After mom closes the door, I roll over and stare at my pastel green walls. My eyelids droop down, heavy. I am relaxed and calm, nestled comfortably between my warm blanket and fluffy pillows. An overwhelming sense of security fills me up and I drift away into dreamland. A place where anything and everything is possible.
Hades
Hades was convinced that Demeter wasn’t as smart as she made herself out to be. He stood across the street from her house, watching in amusement as she backed her station-wagon out of her driveway.
He paused for a moment, staring at the tailpipe of the old tin box, keeping his eyes on the smoke unfurling as the car got father and farther away from the house.
After the car was at least a hundred feet away, and turned a corner, Hades took that as an opportunity to visit Persephone. But before he did that…
He had other plans.
He traveled from room to room, admiring the country-home-like décor, but he had also turned every clock in the house back five minutes. He had only had until midnight to take his beloved and minutes were precious to someone with a limited time frame. And he could thank Zeus for that limited time frame. Just before Demeter and Persephone left Greece Zeus had figured out a way to block his efforts. He figured out a way to put up a shield of some sort that gave Hades only until the stroke of midnight on Persephone’s birthday to take her.
At first Hades was enraged by this. He figured without that time shield he would have had Persephone centuries ago, but now it was something he was used to. And he kept
telling himself that eventually, time shield or not, he would finally have her. He’d finally have his queen.
Standing in the kitchen, Hades glared at the wooden grandfather clock tucked in the far left corner of the room. Who knows? Hades thought. Maybe the extra five minutes would come in handy, no—he knew the extra minutes would come in handy.
After double-checking every clock in the house, Hades strolled into Persephone’s bedroom. Gleaming metal caught his eye from a watch on her nightstand. Hades swiped the watch; he palmed it and set the time back on it as well.
Afterwards, he crouched down next to Persephone’s bed, listening to her soft breathing and watching her, deep in her rem-cycle. He brushed his fingers against her soft skin and sighed. He’d never thought another person could such a powerful hold over him. Him—of all things living and dead.
What puzzled him the most was that she had never done anything to make him feel the way he did. He remembered a spark flickering inside of him the first time he ever saw her, but that was the extent of it. After that moment he told himself he had to have her and hadn’t given up on her since.
Rising to his feet, Hades closed his eyes. He needed to see her, not like this, not deep in her slumber. He wanted to see her in her element frolicking in a field filled with wild-flowers. A field filled with sunlight and warmth and the smell of the outdoors.
So while Persephone slept, he scooped her up and whisked her away. Not physically, but mentally to a place that he knew he could control—her dreams.
Persephone
I don’t know exactly how much time has passed, but I feel like there’s a pendulum inside of me, swinging, back and forth, back and forth. At any moment I’m going to chime. Maybe even cuckoo. Bright sunlight grazes my cheeks and warms me up like a kettle on a stove. My eyelids flutter and I shield my face with my arm as light shines into my eyes. The smell of grass and wildflowers tickles my nostrils and I feel the urge to inhale deeply. I love the way the enticing scent swirls around inside of me as I suck it into my lungs.
Then I sit up as long grass sways next to me and gently caresses my arms. I’m not in my bed. I’m not in my room. I am back in my dream from lunch, in the field at Enna. And I know I’ll see him again. I know I’ll see Hades.
Rising to my feet, I instinctively rush to a patch of wildflowers with the need to pick a bouquet. As I bend over, I feel him behind me, hovering. I feel him behind me, watching. I hop and pivot around, slamming my bare feet into the soft earth. “Reveal yourself!”
He doesn’t.
With my guard up I creep toward the edge of the field, eyes centered on the weeping willow, the tree he stood beneath the first time I saw him. “I know you’re here, Hades! There’s no point in playing these silly games! Show yourself!”
A gust of wind sweeps through my hair, blowing it into my face and tossing the long grass in various directions, but after the wind dissipates the entire field goes still. An eerie silence boxes me in and all the hairs on my arms rise up. Then I hear him hiss, “Come to me.”
I drop the bouquet in my hands and shout, “Stop this right now! I don’t like games!” Surveying the field, I center on the edge of the field as a puff of black smoke unfurls. The smoke expands and twists and contorts like choppy waves on a windy day. It’s him, I know it. He’s trying to toy with me. He’s a magician on stage performing his nightly show for a packed auditorium. Another rabbit out of the hat? Is that what you want? A smattering of applause erupts from his audience and he turns his back to them, reaching into a bottomless bag of tricks.
I start toward the black cloud. “I know what you’re doing!” I yell. He’s messing with my head, trying to fake me out and the black cloud of smoke is sucked into the air. It’s gone. Lost in an invisible vortex. I spin around. “Where are you?”
His hand grazes my shoulder, a cold feeling circulates through my veins, and then his warm breath gently caresses my earlobe. “I am everywhere,” he whispers. His voice is like the missing link, bottomless, empty, and full of mystery.
I spin around to face him, but there is no one behind me. He’s evaporated like a puddle after spending hours beneath the blazing sun. Or maybe he was never behind me in the first place. “If you’re trying to get me to like you I can promise you that toying with me isn’t going to work.”
Suddenly, his hot breath trails down my neck, bringing on goose bumps. “Are you sure?” He sounds amused.
I am positive. I have never been good with the element of surprise. “You will never have me,” I tell him. “It must be exhausting to spend five thousand years chasing a person you will never have.”
He laughs, musically. He’s a siren full of death and destruction, pulling me closer and closer. I’m hypnotized by his hypnotic hymn. I’m in a trance.
After his laughter dies down I snap out of my trance, narrow my eyes and stalk to the opposite end of the field. Then he materializes out of nowhere, only a few feet in front of me.