Page 54 of His in the Dark

The terrors that plague me in my sleeping hours are only worsening.

It is my duty to petition Hekate. To pray with everything I have. The spell must be cast with the plea in my heart.

Wiping my eyes with the small cloth I lay it down and place a key on where the tears have soaked through. As I smooth it out, my hands tremble. I gather 9 black candles for protection and place them in a circle around me. Evenly and with a single match I light them all.

“Hekate,” I pray, ”we beg for your intercession. I beg for you to find Persephone. Please. Her loss is my pain.”

My voice shakes with the prayer and I bow my body in respect as I continue.

“Demeter searched for nine days. Her mother and the Goddess of Harvest and Fertility. She weeps with sorrow. Her father, Zeus, the God of Thunder and Sky seeks for union but knows not where to light for the truth of where she lies. Please, I beg you. I beg you please. Goddess of Night and Mother to all, I cry out to you.

“Find Persephone in the crossroads where she has been lost,” I pray, casting the spell with as much power as I can summon. I cast it with the heart of a mother who has lost her child. Who would do anything to bring that child home. She will always be Demeter’s daughter and her agony is felt in the desperate nights. Tears flow and my nose runs as my body rocks, needing the comfort of Hekate.

As I whisper, “please,” my warm breath on the cold paved floor beneath me, the screams from the courts are heard.

Demeter’s cries of agony and the threats she gives to Zeus. “If I must suffer, they will all suffer!”

The skies brighten with flash of lightning followed by a thunder that trembles the ground. I close my eyes, fear and rage echoing through me.

“I will let them all die!”

“You mustn’t upset the balance! You will destroy everything!” Zeus’s voice booms as the sky cracks again. My body tenses as I cry praying they do not know I still dwell where Persephone once laid.

“If I must be destroyed, so be it!” Demeter shrieks and I don’t dare raise my head to peer out from the window. I don’t dare to look.

Demeter screams at Zeus todo something.Tofind Persephone.She has withered all the plants that thrived on Olympus. Yesterday, she said she would go to the Earthly realm. She said she’d take away all warmth and life if no one brought forth her daughter. She rages and in her rage, suffering spreads. The crops are all dead because of her anger, and she shows no signs of relenting.

“Find hernow,” Demeter screams, her voice shaking the walls. She breaks down in tears, her sorrow felt by every God and witness I’m sure of it. The tears puddle on the ground beneath me and soak into my cheek.

“Hekate,” I pray. “We beg for you to find her. Please,” I whisper and at that moment, Demeter wails and every candle around me goes out, leaving me in darkness.

“Mother?” I whisper.

HADES

Idon’t acknowledge Minox when he appears at my side. Although his dark shadow and presence are felt, he isn’t needed. Minox knows better than to interrupt me when I’m involved in a task such as this.

The pleading and scarred man bound to the X cross is my task of the moment, and I’m heavily involved. My choice; I needed time to think. I need a physical release as well. I’ve never cared for touch before her.

Persephone has changed me, and I struggle with my own impulse and desires.

Now, she consumes my mind so wholly that fucking her would only serve to distract me from the things I have seen and the consequences those things will undoubtedly have.

I bring the whip in my hand down on the man’s flesh in five more measured strokes. He screams and pleads but so did those in the Earth realm. And he did not heed the warning. He did not give mercy. Each stroke is duly earned from the soul before me. As above, so below. The pain he brought to others is to be given back to him now.

The righteous justice and balance given is a balm to my soul although it doesn’t ease the burden of my thoughts for my queen.

Minox waits.

He is a patient companion, but even his patience is not endless.

“Zeus knows,” he says, between strokes.

My muscle tense as a chill runs down my spine.

I deliver one last blow—the man bound to the X screams, his voice ragged and on the verge of giving out—then hand the whip off to the man at myotherside. He has waited, stoic and silent, for even longer than Minox, and is ready to accept the whip. He does not waste a moment in taking my place. The whip cracks across the man’s flesh. Another scream.

Although the man delivering the blows silently weeps. He is next. He so willfully hurt others. Now he will do so again with the vision of himself taking the blows. Then he will receive the pain all over again. There is no heaven in this arena. It is only hell for all who enter this place.

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