Damaged Gods

Pie looks confused as she stares down at it. “What do we do? Smoke? Then what?”

The hookah is massive. Almost as tall as Pie. It’s made of glass and ceramic painted in traditional designs. There are three hoses spaced equidistant around the central bowl, one mouthtip for each of us.

“Fuck, yeah.” Tomas is smiling big as he plops down on one of the three massive velvet pillows positioned in front of each hose. “I’m gonna smoke the fuck out of this thing. Give it a light, Pie.”

Pie looks at him like he’s already high. “Light it with what?”

“I dunno.” Tomas is already inspecting his hose. “Look around.”

Pie begins searching for matches, but I walk over to the window and throw the curtains aside. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Why? Where are we?” Tomas is only half interested.

“Looks like Morocco.”

Tomas chuckles. “I love hallway Morocco.”

“Have you ever been here?” I ask Tomas.

“Nope.”

Pie has found a box of wooden matches. She lights one and stands over the hookah bowl, touching it to whatever’s inside it.

Tomas is already pulling in smoke.

I’m appalled. “You don’t even know what that is in there. It could be anything.”

Tomas coughs as he blows out smoke. “Who cares what it is?” Then he takes another pull on the hose.

Pie is still standing in the middle of the room. But she’s not looking at me, or Tomas, or even the hookah. She’s looking at the floor.

I look down too. There’s a pretty intricate design made out of inlaid wood.

“What does it mean?” Pie asks.

It’s a circle. And it’s partitioned off into twelve parts. Like a zodiac wheel. But there are no zodiac signs inside. Instead, there are letters in an unfamiliar language. I don’t answer her because I don’t know. But the pictures are easy to read.

“Look.” Pie points to the section Tomas is sitting in. “He’s on that pillow, and in that section there’s a dragon.” She considers this. “House. It’s a house. Like the zodiac. So that’s the House of Dragons.”

Tomas and I both look up at her at the same time. “What?”

“Dragons.” She bends down and traces her finger along the line of markings. “This says ‘House of Dragons.’” Her eyes dart to the next pillow, which is three sections to Tomas’s right. “And that one is the House of Bucks.” I walk around the hookah and bend down next to Pie. “This is where you sit, Pell.”

“How do you figure?”

She shrugs. “You’re Bucks and this is your seat.” She scoots over, making me step aside, and then stops at the third pillow. “Because this one says ‘House of Moths.’ And that’s definitely me.” She makes a face when she looks up at me. “Moths are gross. Why do I have to be a moth?”

“Beautiful wood nymph.” Tomas is still choking on his smoke. The entire room now smells like a mossy wood. Kinda like the place we just left. Damp, and earthy, and humid.

“What?” She’s annoyed with him.

“That’s you.” He points at her. “The beautiful wood nymph is a kind of moth. They’re pretty.”

This makes her even more annoyed with him. “I know that. They were coming out of my hand in that last room.”

“Pie, we didn’t grow up together,” I say. “I don’t know what you saw in that dream or whatever it was, but that’s all it was. A dream.”

She crawls on top of her pillow and grabs her hose, then draws in smoke without answering me.

Whatever.

I sit down on my pillow and take my hose too. I’m not much of a smoker. I drink a little if there’s a reason—like this day in the hallways—but after two thousand years, partying mostly bores me. So I’m not expecting much when I inhale.

But holy shit. I am so wrong. The smoke I inhale is sweet. Not earthy, like the stuff that comes out after. And when I blow it out, my head swims. But not in a dizzying way. It’s more like… clouds. Like wandering through a mist. But not a dark foreboding mist, like the one outside the sanctuary if you try to leave without permission. More like a rainbow.

Tomas is laughing at Pie as she chokes on her smoke and I’m already taking another hit.

I’m not a hundred percent sure what happens next, but all I hear is laughter. Time has passed. I know this because the room is darker now. There are torches on the wall. Lit torches. But none of us did the lighting.

“Oh, my God,” Pie says, getting up from her pillow and crossing the room. Have we been sitting here all day? I can’t remember. “Oh, my God,” Pie says again. She’s peering over her shoulder at us. “Look! It’s a truth or dare machine!” She bends over to pick it up.

Tomas falls over sideways, laughing.

“A what?” There’s smoke in my mouth and it comes out with my words. Then I’m laughing too.