The Hammer
by Joshua MosesThe hammer was heavier than it looked. It was really heavy. I mean, it was a fucking heavy hammer.
"How now, tough guy?" Thor asked. He was a dick, him and all his buddies, all the straightlaced uptights of Aesgard with their button-down helmets and their polished swords.
But look who had the advantage now. I raised the one Universal finger at him and let him behold unto it for a minute. Yeah, he was a god, but so was I, and in any case it was me that had the duct tape.
"I fucked your mom," I said. "Just like I fucked your wife. And it was on a Thursday, too." This was a little bit of strategic bullshit - of course, he had no mom. Well, he did. But his mom was the earth, and so if I had fucked her, metaphorically so had most of its residents, especially the Republicans. It seemed to work, anyway - he looked even more pissed off than usual. Every time he exhaled, his mustache blew around like two branches of a willow in a rainstorm. I smirked at him, at the hairs twisting in his nose, figuring that he probably had to scratch in a serious way. I wasn't going to help him out with it. I braced my foot against the wall and gave the hammer another heft. It came up maybe six inches, wobbling in my grip, but I dropped it and it tumbled. It hit the stone floor with a noise like thunder. Not like thunder, actually. It really was thunder. I dunno. Can something sound like itself?
"You're a pussy," Thor said.
"Maybe," I answered, "But I'm a pussy that's got you taped to the bed." I pounded my fist in my hand in a display of manhood. Those sons of bitches wouldn't know what hit them when Loki went to town down there.
"Let me the fuck up," Thor shouted. He strained against the tape. It wouldn' t work, of course. Not only was it the most expensive tape on the planet, but I'd taken the precaution of doing some funky mumbo-jumbo magic on it, stuff that made it real hard to cut off the roll but was gonna keep any second-tier god from bursting forth and caving in my immortal skull. I raised the Universal again and wrapped my fingers around the handle. I strained, but with no better success. Plus, I could feel my bowels pumping. Any more of this heavy lifting, and I'd have to pay a courtesy visit to the public washrooms at Aesgard. If only they hadn't taken away my staff key.
"Hey, man," I said, "I'm thinking."
"You ought to be thinking of how you're gonna avoid the biggest ass-whupping you ever saw."
"Yeah," I said. "How's the pillow? Need it fluffed?" I pulled it out from underneath his head and put it over his face. But as soon as I took my hand away, he thrust his head up and knocked the pillow to the ground.
"Seriously," I continued, "I'll let you up if you'll help me out."
"Fuck you," Thor said.
"Fine. You can fucking stay there until the End of Time."
We didn't say anything else for a minute. We just kind of stared at each other. Then Thor cleared his throat.
"Look," he said, "why don't you let me up, and then we'll talk?"
"No deal."
"Well, what do you want?"
"The Hammer," I said.
Thor shook his head. "I couldn't give it to you if I wanted to. You could never lift it. You can see that now."
"Yeah," I said, "But you can."
"And why would I?"
"Do you know what a futures contract is?"
I'd been doing some fairly serious investing the past two hundred years. You wouldn't believe the kind of shit those humans come up with. Maybe you'd ask why a god needs money, or why he doesn't just take it. Well, two reasons. First, it's fucking fun, and second, the pussy. Have you ever fucked a goddess? It's not all it's alleged. In fact, it sucks. Most of the goddesses are, like, trees and stuff anyways, and the ones that aren't are totally nuts. And when you spurn a goddess, bitch can track you down. Listen, Hannah whatever in Des Moines has a fine ass and there's no way she can find the unlisted phone number for Loki, Heaven. "What listing please? " " I'm looking for Aesgard. I think it's in Indiana."
Whatever. Trust me on this.
Of course, Thor hadn't heard of futures. Thor hadn't heard of a lot of things. He'd basically stopped caring about the humans back in the 13th century, when everybody went Jesus-mad. So I got out my monopoly money and went to work.
"It's a way of spreading risk," I said. I showed him how farmers sell their crops ahead of time, how greasy motherfuckers on the streets of Chicago in funny jackets pay for derived instruments and other shit that made his eyes go all weepy. One thing I can do is put together a presentation that'll make you cave. One minute, you're nodding along, the next you're ready to sign something, anything, just to get me to shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up already.
"Look," he interrupted, "What the fuck does this have to do with my Hammer?"
"You're an idiot," I answered. Then I decided I would try to be a little more tactful, in case I actually wanted this to happen. "I bought June wheat futures at 325," I said. "Ten million dollars, at four to one leverage, makes for forty million on the line. I figure, maybe we flatten some crops." I smiled. I love making my case. "We can push the price to 500, easy. That clears a 30% profit, 120% with leverage. Enough to eat dates and nectar until your stomach explodes."
Thor nodded as best he could. "Fine," he said. "Let me up." He'd surrendered quick. He was what I called an easy sell. I took my sword from its sheath and approached.
