnsson still “lives.” He accepts it as a necessary trade-off – the image of the Norseman broken and alone in the desert is one too scrumptious to extinguish just yet. Maybe tomorrow. Until then, he’s content to pleasantly ruminate.

He passes the list off to a leathery hobgoblin named Hooch who scampers away with a snappy “yes, Master!”

Between tasks, he opts for a quick meditation session on the throne. Lashed together from the bones of his victims, it always centers him.

But equanimity is easy to find in the depths. Even if Björnsson moves against the Lord of Death’s stronghold, an exquisitely curated procession of infinite horrors awaits him, beginning with the Dark Lord’s pet three-headed dog. Chapel-sized and serpent-tailed, that slobbering behemoth could be a menace around upholstery and intruders.

tom-Hanx bounces up the final steps leading to the throne two at a time and there assumes a cross-legged seat. He closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. Today he decides to focus on gratitude.

The restful silence is interrupted by the sound of the massive red doors at the opposite end of the hall creaking open, no doubt signaling the arrival of his entertainments.

“Lord of Death!”

He recognizes the voice. His eyes open wide, and he sees Harald Björnsson standing there at the cavern entrance, armed with one modest broadsword but covered in blood and wounds. Giant claws have ruined his body, slicing off wide swaths of his flesh to expose riven bone underneath. But with a shaking, mangled hand, he still firmly grips a mass of blood-soaked cords attached to one side of a great fleshy orb. He swings it onto the ground between them with a wet slap, revealing the giant canine eyeball for what it is.

“I killed your dog.”

tom-Hanx’s jaw drops. “Wilson! No!”

He leaps from the throne and races to the other end of the hall.

Harald girds himself for one last fight, but the Lord of Death runs up only to fall to the floor over the eye of his beloved companion.

“No! No! Why’d you do it?! Why?! OH GOD WILSON!”

The raw emotion of the scene distracts Harald for less than a second, more than enough for tom-Hanx. One pinky nail of his extends out, coated in slime, and he plunges it into Harald’s stomach.

The broadsword falls to the floor.

“What was your plan, exactly?” tom-Hanx whispers before retracting the nail and stepping away.

Harald staggers, keeping his hand on his abdomen in a futile attempt to stop more blood from spilling over.

“Deceiver!” he growls.

“No! It wasn’t deception! It was acting!”

Harald falls to one knee. His eyes roll back, and every breath becomes a fight – he hasn’t long.

“‘Harald the Fool’ I name you,” the Lord of Death gloats. “Only a God can kill a God!”

“That’s why I’m here!”

Both Harald and tom-Hanx are struck by the presence of a third voice in the hall. Forgetting their own battle, they turn to the entrance and witness the arrival of none other than Jesus Christ, Lamb of Hosts, rapier in hand.

tom-Hanx snorts. “Begone King of Kings, can’t you see we’re in the middle of a scene? Besides, I –”

He receives the same courtesy he once showed George. The rapier flies across the space between them, and the narrow blade shoves itself into the center of his throat with enough force to send him flying back. He cackles and spasms on the floor.

Jesus rushes to Harald’s side.

“The others …” Harald exhales as his life fades.

“Berta’s leading them now.”

“… that is for the best.”

“What were you thinking? Sacrifice is supposed to be my brand. When I heard you’d gone to the mountains …”

“I –”

“Whatever, shut up and let me heal you.”

After some Christly energy woo-woo, Harald is partially restored. But many wounds are still open, and he needs help standing. He collects his broadsword and looks to the quivering pile of robes with the rapier sticking out.

“I thought you chose to never live by the sword,” Harald says to his Savior.

“Fuck that shit.”

They walk over to the Enemy, who has yet to shed his immortal coil.

“I’m not just a God!” he spits. “I’m a Star! You can’t defeat me … I am Legion.”

“Heard it before, asshole,” Jesus says before stomping down on his neck with one sandaled foot. He extracts the rapier, steps back with Harald, and together they watch tom-Hanx’s body combust into sparks of demonic flame.

