Mean Gods

Chapter 7

Chapter 13: Horace

He spent most of the day looking for work at his old haunts. Horace had gone through a bunch of menial jobs, he was a waiter at a small little taverna in his neighbourhood. The old boss really liked him but he was fully staffed and he admitted that customers didn’t spend like they were used to. Then he went to the local McDonald’s, but the manager had changed and he impassively slapped a job application form on the table. Horace filled it out but he knew they wouldn’t hire him, he was in his thirties, and they needed young and naive people to squeeze under the corporate thumb. Then he went to the local newspaper, which of course, had gone out of business.

Horace felt a touch of sorrow at that. It had been his first real job as a teenager, he even got paid for it. Knowing computers and having some graphic skills he worked in the small enterprise, preparing the layout for the articles and the ads and the classifieds of local interest.

But paper was dead. Had he even kept up his subscription? No, now that he thought about it, his parents had one, which they must have neglected to renew, understandably since they had left the country for good.

He asked around the neighbours about what had happened to the little newspaper. The owner had died, heart attack. His grandkids didn’t bother sorting out through the mess and the debt, and just shut it down.

An entire legacy, gone.

Horace had fond memories of the place. He enjoyed the summer he spent there, a place where he was treated as an adult. He knew stuff about computers, they didn’t, and his opinion was respected and his advice instantly applied. The boss was a kind old man even back then, and the employees were grumpy but had nothing bad to say about the man. The sole reporter was a flirty redhead that teased Horace every time she came over to deliver a story or proofread some piece, and he had m*********d furiously every night thinking about her.

But, looking back, the thing he liked about the newspaper the most was that feeling of making something real. They worked on the computer and printed out stuff and resized pictures all month long, then they sent it to the printer and it came back in smelly piles of newspaper.

Physical stuff. You could touch it, you could smell it, and it usually ended up in the trash after expending its half-life. If the newspaper was lucky, it ended up being recycled as a papier-mache or on the floor of some repainted room.

He really liked that feeling, creating things.

The other jobs he had never quite delivered on that front. It was always serving meals or spreadsheets or some mindless data-entry.

Turning away, Horace realised he had tears in his eyes.

It was lunchtime and he was sweating now, walking in the sun all this time. He wiped the sweat off his brow and thought of ice cream.

That was it. He was forgetting the ice cream shop. It was at the far side of Kifisia, it was quite a large suburb, but he needed to check it out. Horace started walking there. He knew the other people of his generation might have just looked up the phone online and called to check if there was work available, but his dad had taught him otherwise.

‘Horace,’ his dad would say, ‘showing up is half the work. That applies to everything, your job, your relationship, your friends, family. Remember that.’

He smiled at the memory. He missed his parents, but they were having fun chasing kangaroos or something. They deserved some fun for themselves.

So, he showed up at the ice cream shop. It was called Zillions, ‘cause it had a zillion tastes to choose from. It was slightly different than he remembered, they had changed a bit of the interior, chairs, some decoration, but it was otherwise the same. A large single space inside the shop, the bar full of ice cream flavours at the side. The staff area and the storage at the back, plus the customer toilets from a different entrance beside that. Then the real attraction, the lovely outside with comfy chairs and tables. It was a wedge shape little plaza, surrounded by trees and covered by humongous umbrellas on top. Horace hated those in particular, they needed quite an effort to open and close. The place was cool and inviting, in soft earthen tones with touches of modern design. He actually liked working there, it was a place where people came to cool off and have some ice cream and feel happy.

It wasn’t as great as creating things, but it was the next best thing.

And he knew they’d need more people, at least for some extra shifts.

As he went inside, he heard screams.

Ah, yes. That was the only memory he had repressed.

Screaming children.