It was another dry year—so dry that even the palms, usually comfortable rooted in sand and watered only by saline breezes, were the color and consistency of peanut brittle. Their brown fronds snapped off and crumbled onto the boardwalk, dry as a Mormon party. They were egalitarian palms, slicing through the bronzed, muscular thighs of rollerbladers, as well as the pasty white arms of Iowa tourists, without regard for age or origin. Sometimes they even drew blood. Drops redder than pomegranate seeds seeped from biceps and tendons onto and into the white, white sand.
Everyone knows, blood is thicker than water. Unfortunately, everyone is wrong. The original phrase: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” actually means the exact opposite. What it really means, is that oaths, especially blood oaths, make closer ties than those woven by DNA. Families after all are but accidents of birth. Covenants are sacred.
Undiluted by even a drizzle of water, womblike or otherwise, the blood of rollerbladers, bikers, and sightseers seeped into the sands like a promise, causing a red, or at least a slightly pinkish, tide.
What people call red tides are not red. Many are colorless. Nor are they related to the movements of the tides. They are actually the algal blooms of Karenia brevis, a microscopic, single-celled, photosynthetic organism. Once again, the humans had it wrong. It was just this kind of fuzzy thinking that irritated Tohil.
“Let them see what a real red tide looks like,” he said to Chaac and Tlaloc.
Tohil, Chaac, and Tlaloc were ancient but didn’t look it. Their brown, bronze, toned bodies were flawless. Their hair was blacker than obsidian and much softer. Their teeth were incredibly white and even, for a trio who had never been to a dentist, or even owned a toothbrush. They were three thirsty Mesoamerican Rain Gods drawn to Venice Beach by the scent of blood and the need for sacrifice.
When they arrived, they’d discovered only traces of the plasma that had seeped into the sand, tinting the white grains pink. They’d desired raw, red gore and found only girly, rosy specks. They were not pleased. Nevertheless, they decided to stay. Now that they were no longer worshipped, they had nothing but time on their hands. Time to frolic in the surf. Time to drink mescal. Time to pick up some beach babes and time to catch some rays. Rain Gods, even desert Rain Gods, don’t get a lot of sun.
They conjured skateboards with billowing sails and began cruising down the boardwalk. Tohil wore a vermillion speedo. His board was vivid blue sail with a grinning, yellow jaguar. Chaac and Tlaloc wore brilliant fuchsia and hot-pink speedos respectively. Chaac’s blood red sail was sported a snake with cobalt scales, golden fangs and a long, pendulous nose. Tlaloc’s rainbow-plumed serpent was equally dazzling.
They were second cousins. Chaac was, or had been, a rain god of the Mayans, while Tlaloc had thundered, lightning-ed, and wept over the Aztecs.
Tohil was Mayan too. Tohil had principally been a fire deity but he’d also moonlighted as a sun and rain god. When you live in a desert, you need a lot of rain gods.
Despite the sun and surf, Tohil was not happy. He’d been looking forward to a red tide that would really be red. He was used to blood sacrifice and missed it.
Once you have been a star, it’s hard to settle down on a planet, even if that planet has a beach, and being a god is even headier than being a star. It’s more like being an entire solar system.
Tohil was used to having the hearts of young men and women delivered, still beating, to his stone feet. The priest was given the hands and feet of the victims to be worn to as accessories. They went with almost everything.
Chaac’s victims were hurled into the Sacred Cenotes and left to drown before having the blood from their genitals smeared onto his image. They had to die slowly, otherwise Chaac would not provide rain.
Tlaloc’s dead were children. After being bathed in rose petals they were marched to His altar where each tiny heart was ripped from each small, heaving chest and placed at Tlaloc’s foam sandaled feet. If the children cried, Tlaloc would bring rain.
After that kind of entertainment, even hot babes, cheap pizza, and the rollerblading Jimi Hendrix look-alike, were let downs.
“Do you realize,” said Tohil, flawless executing a 360, while riding backwards and twirling his sail above his head, “that this is the closest we’ve gotten to a blood sacrifice in over a century?”
“You’re forgetting that crazy dude in Cabo,” Chaac said.
