Nothingness stretches as far as the eye can see, the land as barren as the empty blue sky above it. Far off in the distance a cloud of dust appears, accompanied by a loud roar. A motorcycle with two riders becomes visible, racing across the desolate landscape at a neck-breaking speed. The riders, one male and one female, could not look more different; One looks prepared for war, the other looks as if they just stepped off a fashion runway. The man glances behind him at the woman.
“You know, my dear, we really need to find less…uninhabited locales…for our future dates. We are gods, for Hades’ sake!” The ground rumbles at his words. “Oh hush, uncle! It’s the truth, isn’t? Why do I, Ares, the god of war, need to hide? I never run from a fight! I take pride in that. Always face your fights, that’s what I tell myself. Don’t be late for a fight either, and don’t make stupid mistakes during one. On time, every time, error free, no exception. (©) That’s my motto.
Just because I don’t always win doesn’t mean I’m not powerful!” As he speaks, Ares stops the bike and dismounts. “I’m ruthless!” His biker gear slowly begins to transform into armor. “I show NO MERCY!” He grows to more than 50 times his size, pounding his fists together as he rises higher and higher above the ground. “Any puny little half-blood wanna challenge me now, huh?” He brandishes his electric spear, ‘Maimer’. “THAT’S RIGHT YOU PUNY DEMIGODS, RUN AWAY IN FEAR! HA! I’M COMING FOR YOU ALL! ZEUS CAN’T SAVE YOU NOW!!!”
The sky flashes menacingly, and Ares looks scared. It lasts less than a moment, however.
“I want my revenge, Father, and I will have it! Mark my words!”
The woman looks up at Ares with exasperation. This feeling is accompanied with ‘major eye-rolling’, as she calls it. She leans against the bike, filing her already perfectly-manicured nails. Her hair is in perfect curls, and a delicate tiara rests atop the crown of her soft brown hair. Her makeup is light but done to perfection, and her white robes show no wrinkles and lay perfectly on her body, showing off her graceful figure. She shines through her divine beauty.
“Seriously, Ares? Why do you bother wasting time with such vicious thoughts of revenge? I can think of a million different ways my time can be spent doing much better things. Like shopping, styling my hair, painting my nails, putting on makeup, matching up two perfect people…”
Ares puts up his hand to stop her, having shrunk back down to the average human size.
“Enough, Aphrodite. Its bad enough I have to deal with your husband, can you please not bring your preferred activities into this as well? It’s enough to make me want to use my spear on myself.”
She rolls her eyes again and tucks a loose curl behind her ear.
“Geez, stop over-dramatizing things Ares. That’s Apollo’s job. Besides, it’s not like I can force my husband to leave us alone. And all those little traps he leaves for us whenever we’re on a date? Now THAT’S enough to make me scream. I swear, my face is still red from the last time. I can only shudder at the thought of what he has planned for the future. His precious ‘designs’ are more of a nuisance than Dionysus’ pranks, and I still can’t get the last of the grape juice out of my favorite robes!
And have you ever had to go to his workshop? First of all, good luck finding the place. It’s in the middle of the Labyrinth, I can never find my way around down there. But then if you do manage to somehow find it…oh boy. I don’t even want to talk about it. Let’s just say it’s my least favorite place to be. Even more so than with Hades.” The ground rumbles again. “Oh enough already nephew! My husband is an ugly brute, and his workshop is the last place I want to spend eternity!”
Ares and Aphrodite move to get back on the bike. Once both are sitting, they find that they can’t move. A hologram of a disfigured man appears on the dashboard, smirking in satisfaction. “Maybe you’ll learn a lesson this time, you two. Happy journeys!” The hologram man snaps his fingers and ropes bind Ares and Aphrodite to each other and to the bike. The motorcycle roars to life and begins to tear down a previously nonexistent road. In the distance can be seen an abandoned amusement park, giant mechanical clown heads laughing maniacally at Ares and Aphrodite’s current predicament and future misadventure. Aphrodite screams, her tiara flying off her head and landing on the side of the forsaken road. Ares stares into the dancing eyes of the mechanic.
“I will get you for thi–gah!”
A rope binds itself across Ares’ mouth as Hephaestus laughs along with the clowns. Then his hologram disappears into nothingness, the tiara mysteriously dissolving with it.
(©) That sentence was said daily by one of my favorite teachers in high school and has stuck with me. I doubt he ever pictured me using it in this way, but it works and I hope he doesn’t mind!
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I thought that like your other posts, this was very well written! I agree with Michael, you demonstrated good chemistry with the God and Goddess. I also really like how you used the quote from your prior teacher. It added a good personal touch! Great job!
I’m confused. After Ares grew to 50 times his size, Aphrodite began calling him Hades. Just reread the last paragraph to see how you switch between the two. Anyway, ignoring that, the story’s entertaining. Now, I’m going to try to give constructive, useful comments.
Let’s delve into sentence structure:
“The man glances behind him at the woman.”–This sentence is a bit strange. I assume he glanced behind him because Aphrodite began speaking to him. However, from the way it’s written it almost seems as if he glanced behind him and then she spoke. You could move the sentence to right after she says “future dates,” but moving location is not necessary per se. If you simply omitted the “at the woman,” the sentence would be shorter (yet still understandable) and thus flow more naturally into her dialogue.
I think I can read into this and claim that you dislike breaking dialogue in general. In other words, you don’t like to intermingle explanatory/descriptive sentences with your characters’ sentences (the length of many of the dialogues is also, I think, a testament to this). However, I encourage you to experiment writing the other way. If you do, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of your own stylistic tropes, which will eventually make you a better writer.
Haha, I know I only analysed one sentence and extrapolated from there, but I don’t have the time to fully commit myself to this analysis. Anyway, good luck and I look forward to next week.
This was much better than your previous attempts to combine two gods in one post. You talked about their mythological relationship and showed that they had some chemistry. You also still managed to show the clash of their personalities. I have mentioned this before, but the linking together of the various narratives has been getting better, as most posts lead in some way to the next, and you very much like to link back to past characters that you have explored, like references to Hades, Dionysus, Zeus, and to the next post on Hephaestus.