Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe Read Free Page B

blouse that was leaving too much skin exposed
and sat up straight.
    I looked
down again, at my book.
    It was
nice and neat. Fluorescent markers had highlighted the SOS bits.
With pink of course. Yellow was for the tricky stuff. Green for the
ones I could safely ignore and delete from my memory.
    I was
fighting an urge to check my phone. It had vibrated twice already.
Or had it? I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I would think it vibrated but
then I’d check and see nothing. I could almost hear Billy’s
pretentious voice in my head, “it’s the phantom vibration syndrome,
where the false belief that one’s…” and then I would shut him up.
And he would say it with the tone of voice that implied we were
addicts or something but he was somehow out of this world, more
involved and natural.
    Even so,
more importantly, this teacher had a hawk’s eye for texting. There
was no way I’d risk getting my sparkly new pink phone confiscated
by this malaka.
    I would
endure.
    I looked
around for moral support. Billy wasn’t doing frontistirio, he was
reading by himself. We were classmates only in the morning, at
school. Deppy was here with me, smiling at a boy two rows to the
left. What was his name? John? Jed? Joe?
    No
clue.
    See?
This is where the veil is useful! Just pick it up and look through
the screen. Boom. In-far-ma-shah.
    Must.
Resist.
    I
thought about actually trying to solve the math problem. That
should take me a while. I began reading from the top. The teacher
was already done with the solution, and had stood aside so we could
copy it down.
    Did I
mention he didn’t just let us take a picture and be done with
it?
    The barbarity .
    I was
writing down the problem-solution duo, flicking my head up the
board, down the notepad, up, down, up, down, when a shadow waved in
the corner of my eye and I froze.

Purple Time
     
    She came
through the teacher’s chest, like an ethereal projection, her eyes
darting around the class, staring at people with hatred.
    My heart pumped blood at a thousand litres per second and my
fingers electrified at the extreme dosage of adrenaline.
    I lowered my head and froze in place, my first instinct being
to hide in the crowd. She arose from the teacher’s chest but her
body was hazy, not fully there.
    Her eyes and her hands and her hair were there, moving as if
on the surface of a strong current. She looked around and turned
straight at me, letting me see the hatred in her purple
eyes.
    She charged at me, pushing the teacher aside tearing his
chest with her claws, rippling through the furniture and the people
like an unstoppable sound wave.
    I pushed the desk aside and ran to the door. She was gaining
on me, closing in, splinters flying. Three rows, Two rows. One row.
I dodged and hit a classmate. I pulled him behind me, offering him
as sacrifice to appease Erinyes. She wasted fractions of a second
to rend him in half and extend her bloody claw at me.
    Her nails bit in my flesh and I screamed in pain. She tore
most of my back but the pain gave me thrust and I ran, every step
as if searing hot iron was lashing my body.
    I reached the door and swivelled with my hand towards the
street, she hissed and brushed her hair at me, her hair like
animated snakes, purple and with purpose, stinging my
hand.
    I pulled my arm back and screamed from pain, new toxic pain
as I ran to the bright light outside.

Chapter
11
     
    I was hiding in a corner.
    Someone
touched me and I flinched. I looked up.
    Deppy
was looking at me with worried eyes. Our height difference made her
look almost level at me even with me crouching down. I looked
around, there was no sign of Erinyes.
    “ What happened Mahi?” she asked me but I had nothing to
reply.
    I walked
back to the classroom and Deppy held my arm, as if to support me if
I fell. I walked past my classmates, they were staring and
whispering amongst themselves. I’d never been so ashamed in my
life.
    I walked
past them, a couple of boys tried to make some sort of tease