“Oh yeah, him.” Tohil moodily chewed the inside of his full lower lip.
“I don’t know if he really counts,” Tlaloc said. “He was just insane.”
“Blood is blood,” Chaac insisted.
“But he only sacrificed his mother-in-law,” Tlaloc said.
In his heyday, he had gotten a minimum of twelve children, and that was in a bad year. Besides, he missed the ceremony.
Somewhere across the sands a drumbeat sounded. It called to them with the primal thumping of a beating heart.
Tohil kickflipped his board into air, making his sail vanish. The other two did the same. They raced down the beach, squealing as their feet touched the scalding sand, irresistibly drawn toward the insistent pulse of the drums.
Gathered on the beach in an approximation of a circle that would have made a mathematician weep, half a dozen men and three women stood thumping on congas and bongos. Despite the heat, they were dressed in dark baggy sweats and hoodies. In the center of the sort-of circle, a woman jiggled in a half trance. Her sweaty bare stomach wobbled to the beat of a different drummer, one who was not present. Her head, shoulders, and legs moved independently, as though they were strangers who had just met.
Tlaloc eyed her disapprovingly. “They used to bathe the children in flower petals before sacrifice,” he said. “This one smells like the back alley of a charnel house.” He was familiar with the scent. After the offering of hearts, the children’s flayed skins had been worn by priests for twenty days before being left in his cave.
“Well, there is a drought on,” Chaac offered. Since his victims had usually been drowned, he was less finicky about fragrance.
Tohil was tired of waiting. He raised his arms heavenward and dropped his head backwards. The wind sighed. His neck cracked like not-distant-enough thunder. The woman moaned and dropped to her knees.
As if impelled by an inner voice, Snoopzilla, one of the percussionists, raised up a long drumstick and sliced through her chest. At least that’s what he intended to do. Drumsticks, even sharp ones, are not noted for their slicing ability, and rib cages are, literally, as hard as bone. Also, Snoopzilla, in addition to being rather stoned, had no experience with butchery. All he managed to do was nick the moaning woman. The wound was not even as deep as a cat scratch. Still, a thin rivulet of blood ran down her chest toward the sands. It never reached its destination, however, getting trapped enroute by a morass of dirt.
Friggy, another circle regular, stopped his pounding. Something inside called him to worship. Though up to now he’d been a gluten-free vegan, raw food connoisseur, he yearned to reach his callused hands into the woman’s chest and pull out her beating heart. She did not seem like she would mind. She remained on her knees swaying, seeming unconscious of Snoopzilla’s attempt on her heart, still gyrating to the pulse of an invisible timpanist with no sense of rhythm. Friggy looked up at the three magnificent, bronzed strangers, then back at the vibrating woman. Though not skilled with numbers, even he could do the math. Three gods and one heart do not make for a rainstorm or even a drizzle. They make for an apocalypse.
He peered through the mental haze that encased him, scanning the beach for a couple of promising strangers. There were none in sight. Stepping backward to get a better view, he tripped over Snoopzilla’s drumstick and fell on him, toppling onto the rosy sand.
Under the expectant glare of the gods, Snoop and Ziggy turned on each other, grappling with the ferocity of two stoners with no weapons and zero experience in the arts of war. The woman, still on her knees, tumbled backward. A brilliant red stream, more vibrant the blood of warriors, exploded from the vicinity of Ziggy’s chest. For one brief moment it looked like a massacre, but it was only the smashed tomato on the slice of gluten-free-vegan-raw-pizza-for-a-dollar that Ziggy had discovered almost uneaten in the trashcan and had put in his pocket to savor at a later time.
The gods looked on in disgust. These stupid gringos couldn’t even do a simple blood sacrifice. No wonder there was a drought. No surprise California was a mess.
“Enough!” rumbled Tohil.
“Suffer in famine for a million years!” boomed Tlaloc. They raised their rippling arms and vanished in a puff of irritation.
Chaac bent down, running his finger through the red stuff that, for a second, had seemed so promising. It wasn’t half bad. Not quite as tangy as the blood of drowned warriors but much less soggy. He twirled on his heels and skated back toward the stand selling gluten-free-vegan-raw-pizza-for-a-dollar.
