IT WAS WORSE than she could have possibly imagined. Glaring at Apollo, Hera held up the sniveling human by the scruff of his neck and shook him like a dead rabbit. ‘I leave you in charge for five minutes,’ she said, ‘and this is what you come up with?’ With an accusatory sweep of her arm, she showered the whole sorry mess in front of her with a booster shot of oil of amnesia. Kurt continued to hyperventilate. ‘Oh do shut him up,’ she said to Apollo. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the same power to freeze people as the sun god and she didn’t want to hurt the human unless it was strictly necessary.
It was then that she noticed that Apollo wasn’t reacting with quite the level of contrition that the situation, in her opinion, demanded. Come to think of it, neither was Hermes. In fact, they were both staring at her with blank yet desperate expressions, not frozen exactly but clearly unable to move. ‘You must be Hera,’ said a diminutive immortal she had never seen before.
‘I am,’ she said, puffing out her breastplate. ‘And who might you be?’
Jesus smiled. ‘I’m the person who sent for you.’
‘No one sent for me,’ said Hera imperiously. ‘I came on a whim.’
Jesus shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘Then I sent you a whim.’
Hera’s eyes narrowed as she assessed the bearded creature. ‘I could crush you,’ she said speculatively.
‘I don’t doubt that,’ said Jesus. ‘But that would be of no benefit to your world, or to mine.’
Hera’s breastplate heaved indignantly. ‘What do you know of my world?’ she said.
‘Put him down,’ said Jesus, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
Hera stared distastefully at the dangling human. By some miracle he hadn’t wet himself, but it was surely in the post. ‘Fine,’ said Hera, tossing Kurt onto the stage. ‘But he can’t remember any of this.’
‘Of course not,’ said Jesus, making his way to the whimpering mortal. Squatting down next to Kurt, he extended his palm and placed it gently on his shoulder. ‘Your name is Kurt, isn’t it?’ Kurt nodded dumbly. ‘In a little while,’ Jesus went on, ‘all these people are going to wake up. They won’t remember anything that has happened. You will say that there has been an electrical fault, and tell them to go home.’ Kurt nodded again. ‘And then you will go home too, and go to bed. And when you wake up tomorrow morning, you will simply remember that filming finished early due to technical problems. Do you understand?’
‘I understand,’ said Kurt, feeling strangely calm. Clearly, he had unwittingly stumbled upon some divine power play, but that was all fine, just fine. ‘What about him?’ he said, pointing to the crumpled production manager in the corner.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Jesus soothingly. ‘He’ll be OK.’
Kurt stared doubtfully at the awkwardly splayed limbs. ‘He doesn’t look OK.’
Jesus sighed. Standing up, he walked quickly over to the production manager and placed a hand on the back of his neck. Immediately, the twisted body seemed to straighten and contract, until it was curled into a comfortable fetal position, as peaceful as a kitten.
Hera watched the entire display with a supercilious glower. Still, she wasn’t the type of goddess to withhold credit where credit was due. ‘Impressive,’ she said haughtily.
‘Not really,’ said Jesus. He was getting tired of this; tired of immortality; tired of setting broken bones; tired, even, of Hollywood. ‘You should go home,’ he said, nodding at Hermes and Apollo. ‘All of you.’
Hera exhaled angrily. Her chin tilted to its most regal angle and her hand swept across her body, where it grasped hold of her immortal sword. ‘Who are you,’ she said, pulling the sword from its sheath and holding it aloft, ‘to tell me what to do?’
‘I’m no one,’ said Jesus. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not right.’
‘Oh really?’ said Hera with a sneer. ‘And what is it, exactly, that you’re right about?’
Jesus tapped his Birkenstock softly on the stage. Sometimes it was difficult to know where the boundary between advice and interference lay. Particularly when that boundary was continually shifting. He looked up at the goddess, so beautiful and frightening in her Olympian splendor. Splendor that might soon mean very little, without a world to indulge it. ‘You can’t force a prophecy, any more than you can prevent it,’ he said.
At the mention of the prophecy, Hera’s entire demeanor changed. Her shoulders slumped, her chin wavered and the sword began to shake. ‘Who told you about the prophecy?’ she whispered.
Jesus shrugged. ‘Go home,’ he said again, and with a click of his fingers he released Apollo and Hermes from their suspended animation. As the gods coughed and spluttered, Jesus gave Hermes a little wave before heading unhurriedly across the stage. He was already thinking about his cats as he moved through the empty backstage area and over to the exit. No doubt they would be meowing impatiently, with little concern for the inter-dimensional shenanigans currently delaying their supper. The more time he spent away from his cats, Jesus mused, the more unsettled the world became. Perhaps there was some precise inverse relationship between feline companionship and operational capacity. If so, there was surely an optimum number of hours to which he should devote himself to petting, conversation, and playing with string. Falling below that optimum number would not only be selfish, it would be foolhardy. With a little time and a spreadsheet, he was sure he could put a figure on it.
Opening the door to the cool California air, he took a moment to breathe in the peace of an unbounded evening. He was just starting to contemplate the fastest way to hitchhike home, when the moment was abruptly curtailed by the appearance of another immortal being, who didn’t yet know what she was.
‘Jay?’ said Violet tentatively. ‘Is that you?’
And just like that, Jesus felt the rug of feline comfort cruelly whisked out from under him. He tried not to sigh. ‘Violet,’ he said softly, taking her by the elbow for the second time in as many weeks. ‘I think you’d better come with me.’