Enter Odin, or The Hanging of a Demi-God
—-

Minus woke up a few hours later, hanging upside down from the giant tree. He could see an older man, with unkempt hair and beard. He only had one eye and the ravens were sitting on his shoulders. He was still very large and muscular for his age.

“What is it this time, old man?” said Minus.

“Oh, so you do remember our last talk, youngling? This is indeed a surprise. My brother Othin told me you would be here. Of course, I knew already. What is it you seek, child? What more could I possibly teach you? You are too weak. Your mind too fragile.”

“All-Father, I did not come here for your knowledge. I have come for my own.” Minus spoke with a harshness that his expression could not show, since he was hanging upside down by a rope tied to one ankle.

“Ahh… I see. You are tired. Tired of your delusional life and your ‘doctor’s’ pineal poisons. This is admirable. To hold ones own memories as only the Aesir can. I will take my leave. Should you succeed, you will see me again.”

The old man looked weary as he left. Minus had never seen him look so tired and beaten. He didn’t like what this could mean.

***

Back at Minus’ house, Jane was busy studying with a see-through Victor Mancini. She was alone today. Some days Kotoko would show up, and they’d study together, but Kotoko had a job and she was still in school.

Minus had been gone for three days now. Mancini insisted he would be fine and return unharmed. Jane tried not to worry, and regularly took the tiny little purple pills that Mancini had recommended. Apparently they were something that Minus had made up in his “Apothecary,” as Mancini referred to it.

Sometimes Jane would go upstairs and look out the windows to watch that horrible Mist. She didn’t like the idea of Minus and Kotoko being out in it. Kotoko couldn’t even see it until the night she met Minus.

“And what was so important about Minus?” Jane thought to herself. She loved him, she knew that much. But it seemed like he affected everyone he came into contact with. Without even realizing it, people seemed to find that their lives revolved around Minus and his actions.

Sometimes, when Mancini would be talking, Jane would daydream a little. She would start to get the feeling that there was something important that she could not remember. There was a hazy feeling to her eighteenth year. She started to think a lot about that time period.

After Mancini would leave for the day, she would try to remember things about that year. But everything seemed perfectly normal. That’s what really bothered her. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that her memories had a sense of fabrication to them. It was too normal. She would dream of it at night.

These thoughts began to occupy more of her time as the days passed. On the fifth day, she asked Doctor Mancini about the Akashic Library, and how she could get there.

—-

Jack
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #20
Enter Odin, or The Hanging of a Demi-God

*****

It started off innocently enough, like most things. Especially things in Minus’ life. He often felt like the opposite of King Mitus, since everything he touched turned to shit, instead of gold.

“But it’s different this time,” he thought to himself. He always thought this to himself. He seemed to really like writing an internal monologue.

So, there he was: very happy, very stupid, and very drunk. What was different from every other day? Nothing. Nothing at all. Or so he thought.

It was near midnight, and after several pitchers, when he found himself alone, talking to a girl in her early twenties. The volume was turned down on the rest of the bar. The people moved in slow motion and sound traveled as if through water. Minus loved these moments, when he felt so very at home. These moments seldom lasted, and took much drink to accomplish.

The girl was cute, but young. Minus had already forgotten her name. But this time was different. She had that silken aura glow, like the girl that haunted his dreams. He’d seen her play a dozen roles in his dreams, but she was always obviously the same person. He could always tell by that bright white glow. She was a mother one night, a sister another, a lover more often than anything. In his dreams, Minus never looked the same. He knew who he was, even when dreams happened from odd perspectives, as they often do. And he always knew who she was, even when she was nothing like the night before, or any of the thousands of nights in his life.

This was a long dream. It haunted and beckoned. It tore at his heart strings and played death metal in his rotten soul. Minus was not a bad person, but a person consistently forced into bad situations. He couldn’t really grasp how at least half of his life had actually happened. But it had. Dreams through a Seconal haze. Hadn’t there been another dream-girl a few years(or a lifetime) ago? The Thorazine year that followed that instance had taught him that, no, there had never been a girl in his life with this aura. Even though his pineal gland would ram itself around to try and break free from the anti-psychotic’s numbing embrace.

But the pineal gland survived for moments like this. Brief glimpses at reality on the other side of the vale. And it shouted as he talked to this girl.

Minus fought a little when he felt the vertigo pulling him in. He was never very good at fighting this falling feeling, even though it almost always lead to pain directly. So he funneled down in to the synchronicity that surrounded this girl.

Her name, it later turned out, was Jane. Jane was 22, not really old enough to know better. Minus knew better, he just didn’t care. If Jane had known better, she would not have cared either.

——–

Jack.
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #1