Nemesis - 1. Chapter 1: Nemesis

Nemesis

“Who are you?” My voice was slurred from the booze I had drunk and fuzzy from the sleeping pills I’d taken.

“I am Nemesis,” the little boy answered.

“Uh huh, yeah.” I grunted. “Since when is the Goddess of Divine Retribution a 12-year-old boy?”

The boy looked funny at me. “I am not a goddess! I’m a boy. And, yes, I’m the spirit of divine retribution. One of them, at least. How would you know anything about—?”

“Look, I don’t mean to interrupt,” I interrupted. “But this is my dream, and if I’m dreaming about a cute, half-naked 12-year-old boy, I don’t need any retribution getting in the way of my erection.”

The little boy looked at me. His eyes were obsidian black and obsidian hard. “You’re disgusting! And you’re not dreaming. The booze and the pills suppress the dream state. You’re … awake … as awake as you can be after all the crap you stuffed into your body today. And, you were about to die … you were going to choke on your own vomit.” He looked … smug, I guess was the best word.

“Fuck you!” I said. “Speaking of which, since you’re a dream, how about taking off that … whatever it is you’re wearing?”

“It’s a chiton, you … you jerk,” the boy said. “And I’m not a dream, and I’m not going to disrobe to satisfy your carnal lust.”

Disrobe, he said. And carnal lust. What a little prick! “Then, go away, and let me sleep.” I rolled over, punched the pillow, and tried to think sleepy thoughts. The boy wouldn’t let me.

“I told you, I wasn’t a dream. I’m Nemesis, and you’re my replacement.”

There was a long pause while I collected my thoughts. And then, I sat up. This was either an extraordinarily real dream, or I was really … dead. I wasn’t sure. I thought I was in my room at the “by the hour or by the month” motel in a Chicago slum. I thought I felt the rough sheets on my skin. I thought I saw the digital display of the clock radio that got only one station. Hip-hop, of course. I thought I was awake.

Of course, I wasn’t awake. Of course, this was a dream.

“Mark Anthony? Right? He wrote about the guy who takes the place of Death. I read that years ago. Good story. Erotic, in places.”

That’s why I’d liked it. Think about it: Death as an avatar. Able to go anywhere and do anything. Arbiter of the souls of all the gay teens who’d killed themselves. I really wanted to do something like that. All my life, I’d dreamed about being able to reach out to a gay boy who was about to take his life, and offer to be his boyfriend, to be the one who loved him, to be the one who saved him from that horrible fate. I’d never had the courage to follow up, even if I’d had the ability. I was such a wimp … such a loser. The boy seemed to agree with me.

“Piers Anthony, you idiot, not Mark Anthony!” the boy’s eyes sparked. Yeah, sparked. Flashed with fire. This was definitely a dream.

The boy continued. “Anthony was close, and he figured out a lot. But Death is a different avatar. I’m Retribution, and you’re about to feel that.”

There was a definite chill in his voice. And then it got hot. Really hot.

You don’t want to know what I saw and what I felt. It was the stuff I drank to forget. It was the nightmares that were the reason I took sleeping pills. I knew they suppressed dreams.

I had done things that I’m still ashamed of. I saw them all. Every evil thing I had ever done came back to haunt me. I don’t mean a casual “flash before my eyes.” I took the place of those I had hurt. There were a lot of them, and it was in slow motion. Then, it started over. I lost track of the number of times I re-lived each event, each hurt, each pain. Eternity couldn’t have lasted that long. Dante Alighieri, himself, would have pitied me, I think. I hope. Before it was over, I’d traveled all the circles of hell. I’d seen the rank, raw underbelly of me.

When I woke up back in the motel, the mattress was soaked with sweat; my throat was parched. The kid handed me a plastic cup of lukewarm tap water. I thought of the Koran’s promise that the evil dead would be made to drink from a fountain of boiling water.

“I’m supposed to replace you?” I asked.

“Yes,” the boy replied. “Who better to be the instrument of retribution than one who has been the instrument of pain?”

“Someone who was the target of that pain?” I asked.

“No,” the little boy said. “The target is going to hold a grudge. Only the person who caused the pain, knowing the pain he caused, can mete out justice. And, justice is the goal.

“Yeah,” the 12-year-old boy giggled. “You’re retribution, but you’re justice where it counts. Oh, and just to make it more complicated? The Goddess of Justice is Die-Key. It’s spelled d-i-k-e, but pronounced Die-Key, like Nye-Key, the Winged Victory. She’s your boss. Don’t mispronounce her name and don’t piss her off!”

“You … you were like me?” I asked.

The boy nodded, and I saw pain flash across his face. I knew he could no more tell me what he had done than I can tell you what I had done.

The transition was instantaneous. One minute I was a 46-year-old guy in a sleazy motel room about to drown in his own vomit from too much booze plus a couple of sleeping pills. The next minute I was a 12-year-old boy with a great honking sword and immortality. I was still in a sleazy motel room, though.

The boy had explained about the immortality part. Although I was immortal, there was no way I could keep this job forever. At some point, I’d burn out, and have to turn it over to someone else. That’s what had just happened.

“Where will you go?” I asked the boy. He was already kind of misty, like he wasn’t all here.

“A good place,” he said. “You’ll understand, some day.” He vanished.

A shaft of sunlight popped through a hole in the curtains, the signal that it was morning. I looked at the mess: clothes strewn about, liquor bottles in the trashcan and on the nightstand, half-eaten fast food in Styrofoam boxes. At least there wasn’t a body. I’d rather vanish than be found that way. I didn’t want to leave the room the way it was, though. I took off my chiton (yeah, that and sandals came with the job—maybe a sense of responsibility, too) and started cleaning up.

Two hours later, I showered and put on the chiton and sandals, stuck the sword in its scabbard, and left the room. My first goal was to find Dike—Die-Key—and get her take on all this. The notion that the criminal could be the best judge made a weird sort of sense but I needed to talk to someone about it. I also wanted to know what the boy had meant when he said I was “one” of the Nemesises … Nemeses … whatever. Oh, yeah, and what the fuck was I supposed to do next?