Chapter Seven: OTIS GOES TO HELL / POLUTROPOS

Chapter 7

OTIS GOES TO HELL

 

  Otis held Polutropos close to his heart.  There was a long, aching hiss that came from the direction of Dante's Inferno, the former hot spot of the South Bay Riviera.  Suddenly the mist turned green and without moving a muscle, Otis found himself gliding into the yawning doors of the condemned building.
  Once inside, the room began to spin like a whirlpool and there was the very loud sound of something chunky going down a great drain.  A huge disco ball violently swung round and round the room. Otis had to keep ducking to avoid being hit.  Stobe lights occassionally pierced the green air.  He soon recognized the voices of a fierce high school band called Charybdis singing, "Burn, baby, Burn, Disco Inferno".  When he caught glimpses of them, he knew something was up.  They had all died when their van drove over one of the steep Palos Verdes cliffs more than a quarter of a century ago.

  Otis and Polutropos hit bottom and an unearthly silence enveloped them.  There was an eerie canal where thick green fluid slowly sludged.  On the other side of this revolting river Otis could see many transparent people who did not seem aware of him or each other.  One of the see-through people was a dead ringer for his beloved Penny.
  "Do you see what I see, Polutropos?"  It was a rhetorical question, so Otis was mortified when the puppy grinned ear-to-ear like a Cheshire cat and answered, "Yes."
  Polutropos got the giggles and this really disturbed Otis even further, but he didn't put the puppy down.  He didn't want to have to search for him in this place.
  "Damn Circe!  Hell!  I'm having a flashback!"  Otis moaned.
  Circe had sent him to hell.  The spirit of the Prophet Teiresias appeared to Otis and explained that the reason the others seemed hollow and unaware was because they were mere PRE-IMAGES of people who would soon be arriving in hell but were not dead yet.
  Teiresias went on to say that unless Otis could get home in time to change the flow of events, Penny would be raped after the poetry party that very night and in a moment of insane despair she would take her life.  Otis recognized other PRE-IMAGES flickering on the other side of the eerie canal.  Professor Antonio, Melanie, the Skylla Surfers and the stranger on the beach who had warned Otis about the Skylla were all PRE-IMAGES.
  Otis was eager to leave hell and rescue Penny.  However, Teiresias indicated there was one more matter to attend to.  Although Otis had not eaten of the prize-winning three bean habanero chili that was made from the poached beef of the Helios Cattle Ranch, Polutropos was guilty as hell and must be punished.  Otis was free to go, but Polutropos was not.

- To Be Continued -

Chapter One: POLUTROPOS/THE ODYSSEY OF OTIS

"Cyclops, you ask me for my famous name.  I will tell you then, but you must give me a guest gift as you have promised.  Nobody is my name.  My father and mother call me Nobody, as do all the others who are my companions."  So spoke I, and he answered me in pitiless spirit:
"Then I will eat Nobody after his friends, and the others I will eat first, and that shall be my guest present to you."                                                                             
                                                                   -THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER/Book IX

 

Invocation To The Muse

O my willful muse, assist me in the tale of the New Odysseus.

  A sad moon silently rolled the light it borrowed from the sun across the night like a great hopeless eye that never expected to see love again.  The Redondo Beach breeze struggled to lift and lower the royal palm boughs but only made the fronds twitter like lashes on dreaming eyes.
  The tradition was ending.  Penny watered the violets on the kitchen window sill.  She looked out to sea, then took her Blackberry from her sweater pocket.  She unfollowed him on twitter without looking at any of his new twitpics or reading his updates.

  Penny cleared the kitchen and made the shopping list for the last poetry party.  They had been having these monthly shindigs ever since her husband, Otis, the beach cities' beloved poetry professor, became the poet laureate twenty years ago.
  Generations of budding poets had written their first poem in his class and spilled wine on his carpets the last Saturday of each month in joyful symposiums.  In recent months the potluck of poets had become an unpleasant, thankless ordeal for Penny.  The guests no longer contributed.  This crop did not know the meaning of the word "xenia".
  The tapestry of rich memories was torn.  A tear rolled down Penny's face when she looked out the kitchen window and for a moment mistook a shadow on the shore to be Otis.  The host had missed so many of his parties that the hostess decided tomorrow night's would be the last poetry party and the last Valentine's Day she would spend alone while her husband was reading love poems to strangers.  She unfriended her husband on Facebook.  Pretending they were still together had become a crushing weight.

- to be continued -