Page 13 of Blaze of Our Lives

“Mine’s rather clean,” Tim announced. “As an asexual being, I don’t have a lot of bodies in my closet. Of course, my desire to father a child has yet to be accomplished. However, since Heather and her partner Missy don’t have penises, I’ve volunteered my sperm so we can have a baby.”

Well, that was a whole lot of something I probably didn’t need to know.

Heather winced and Candy Vargo shook her head. “Don’t wanna hear about your little swimmers, jackass. Keep your pecker in your pants and your mind on the shitshow we’re discussing.”

“Will do, friend!” Tim saluted his buddy. “Shall we discuss the box?”

Sucking my bottom lip into my mouth, I scrunched my nose. I hoped the box wasn’t a euphemism for Heather or her partner Missy’s lady parts.

“Pandora’s box,” Heather said quickly, obviously relieved to change the subject. I was delighted to be wrong. “Was it truly filled with the components that Hesiod wrote of in the Greek poem Works and Days?”

“It was,” Lilith confirmed.

“But Hesiod wrote the poem around 700 BC,” I pointed out. “Millions of years later. It’s a myth.”

“Trillions,” Gideon corrected me.

It wasn’t possible for me to take that number in. It still didn’t make sense. “Wait. Is… was Hesiod Immortal?”

“Nope,” Candy Vargo said. “But stories have a way of sticking around.”

“Like the Bible,” Cher added. “Probably some truth to the myth, but mostly not.”

“There is some truth,” Lilith said. “In the poem, swarms of evils were unleashed—disease, envy, greed, pain sorrow and many others. However, that’s where the similarity ends.”

“Please, do not be cryptic,” I said, raising a brow at my mother.

“I won’t,” she promised. “All of the miseries in the box were absorbed into Pandora. Therefore, she became the box. The theory had always been my guess until recently. Because she was consumed with the vile wretchedness, she was the one who spread it to the world through her people.”

The silence in the room was loud. I broke it. There was more to be learned and discussed.

“And I used the key—the words—to release her from the box. Shit.” My stomach clenched, and I wondered if there was any way to reverse what I’d done.

“I think it’s far more nuanced than that,” Gideon said. “The only gift that was left in the box—if we’re to believe Hesiod—was hope. I believe you released the hope.”

“Okay.” I twisted my hair in my fingers and tried to form my thoughts. “I’d like to believe that—really, really like to believe that. However, why am I housing Pandora if all I did was let the hope out?”

“That’s the fuckin’ question for the Higher Power,” Candy Vargo said.

“Awesome,” I said sarcastically. “I guess I’ll go have a chat with a smoking mirror and we’ll work this crap out.”

Cher and Candy Vargo laughed. I did not.

“Yes and no,” Lilith said. “You will be able to commune with the Higher Power as the Goddess of the Darkness.”

“Wait. Hold up.” These people talked out of both sides of their mouths. My hands doubled into fists at my sides, but I kept my tone calm and reasonable. “Is the Higher Power actually a person? Someone or thing that’s tangible? All of you guys keep saying It’s an entity… you can’t see It with your eyes. Bottom line, I’m fucking confused. How can you talk to something that’s been described to me as an elusive light?”

Candy Vargo blew a loud raspberry from her mouth. “Shit’s hard to comprehend,” she admitted. “Don’t help all that fuckin’ much that you’re only forty years old.”

“I’m also forty,” Daisy reminded everyone. “I stand with Cecily on this line of questioning. She and I have accepted a lot in a short amount of time. The Higher Being is difficult to swallow. Not to mention, Cecily has to deal with It. Soon.” Daisy stood up, crossed the room and stood next to me.

I wanted to hug her, so, I did. She hugged me back and kissed my cheek.

“Newbies have to stick together,” she said with a smile. Shifting her attention back to the occupants of the room, her expression went hard. “Enough of the vague bullshit. If no one here knows what they’re talking about, admit it. Give the Bitch Goddess Cecily the respect she’s due. All of you are old enough, and I do mean old enough, to acknowledge if you have no clue how to explain this.”

The room was silent. Glances were exchanged. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. Not too long ago, I was blissfully unaware of the Immortal world. I’d been thrown into it against my will. And due to Pandora killing Lilith, I was now one of the leaders. It was a job I had little to no qualifications to perform. I was an actress for the love of everything absurd. Doing sitcoms, dumb movies of the week, and infomercials was my forte—not leading Demons. But par for the course of the insanity that had become my life, I had Pandora stuck inside me and a room full of old and powerful Immortals who were of no help whatsoever. Part of me wanted to just leave for the Higher Power’s plane and go in blind. I’d just wing it with some improv. The less crazy part of me decided to hear them out.

Gideon was the one to speak first.

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