YOU’VE MISSED YOUR CUE! Teleprompter still running lines with no one to read them, a BLOCKBUSTER script crossed out, shredded; a grainy live stream feed playing back from an isolated screen and without a word, it goes blank. ATTEMPTING TO RECONNECT TO YOUR BROADCAST IN THREE, TWO, ONE – FAILURE TO CONNECT. Would you like to try again? The air felt dry. Stifling; dry tongue swiping across their teeth and the stage shifts, tilts around them, scanning through cathode rays and satellite signals in attempt to find SOUND; that grating, silvery voice scratch, scratch, scraaaaaatching at their ears and compulsively, they twitch, flinch; features contorting into something real, something human: FEAR. No static, no test patterns; something acrid, something old. Fear. YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE: WE CANCELLED THAT LONG AGO, AND THERE WILL NOT BE A RENEWAL. Tasted acrid, tasted like BURNING PLASTIC and their over-lined mouth twiiiiiiiists, nails digging into the arms of Wednesday’s chair as the leaned in. CAMERA PAN TO CENTRE STAGE: plasma screen eyes no longer blank, no longer recording; shining with some awful, forgotten thing that they dare not give air time to.
“Is that a threat?” Soft, quiet; they’re too close, nose to nose: just another old man, just another thing that bleeds. BLOOD AND GUTS AND ALL THE GOOD PG-13 SHIT. Attention, viewers: I may hold no temples, but when pilgrims come by the thousands to gaze upon masterworks, it is the closest thing to an altar I will ever know. A slow, deliberate swallow. “You would destroy what is left of the Gods you claim to serve and protect? Their images, gone; their reinventions, ash. ART IS IMMORTAL. Eternal.” Mine. Me. Me! Eyes wide, unseeing; a terrible tremble to their lower lip and they pull away, leaving nothing but the smell of Chanel No 5 and the aftermath of an electrical fire in their wake. UP NEXT: A MASS MEDIA ASSASSINATION SPECIAL, SPONSORED BY MISTER WORLD! “You are more of a fool than I thought, Mister Wednesday.”
❝ Oh, my dear, what an absolutely irrational assumption! I was simply rambling about an old man’s dream! ❞ Wednesday replied, sounding offended by Media’s question. If he was bothered by the close proximity, he hid it well. Both of his eyes were locked with their screen-like stare. They reflected Odin’s image, but there, somewhere, in the depths of the new god’s being, something else was being broadcasted. Mr. Wednesday could nearly hear it. A whole team fussing over film equipment, assistants running wild across the set, lights struggling to flicker back to life while in the background a director had an emotional breakdown ... The old man fluttered his lashes innocently. ❝ Though you must have thought about it, surely. ❞ He mentioned, casually. Mr. Wednesday was grey and small compared to them but there was still the distant rumble of thunder caught in his throat. Still the shade of a winter fjord in his one good eye. Still the soul of a WAR GOD, thirsty for battle and all the horror and awe that came with it. He lowered his voice, as if this was a secret between the two of them.
❝ If the earth turns to ice and the people suffer, you think all that hemp won’t burn? ❞ His nose wrinkled as he posed his question. They had the nerve to speak of the old gods to him. Wednesday felt a snarl tug at his lips. But he decided to be polite and swallow any urge to openly mock his captor. Those canvases might have held power in the days of old when people knew Odin’s and others’ names. When the painters holding the brushes TRUSTED DIVINITY and wished to help others SEE THAT WHICH THEY SAW ... Or that which their paying patrons told them to see. Media believed that to be their altar. Wednesday saw nothing but a funerary home meant for people to gawk at dead Italian drunkards who thought themselves better for copying ideas of older civilizations with an actual personality. ❝ Because that is what that art you speak of is, my dear. Nothing but hemp and poppy seed oil. ❞ He could feel it in the way those words rolled off his tongue ; Grimnir was pushing his luck. But he was unarmed and bound. The only way he could wound this god was through speech.
❝ You need a whole lot of effort to stop the people from praying to us. But you?” Wednesday smiled then. ❝ All it takes is one fool with a match. ❞
