The Golden Watch

The desire for power has been known to devour the strongest minds and strip the valor of the brave. The flame to rule burns so bright that even the gods couldn’t resist the power that came with eternal victory, so after the brutal war between the Olympians and the Titans, the gods seeing an opportunity to carve out everlasting power drew their shards and gambled with the world over which parts they desired to rule. Hades, as fate would have it won the right to rule the underworld, Poseidon conquered the seas in its vast wildness and Zeus received power over the skies and the firmaments.

Who would think it would take an untamed lady like me to challenge the gods? I look nothing like my past, raised in an underfunded orphanage scruffy and rarely clean. I was 13 when Farah the Greek nun walked into my orphanage to teach music and arts.

“Zara! So how do I look?” His soothingly perfect English accent jogged me back to reality. Irresistible Tom McDermott sat across me with two chopsticks stuck up his nose with a piece of cabbage hanging from his mouth. Eyes that could captivate, shipwrecking your heart with one look, a face that could steal the soul and keep my heart locked in away forever enchanted by his spell. It was a perfect first date as we sat in this fancy five star restaurant with jazz playing in the background and an ambience set for the most romantic night and still Tom found a way to be his silly self. I laughed hysterically as I had another glass of wine, halfway through our first bottle of Merlot, my charming handsome potential future husband smiled at me and I thought to myself how lucky I must be to have finally found the one! I had spent months of regrettable nights searching for the one and finally after numerous gut wrenching blind dates I was ready to take my profile off true love match.com. What had started out as revenge on my cheating fiancé Freddie had now turned into love. Especially after finding out Freddie had married the stripper he cheated on me with. I had walked in on them in our own bed last Christmas. Now months later I could thank Janet the stripper enough for baring her all for my lousy fiancé. Had she not stripped her left over dignity and gotten in bed with Freddie, Ah! No pun intended, perhaps I wouldn’t be dressed in my red bandage dress finally meeting Prince Charming in person after two months of cyber love. It was nice to look at his delectable lips and dream of saying I do by the beach in Seychelles. Yes I had planned it all, now in my mid 30s I was ready for the white picker fence, maybe prams and even the vain banter of housewives I would readily endure! When you spend most of your childhood, poor and unwanted, one tends to grow up craving the best of life. This lady had seen enough of the gods cruel jokes.

I had spent years learning new languages, changing my looks and even my mannerism all in a bid to rid my soul of my less than perfect past. I wanted to be desired, successful wealthy and beautiful. A masters degree in philosophy and a four bedroom Parisian inspired home to myself in Los Altos Hills, California. I had what I wanted except love. Foolish and naïve, I had fallen for the wrong man once. My heart was now colder and I feared my disdain for men would turn me into a bitter old witch. I was cast into street life when my father decided to be beat my mother so badly after a drunken night out with his mistress. My mother had taken enough and barely 4, I watched as my mother bloody and weary fought my despicable father off and somehow took his life after she hit him with a lamp. But like the selfish man he was with his last strides had pulled mother close to him pushing the knife he had in his hand into her bowels. Unsure of the events and why he even had a knife, all I remember was fragments of chaos and the bizarre silence that fell on our turbulent home after they had both died.

I had fought for everything I had but destiny swept the Greek teacher Farah into my life for a reason. We had grown so fond of each other and at the end of her one year term at the orphanage she left me a gift. A gold pocket watch. It was pristine even though she said it had passed through generations. She wanted to adopt me and take me with her, back to France where she lived but as the gods would have it playing their cruel jokes on me again, she had found out she has stage four bowel cancer two months before we were supposed to leave for France. Distressed and overcome with defeating sadness she couldn’t bare to take me with her and decided to return back to Greece to spend what was left of this mundane life. Again I had lost.

