
This is a transcript of a conversation I found on my tape recorder.
I do not remember holding this interview. It is certainly me, in the recording. Me and two unknown women. I often record interviews on an old-school tape recorder—perhaps I like the tactility of it. Oftentimes, I admit, this is unethical. It seems to me, by virtue of the conversation, that the women I interviewed were not made aware of the device in my pocket. If they had been, perhaps this tape would have disappeared to wherever my memories went.
I transcribe this here, in Modern Gods, as one extra brick in my hypothesis about the gods that walk our streets and live alongside us. I have no names. I do not even have the pretense for this interview. Again, I am without memory on the matter.
The two voices sound very similar, and, in fact, upon first listen, I thought I was interviewing only one woman. You will see why this gets confusing. However, one of the women does sound fainter, as if she were further from my recording device. I have taken great pains to discern when each woman is talking, and have labeled them as Alpha and Bella (or, when I couldn’t discern who, “Either”), as such, with a zest of my own poetic embellishment.
ALPHA: Are you sure you won’t have a drink?
ME: Not at the moment, please, thank you. I have a bit of poor digestion. Carbonated drinks don’t sit well with me, especially after lunch.
BELLA: Your loss, hun. Maybe you’ll change your mind.
ALPHA: So where were we?
ME: You mentioned you were born into a powerful family.
ALPHA: Yes, yes. Well, born is a strong word for it.
ME: May I ask which family?
ALPHA: No need to spoil the story with details. What matters is that the family was rich.
BELLA: It’s a fairy tale. You’ll like it. There was once a young girl, an heiress to a powerful company. She had a loving father, a strong-but-distant mother, and an awkward younger brother. The issue was that her mother didn’t love her father.
ALPHA: In fact, neither children were his by blood, although he couldn’t have known that. The father was a low-tier boxer. A loser, really.
BELLA: He suspected, but didn’t care. He was in love, true love. It’s... well, true love should not be wasted.
ME: What’s your interest in their love life?
ALPHA: Oh, but their love is the only thing that matters to us. We weren’t always what you see in front of you. We are, well...
BELLA: We have no name for what we are. Until we became like you, we didn’t think of things like that, in those terms. We are like the wind, like the sound of the waves, like the prickly sensation you get on your skin when you feel excited. We exist all around you, but not in the same way as you do.
ALPHA: We have only one interest. We want love to exist. True love. And when we see a man like this poor father, one who has such pure love and devotion, being completely ignored, we follow it like the sunflower follows the sun.
ME: Okay, um. Yes. How does this involve their daughter? Did you tell the mother you knew she was the result of an affair?
ALPHA: Nothing so convoluted. I became her.
ME: Uh—
BELLA: Yes, I became her.
ALPHA: The young girl died at the age of 13. She fell, after a heavy gust, from the Cliffs of Moher during a vacation. The father was miserable, and I knew that the opportunity for him to love would be dead, and stay dead, with his daughter.
BELLA: And yet it lit a different fire in him! His love for his dead daughter was enough to keep me intrigued, powered on. I watched from between the air and behind the shadows as he scoured the world for a way to bring his daughter back to life. Ancient rumors, desperate legends, hidden libraries. Finally, it was the mother who took charge. She was severe and determined. She had no belief in the father’s pursuits, but she saw no other option than to handle it herself to put an end to his obsessions.
ALPHA: She found a book. An ancient recipe book, of magic. I suppose that’s what it’s called here. Magic. To me, it’s a book of nature, filled with imprecision.
ME: What book?
BELLA: Ha! Nice try. It’s a secret!
ALPHA: In it, the book had a recipe for bringing back the dead.
ME: It...
BELLA: Not for real, though. Bringing back a human life is impossible. It had the recipe, though!
ALPHA: So I played along.
BELLA: I took the form of the daughter. It was seen as a miracle, but their family covered it up. They couldn’t explain it, and didn’t want to. They understood, somehow, I was their daughter. That was enough. I used everything in my arsenal to maintain that daughterly form.
ME: But... why?
BELLA: To bring the parents together! To make them love each other! That’s all I cared about.
ME: Oh... um...
ALPHA: In any case, the recipe did have an effect. It separated me from my shade.
*There is a silence at this moment. Several cars go by.*
ALPHA: My shade? Did you hear me?
ME: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
ALPHA: What is the word?
