Bentley Little - Dominion

A young girl wearing a visible diaper under her ripped pink dress pointed a handgun at Penelope and grinned as she pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty cylinder. The other kids burst out laughing.

Maybe they'd killed their parents.

Penelope turned away hurrying back the way she'd come. Fuck trying to call for help. Fuck trying to contact the outside world. She wasn't going to sit here like a dummy and wait to be rescued. She'd find a goddamn car, go back for Kevin, and the two of them would get the hell out of the valley and not look back until it was all over.

There were cars in many of the driveways she'd passed on the way over, and though she didn't think any of them had keys in the ignition, keys were probably in the houses.

It hadn't looked like any of the owners were home.

She looked behind her. She wasn't being followed. None of the kids were coming after her. She scanned the driveways in front of her, saw a van at the next house over, saw a Lexus two houses up from that. Glancing across the street, she saw a Toyota of some kind in the driveway directly across from her.

The door to the house was wide open.

She hesitated. If the door was open, something was wrong. Maybe the owners of the house were all dead in there. Maybe they were alive--and waiting.

Fuck it. Something was wrong at the house? Something was wrong all over the goddamn city. She started across the street. She'd rush in, grab the keys, rush out. If someone was inside, she'd run if she could, or, if not, she'd fight.

She pulled the screwdriver from her waistband, adjusted the scissors so she could grab them more easily should the screwdriver be knocked from her hand.

She slowed as she reached the driveway, peering into the open doorway before her, looking for any sign of movement within the dim interior of the house.

Her grip on the screwdriver tightened as she passed the front of the car.

She saw no movement inside the house, heard no sound, and she took a deep breath and forced herself to walk through the doorway.

The house was empty. There were no dead bodies, no attackers lying in wait. She walked from the entryway to the living room to the kitchen, where a ring of keys was lying atop the counter next to the stove. She grabbed the keys, hurried outside.

The first key she tried fit the car door.

She smiled to herself. This must be my lucky day, she thought.

Five minutes later, she drove into the school parking lot. Pulling into the principal's spot in front of the main building, she was about to honk on the horn when Kevin hurried out the front door. She looked around to make sure there was no one nearby, then pressed the button that automatically flipped open the Toyota's locks.

Kevin pulled open the passenger door, jumped in, and slammed the door shut behind him.

"Well?" he said.

She locked the car doors again, put the Toyota into gear.

"What's the plan?"

"We leave," she said. "We get the hell out of here."

April awoke on the grass, a rock pressing painfully against her left breast, her mouth tasting of blood. She hurt all over, and it took her fogged mind a moment to remember where she was.

Dion.

She sat up quickly. Too quickly. Agony flared behind her forehead, almost causing her to fall back down. She closed her eyes against the pain, waiting until it subsided to a dull throb, then slowly reopened her eyes.

She was still in the meadow, as were hundreds of other people, but Dion and the other maenads were gone. She remembered them leaving rather early in the proceedings, and vaguely recalled wanting to go with them, but she could not seem to recollect where they had gone or why she had stayed here.

Next to her on the ground was the half-eaten remains of a goat. She stared down at the animal's bloody chest cavity, at the snaking entrails, the deflated sac-like organs, and felt a warm tingling between her legs. She bent down, picked up a quivery piece of liver, bit into it.

Wine.

She needed to wash it down with wine.

Glancing around, April saw a partially filled bottle clutched tightly to the chest of a sleeping woman. She walked over to the woman, lay down next to her, kissed her on the lips, and gently removed the bottle from between her oversize breasts. She finished off the wine, then carefully replaced the bottle.

She sat up, stood up. The headache was almost entirely gone now, and she looked more carefully around the meadow. Her gaze alighted on the altar at the opposite end. Immediately, a sharp stab of guilt shot through her. She remembered the way her son had screamed as the other maenads had anointed him. She should've come to his rescue. How could she have allowed them to do that?

How could she not?

Her intellect and her instincts were at odds on this one. Well, maybe not her intellect. Her upbringing. No, not that either, really.

Her sexual desires and her maternal instinct.

That was more like it.

She wondered where Dion had gone.

Dionysus.

It was still hard for her to think of her son as her god. She smiled wryly. Had it been this hard for Mary?

Someone groaned nearby, then started yelling: "My leg! What happened to my leg!"

April turned toward the voice. An obviously hungover man was sitting up on the grass, staring at the bloody, half eaten remains of his right leg. She smiled at him, then walked over, pushed him down, and sat on his face. Immediately, his tongue snaked inside her.

She stared at the red remains of the leg as she squirmed on top of the man's head. For the first time in her life she felt totally free, totally unfettered.

Happy.

She just wished that it hadn't come at the expense of her son.

It was again as it should be.

Times had changed, the world had moved on, but he was here, the females were here, the wine was here, the celebrants were here.

Woman and grape.

These things were eternal.

Dionysus strode across the hillside, the dry grass rustling pleasantly beneath his bare feet. His "maenads were singing to him. He could hear them even from this far away, their song a paean to his lust, his power, his generosity, his greatness. They had welcomed him back last night, hosting a celebration that had not stopped until dawn.

It was again as it should be.

But he was not the same as he had been. He had another past now, another history, another life, and it was his as well ... only it wasn't. He shook his head. It was all so confusing, and he didn't really want to think about it. He wanted to drink again and celebrate Ms. return, wanted to kill some men and rape some women.

But the exhilaration and anticipation he should have felt in contemplating the sating of his desires seemed to be tempered. He felt uncomfortable, ill at ease, not himself, as if his new physical limitations were affecting his thoughts. He was joined with this other, trapped inside this too small form, mired in this overly literal body like an animal trapped in tar. He had never had the freedom of Apollo or Artemis or Hestia, had never been as ephemeral as the others, had always been tied to the flesh, and he had liked that. It was what had set him apart from the others, his ability to enjoy earthly pleasures, and he would not have given it up for anything.

This, however, was different.

He was not himself.

He was himself and this other.

He stopped walking, inhaled deeply. The scent of grape was on the breeze. It permeated the air, the redolent fragrance providing a promise of intoxication, and it made him feel calmer, more relaxed. He strode to the edge of the hill, looking down and surveying his dominion. He could see the burnings at either end of the valley, the crashed cars on the roads, the bands of revelers prowling the city in search of more fun.