This is a new short story I'm writing based off of this post: post/110393424709/the-old-gods-are-dead-zeus-sits-at-the-bar-hell on tumblr. I loved it, so I wanted to write it. (The Italics at the end of each chapter are the poem lines that correspond to the chapter). I own nothing except the inspiration to write this.
Zeus sits and stares into the large tumbler of whiskey in his hand. The ice has long since melted and the cheap scotch burns as it slides down his throat, but it does nothing for him, just as no alcohol has ever done anything for him. Not since ambrosia. He finishes the drink any way and gestures for another.
He wears the body that he has for a millennia. Middle-aged, non-descript and practically invisible. He can't remember a time when the people believed in him, or his brothers, his sisters, his children. It's been so long, and now they are just stories.
His eyes flit over the giggling college girls in the corner, taking in their young curves and voluptuous bodies and he thinks of a time when he would have walked over and gone home with any number of them. Of a time when he was the king of everything and all young girls would willingly offer themselves to him.
He smiles flirtatiously at a young girl looking his way and she flinches, tearing her eyes from his and shifting uncomfortably in her seat. He can see in her thoughts the disgust that she feels, and the reassuring way she reminds herself of the pepper spray tucked in her sleeve and the rape whistle attached to her hip.
Zeus turns back to his drink and thinks of the old days, when he ruled on high from Olympus.
Zeus sits at the bar, he'll buy a thousand and one drinks and the girls who he smiles at will raise their eyebrows and think of the pepper spray tucked into their sleeves.