Flash Fiction – The Year King

Got a little stuck on Nox and Grimm, so I did a true flashfic peice to get the ol’ muse up and running again.  I’ll return to the serial very soon 🙂

———-

James woke up with his mouth hanging open and his cheek resting on a puddle of drool.  Again.  He really should have gotten up off the couch and gone to bed the night before, but he just couldn’t see the point.  He had been unemployed for over a year, and the money was running out.  Most of his furniture had been sold and replaced by pizza boxes, or ratty old pieces like the couch that he had found while out dumpster diving.  He had written the last rent check two months before, and it was only a matter of time before his landlord put him out and called in a hazmat team to clean up the mess.   Hell, he should probably stick around to watch that, maybe the hazmat guys would take pity and clean him up a bit too.  From the smell of his clothes, he needed it.

James flicked on the power for the Atari, another dumpster find that miraculously still worked. He jammed in a cartridge and was about to settle down for another thrilling day of blowing up asteroids when the phone rang. He didn’t jump up to answer it.  Long experience had taught him to screen his calls for trolling creditors.

His own voice mumbled drunkenly out of the machine.  “Make it good,” he had recorded, followed by a long burp instead of a beep.  A chipper female voice replied.  “Hello Mr. MacNair!  This is Stella from Celestial Temps, a full service staffing agency.  I found your resume online and I believe we have a job for which you are uniquely qualified.”

By the time she had gotten to the word ‘resume,’ James had jumped off the couch, gotten tangled in the joystick wires, tripped, banged his toes on the sofa leg and fallen just short of the phone.  He reached up and knocked the receiver off its cradle and dragged it to his ear.  “Hello? Hello? This is James! Damn, where’s that pen…”  He snagged a pizza box and a sharpie, scribbling madly all over the lid. “Uh huh, yes, sure!  Keeping the client confidential is fine. Yes, I’ll sign a form to that effect.  One hour?  Uh, okay.  Yeah, I can be there. Thank you!” he said, and hung up the phone.

A quick inspection in the bathroom mirror told him that he was long overdue for a date with a razor. He got showered and shaved in record time, and pulled out the one pristine object in his entire apartment – his interview suit.  Forty minutes later he was flagging down a cab and handing over the last of his cash to make the trip across town.

Celestial Temps operated out of a typical office park.  There was nothing to differentiate it from the hundreds of other buildings that grew up like mushrooms on every flat stretch of land for miles around the city.  The only thing of note was a large, white sedan with diplomatic plates parked out front.  James smiled to himself. Government work could mean big dollars, and he had learned to keep his lips shut during the legal debacle that had wrecked his former employer.  Stella was right, he was more than qualified to keep an execs’ dirty secrets.

The automatic doors swooshed open as he walked up to them, and a shimmering sound rang in his ears as he passed through.  Great, knowing his luck he was probably getting tinnitus.  He caught a glimpse of himself in the doors, and corrected the now habitual slouch.   A perky twenty-something in a snug white business jacket and skirt came out from behind a desk to greet him.  “Hello Mr. MacNair, I’m Stella. The client is already here.  Right this way please.”

Two security guards, who probably wore their Ray-Ban’s 24/7 stood outside a conference room door.  They frisked him and ran detectors over him before waving him inside.  The man waiting there was not what James had expected.  He looked like a strung-out junkie, thin with wispy hair and a nervous tick under one eye.  His suit was impeccable though, and almost blindingly white.   He waved to the chair across from him.  “Have a seat, James.  I’m glad you decided to accept the call.”  He said the last word as if it held a special significance.

James gave him a professionally polite smile.  “How could I resist so charming a girl as Stella?  I’m sorry though, I wasn’t given your name,” he said, and held out his hand.

The man’s nervous tick jumped a little faster.  “No, not yet. I have to be sure, you see?”  He added nervous drumming with his fingers on the tabletop as a counterpoint to the tick.  “What are your views on religion, James?”

James settled back in his chair.  “Is that important for the job?” he asked, a little surprised, what with all the anti-discrimination laws.

“Yes, it could be very important.  You will have to deal with members of many different beliefs if you accept the position.”

“I’m an agnostic,” James said.  “Not an atheist, just not willing to commit to anybody else’s ideas on God.”

The man smiled, and held out his hand.  “Perfect.  You’ll want to remember that, down the road, and stick to it. No matter how persuasive the others can be.”

—

Later, James looked down at his crisp white suit, and had to laugh.  If deities were just temps, it was no wonder everyone had a different idea about God.  Or Gods, for that matter.   Not to mention the mess they all made of the world.  The earth didn’t come with an instruction manual, and each year the new King of Kings had to figure out how things worked while simultaneously trying to make deals with his fellow supreme beings.  James still didn’t know what would happen when his year was up, but he was betting the retirement benefits were phenomenal.   He straightened his tie and grinned in anticipation.  It was time to get down to work.