“I’ll have one of those-what do you call them?” Chaac gestured toward the tomato-gluten-free-vegan-raw-pizza-for-a-dollar.
“That’ll be a dollar,” said the pimply youth behind the counter without looking up from his iPhone. Chaac narrowed his eyes. The stink of drowned bodies rose up from the hot boardwalk like a smelly tide. In the distance thunder rumbled.
“On th-th-the o-o-other hand,” stammered the spotty teen, “w-we are having a s-special. T-two for one. Here.” He handed Chaac a slice. He considered asking for fifty cents but was discouraged by the flames flicking from Chaac’s nostrils.
“What does this mean?” asked Chaac, taking a big bite of the tomato-gluten-free-vegan-raw-pizza, and pointing to the sign that read, Help Wanted.
“I- it means we-we want help,” said the lad.
Chaac looked at him.
“W-we’re hiring. You k-know, t-training people.”
Chaac stared.
“T-training t-them how to make t-tomato-gluten-free-vegan-raw-pi-pizza and s-s-sell it for a dollar.”
Glue-ton, what’s glue-ton? thought Chaac. And because Gods, like humans, do not like to betray ignorance, he said, “I’ll take it.”
“Take what?”
“The training,”
“T-the manager’s not here,” said the teen. “Just fill out this and . . .” He handed Chaac a paper which burst into flames.
“It’s yours,” cried the teen, bursting through the door and dashing toward Main Street without even stopping to remove his detested apron and cap.
Chaac went inside. The pizza oven slanted slightly left. An old book had been propped beneath one corner to make it more or less even. Chaac wiggled it out and stared sternly at the oven until it straightened.
The book was greasy and dented. It was an old dictionary.
“Glueton . . . glueton,” he muttered leafing through the pages.
There was no entry for glueton, but he found two items that were close.
“Gluten. Gluten (from Latin gluten, ‘glue’) is a group of proteins, which occur in various wheat species and grains, such as barley, rye, and oats, as well as products derived from these grains such as breads and malts.”
And:
“Glutton (Latin: gula, derived from the Latin gluttire meaning ‘to gulp down or swallow’). Over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or wealth items, particularly as status symbols.”
It must be glutton; the youth had meant. Wheat was just a grain, and an inferior one at that.
Mayans are known as people of the corn, though they also enjoyed avocados, chocolate and the occasional human appendage. But none, even Mayan-foodies, had ever heard of wheat. Everyone knew that corn was the food of the people and people were the food of the gods. But glutton, that was something no person should be. Gluttony was the providence of the gods.
People do not deserve food, drink, or wealth items. They belong to me. I will make them glutton-free and my followers shall be multitudinous . . . or else! thought Chaac.
And that was how Chaac got an education, and opened Chaac’s Famous Glutton-Free-Vegan-Raw-Foam-Infused Flatbreads and Pizzas.
Good gods adjust to the needs of their times. In the sixteenth century, people needed blood and rain. In the twenty-first century, people needed better ecology. Less food, less drink, fewer wealth items, and more restraint.
Within one year, the entire population of Venice, California had given up meat and stopped cooking. Within two they shunned refrigerators. They grew gardens of maize, beans, and squash. Gardens without pesticides or chemicals. Chaac had read up on and disapproved of pesticides and chemicals and he was a very persuasive salesman.
It isn’t such a bad place, Chaac thought. When things get dry enough, and enough people realize that blood is thicker than water—literally—I’ll be around to accept their offerings.
So, if you’re ever in Venice Beach feeling a little parched and droughty, be sure to get one of Chaac’s Glutton-Free-Vegan-Raw-Foam-Infused Flatbreads and Pizzas. It’s housed in a large triangle with ninety-one giant steps. It’s almost as good as a blood sacrifice. Pizza is even thicker than blood.
This story previously appeared in Space and Time.
Edited by Erik Homberger
E.E. King is cohost of the MetaStellar YouTube channel's Long Lost Friends segment. She is also a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Flametree. She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on MetaStellar's YouTube channel. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at ElizabethEveKing.com and visit her author page on Amazon.