Before they can savor the victory, the ground starts to shake. Candles fall from their perches and rain down around them.

“We should leave,” Harald says as the quake worsens, but it’s too late. There’s a loud crack, and the floor crumbles beneath them, dropping them even deeper into the Underworld’s fiery pits. It’s in this Hellscape the Legion awaits.

The hosts of millions swarm, demons, devils, ghouls, and more. Winged monstrosities circle overhead, and giant serpents slither out of the earth ridden by armored, man-sized tarantulas. They’re even joined by goose-stepping platoons of the Dark Lord’s fearsome Hitler-Raptors, spiritually engineered affronts to God that are fifty percent Adolf Hitler, fifty percent velociraptor, and one-hundred percent deadly. Then there’s the witches and warlocks, plus zombies, orcs, goblins and trolls. They will all need to be slaughtered.

Christ and Björnsson ready their swords and stand back-to-back.

The trumpets of fallen angels sound, the armies of darkness charge, and the Battle for Hell begins.

.            .            .

“Auf Wiedersehen … rawr!”

A thousand years later the final Hitler-Raptor is slain, and at last Harald stands victorious atop the Everest-sized pile of bodies that’s accumulated underneath him.

Christ died not long ago. Being both God and man, he succumbed to his wounds despite Harald’s best efforts to keep him alive.

From the peak of his rotting corpse-mountain, Harald climbs back into tom-Hanx’s old throne room. He has to shimmy along the wall to avoid precipitous drops, but he eventually arrives on stable ground, the steps at the end of the hall leading up to the throne of bones itself.

He ascends and takes a seat.

There are other paths open to him. He saw many things on his journey to kill tom-Hanx, like a city on a bay and an endless forest beyond it. He wonders if there in the forest he might find Yggdrasil, the great tree unifying all of existence. It’s sacred to his people – if there’s still a chance of reaching Valhöll, that’s easily the best one.

Or maybe some dreams are best left as ashes …

All hail Harald Björnsson, Lord of Death!

-

An old woman wrapped tightly against the wind climbs a steep valley hillside. Her knees buckle, and she takes frequent rests, but she never thinks to complain.

She still has time to make it to her destination and back home before sundown. Naturally, she would’ve preferred a more convenient location for her son’s monument, but, as the saying goes, beggars cannot be choosers.

Not that she’s destitute. Hers is a powerful family, recently mired in misfortune, true, but here she reminds herself that nothing lasts forever. (If she only knew.) Monuments remain expensive, however, and among the family she noted a general lack of enthusiasm for memorializing the life of Harald Björnsson – unsurprisingly, they lost the battle on that day of his ignoble demise, and years later their luck has yet to improve. She, however, sees the situation on a different timescale, as evidenced by the small pair of mittens she’s holding in her pocket. She made them for Harald when he was a toddler, and she’s kept them on her person since he died.

She approaches the memorial stone eager to see it for the first time. Some jewelry needed to be bartered to pay for its crafting, but those items are mere ornaments to her now.

She’s underwhelmed, but not surprised. Her son’s monument amounts to a misshapen lump of rock with barely legible runes scrawled across the top. It’s what she could afford, and it’ll have to do.

Her thoughts on Harald’s life and death are uncomplicated. She knows it’s a common tale, another mother mourning the loss of her son to violence, accidentally self-inflicted violence in this case though it may be. It could have been different. If he’d chosen a life away from the battlefield, maybe he’d still be here to go on walks with her.

She catches herself venturing close to complaining. She hasn’t survived her life’s many hardships by feeling sorry for herself, and she’s not about to start now. Harald is in worlds beyond her sight, hopefully finding new ways to make her proud. Perhaps he awaits her too – now there’s a pleasant thought!

Wind rises, and she bravely holds herself against it.

[1] Plutarch, Life of Artaxerxes.

[2] Anonymous of Béthune, History of the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of England.

[3] Abraham Constantin Mouradgea d'Ohsson, History of the Mongols from Chinguiz-Khan to Timour Bey or Tamerlane.

[4] Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān, Journal.