Osiris Likes This

“My tongue feels like sandpaper.”

    Nut rubbed her eyes. “Isn’t that normal when you’ve got the head of a lioness?”

    “Yeah, but this is like double sandpaper.” Sekhmet gave her lips an experimental lick. “This is like double sandpaper with extra sand.”

    “Urrgh.” Nekhbet sat up, clutching her head. “I’ve got a hangover the size of Upper Egypt! What time is it?”

    “It’s...” Nut fished her phone out of her pocket. “It’s 2015. Look, we’ve got smartphones and everything.”

    “Oh no!” Anuket started to stand up, realised that standing up would make her chunder, and sat back down. “I was supposed to be at work three millennia ago!”

    “I think...I think, um...I think...” Sekhmet was still slightly wasted. “The river barge might have sailed on that.”

    “This is all your fault!”

    Sekhmet winced. “Not so loud!”

    “No!” Anuket whipped off her feather headdress and threw it to the ground. “You were all like ‘Let’s just pop into Thebes for a drink!’ and then...well, that’s about all I remember. Where are we?”

    “Well,” Nekhbet looked around, “Poundworld is here, and KFC’s there, and the truth is I really don’t know. But this new hat of mine says ‘Made in China,’ so maybe we’re somewhere in Asia.” She squinted at the orange plastic lettering inside the brim. “Wait...wait...no, hang on, this is a traffic cone.”

    “‘Let’s have a girls’ night out,’ she said,” muttered Anuket. “‘It’ll be fun,’ she said.”

    “It’s Southampton.”

    “What?”

    “This thing has GPS.” Nut held up her phone. “We’re in Southampton.”

    “Great.” Sekhmet rolled her eyes. “That’ll be loads of help working out what actually happened last night.”

    Nut shrugged. “There’s always Facebook.”

    “Actually, yeah, that is an idea.” Sekhmet got her phone out too. “‘Nut tagged you in 8,739 photos’?”

    “Sorry, yeah. I probably could have been a bit more selective.”

    Sekhmet brought up the first one. “It’s me with a cocktail pitcher to myself. Cheers for that. ‘Having great time with BFFs LOL #YOLO.’ Osiris likes this.”

    She flipped through the next three hundred or so: all extremely similar.

    “‘Sekhmet is such a cow LOL.’ Osiris likes this.”

    “That was a joke,” explained Nut, quickly. “You know. Because you turn into Hathor when you’re drunk? And then you’ve got the whole cow head thing going on?” She pointed at the screen. “See? Osiris got it!”

    “‘Nite still yung, clubbing in France, gon make Napoleon wish he never come to Epypt brap brap #YOLO.’ Osiris likes this.”

    She flipped through a few more.

    “‘Eiffel Tower looks like a penis LOL.’” Sekhmet glowered at Nut. “Did you have to use that caption for the one where I’m holding it up?”

    “Hang on.” Nekhbet had got her phone out too. “You tagged me in this one and it’s just a photo of some random pigeon!”

    “Well, yeah.” Nut shifted about uneasily. “Because you’re a vulture? So, like, it’s funny?” She caught sight of Nekhbet’s expression. “It is a little bit funny.”

    “Ugh.” Sekhmet had progressed some way through the album. “I should have stuck to just holding up the Eiffel Tower.” She passed the phone to Anuket. “You look through these. I don’t want to know.”

    “Yeah.” Nekhbet was keen to divert attention away from her massive photo dump. “We should really think about what we’re gonna do now. I mean, we don’t have jobs. Probably nobody even believes in us anymore.”

    Sekhmet tried to think. The situation was actually kind of terrifying: what they did next would have consequences not only for them, but for the whole of reality itself. But right at that moment there was really just one problem on her mind, and the solution was right there in that KFC.

    “I’m getting a coffee,” she said, standing up. “My tongue feels like sandpaper and my breath smells like dog.”

    “Hang on.” Anuket got to her feet and struggled queasily to catch up. “You forgot your phone.”

    “Thanks.”