The Gods and Those Below Them
by James Callan
Hannah eyed the wooden saviour nailed up on His cross, up on her wall. She gazed at Him, there beside the pinned-up butterflies, and stuck out her tongue. In mockery, she placed a Cool Ranch Doritos triangle into her open mouth, crossed herself, and intoned “The body of Christ” before chewing like a savage, a pagan animal, to shed over-flavoured snack shrapnel upon the plush, white carpet.
She opened the pages of her Children’s Encyclopedia: Gods and Heroes edition, and stared down Athena, talking down her style, her outmoded toga, her spear, shield, and silly owl, a pesky thing not half as cool as Hedwig. To Hercules, she offered a thumbs down, told him Arnold is bigger. To the angry man in the clouds? The white-bearded, barrel-chested elder that raged on mortals with charged, hurled lightning? For the god of gods, she offered nothing but laughter. For the big shot up on Mount Olympus, for Zeus, the almighty himself, she deposited her chewed bubblegum over his disbelieving scowl and closed the book.
Hannah’s laughter filled the small room. Her amusement reverberated across the Land of Hannah. She climbed the furniture, scaled her dresser and mirror, ascended the snowy summit of the tallest peak, and stretched out to deface a beloved, portly avatar. Hannah grinned, mischievous, malicious even, as she Sharpied fat, red lips over the tireless, warm smile of the little, plump, golden Buddha that laboured as a sturdy bookend high up on her shelf. Climbing back down, she trampled the neatly folded laundry, lavender-scented skyscrapers, and knew what it was to be Godzilla, to be destructive because you are built for it, because you can. She giggled as she approached the fishbowl, and fed Doritos crumbs to her goldfish, which she had named Neptune. She winked at Jesus, who was just hanging around, who had nothing better to do but watch.
Hannah brazenly mocked the gods.
And why not?
Here, in Hannah’s room, in the Land of Hannah, in this microcosm of a prepubescent daydream, who is Zeus but a Santa wannabe? An ill-tempered Saint Nick? Who is Jesus Christ but an ornament among the insects to break up the floral wallpaper? Who is Neptune, beyond a misshapen, mound of bloated scales, a one-dollar fish that Hannah took home in a plastic bag filled with water? Who are all these third-rate buffoons? In Hannah’s room, they are nobody. They are minions, board game pieces, pawns. Here, Hannah is master. In the Land of Hannah, Hannah is the goddess supreme.
Omniscient, Google tells her, means “all-knowing.” Omnipotent, she discovers: “all-powerful.” She practices the words out loud. Words that describe herself. With power comes responsibility—or so some preach—but Hannah is nine years old and couldn’t care less about any of that sage horseshit.
Hannah is a vain goddess, a cruel deity, so she called out across the sweeping, plush-carpeted plains to assemble her subjects to a gathering of barbaric sport. She heralded her followers, the citizens of Hannah Land, the fawners and flatterers, the servile and the sycophants, ushering them in to attend her game. They filed in, a long queue of lowly peasants, their bent necks and down-turned gazes fixed on their feet. Hannah surveyed the rabble, the collective puddle of scum, and one by one smirked into their simple, smiling faces, ready to absorb it all: their transparent, brown-nosing bullshit.
It didn’t matter to Hannah that they were all just trying to save their skins, keep their heads, avoid the wrath of a monster. It didn’t bother Hannah one little bit that the peasants all gathered before her, each to say such pretty things to her because they know it’s what she likes to hear. That was, after all, the very point of the assembly to which she had ordained. Hannah likes to be inflated; loves to be made large. She feeds off of those who fear her, those who praise her not because they love her. Hannah likes an affectation of love. She likes to see her admirers sweat. She savours that moment when she pretends that they have said enough, and more than that, when she finally lets them know that they have not.
Hannah enjoys adoration. Hannah likes to hurt. She takes and takes, but she also gives out plenty. In some ways she is generous—especially with pain.
From up on her throne, she greeted them all: those who had gathered in haste to appease their queen. Sitting on her bed, she looked down to the masses sprawled out over the carpet far below her, the bright, gormless faces of Beanie Babies and Barbies, teddy bears and Bratz Dolls, a contingent of Lego Men: those who had come to pay their respects.
