Asphodel (11 page)

For someone like me, who is always letting my curiosity get the best of me, this room is a playground. I want to know what all these buttons are for. I want to push them. Stepping inside, I stroll over to the keyboard staring at a giant red lever labeled earth. Hmm. I wonder what will happen if I pull the lever. Will the entire underworld fall apart and break off into pieces, crumbling like the twin towers? I shrug. “Nah.” So I pull the lever then wait. Nothing happens. Maybe it’s useless. Or maybe it’s broken or something. My eyes dart around the room. I’m wasting time standing here contemplating whether the lever I just pulled is broken, so I head for the door. But I only make it a few steps and the whole room goes black. What’s going on? Maybe the lever is like a light switch. Maybe if I push it up, the lights will come back on.

Pivoting on my heel, I strut back to the lever. My arm is outstretched and my fingers inch closer. I’m just about to push the red bar up when a bright light reflecting off one of the television screens catches my eye. Turning, I face what is behind me. My mouth drops open, my eyes widen.

Rotating on its invisible axis is a hologram version of earth. With bright blue, green glowing colors, and tiny red dots placed sporadically all over it. I smile, kind of amused. It looks like the earth has what mortals call the chicken pox. I slink closer to the hologram in awe. The lights flicker in my eyes and I reach out to touch it, but when I do the tips of my fingers skim right through it. I jump back, startled when a computerized voice screeches, “Name please.”

“Name please,” the female voice repeats.

I don’t have a name to give her. I’m puzzled. Then it dawns on me. This has to be how Hades keeps track of all the dying mortals in the world. Or all the mortals in the world in general. When you have to give them judgment on how they’ll live out eternity, I imagine that you have to watch them throughout their lives too. The world continues spinning and I wonder something; I wonder if Hades can keep track of the immortals too.

“Name please,” rings out a third time.

Stepping forward, I’ve got an idea. “Demeter Jones,” I say softly. Maybe if I can actually see mom I might feel a little better inside. I’m more worried about her than I am myself.

The earth whirls around so fast it becomes a blur. “Locating, Demeter Jones.” All of a sudden the hologram earth vanishes. In place of it is a picture mom. Underneath her image are written words.

Demeter Jones

Member of the Immortals

Goddess of the Harvest and Fertility.

Most recent place of residency – Klamath Falls, OR.

“Wow,” I gasp. Hades really does know everything. Focusing on the floor, I exhale and then I hear it…sobbing.

Mom’s photo fades from the screen. In place of the photo is a streaming video. I’m baffled and elated at the same. How is Hades able to do this? Does he plant cameras in every household on earth? The questions in my head drift away when I get a better look at mom’s face. Her eyes are bloodshot, with purplish circles underneath. Like she hasn’t slept in days. Her skin is pale and her cheekbones are sunken in a tiny bit. If I know her, she hasn’t eaten either. She hangs her head low and sobs uncontrollably. Zeus steps into view and places his hand on mom’s shoulder and caresses it gently. “Demeter, we’ll get her back. I promise.”

I try to touch the hologram, but just like before, my fingers slide right through it. “Mom!” I shout. “Can you hear me?”

She can’t.

Seconds later the feed disappears and is replaced with the hologram earth again. Seeing mom like that shreds me to pieces. I’m pounds of raw hamburger being forced through a meat grinder. Red and pink pieces curling onto a Styrofoam tray, waiting for the butcher to package me for sale.

No more distractions. No more exploring. I have to get out of here. Now.

Stomping back to the keyboard. I push the lever up with so much force I almost snap it off. I am going to get out of this realm of doom and gloom. No matter what it takes.

Persephone

A
fter getting lost three times and wasting what seems close to two hours, I finally find my way to the double doors that lead outside of Hades palace. I take a deep breath and yank the doors open, stepping out into a realm of emptiness, death, and misery. And after standing outside the palace for only seconds, all I want to do is turn around and go back inside.

