Fates, Furies and Freckles(Watty Awards 2013)

εικοστό πρώτο

                                                               {Present Day}

                                                               Point of View:

                                       {{Dani (The normal human freckled teenage girl)}}

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I watch as Aaron's face turns seven shades paler. My hands start to shake involuntarily. "What does that...mean....exactly?"

He bites his bottom lip, and it begins to turn blue right in front of my eyes. "Each level of Hades holds cells for different prisoners. Level One is the the level for the prisoners who committed the least awful crimes. The levels get worse the worse your crimes are. So Level Ten is the worst level for the worst crimes."

His breathing becomes shallow and I begin to panic simply because he's panicking. I don't know what any of this means, and I don't know why I should be scared. But he is, so I am as a result. I twist my fingers together.

"So, how do we get out?"

He cracks his knuckles, "Someone will have to unlock the door from the other side."

I run my fingers over the seams of the door carefully, feeling the cold metal under my fingertips. "When will someone discover we're missing?"

He shrugs, "I dunno. I heard one time someone got stuck in a cell for a week. It's the dangers that come with the job, and with visiting anyone here. The thing is, they take such precautions to keep people in here, that the people who accidentally get stuck are just casualities. They have to keep people from escaping, and they'll go to all measures to do that."

Okay, so I might be stuck in this room for another week. Awesome. It's now that I take the time to look around the room really and truly for the first time. It's white. Just white. There are notches in the walls that are black and are about seven centimeters apart from each other.

It's just a white box. That's it. A white box.

"So, what's the punishment for down here?" I ask softly. It just looks like a normal room. I don't understand how anything could happen in here.

He sits down across from me and puts his head in his hands. "I don't know exactly. But nothing good."

I sit down across from him, and pull off my big boots. If I'm going to be in here for a week, these are coming off.

"These cells are designed to inflict pain and suffering upon immortals, so even though we can't die, we can suffer a great deal of pain. If you've ever heard of Prometheus, he had his liver ripped out by a bird and eaten every day. Since he was immortal, it would grow back over night. We can't die unless we're stripped of our immortality. So Hades was designed to do things to hurt us as much as they could."

He says this impassively, as he searches the room with his eyes.

Meanwhile my heart has sped up. My mouth has gone dry. My stomach is coiling and uncoiling.

"So," I swallow thickly, my head spinning, "So, what would happen if a human, and not an immortal were trapped in here?"

He shrugs, "I dunno."

1 beat.

2.

Then, his head turns to mine and his eyes widen in terror, "Oh no."