They grovelled while they waited. They filled the silence with soft whispers of devotion. They looked up to their Lady from down on their knees, button and marble eyes gleaming, moist with reverence—or were those tears of anxiety? Of crippling fright? Disquietude in the ominous calm before the storm?
Hannah soaked it all up, all that simmering unease, all that bubbling trepidation, until she needed something more, something stronger. At last, she broke the silence. Those in attendance held their breath while their queen told them the cold, hard facts: the laws and guidelines that would help funnel their lives into an epicentre of pain, the measures taken to help fuel her sadistic pleasures. She never was one to mince words, they remember, but on occasion, she did sometimes mince her subjects.
“Welcome,” she told them, open arms and smile spread wide, a veneer of warmth to mask a veiled savagery. “Welcome, beloved friends of Hannah Land, to the great affirmation, to this grand, auspicious day where each one of you will have your chance to prove your love to me, your goddess.” Hannah nodded to the sound of resounding applause, simulated pleasure throughout the gathered masses. Adequately venerated, she held out her little-girl hands to quiet the throng. In a heartbeat, all fell silent.
Then, among the crowd, a Winnie the Pooh hand puppet cleared the back of his throat, dislodging the sweet, trickling honey that tickled his lungs. Those around him parted, edged away, and distanced themselves. As if fearful of the plague, they avoided looking—even breathing—in his direction. The room went silent as a crypt, so quiet that one could almost hear the dozens of heartbeats pounding as one in panic.
From up on her bed, her golden throne, Hannah shook her head and tsk tsk tsked to fill the breathless silence. She retrieved a small, aluminum case from her back pocket, from her blue jeans beneath the frilly tutu that she wore. She shook the tin box, rattled its contents, and grinned like a rabid jackal, hissing out laughter between her teeth like a bemused viper. She motioned Pooh Bear forward, who trudged, head down, a sombre, forlorn figure.
“Something for your throat,” she offered, reaching into the tiny metal box she had taken from her father’s office, from Daddy Land across the hall, and plucked out one of the extra-strong breath mints that she could not stomach herself but her father used to cloak the smell of Scotch. She handed the small, chalky-white pill to Pooh, who bowed in reverence, who averted his gaze in respect, in utter fear, who took what was offered and without hesitation swallowed the cyanide capsule. “Now back to your place,” Hannah shooed him away like a stray dog, not at all a beloved stuffed bear. Halfway back to his place among the crowd, Pooh Bear stumbled, fell face forward, and expired on the spot.
Somewhere in the crowd, Christopher Robin stifled the outpour of his broken heart.
“Today is a glorious day!” the goddess of Hannah Land declared. “Today is a day to elevate yourself above the common crowd, to stand out, to shine, to demonstrate your devotion to me, your queen; me, the supreme being! Me, me, me!” Hannah stood atop her bed and raised her shrill voice, nearly stumbling amid her wild words and animated gesticulations. “Among all you faithful, there is naturally one who must love me most of all. For this individual, there will be reward. Whoever proves to me they love me best may escape unscathed. Those that are convincing may live to try harder. Those who fail…” She let that hang in the air. Hannah knows that words often pale next to the limitless bounds of the imagination.
The boldest came first. Those who hungered to show their worth, their ironclad fidelity.
The great, golden bear came down from his forested, mountain top home to prostrate before his sovereign. He wished to vindicate his kind, to better represent the bears of the world, to make up for Pooh Bear’s embarrassing fuck-up. So, as humble as could be, he lowered himself, his great muzzle pressed against the carpet, and spoke with reverence as he tallied off many promises to his queen.
“I will forgo all fish from the wide rivers and deep lakes,” he told her. “I will do without ripe berries, abstain from meat, skip out on hibernation,” all in her name, he had said. “What is more,” he went on, then explained to her that he was committed to filing down his sharp, curved claws, removing his teeth, and even shaving away his thick coat so he may go uncovered, totally revealed, no secrets withheld. It would be a show of humility, he attested. For his goddess, he would offer up his very soul.
Hannah seemed delighted, but refrained from voicing her pleasure. With so many subjects yet to prove their love, she couldn’t possibly end the game with the very first proclamation.
“Do you offer up your neck?” She asked the great, golden bear.
