The night before the gods left, Dionysus threw the greatest party the divine world had ever known. Sparing no expense, the god of wine, ecstasy, ritual madness and theatrical pursuits tapped into the then-unlimited well of magic and burned tens of thousands of years, ensuring that every drink, light, cushion, chair, party-streamer and cocktail-wiener was perfect. No detail was too small for his attention. And why not? After all, the world everyone knew was ending.
"Let us party like there is no tomorrow ... for there truly is no tomorrow!" he cried out, raising a glass of ambrosia poured from a bottle he saved for a very special occasion. And what could be a more special than all the gods leaving? He drank heavily from its rim. He smacked his lips as he examined the iridescent, green bottle with great pride. It was delicious. No—delicious was too meager a word to describe the fluid that passed through his lips. It was exquisite, enchanting, divine. And far stronger than anything he had ever distilled before. As it should be—this ambrosia was corked at the dawn of time.
Looking down at his party, he watched as his brothers and sisters danced, sang, made love—each of them enjoying their last moments on Olympus. Truly, this is my greatest achievement to date, he mused. And what an achievement it was ... he was, after all, responsible for some of the classics—Pompeii's Inauguration, the Sinking of Atlantis, Y2K ... and who could forget Sodom and Gomorrah?
Dionysus did not know what tomorrow held. All he did know was that after tomorrow, he would no longer live on Mount Olympus. He would live with the gods somewhere new.
"For a tomorrow that never will be," he cried out drinking deeply again—this time straight from the bottle.
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But tomorrow did come. At least it did for Dionysus. Waking up in the stirred remnants of his perfect party—a party in which he passed out far too early—he looked around and saw that everyone was gone. The gods had left. And what was worse, they had left him behind. At least his bottle of special ambrosia was only half drunk.
Then it started: "Thank you for believing in us, but it is not enough. We're leaving. Good Luck." Damn Hermes—always so economical with his words. An event like this deserved flair, pizzazz. Joy. Something like—
Dionysus did not have time to mull over the message he would have delivered—not with all the shaking. Olympus trembled. Or was it his head? Dionysus was not sure.
Staggering to his feet, he tried to remember where they went and if there was a chance for him to catch up. He tried to burn time and connect with them, but there was no connection, no way to reach them. They had already left.
"Damn it!" he cursed aloud. If only Dionysus had listened to Zeus when he explained where they were going, he could have followed. But instead, Dionysus was drunk and let's be honest ... when that old static fart started talking, he could just go on and on and on. Blah, blah, blah—GrandExodus this, new beginning, that. Who could sit through that drivel? Certainly not Dionysus and that was why he'd planned to latch onto Athena and follow that diligent little godly pet into the 'Place Beyond'.
But you have to be awake to latch on, and his sister was probably so busy preparing how she was going to kiss the Lightning Bearer's ass in a new setting that she forgot all about him. Or he forgot to tell her...
He honestly couldn't remember.
The halls of Olympus started to crumble.
They'll be back, he thought.
The pillars that once held up the Great Hall cracked.
I'm the life of the party.
The darkness from beyond was approaching, consuming Olympus in a tidal wave of nothingness.
They wouldn't ... leave me behind?
A platoon of talos centurions entered the Great Hall, confusion on their bronze metal faces. "My lord," the lead guard said, "What is going on?"
"Don't you know?" Dionysus said, "Olympus is over. Now is the time of the mortals!" As the words left his lips, he knew that was the message Hermes should have delivered. Now is the time of the mortals. That was exactly what was happening.
"What do we do, Lord?" the guard asked, his copper-colored face showing signs of greenish rust—a sure sign of fear for the metal soldiers.
"What any good mortal does," Dionysus said, waving his hands and opening a portal between Olympus and Earth. "We run!"
Dionysus is not a leader. Never was, never will be. He jumped through first, followed by thirty very scared talos centurions who fell to Earth like pennies from the sky.
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For the first three years of mortality, the talos centurions followed Dionysus around like lost puppies. They defended him during the Great War between the AlwaysMortals and the newly-made ones. Some even died, defending their once-upon-a-time god, believing Dionysus had stayed behind because he was loyal to them. After all, he was the youngest of the gods and the only one with a mortal mother. Perhaps he embraced the part of him that was always meant to die. None of them knew the truth, and Heaven forbid that Dionysus would ever correct them.
When the war settled down to distrust and malice, the centurions hid him. They knew that AlwaysMortals and Others alike would like nothing more than to capture the only god amongst their midst. They would pester him for answers he did not have and when he refused to answer because he could not, they would use torture. Or worse—force him to sober up. And to what purpose? To find out why the gods left and where they went. Dionysus may have been a god, but he had absolutely no idea where they went. As for the other question—who knows why the gods do what they do?
Dionysus and his whittled-down platoon moved from hiding place to hiding place, until eventually they settled on a dire little slum called Paradise Lot. It was the only place on this godless green earth that seemed to accept them and their kind. They found accommodation and did their best with the little they had.
The talos centurions stuck around for a while, but Dionysus was no leader and one by one they abandoned him, seeking to make a go at what the AlwaysMortals called life. Still, they were a loyal bunch—each giving him a monthly tithe from something they referred to as their salary. They even brought him a little all-seeing window called iPad so that he could order food and what passed as wine in this dimension without having to leave his apartment.
Occasionally Dionysus would put on his coat, fedora and sunglasses, and wander the streets of Paradise Lot incognito. But that did little to alleviate his boredom.
Alone and imprisoned by his once-god status, Dionysus was not only devastated by his new mortal existence, wrecked by his brothers and sisters abandoning him and traumatized by the drivel AlwaysMortals drank—he was also bored beyond belief.
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That was then and this is now ...
Dionysus sips his wine as he wanders the streets of Paradise Lot, hiding his face from the world around him. He is not an unusual sight here. Alone, drunk and wearing far too much clothing seems to be the typical uniform to these lost Others.
As he walks, he occasionally catches the eye of another Other and sees what he always sees—no joy, no happiness. No hope.
He pulls hard on his bottle. Cider, they call it. More like fermented piss. Bahhh—he misses his wine cellars, his liquor cabinets, his fields of grapes and barley, wheat and a thousand other fruits that he would distill, ferment and brew to make his drink. But on this realm ...
He pushes the thought out of his mind. It is too depressing and Dionysus doesn't do depressing.
Instead his mind wanders to the lost creatures of Paradise Lot. They are so unhappy, living a life without delight, without ecstasy, without revelry. Each of them crying out in silent, tearless misery ... But why?
Why has their existence become so damn miserable?
Is it because they miss their gods? That might have been the case before, but now that the world knows the gods abandoned them, missing them was long ago replaced by anger. No, it was something else.
They, like he, mourn the loss of their once carefree life. They, like he, age under the strain of incessant worry over silly little things like money and food and shelter. And drink.
They worry about survival.
They worry about tomorrow.
Well, what if tomorrow will never be? Would that bring them joy?