She left me with a parting gift, a watch that could turn back the hands of time and give its owner the opportunity to reset life. A chance to turn things around and change the future. She had told me a bizarre tale of how her ancestor Orin had dared the gods to a battle in order to win back Alexdria, his fair skinned beautiful fiancée who Zeus had decided to have an affair with and claim as his. Clever and witty Orin, an Olympian had tricked Hera, Zeus’s wife into giving him a gift that could control time. In return, he would get Alexdria to break Zeus’s heart and betray him. Overcome with envy for yet another one of her husband’s object of desire, Hera stole a watch that held the power of Time from Hades who himself had stolen it from Poseidon, god of the seas. The watch was the power behind the triangle of death as certain parts of the sea were so fondly called. Sinister seas locked in perfect triangular boundaries where time stood still. Ships, planes and lives would be claimed in these treacherous waters where within its enchantment time worked in reverse. Whatever went in was lost forever, nothing came out. Farah said it was the sacrifice of souls in order to appease the dragons in the seas that protected the waters from the monsters below. Vile creatures that Hades called sons. Beasts of the underworld that did his bidding and unleashed havoc upon the earth. Hades felt cheated after loosing the one thing he wanted the most, uttermost power of men which was never actually up for grabs, instead he won the underworld as his territory setting him malevolent on a path of revenge.

The Olympians with the help of the titans had fought off Hades and his underworld dragons and the disgraced Hades had lost his best weapon, the dreadful beast that was formed in the bellows of the underworld. His army of demons cast back to the underworld, the defeated Hades had hoped the watch, he stole from Poseidon would be his chance to turn back time and unleash his furnace of vengeance on men for favoring Zeus instead of him. But he didn’t think a man in love like Orin would outsmart the gods in a bid to save his beloved Alexdria. After he got the watch from Hera he turned back time to the day he asked Alexdria for her hand in marriage and decided to escape to a foreign land now just with his betrothed and married her.

Farah, generations after her ancestors Alexdria and Orin, was now the owner of the coveted gold watch but now this dirty little orphan has come into possession of such a powerful artefact and willed it she did. It danced to the my every whim and satisfying my deepest desires years after I had now become wealthy, educated and successful but yet the one thing the watch couldn’t do was control the emotion of men.

Somehow Zeus must have had a bad day. Perhaps his bath wasn’t warm enough or he was just bored but he had found me. The dreadful and unworthy owner of such power. I knew he was coming for me as the skies raged with such fury. Silly and unassuming everyone carried on like nothing was wrong. They must have thought it was just a fluke. Didn’t they realize that it was strange the weather had just flipped its script. I knew better, Farah told me one day he would find me and that day had come. The crazy part was somehow Hades must have made a pact with Zeus to get the watch back because a sudden earthquake rumbled the earth beneath me as everyone took cover.

Grabbing Tom’s hand I got up and pulled him off his chair. “we have to go right now.” The earthquake sent people into an irate frenzy as the streets were filled with utter chaos surged with screaming mortals trying to find a safe place but I stood still outside with Tom beside me as I watched the skies above us. Once blue and kind, the heavenly sky had now become lit with surges of numerous lightning strikes that seemed to spread its viral tentacles onto the street like they were searching for something. Me! The earth roared even loader and the roads succumbed to the fiery flames that Hades had released. Spurts of little but yet hateful fires sprung up on the streets while men screamed in disdain. What they would later call a gas explosion from the underground gas mains would become their rationalization for this chaotic occurrence but I knew better. I starred at the skies as it grew darker with clouds. Incompetent Prometheus! Was he on his lunch break and forgot to warn the earth of Zeus’s impending horrid plan? Wasn’t it his job to send the clouds as a warning of rain?

Tom screaming at me wondering why I wasn’t looking for a safe place to hide. He tugged at me but his shouts turned faint as I saw a seven fold entangled lighting strike reach out from the skies and aim for me “ No! Go away, I won’t let you have it. It’s rightfully mine” I screamed at the heavenly missile strike engulf everything in its path as it rushed towards me. It happened so fast, a moment edged in the sand dunes of time I would never forget, Tom saw the beast of electricity and stood right in front of me. What was he thinking? It surged through him and the air filled with the smell of burning flesh as it struck him. I stood and watched while the vengeful beam claimed my Knight and it wasn’t until he fell to the floor before me that I remembered it would come for me as well. Reaching into my pocket I pulled out the watch shouted out the words inscribed on it and in a flash I was right back to the dinner table. Time was captured in this relic and I was now flung back to a few minutes before the storm hit. Gasping for air as I heard Tom say “Zara! So how do I look” Chinese chopsticks hanging from his nose and vegetables dangling from his mouth but this time I didn’t laugh at his jokes. My poker face starred beyond him as my brain raced through its puzzling maze trying to map out a plan of action. Just like my benefactor’s ancestor Orin, I now had the tasks of outsmarting the gods to save the love of my life and so my journey to defeat the old gods would begin, the stage for a true love story begins.