"You better not try anything," I said. "There's some serious money at stake."
"Don't worry," he replied. I watched his Nordic veins pump under his skin for a minute, trying to make a decision. Then I cut him loose. He pushed me out of the way and grabbed the Hammer. And then he crushed my skull with it. "Thor is avenged!" he shouted.
Motherfucker doesn't understand risk analysis at all.
I learned how to blow up my skull from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. I'm not shitting you. Time was, it took a couple hundred years of sulking in a cave to heal. But that Chuck Jones was a genius. He should have been one of us, up here. Just as well he wasn't. We only need one trickster in this joint. Though it would have been nice to have somebody else to talk to. You talk to most gods, and they're duller than popsicles. I mean, all referring to themselves in the third person and calling for consequences and getting riled up over such-and-such offense. They're morons. So, yeah, I like Bugs Bunny. Sue me.
I hit the down button and rocketed to Earth in the guise of a mortal. I usually pick iron jaws and deep tans, but I wasn't feeling picky. So I pulled together a little something I like to call "the facilitator": nice even brows, non-threatening grey eyes, a natty suit of the kind you pick up half-price from those guys who hand out leaflets on the sidewalk. I was looking for a deal. I like that sort of thing. I like taking a few bucks and making it into a lot of green American presidents. I know I should have been trying to bring about the end of the world, or whatever. It was on the agenda. But first I had some business I wanted to discuss.
I dropped in on a pal at Citigroup, a lunk named Lundgren. A thousand years ago he would have trembled at my name. But now we had to exchange business cards for the third time. Another piece of paper cluttering up my wallet.
"What do you want?" he asked me.
What I wanted was to turn my futures contracts into solid gold. But without the hammer, things had gotten complicated.
"What do you know about derivatives?" I asked.
It was a stupid question. The man knew plenty about derivatives. He'd been buying and selling financial instruments for twenty years. But he owed me a favor, and so he had to play along.
"Quite a bit," he answered. "What kind of underlier are we talking about?"
"Wheat futures," I said. "Forty million bucks worth."
He shook his head. "Not much you can do with those," he answered.
"I'm thinking we do a swap. June futures for gold."
He nodded his head. "I don't see much market for metals," he answered.
"You just do the work. Make it happen."
He made a few phone calls and some paperwork came rumpling through the fax machine.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked.
"Does Odin wear panties?"
He shrugged. I took out my quill, a gift from a peacock god, and imprinted my name on the paper. It glowed like dying coals.
It was time to go to work.
Gold was easy. Gold was something I understood. I should have thought of it a long time ago. What was I doing messing around with grain futures? All I needed was a little help from some pagans I knew.
I found them gyrating in Golden Gate Park. I'd shrugged off The Facilitator for the task, had pulled on a little number I liked to call The Hedonist. The easiest part was the clothes-just throw together whatever I happen to have handy. Which in this case was a toga. I'm not kidding, I looked like Hercules down there next to the skinny hippy kids. But they weren't just hippies. They were real Marin County types, the sort that set trends amongst the jet-setters on the West Coast.
"Howdy-do," I said, approaching one of them. He stopped slapping at the air long enough to embrace me.
"Brother," he said.
"Yo," I answered. I had this hip lingo down. They'd taken to goat worship of late. Why, I don't know. But they'd found themselves a goat someplace, and damn if they weren't worshipping it. I made a few perfunctory curtsies in his direction. He picked at the grass.
A hippy girl wandered toward me. I liked hippy girls. They reminded me of Berzerker women long past, especially when they didn't shave their legs or armpits, which this one didn't. Without the thirst for blood, of course.
Her hair was long, and she was actually wearing flowers in it, little spots of purple and red amidst the great blonde sea. "Hey," she said. "Where are you from?"
"Norway," I answered. It was easier. Plus American girls dig Norwegians. We made out for a little while, and then somebody handed me some mescaline. It doesn't do much for me - I'd need about a ton to have an effect - but I took it anyway, just to be polite. It wasn't long before everybody was on a psychotropic bender, and that's when I made my move.
"Brothers," I said, "and sisters." I cleared my throat. They looked gone, but I knew they were listening, not least because I addressed myself directly into their brains. "The time has come to build an idol." I even gave them specifications: forty feet high, draped in a golden cloak. Dude, it was going to be one awesome idol. Then I slipped in a little symbol of my own design, something to make my mark on it so the gods who art in heaven knew who was fucking them royally.
They had out the diagrams before I'd even had time to finish my cigarette. It was awesome. I couldn't have done it better if I'd come from the sky on a flying horse. They wanted their idol. They needed their idol. I took out a cell phone and called Lundgren back. "Give me a price," I said.
"Four-forty an ounce," he answered.
"Bet you a steak dinner it's six hundred by the end of next month."
I could almost taste the steak.