There’s something levitating in thick air of the underworld that makes me feel like every ounce of goodness has been drained from my body. Now I can see why Hades is the way he is. If I had to look at this devastating depressing realm every day for all of eternity I’d be bitter and cold too. The exterior of the palace is made of black hardened rock that reminds me of tar, bubbling for centuries in a tar pit, then cooling permanently in odd shapes and sizes. Circular towers stretch upward pointed like a sewing spindle, disappearing into a line of heavy gray smog. Dead trees line the walkway, with limbs like broken bones, bent and misshapen. And encircling the perimeter are asphodels. Asphodels everywhere.

I run over to the white and pink speckled flowers, determined to destroy them. I rip the asphodels from the ground, tear them in pieces, throw them down, stomp on them and kick them. If I never see another asphodel for the rest of my immortal life I’ll be perfectly content with that. But it doesn’t matter. Seconds after I’d destroyed some of them, the bare spots on the ground are replaced with new ones. The white blossoms bloom before my eyes like they’d been sleeping all winter and have just been graced with the spring sunshine.

Screaming in frustration, I drop the remaining flowers in my hands and sprint through the canopy of dead trees. Bats flap their wings above my head and I use my arms as a shield and cover myself. The walkway made of grayish clay stretches on for a half a mile and I’m too afraid to drop my arms. This place is full of uncertainty and I have no idea what it has in store for me. And I assume that means there will be worse things than a few bats.

At the end of the walkway, I come to a halt and peak through my arms. Thick, impossible to see through, smog looms above me, but I don’t see any more bats so I lower my limbs. Two feet in front of me is a wide gap in the ground. Connecting each side is a narrow cemented bridge. A bride so narrow, it looks almost like a balance beam. Peering over the edge of my side of the gap, I shudder at the drop. It has to be at least one hundred feet. Jagged rocks stick out at various angles and I wince when I think about having to recover from a fall that severe.

Backing up to give myself some running room, I make a mental note to just sprint forward and not look down. But then I center on the other side of the gap. There is a wall of smog so thick it reminds me of a brick wall. A barrier. A blockade, keeping one side of the underworld away from the other. One side is Troy, the other a clever Greek king named Agamemnon. The Trojan wall was a fortress of safety, but the entire world knows that no matter how big the barrier, cement can’t block intelligence.

I know my freedom waits on the opposite side of this gap. Even though I’m terrified of what awaits me, dead things mostly, I have to push through it. I just have to. Adrenaline pumps though me and I hop up and down amping myself up. I close my eyes and exhale, listening to the calm sound of rushing water. “This is the key to your freedom,” I say aloud. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I’m going to find this Charon guy is by crossing this bridge.

So I charge forward, feet pounding into the clay, staring straight ahead. Loose rocks breaking off and smacking into the walls of the deep ravine fill my ears. Panting, I keep going, pushing myself. A few more paces. A few more paces and I’ll be on the other side. And before I realize it, I’m an immortal wrecking ball blasting through a wall of thick gray smog.

Hades

T
he God of the Dead leaned against the wooden frame of his future queen’s door. Her comforter was flipped over and her violet satin sheets were a crumpled mess. She had definitely slept in her bed, but that left him wondering; where was she now?

Puzzled, Hades strolled into the adjoining bath, to see that every item in it was still in place. None of the towels had been used. All the expensive luxurious soaps he had purchased were still in their fancy wrappings and the bathtub was bone dry.

In the hall, he examined the marble tile, hoping to spot some footprints or something to give him some explanation on which direction she might have gone. He knew his realm. He knew the wicked and despicable things that lurked around every corner and he feared for his future queen. He’d been hostile with her yesterday and he assumed she might be angry with him. That was the last thing Hades wanted. He wanted to show the Goddess he’d been obsessed with for thousands of years that there was more to him than what he’d put off the previous day.

He loved the fact that she was a bit defiant. It meant that she wasn’t weak. He couldn’t have a weakling sitting in a throne next to him. The realm of the dead chewed up weaklings and spit them out.

All of a sudden, the sound of Cerberus’s thunderous footsteps pounded through the narrow hall. Stopping at Hades feet, the three-headed dog hung his middle head low, his snout planted on a particular portion of the black marble. Hades bent down and stroked each one of the dog’s three heads. “Good boy,” he cooed.

Straightening up, he pointed his finger at his best friend. “Cerberus, heel.” The dog sat down and all three tongues from all three heads rolled out, hanging as the pet panted.

