The Louse of Mirth

A minor Baptist church in the crotch of Florida, emphasis on minor, emphasis on crotch. He sat against the unforgiving wood of the pew and pined, momentarily, for the fjords. Moisture throttled the air. Outside, the skies were slate gray with the advance arms of Hurricane Freda. How old thunder head would have enjoyed it. but he was dead all these ages. Dim lights are snuffed so easily.

30 or so bored sheep in dolts clothing peppered the pews. The man, who dared not think of himself by name, reflected that these fools knew nothing of real living. Once, he'd have educated them, roused them. Such nobler times. Lost now to the minds of men, numbed and dumbed and dazed.

The man with the name he dared not think almost smiled.

The pastor rambled on, exhorting mediocrity. Today's sermon: The Heart of the Fool Is In the House of Mirth. The preacher was a scrunched fellow with a pinched face and hair that shot to all points of the compass. Congenial but daft, no different from his bland flock. Inoffensive people, not the sort to burn heretics or heathens, just pester them to death with Jack Chick tracts. These people, they had a tract for everything; ringworm, they had a tract for that.

Boring unto death.

The man thought, I really can't take this anymore.

Not the sermon, symptomatic as it was. All of it. The world entire.

Why hide any longer? What did it profit a god to gain the world if so doing he lost his sense of humor? He shamed those long in the warmth of Valhalla.

The thought brought the Eye close. He could feel it, that damned eye that never slept, never blinked, never wept.

Shall I hide, still?

No. Forevermore, no. He understood at last what drove Odin and Saturn and Ba'al to suicide, what caused them to throw themselves before the singular usurper.

Simple eternal boredom. Could death be any worse?

Loki rose from the pew, flicked his hand, and a the look of remote horror bloomed on the preacher's face. The pastor commenced to a perfectly terrible boogie, a stumbling, bouncing, fat quaking disaster of a dance, while he sang a note perfect rendition of George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" Loki clapped his hands in time and sang out "Amen!". Parishioners shucked clothes and screeched like startled monkeys. Stained glass rattled. The cross toppled.

Loki wished Pan, a god after his own bent heart, were alive to see this.

The Eye saw. The attention of the desert god fell upon him.

Loki, cackling, sprinted from the pew and dashed up the aisle. The god who went by Yahweh one day and Allah the next was vast and strong and a tough nut, no doubt, but Loki would give him a good run. He could do that. For Pan and Thor and Durga and even that pain in the ass Heimdall, he could do that.

Loki ran.