Page 38 of His in the Dark

My instincts are to run. These rooms are not for me. They are for those who dwell in them. I dare to peek, although something in me holds me back, something frightened.

In one of the rooms, a man tilts his head back, letting out thick, guttural moans. Along the walls are blots of ink, they move and scatter as I attempt to see them. As if they don’t wish to be seen. Perhaps they’re only for him.

“What’s happening to him?” I ask, my curiosity feeling almost filthy.

“It’s a manner of psychology, an Inkblot treatment.” Hades answers, looking in dispassionately. “For torture of pleasure.”

“Torture of pleasure?” I question, so unsure of what I’ve just heard.

He laughs, a short, knowing sound. “Yes.” Clearing his throat, he adds, “these rooms are designed for the particular soul. For they are not welcome in the other realms and require special attention.”

He takes me through the threshold of another room, and a woman approaches. In a long burgundy gown, her blonde hair braided and swaying down her back. She is beautiful, like my sister Aphrodite, and comes close to caressing my face.

I lean into her touch, unthinking, but Hades’s hand on my arm pulls me back. The woman’s touch lingers on my skin even after she’s walked away.

The room changes around her. The colors on the walls and on the bed warm, making her skin warmer as well. I blink, and she’s tangled in the sheets with a man, their mouths open and searching. He turns her over and ruts into her, his forehead leaning against her shoulder. Every bit of exposed skin glistens with how hard they’re moving together.

My nipples harden as an immediate reaction. My lips part and my brow rises.

Eventually, she collapses onto the pillows and sleeps.

I blink, and there are two more men in the room with her. The beautiful woman opens her eyes and screams. I jerk backward, but Hades is there, and his presence steadies me enough that I keep watching. With my back to his front, I stare in shock.

One of the men leans down and covers her mouth. The other?—

I can’t see what he does, or I don’t want to see, but there is blood trickling down her skin when he straightens again.

The woman wrenches free, and the first man—the one who was there in the beginning—catches her in his arms. Comforts her.

None of it seems to be a comfort. There is blood on her lips, and she lets out another shrill scream. The other two men have not stopped touching her. They’re cutting her.Hurtingher.

“They wanted to play and scared you?” the first man murmurs. I do not know how I can hear him so clearly when he’s speaking into her ear.

“No,” she sobs. “I said no. He covered my mouth when I tried to scream again.”

In an instant, he viciously murders the two who harmed her. Ruthlessly, with a heavy stone in his hand, the crunch of their skulls and the screams almost muffled.

Shock keeps me still, but so does Hades grasp. Vengeance. Is this a room of vengeance?

Every time I blink, the image before me changes. It looks real, and close, as if I could reach out and touch her skin, just as she touched me. The first man leans down between the woman’s legs and pleasures her, sucking at her clit until she cries out from pleasure. Her lover. Unlike the other two.

She is comforted and loved by him so. Is this a room of heaven or hell?

The man between her legs lifts his head and gives her clit a final lave of his tongue. The woman throws her head back, sobbing, or coming. Maybe she is doing both.

He gets to his feet. “Kiss her for me, will you?” he tells another.

A fourth man materializes out of the shadows. He takes his place between the woman’s legs and continues licking her, but she doesn’t look at him.

She watches the first man, who walks calmly to the two men who had drawn so much blood.

He slaughters them. As if they were not already dead. Chokes the life out of them. One by one, they fall to the floor and lay still. My pulse is a hammer in my ears. I can hardly catch my breath. He brings them back to life, only to kill them once more.

My breathing picks up at the realization. All the while the woman is pleasured by another, watching her lover commit murder.

I notice, as if I’m coming awake for the first time, that Hades’s hand is on my shoulder.

“Is this heaven or hell?” I breathe the question and he laughs, low and pleased. “I love that you have to ask. I suppose it depends on who you are and what your soul is made of.”

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