Cerberus licked his master’s face and Hades planted his fingers against the marble and closed his eyes. In a last ditch effort he infiltrated Persephone’s mind to find out exactly where she was going. Then the mighty God laughed out loud. Persephone was definitely clever. He’d give her that.

And now he knew exactly where to find her.

Persephone

S
hadows. There are shadows everywhere. Big ones. Small ones. Shadows of different shapes. Circles. Triangles. Squares. The shadows are eerie and creepy and as they pass over my face they make me feel cold and empty inside. The shadows are swallowing my years of existence. Eating me alive. The shadows won’t disappear until I’m a robot. Luckily for me, I’ve lived for a long time.

Speaking of being cold, when I’d first arrived I assumed that the underworld would be hot, but it’s the opposite. It’s freezing down here. My teeth chatter as I massage my arms, rubbing warmth back into them. Every time I stop massaging my arms a fresh array of goose bumps sprout up while I trudge through what appears to be a massive bleak underground desert.

Funnels of gray sand swirl around me and a gust of cold air blasts me in the face. The desert is never-ending and seems too calm for my taste. When things are calm that usually means something is about to happen. I am right.

Voices hiss around me, spinning in circles filling up my head and drowning out my thoughts. I feel like I’m in crowded room, boxed in by the chatter. Except these voices aren’t speaking coherently and there isn’t a person in sight. I know the underworld is a land of illusion. I know it’s a place where nothing is as it seems. But it’s one thing to know those things. To actually experience the strangeness of another realm, that’s something completely terrifying.

A sudden tap on my shoulder causes me to spin around. “Hello.” My vocal chords quiver and fear spreads through me like the plague. “Hades? Is that you?”

Squinting ahead a sheer shadow with a white film covering appears before me. As the shadow lurches closer I can tell it isn’t a shadow at all. It’s an apparition. A ghostly ghoul determined to haunt me. A discarded spirit determined to scare the bejeezus out of me. And it’s working.

Before I’m able to let out a scream, the spirit bursts into a million pieces. Like raindrops suspended in an atmosphere without gravity. The ghost particles hang in the air for a minute, and then fall to the ground. They linger on the gray clay then like they are being sucked through the ground by an invisible vacuum, the particles disappear. Great. I have enough to deal with and now I have to add one more thing to that—ghosts.

More apparitions appear. Men. Women. Even children. And they float toward me like astronauts, suspended in the air by lack of gravity. Their faces hollow and sunken in. Mouths forming an “o” shape as they let out gluteal moans. All they do is moan. None of them utter a clear word. It’s like someone stabbed each one of them in the neck with a scalpel and twisted their vocal chords around the blade so they wouldn’t be able to speak coherently. Their arms are extended, like they are reaching out for me. Like they are begging me for help. I am their savior.

But I’m not their savior. I’m just a Goddess who has been running from their commander her entire life. I’m just a Goddess who prays every day to be considered normal. I’m just a Goddess who wants nothing more than to go home.

I am not their queen. I don’t want to be and I never will be. Yet they float closer and closer as fear takes a firmer hold of my insides. Swallowing hard, I tell myself I can’t let my fear get the best of me. I need to keep going because I have to be getting close to the Styx. As the spirits loom closer, I take a few steps back. And when the first ghost is only inches away from me, that’s when I take off running.

There’s no traction in the soles of my tennis shoes and as I run, I’m slipping and sliding in the gray sand. Minutes pass and I’m still running. I think about giving up. But I can’t. I hear them behind me. I hear their tortured moans filling up the whole underworld and that’s what keeps me going. Still stampeding forward, I struggle to breathe. “What do you want with me?” I rasp in between breaths. I don’t know why I bother asking. I know they can’t speak.

The spirits are gaining on me. They float faster than I can run. Glimpsing over my shoulder I see the first one only feet away from me, so I push myself harder. I make myself run faster. But my body is wearing down. I need to catch my breath or I’m going to pass out. My heart thunders in my chest. My joints ache. I’m starting to topple over. I’m the
Leaning Tower of Pisa,
but I catch myself before I crash and crumble over some village in Italy.