Gods and Roses
So here's the opening that ended as a finalist in Glimmer Train's "Best Start" contest last month. It's a revision of something I posted here a couple of years ago, and I may or may not expand upon it for NaNoWriMo this year.



The couch was on fire when it burst through my living room wall. It rocketed across the street and down half a city block before hitting the side of a school bus and cracking the vehicle open like a piñata. The bus was fortunately unoccupied at the time, but the 5th graders would have to cancel their field trip to the Boston Museum of Science. Such are the risks when furniture and education collide.

There had been many things I had not wanted to do in my life: living in an apartment complex in downtown Boston, owning several Star Wars collectible glasses, and briefly dating my sister-in-law, for example. Up until now, the one thing I had happily managed to avoid doing was angering the Greek god of thunder. Unfortunately, I had crossed that line about thirty seconds ago. Thankfully, he decided to take his frustration out on my faux leather sofa.

“Do you believe me now?” He asked. He was built like a vending machine wearing an Armani suit. Sparks of electricity crackled across the tip of his black cane.

I looked out the hole in my living room wall. I could hear the sirens approaching. The news crews were already on the scene. In my apartment, a burn on the carpet marked where the couch had been struck by lightning. I could still smell the whiff of ozone and the hint of scorched PVC fabric. I shivered slightly, then realized that the sprinklers had been going for several minutes now, drenching me to the skin.

My client didn’t seem wet at all, even though he was standing no more than five feet away from me. He was tapping his foot impatiently. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t answered his question, and my gaping mouth was starting to fill up with sprinkler water.

“Look, Mister…”

“Zeus.”

“Right, Zeus.” I would have to write that name down. I had always been terrible with mythology. “I usually charge 75 dollars an hour for missing persons cases, plus travel expenses and, um, damages.” I signaled weakly toward the missing wall in my living room.

Zeus stroked his trimmed black beard and reached into his suit. He pulls something out of the inside pocket and tossed it on the floor. It looked like a small brick. I stared at it blankly for a moment, and then recognized the picture of Ben Franklin looking back at me from atop a wad of his friends.

“Do we have a deal?” he asked. He had a faint accent I didn’t recognize. I guess logic would dictate that it was Greek.

I glanced across the room at Hector, my Scottish terrier. He was sitting on top of his cushion in the corner of the room, looking at the scene nonchalantly, as though my business attracted lightning-hurling clientele all the time. Hector raised his eyebrows to me, telling me to take the money.

“Yeah, we have a deal, I guess.” I bent over and picked up the wad of bills. It was hundred dollar bills, right through to the bottom.

“Good. That should cover your immediate expenses.” Zeus reached into his coat again and pulled out a business card. “If you need to reach me, my cell number is on the card.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and walked out the front door as soon as I took his business card, humming to himself as he left.

I sighed and got to work. Opening up the closet, I pulled out a gray coat and shoved the bills into the front pocket along with the business card. I shrugged that on, grabbed my laptop from the kitchen table, and put on my New York Giants baseball cap. Hector went back to gnawing on his rawhide bone, oblivious to the entire scene. I kept a harness on him for occasions like these. Now I picked him up by the harness and tucked him under my arm, leaving the bone dangling out of his mouth as I walked. I passed a group of firemen in the hall. They ran right by me without bothering to think that the man with a laptop and a wet dog might have come from the apartment with the big smoking crater in it.

The money would buy me a hotel for the night, but it wasn’t going to be easy getting a reference from my landlord in the future. I would say it was going to be one of those days, but it was already past noon. First I had forgotten to put the milk away, then I got a notice saying my cable bill was past due. Then a Greek god blew up my couch, ruined my apartment, and hired me to find his missing daughter. So it had already been one of those days.