The duck rubbed its wingtips together gleefully. "Welcome," it said grandly, "to the first day of the rest of your life."

The king said nothing.

The duck waddled over to a nearby boulder and jumped on top of it, wings fluttering madly. "This is your rock," it said. "You and it are going to become very familiar with each other."

The duck stretched a wing to point up a hill. "This is your hill. Any questions so far?"

The king eyed the slope. It was a hill, alright. "Nope."

"The rules are as simple as they are elegant. If you can get this rock up that hill, you can go home and be king again."

The king's eyes narrowed. "That's it? Just get this rock up the hill?"

The duck smiled an evil smile. "Believe me, that's plenty."

Then it dissolve into a golden mist and vaporized into the sky.

The king examined his rock. It was about waist height, weighed perhaps 300 pounds. Lots of crevices and moss on it, so there'd be plenty of hand holds.

The king estimated that the top of the hill was about a mile off, the first half mile having a gentle slope and then steepening as it approached the top. Not undoable.

The king wondered at the duck's parting words. The punishment, if it could be called that, seemed suspiciously easy.

The king spat in his hand and rubbed it into his palms. Nothing to it but to do it.

He figured that if he could whip the Spartan army after a twenty mile march, he could get a damned rock up a hill.

He pushed, rolled, shoved, and maneuvered that rock two thirds of the way up the slope before he stopped for a break. He sat with the boulder to his back and his heels dug into the hillside to keep it from rolling back down, and waited till he got his breath back. Then he kept pushing.

The king was past the prime of his life, but he had grown up as a warrior in a hard culture, and he was years away from old age and infirmity. His muscles did not fail him, but he still had to take another break just twenty feet from the top.

The slope had gotten steep, and he quickly discovered that breaks didn't work when you expended just as much strength standing still holding the rock back as you did pushing.

With a grunt of effort, he started up again. He starting carving distance away in chunks- one shove, one step forward to brace the rock in place, and that's just 17 more feet. Another shove and that's 15 feet. Sweat was pouring down his naked body, getting caught in his long hair and beard, and dripping down into his eyes.

At the last possible moment, when he was just one rush of effort away from putting the boulder on the level ground at the top of the hill, his foot slipped in the gravelly dirt and he could feel the boulder start to roll. He threw himself to one side to keep the boulder from crushing any toes.

The king sagged into the ground and panted, watching his rock roll all the way back down to the start point.

"Motherfucker," he said.

"What, talking about me behind my back?" a cheery voice to his immediate left said.

The king craned his head wearily and saw that the duck had joined him.

"Oh, wow!" the duck said. "You got close, there."

"You sabotaged me," the king accused. "I would've made it if you hadn't made me lose my footing."

"Nope," the duck said. "That's the funny part. You failed because you weren't clever enough or strong enough to succeed. I specifically designed this hill so that I wouldn't need to sabotage you. Honest."

The king spat into the dirt to his right. "There's always tomorrow," he said.

"Oh, yes," the duck agreed. "There is always tomorrow, isn't there."

"Tomorrow" was inaccurate. There was always light but no sun where the king was trapped, and thus the concept of days and nights was obsolete. Nonetheless, the king tried again soon enough, and there was no way to disprove that it wasn't a a new day.

He failed the second time as well. Half way up the slope, when he went to rest, he lost control of the rock while he tried to seat himself on the ground, and it rolled back to the start.

The duck was nowhere in sight, but the king could sense its mocking laughter.

The third attempt also failed- his arms experienced muscle failure two thirds of the way up the hill.

There was no food or water to revive and replenish him, but it seemed he didn't need it. Just sitting down and resting was enough to restore his strength. Still, he missed the sensation of eating- tastes on the tongue, weight in his belly.

He told himself that if he wanted to eat again, all he had to do was overcome the hill.

He blazed his way up the hill on the fourth try, not stopping for breaks or slowing down. He put all his might and will into this drive, and near the end, in the last foot and a half where the slope was almost vertical, his fingers slipped off and the boulder crashed down onto the hill and rolled back.

The king screamed and beat the ground with his fists, wept, raged and raved in his frustration. He lost his footing mid-rant and tumbled half way down to his rock. He laid prone and sobbed, cursing the rock, the hill, and above all the duck.

"So, how are things working out for you?" the duck asked.

"Could be better," the king admitted.

The duck nodded sympathetically. "When I design ironic punishments, I don't hold back," it said. "You should see what I did to Tantalus."

The king glared. "I'm not beaten yet, though. There's a way to crest that hill, and I will find it."

"Hey, that's the spirit!"

The next dozen attempts, the king used his mind instead of his body. He rolled his rock around the hill, trying to find an avenue of approach that offered a greater chance for success. None of the promising routes worked any better than his first.

He noticed that while he would still bruise and could still scrape some skin off, sitting still and resting was enough to heal him. None of the many bruises he had given himself on the hill stuck with him for long.

"Hey, there," the duck said. "Any progress?"

The king smirked. "Oh, yes."

The king was digging into the pebble specked dirt with both hands about halfway up the hill. The duck stared at him, bemused.

"Alright," it said. "I must have been unclear. You have to get that rock up this hill. I didn't even mention digging."

"No," he said. "But I do have some small talent for cunning."

"Cunning? You do realize that being too clever by half is how you ended up here, don't you?"

The king ignored that. He pointed down into the shallow hole he was standing in. "I shove that damned rock up here. I start getting tired, so I plop it into the hole here and relax. When I get my strength back, I shove it to another hole up there. And another hole past that. As many holes as I need."

The duck nodded. "I see."

