The Gods Among Us

One of them grants you the ability to forecast the future; another wrenches your tongue from your mouth, changes you into a bird precisely because you have been given this gift. The gods are generous in this way. I learned to avoid danger, avoid fear, avoid excitement, these the very triggers that prompt my wings from their resting place deep inside. And so, I avoided fights, avoided everything really. In the locker room, I avoided other boys, all the while intently studying that space between their shoulder blades, patiently looking for the tell-tale signs, looking to find even one other boy like me, the wings buried but there nonetheless. I studied them from a distance. When people challenge a god, the gods curse them with the label of madness. It is all very convenient. And meanwhile, a god took the form of a swan and raped a girl by the school gates. Another took the shape of an eagle to abduct a boy from the football field. Mad world. And what about our teachers? Our teachers expected us to sit and listen. In Theology, there was a demon inside each of us; in History, the demons among us. So many demons in this world. Who among us could have spoken up against the gods, the gods who continued living among us? They granted wishes and punishments much the way they always had. Very few noticed them casually taking the shape of one thing or another.