Forgotten Gods

                Once, I was a being of unimaginable power. I was able to wield the very power of life, of creation, like a weapon. The oceans rose at a mere flick of my fingers, and storms stirred in my very blood. But that was so long ago, back when chaos itself reigned the world.

                Now, I’m a freaking cashier at Costco, getting screamed at by a middle-aged mom named Karen over a damn coupon.

                Back in the old days, a mere dirty look from me would be enough to make a mortal crumble, literally.

                “I’m afraid that your coupon has expired, ma’am,” I repeat, wishing that I could snap my fingers and obliterate this terrible, awful woman. Is it my lunch break yet? On days like today, I miss my former existence, and how my siblings and I ruled the earth, and its elements. It’s a deep, throbbing ache that’s near impossible to ignore, and I grit my teeth, trying not to let my annoyance show on my face.

                “But it says that I can buy one, get one free—” The woman insists, impatiently shaking her bangs out of her face. Her kid is in the cart, sucking down a sugary liquid that’s an unpleasant neon shade of green.

                “Yes, ma’am. Through yesterday,” I reply, feeling the plastic smile that I wear for this underpaying job turn brittle, more like a grimace. “You came to shop a day too late.”

                I feel like a tape recorder, or one of those old-school voicemail machines, on repeat until the end of time.

                Thankfully, I’m saved from this awful woman by my boss, Roger, who, under any other circumstance, is a douchebag. But I’ve never been happier to see the guy as he comes up behind me and flicks my light off.

                “Timothy, head to your lunch break, I’ll take care of her.” He smirks at me and winks, and I don’t need to be told twice, absorbed in memories of the past.

                See, we could have, and would have, kept our power, if we hadn’t gotten greedy. Never mind that our power had been rooted in darkness, blood, and death. Gods we were, but we’d forgotten about the humans we ruled, and their discontent. It didn’t matter; does a human being think of the deaths of ants?

                But the sparks of revolution fanned into a flame that consumed us all. The humans tricked us into leaving our godly plane, trapping us in human vessels and killing us. We were reborn in a modern age where we, and all of the other deities of old, had long since been forgotten. And we had to make a living somehow.

                I feel especially pathetic as I buy some hot soup and a dinner roll and take it to the breakroom.

                Once, I split open the sky and made worlds of naught but air and a few droplets of blood. My siblings and I were capable of creating life, and taking it, in an instant.

                But everyone knows that even gods can fall from the sky.

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