BELLA: I don’t know the word for it. The thing that protects. The... spiritual hymen?
ALPHA: Do humans not know what a shade is?
ME: I’m sorry. This is news to me.
ALPHA: In any case, I was now in the form of the daughter, and I was no longer protected by my shade. But, a shade will find you fast and set you right. If I wanted to stay away from the Lonely Void, I had to make sure to shed it.
ME: Lonely Void?
BELLA: What do they teach you people!?
ALPHA: No matter. In human form, I used a recipe to mark my stem, then I cut myself in two.
BELLA: Yes, I did.
ALPHA: No, I did. Not you.
BELLA: It was me, though. I distinctly recall.
ME: Please, ladies. I don’t have much time.
*Let it be known that I probably did have a lot of time. I often used this tactic to push an interview forward.*
BELLA: Sure, look.
ALPHA: The long of the short of it was that now I was two.
BELLA: Me and me... or her, I guess. We had to pretend to be one person for a long time.
ALPHA: The father wasn’t stupid. He was a lot of things, maybe. Meek, shy, spineless. But he wasn’t stupid. But... he played along. Maybe he just needed to pretend his daughter was breathing his selfsame air. I don’t know. But he knew I wasn’t really her. And he knew there were two of us, slowly becoming different.
BELLA: She liked being the daughter the most. I usually had my own thing going on. I felt free. Free to make people fall in love. Free to watch lips kiss and hearts putter.
ALPHA: Leaving me with the hard work.
BELLA: Hey!
ALPHA: It’s true. I became the de facto daughter. I had to learn how to manage employees, talk to the public, monitor operations. It wasn’t long before I realized that my mission to make the father and mother fall in true love was impossible. I was ready to reconnect with myself, call out to my shade, and go back to the void.
BELLA: But then I had an idea! I had the recipe book, in which there was a very real recipe for a love potion. And not just that, but I—or rather, at this point, my sister—was the heiress to an international bottling company.
ALPHA: For the first time, I was thinking like a human. I was thinking in terms of sales and resources and logistics. I had never done this before. Before, I played with light and air and sound, inspiring love at a whim. But now, as a human, I had not only the mind, but the schematics for a potion that could forever make all life fall to the beauty of love!
BELLA: Love!
ALPHA: Love!
ME: ... Love?
EITHER: Don’t be patronizing.
ME: No... I’m sorry...
ALPHA: The story ends there.
ME: I can’t say I understand the ending.
BELLA: Hun, the ending is the beginning of our next big project.
ALPHA: We’re going to introduce love to the world, in the only way the world understands.
ME: What way is that?
EITHER: Consumerism!
ME: And... how does this involve me?
At this point, a lot of the recording deals with me and my ex-wife. We are the subject of their prodding, their poking. It’s odd to say it here, but I believe the whole point of this impromptu interview was for these strange voices to try and rectify the bleeding cyst that was my marriage. Suffice it to say, it failed. If these two claim to be muses of love, they have lost their edge. I have never been more alone.
But let’s not dwell on the personal life of the author. These two must clearly be modern gods! And if you are interested in my research on this subject, you are necessarily interested in the life of the S*******.
​
Yes, that is my hypothesis regarding these figures and their anecdotal affect on my life. After pouring over the evidence of this recording, I can only conclude that these women are (or were pretending to be) A***** S******, of the infamous S****** House of St. Lauden, and CEO of M******, the international beverage conglomerate. The facts line up. However, my lawyers tell me that this is factually incorrect, and that I am actually joking. This is all a joke, legally.
It is documented in the Irish Times that A****** S****** perished at the Cliffs of Moher on a family vacation. This, however, never spread outside of the country, either due to lack of interest or some sort of cover-up. In any case, A****** seemed to be fine, alongside her brother, Simon, well into adulthood.
Could it be a prank? An actor hired to sound like me, then slipped into my recorder for laughs? According to my lawyers, yes. So, why make up this incredibly obtuse tale of a spirit taking the form of a young girl, split in two, and driving forward in the name of love?
My hypothesis about modern gods living among us has increased. Certainly this hypothesis has caused hardship. My wife—ex-wife!—can’t bear another word. But it seems to me, with every passing day, that the universe is filled with mysterious essences, from time sunken, who flitter around us like flashes of inspiration.
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Modern Gods, 2009 (deleted excerpt)