Furious

Chapter Six

I kicked the mirror.

"This stupid guy is—" I grunted with the effort, "crazy. A lunatic with a—" I kicked the wall, "mythology fetish." Nada; the wall refused to open up for me the way it had for Hector. I tried everything I could think of: I kicked it repeatedly. I threw my shoulder against it with the full force of my body weight. Planting my feet I spread my arms and put on my best wizard voice, shouting "Abracadabra!" with as much confidence as I could muster. Then I screamed at it. I yelled "Open Sesame" to no avail. I even begged an inanimate object to open for me, bargained with it, promising to have it cleaned daily from that moment until forever.

Eventually, I gave up and threw a candlestick holder from the nearest table at the glass surface. That thing was heavier than it looked. I wasn't even surprised when the glass remained intact, no shatter or crack in sight, but it made me feel better to throw Hector's stuff.

I was stuck, trapped, destined to stay here forever. The room all of a sudden seemed smaller than it had before.

"Here", the Underworld if Hector was to be believed, was a warped fantasy straight out of Versailles. All I wanted to do was go home, apologize to Mom for fighting—I couldn't even remember why I'd been so angry—and never go out alone after dark again. We'd been fighting almost daily about my leaving for school; it was a constant part of our lives these days. How was I going to pay for it now that both the state and the school had denied my financial aid? Was I even planning on attending classes or just skipping all of my courses the way I did in high school? It ended in a stand-off as per usual, no answers or conclusions to be had; she retreated with her glass of wine to her bedroom and I snuck out the window. It didn't matter where my feet were taking me. I didn't care. Didn't care about my direction or the dark or my mother's voice, telling me I was better than this, whatever this was. We'd been having so many arguments lately that it was easier to just leave.

The sole motivator for my choice of college was the distance from home. Leaving, as was my plan for the fall, was so attractive. Leaving was easier than sticking around—leaving is what I did when Dad left and after Grandpa's funeral and every other terrible thing that ever happened. I let my feet carry me away from the sadness until it couldn't touch me anymore.

Tonight was no different.

And that's when the ground opened up in front of me.

All in a Tuesday's work, right? Or maybe by now it was Wednesday.

I leaned my back against the wall, only inches from the frame of the portal mirror, and slid down until I hit the floor. I gave up, completely. My life was a good run, eighteen years and some change; I never skinny dipped or drove a convertible or made a drunken mistake with a frat guy. I never would. The future was desolate. From where I sat there was no future. This was where the train stops, good-bye world.

A foot appeared next to my elbow, followed by a knee and, after a second, a whole body. If I wasn't crazy before, I definitely am now. I am completely out of my mind.

The foot belonged to an older gentleman dressed in a black button-down shirt and jeans. He looked down at me with squinty eyes and marshmallow-white skin. My new captor sported extra weight around the edges, but at first glance was otherwise harmless. I pictured him in a bright red suit and white fluffy trim, a bulging sack of gifts over his shoulder.

"Evening. Hades said you might be hungry, seeing as you didn't eat with him."

The older man looked and sounded utterly bored. But then he smiled down at me and my spine stiffened. Forget about harmless, forget about red suits and jolly laughter: his smile skipped right over frightening and dove headfirst into dangerous. He looked about as trustworthy as Hector, maybe less.

Why did they want to feed me so badly?

"I'm not hungry. And I don't need a babysitter." Let Hector deal with his irate "guest" himself. "How did you get through the mirror? I've been trying to make it open forever." I stood and needlessly bushed myself off.

"Well, for one, I have a key. Or rather I am a key." He wiggled his fingers at me. I frowned, discontent with his vague wave. My new companion walked with familiarity across the room and sat on the sofa where he could see me. "But I had to wait for you to stop pounding on this side of the portal. I did not wish to come through for fear of your mighty fist in my face."

"I'm so glad this is entertaining for you, but I've had enough fun. Now, if you could be so kind as to transform yourself into that key you mentioned," my fingers mimicked his wiggle right back at him, "I can be on my merry way. That way I'll save you the trouble of having to force feed me," I promised him.

The unblinking stare on his Evil Santa face made my skin crawl. My resolve broke, along with my bravado and my will to survive. "Fine! Just kill me already, damn it! Don't drag it out."

"Don't give up yet! I have two hundred that you'll last another week, if I lose to that minotaur again I'll never hear the end of it. Even the others lasted much longer and they weren't nearly as promising as you." Leaning forward, Santa's doppelganger place his elbows on his knees and studied me. As if staring intently would help him figure me out. "First things first, you are his last hope Obi-Wan Kenobi, so nobody will be eating you. Things are getting a little desperate but the order was given: hands off. And I might be a lamia but you're too old for my taste. You're cute, but my palate prefers the supple flavor that only a child can provide. I prefer the fat, dark-skinned ones, but I'm not picky."

He licked his lips. His hair was silver with age and his skin was paper-white; the man looked too old to have the taste of children in his teeth. It was my Christmas nightmare turned inside-out: fearing that the mall Santa was a monster underneath his clothes, brimming with hissing cockroaches and an insatiable appetite for the wishes whispered in his ear by children plopped in his lap. I wouldn't have put it passed this guy to hide bugs under his pressed black shirt.

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards on the word 'picky'. I took a step backwards. There needed to be a lot more space between us. "Oh my God, what are you? You eat children—what kind of psycho does that?"

"Not psycho; lamia, pay attention. You're familiar with the vampire mythology? Dumbed down, it's sort of like that. So not psycho—just undead. I take after my mother in that way. My particular pallet is reserved for children, though after about six years they go a little stale. That's why I'm here in Hades and you're safe with me. Safe enough, anyway. It's Cronus you'd have to be worried about but you're not likely to run into him."

Was that supposed to make me feel better? Instinctively stepping backwards again, my back now pressed against the mirror, I braced myself against the all-too-familiar panic attack. Noise continued to spill from the lamia's mouth but I hardly heard them.

Hugging myself tight, I fought to breathe. Tendrils of darkness slid across the room in my peripheral, swallowing the art on the walls without a care. Ice crawled into my flesh as the darkness overcame me and I hugged myself tighter. The shadows crept slowly into my field of vision, blinding me, making my eyes water through the blackness. My cries caught in my chest, and I choked—on fear, on desperation, on darkness.

"Cut that out, you haven't even heard the scariest part." I fought to breathe. What he had to say could wait, would have to wait. The creature swore loudly. "Hey! Pay attention, Autumn; you're not even listening to me. You are better than this."

The words were ignored; all my cells were focused on getting enough air into my lungs not to pass out. Stunted bursts of oxygen, my finger nails biting into the flesh on the backs of my arms keeping me in the present.

I didn't register the creature's grumbling noises, though I'm sure he had a few choice words on my behalf that would have made the real Santa blush. A sweet scent jarred me from my short breaths and I opened my eyes to see that the room still stood, the shadows had retreated.

With his hands outstretched towards my face and carefully unworried eyes, the child-eater held a bleeding fruit under my nose. Red juice dripped down his fingers onto the carpet from the unceremoniously sacrificed pomegranate cradled in his palms. I jerked backwards again but there was nowhere to go; my head slammed against the mirror and the world stopped.

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