"And then I'll carve out a tunnel through the last foot, where you kindly made it damn near straight up and down. And thus will I succeed."

The duck said, "Sounds like a plan. Good luck with that."

The duck didn't go anywhere. The king snorted and resumed digging.

The duck said, "Hey, do you mind if I just unload on you a little?"

He shrugged. "As though I have a choice!"

"You got a choice! I can just fly off now and you wouldn't have to hear it, it's your choice! I'm just asking, can I vent for a while?"

"Sure. No skin off my nose."

The duck sighed. "You ever hear of the Hebrews?"

"Heard of, never dealt with. They're an isolationist kind of people."

"Yeah, that's the group I mean. You know their God?"

"Well, not by name, of course."

The duck chuckled bitterly. "No one knows that one's name, 'cept them. Paranoid bastard. He's moving in on my territory."

"Oh?" the king didn't even try to sound interested.

"One guy," the duck said. Its eyes narrowed in bewilderment and petulance. "One guy, just one measly motherfucker gets crucified, and the next thing I know the world's falling apart. I didn't mind when you lot turned to Rome. Rome liked my style and made a little living space for me. These days... I can count the number of people who still take me seriously on one hand."

"Wing."

"Wing," it agreed. The duck sighed again. "I miss the old days," it said.

"I know what you mean," the king said through clenched teeth.

The king's plan to leapfrog his rock up the hill failed. The holes were dug deep enough, alright, but as he progressed up the slope he found that he had dug the pits at an angle. The first hole he came to wouldn't hold the rock in place very well. The second was even worse. When he finally rolled the boulder into the third pit, he found that he had dug it so deep that getting the boulder out at all was a harder task than pushing it had been. By the time that he released it, his arms were so sore and numb that he couldn't push the rock another step. The king reluctantly let go and stood aside to let it roll back to the starting point.

It was at this point that despair well and truly hit him.

He still tried to complete his task every so often, but with no real hope or ingenuity. He had nothing better to do than push the damn rock, so he did. There was no possible way to know how many years he shoved the rock without hope of success. However, every so often the duck would come to visit.

"Still here then, are you?" the duck asked.

The king nodded.

"Eh. Thought you might have escaped, or something."

"No."

"Some one else did," the duck said. It let loose an indignant quack. "I just went to check on Prometheus, and it turns out someone cut him loose ages ago. The chains were all rusted and there wasn't a bloodstain to be seen. Must've happen two thousand years ago or something. Before the yehuds' God took over."

Hope grow suddenly in the kings heart, then died just as quickly. If it happened that long ago, the odds of the rescuer coming here were nil.

"You have it easy compared to him," the duck continued. "I had an eagle come every single day to eat his liver, and every night the liver would grow back. Got him coming and going! He didn't just experience agony every single day, his whole life revolved around the fact that a bird of prey was coming for him. He woke up every morning sick with anticipation, lived through the deed, then spent the afternoon dreading the morrow. Very slick, if I do say so myself."

The king sat with his back against the rock and tried to ignore the duck.

The duck waddled over and sat down in front of him. "It's just you, me, and my brother down here now. Every one else is gone. Poseidon went off years ago. He said he couldn't take the fucking oil spills anymore.

"Aphrodite, reduced to a mere masturbation aid by a couple million art critics worldwide. Shows up in the movies as a hot chick, but she doesn't do a goddamn thing.

"Ares retired after war got mechanized. He said it took all the honor out of the thing. He couldn't hold with interlocking fields of fire, air support, and shit like that.

"Nike? Don't even get me started."

One by one, the duck named his brothers and sisters and daughters and sons. The king couldn't comprehend half of the circumstances they had fallen to, but this much was clear- the gods he'd known and outwitted in life were faded and gone.

"I survived, because I was famous enough to be associated with the Nameless God. When the stories about me get told, they all think I'm Him with a different name tacked on," it spat. "And my brother survived because he's Lord of the Dead. When his stories are told, they all think it's Beelzebub in a different suit."

"Please," the king begged in a whisper.

"I mean, he's the only one of us who didn't fuck with humans on a whim! Where's the logic in that?"

"Please."

"Do you know," the duck ranted, "in one movie I saw, I was this kindly middle-aged guy who loved his son Heracles- oops, I mean, Hercules- was a kind and loyal husband to Hera, and blindly trusted my evil brother Hades, who then betrayed me. It like you sons of bitches never even heard the original tales."

"Please."

The duck cut his rant short. "What did you say?"

"Please. I want to go home."

The duck gaped. "You are begging me? You?"

"Yes. If you have the slightest ounce of mercy and compassion left in your soul, please let me go home. I can't endure this anymore."

"Well, shit," the duck said after a moment's thought. "Sure. Why not?"

"Truly?" The king began crying softly.

"Sure. I designed this little punishment to rub in the fact that you weren't smart enough, cunning enough, or strong enough to outdo the gods. The very fact that you're begging shows that I'm still top dog."

"Top duck."

"Don't push it. Go on, push the rock up. It'll work this time, if you're game."

It was the hardest mile of boulder pushing the king had done in all his years of torment. His arms felt like they were at the breaking point, his legs burned with effort, and the sweat would not get out of his eyes. The last foot of the slope, which had defeated him so many times, came close to breaking his back when he finally levered the boulder over it and onto the top of the hill.

The duck was all alone now- his brother was off tending the souls of the departed, which seemed to be all he had time for these days, and his very last prisoner was released. It wondered briefly if it should have mentioned that Greece didn't have kings anymore, and that they probably wouldn't understand his dialect anyway, then decided that the king would find out soon enough.

"Well, here I am," it said. It gave a solitary, mournful quack, and then was silent.