Tuesday next the whole world had gone mad for idolatry. Man, you couldn't get gold for less than five-fifty. And meanwhile wheat was slumping because everybody was spending their money on metals, not to mention Atkins. I was going to be a very rich God when the contracts came due. They'd built a hundred foot idol in Los Angeles, just to outdo San Francisco. And then of course the New Yorkers had built three idols, each two hundred feet high, just to eclipse Los Angeles. London had one, and so did Paris. They were even making one in Darfur. Where they got the gold, I had no idea. Well, I had some idea. It wasn't pretty, the sex slave trade, but people had idols to worship. Am I right?
On June 1st, a week before the lock-in date, gold was at an all-time high of six-hundred and twenty-four dollars an ounce. I couldn't suppress my cackle, which sounded pretty weird coming out of the body of The Hedonist. But I didn't care. I was the Man, and I wanted people to know it. For that matter, I was the God, and I wanted the folks upstairs to know that, too. Business had been taken care of in a most serious way. I went to sleep, drunk on nectar, in a hotel room in Monterey, and dreamed of hammering Thor's genitals into oblivion.
That's when Moses had to fuck everything up.If there's one thing I hate, it's a Hebrew prophet. Those bastards never make anything but trouble. You'd think they'd stay out of my business, and I'd stay out of theirs. But they're all into the "one true God" thing, which is demonstrably false, by the way, and they don't care whose toes they step on. He started his campaign on Fox News on the 2nd.
"These idols are an abomination," he said. "You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment the Lord should go up among you, He would consume you. So now put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what to do with you." Bill O'Reilly was jumping up and down in his seat so hard I thought his head would explode. And then the market collapsed.
Everybody wanted to unload gold. Everything I'd worked for the past six weeks, everything, went spiraling down the drain. Gold went from six hundred to three hundred an ounce. And then the people were all buying grain to feed their fellow man and to sacrifice unto God, and whatnot. The hippies in the park even slew their goat and laid it upon the Lord's doorstep, or some shit. I was ruined.
The funny part is, you can't sell anything unless you have a buyer. You know who was buying all that gold? His name starts with M, and ends with S. The bastard sold me out for a quick and tidy profit. So I went to see him.
"Moses," I said, "Buddy." I had to shake his hand. It was a clever scam.
"Do I know you?" he asked. I was in the guise of The Facilitator. But it wasn't fooling him.
"Loki," I answered, fishing through my pockets for the appropriate business card. "Trickster God."
He took the card and put it in his vestments. "What can I do for you?" he asked.
"I want my money back," I said. "My deal was square until you scuttled it."
He shook his head. "Finders keepers, losers weepers," he said. I sighed and took out the charts.
First I demonstrated how capitalism only works when there's a free flow of information. I had a bunch of diagrams on that. Then I explained away the Laffer Curve, just in case he was expecting his wealth to trickle down. Finally, as my pièce de triomphe, I showed him forty years of research that suggested gold was a sucker's investment, that only stocks could return a sizeable percentage year after year.
He wasn't buying it, though. He had other plans. "I shall make a plate of pure gold, and engrave on it 'Holy to the Lord,'" he said. I pointed out the size of the plate he was talking about was going to be a bit large to pin to a turban. But he demurred. "Merchandising," he chuckled. "With a little bit of work and some fashion sense, I can take six ounces of gold and sell it for a thousand dollars." I should have thought of it myself. Damn my feud with Tiffany's! Still, though, I wasn't ready to give up. I had one more trick before I was spent.
"Look over there!" I shouted, pointing behind him. He swung around, and I grabbed every ingot and bar I could see, then made a beeline for the door with my godlike speed, too quick for any human, no matter how prophetic, to track . Unfortunately Moses had some fairly careful security in place. Steel bars slid down, not enough to stop me, but enough to keep my treasure from leaving with me.
"Guard," Moses said, "Take him away." I was about to laugh-no human could contain me. But then I saw Thor step around the corner in a blue uniform, his hammer hanging from his Kenneth Cole knockoff belt. He grabbed me by the collar and threw me up against the wall.
"We meet again," he said.
"A flat two million," I offered. "No risk to you whatsoever."
But he splattered me with the fucking hammer again. They don't teach economics in Heaven.
©Joshua Moses
Joshua Moses sold his soul to finance in 2000 and has been trying desperately to buy it back. His work has appeared in Pindeldyboz, Facsimilation, and on the late and lamented Playboy.com Comedy Club. His pieces are linked at JoshuaMoses.com. Some of his favorites include "Notes to Underground" (here), "Win One for Mounty" (here), and "Resurrection" (here). His novel, The Monkey's Uncle, which is mostly about Communists and only a little bit about monkeys, is awaiting discovery. He can be reached at joshua at joshuamoses dot com.. His previous story at RE, Possession, was named a Notable Story of 2004 by Story South.