Metaphors are a fine thing, Bear had thought, so he agreed without hesitation. He would stick out his neck for any friend, he publicly declared, and so too would he proudly do for his queen. Hannah nodded, solemn of face, though her eyes glimmered with menace. The serrated steak knife from Mother’s kitchen, the fabled blade from Mommy Land, caught the light from above. Excalibur shimmered when revealed from beneath a pink, frothy tutu, and radiated gold, as if blessed by a goddess. Wielded by a tiny, pudgy hand, gripped by stubby fingers with chipped polish and chewed nails, it seared through the thick flesh of a brave devotee.
A wash of crimson flooded the floor by Hannah’s feet; the base of her throne now encrusted in dark rubies. As if the will of the divine, the white carpet magically transformed to become deep, red velvet. A bear-skin rug covered whatever stain lay beneath it.
Next, bold as brass, filled with rum, a seafarer arrr, arrr, arrred over the crowd to command his Queen’s attention. On a wooden peg leg, he hobbled forward through the throng. He boasted of adventure, tales from across the sea, his exploits from continents far and wide. He spoke of treasure, of good marauding fun, of fruitful raids that razed fishing villages to the ground and filled his cargo hold with sparkling booty.
“I offer thee me cache of coin, sweet goddess, Hannah, maiden fair.” With a silver tongue, the pirate promised gold. “I’ll shave me beard, long as a transoceanic voyage and gray as sea foam, down to the jaundiced skin of me gaunt and hollow cheeks” he offered, “and tattoo thy lovely face upon me chest.” He winked, though came across questionably deranged, certainly drunk, forgetting that his other eye was veiled in a black patch, a white death’s head branded upon its center, a grinning Jolly Roger. “I love thee more than thou could ever know,” he swore, “and to prove it, I offer up me precious Polly, me parrot, a scarlet macaw from the dreaded Caribbean isle of one thousand ill omens, the dire black rock of doom!”
Squawk! “Don’t listen to him, Your Worship!” Squawk! “He’s as mad as they come, and drunk besides!”
“A regular jester, that bird,” again, with that spasmodic tick, that demented, one-eyed wink. “Of course, what me feathered friend here means to say is I be thy man, till I breathe me last breath or till the oceans boil over.”
“Then it shall be just as you say,” Hannah declared. “Till you breathe your last breath.” Again, she made quick use of Arthur’s blade. She did not hesitate to heft the birthright of a noble king, to swing forth a legendary longsword, a serrated steak knife, to part the one-eyed head, beard and all, from the addled sea captain’s shoulders.
A macaw squawked its last and tried to flee as it burst into a cloud of primary-coloured feathers. They dispersed in the air, an elegant free fall, and caught the late afternoon sun coming through the window. Delicate things, they were vibrant and most beautiful. Before they even reached the ground the next supplicant stepped forward.
Mr. Potato Head went out on a limb to show favour to his goddess. He put in an honest effort, gave an arm and a leg—a nose, too—but it did not settle Hannah’s need for more. In the end, she summoned the cooks to prepare mashed potato for supper.
Among the crowd, someone nudged Tickle Me Elmo, and his maniacal laughter filled the carpeted pasture of Hannah Land. He was tarred with Silly Putty, feathered with macaw quills, drawn and quartered, desexed, and still he laughed, on and on, until he was disembowelled, batteries removed, wiring severed and pulled out. Even after his death, his laughter seemed to echo across the region. It was enough to haunt even the staunchest of G.I. Joes.
Toward the end, even Barbie made her case, a bold gesture of shaving her cascading, platinum-blonde hair. She went on in fevered declaration, pledging that her wardrobe would be scoured of sin, bikinis, and designer wear to be burned in a mound, that unrevealing hoodies and one-piece swimwear are forevermore her fashion. Speaking for Ken, for Stacy too, she offered up their lives, their plastic, empty heads, their gleaming pecs and nippleless breasts. In desperation, Barbie agreed to rough it out in crude lodgings of Duplo, to offer up her Barbie Dreamhouse to Hannah, her beloved Lady. In the end, Ken’s and Stacy’s heads were mounted on the wall. Between them, shorn to the scalp, a bald beauty. True to her word, Barbie never did wear a bikini thereafter.
One after the next, Hannah rejected all proclamations of devotion. At her feet lay the failed participants, the dismembered and the dead. Throughout it all, Hannah savoured the power, more so still, the sweet punishments that came with her swift rebuff. But now, she grew a little bored, and close to dinner, she had now become hangry.
Her tummy rumbled in time to her mother’s call from the kitchen, “Dinner!”—the summons from the great goddess of Mommy Land, a frightful kingdom with a militant ruler. “Coming!” Hannah called out, trying to buy some time in spite of her great hunger, attempting to delay dinner, but more than that, delay her mother, endeavouring more than anything else to use what little time she had to conceal the mass slaughter that filled Hannah Land, each and every inch.
“Dinner!” Mother was not known for her patience.
“Coming!” Hannah summoned a gale to sweep away the corpses.
“Dinner!” The great goddess of Mommy Land was quick to anger, a ghastly creature of epic wrath.
“Coming!” Hannah waved her hands and whispered incantations. One by one the dead rose to their feet to sway across the carpet; crumpled, disfigured forms animated by black magic; the will of a desperate deity.
Hannah’s mother did not call out again, which sounds like a good thing, but actually, it was worse. Rather than wasting her breath, engaging in a tug-of-war conflict of back and forth, an endless volley of “Dinner!” and “Coming!” cried out from one precinct to the next, a shouting match between two gods, each on their own cloud, instead, Mother decided to go to war, to invade Hannah Land, to seize her daughter and downright command her to attend the mandatory mealtime. Her footsteps were muted by the soft, white carpet, but a low bass-like war drums alerted Hannah to the dire reality she then faced. Each heel driven into the floorboards was one among a sequence of thudding that reverberated like Morse code. Message: here I fucking come!
And sure enough, the door burst inward, a vast rupture in the stalwart defence of Hannah Land. Even with Excalibur in hand, Hannah felt helpless, a weak, miserable worm writhing in the mud.
“What are you doing with my steak knife!”
Hannah dropped a legendary blade to bounce upon the carpet. It landed beside the heads of Lego men, an entire flotilla worth of pirates and their eccentric captain. She watched, distraught, as Mother’s eyes scanned the room, the sweeping plains of Hannah Land, as her gaze darted from one violent aftermath to the next. There was no shortage of carnage, any lack of evidence to hide the teeming atrocities. Hannah’s guilt lay everywhere, in one horrific display after the other. From the torn-open teddy bear, its profusion of white fluff, to Barbie limbs and Bratz Doll’s heads scattered free from their bodies, the medley of butchery was not lacking. At the center of it: Hannah.
“Oh, you vile, little wretch!” Mother growled. “You’re the devil in disguise as my daughter,” she spat. “Oh, Hannah, little miss Hannah, you are in for a reckoning, make no mistake about it.”
From outside Hannah’s window the weather shifted. The sun was swallowed by black cloud. The early evening light was gulped down, drowned out by a thick application of doom.
Inside, Hannah looked in the open doorway to the overbearing silhouette of her towering mother. She looked into the aperture hemorrhaging harsh, bright light. She stared, terrified, into the space leading out of Hannah Land, the vast provinces that stretched out into the hallway, the kitchen beyond, the black mass that barred her way, that blocked any chance of her escape.
Under the searing spotlight of scrutiny, a harsh puritanical eye, Hannah was made small, deflated, debased. Shrunken down to the size of a flea, she wished to burrow into the soft fibres of the carpet. She wished more than anything to hide, to disappear. She cowered beneath the wooden saviour who glared down at her from high up on his cross above. She could not move, pinned down by the corpulent weight of the smiling Buddha. Even Neptune seemed fierce, ancient, like megalodon, capable of tsunami-like wrath. Doritos floated on the surface of his fishbowl. Impregnated with water, they resembled flecks of industrial waste, something to mar the perfect microcosm of Earth’s deep oceans.
Among these fearful totems, worst of all is She; the one who rules all lands and all people. More arresting than any other is her stern and mighty figure, a mountain that cannot be moved. More terrifying than anything else is her wrath, her final word, the law administered by the omniscient, the punishment doled out by the omnipotent. Scarier than anything else, more dreadful by far, is Mother, the goddess who dominates over Hannah, the deity who knows no equal, the goddess of all gods.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
James Callan grew up in Minnesota and currently lives on the Kāpiti Coast, New Zealand. His wife and son are great apes of the human distinction, but the remainder of his family consists of varying lifeforms, including cats, a dog, pigs, cows, goats, and chickens. His writing has appeared in Bridge Eight, White Wall Review, Maudlin House, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. He is the author of A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). @jamescallanwriter on Facebook.