My Ebony Dove (Nico Di Angelo)

Ch 4: Don't Piss Off Hypnos

Triggering and sensitive topics ahead

Ryan's pov:

Just a word of the wise to all future demigods, do not piss off Hypnos. I repeat, Do Not Piss Off Hypnos. If you piss him off you will be mentally scarred for life and bad things will happen. I didn't even know that I pissed him off until it was too late for me to be saved. I didn't even know who he was.

I don't think I ever want to sleep again because of that.

I started out in a white room. It was completely white and I was being restrained by a straight jacket. That too was white. Suddenly the scene changed and I was running down a white hallway being chased by something.

My heart pounded in my chest as I ran for my life from the creature I couldn't see. The dream reminded me of the teacher chasing me. I ran faster after that.

As I ran faster, scenes on the walls caught my eye. They looked like crude chalk drawings but they came to life in front of my eyes.

It was my birthday. My fifteenth one actually and it was probably one of my worst or hardest memories.

I was sitting on the couch with my Dad when I decided to tell him something that I now regret telling him. I tapped him on the shoulder and when I steeled up my courage, I told him that I was gay.

It's needless to say that it didn't go over too well.

He was an insane Catholic and by insane I mean a zealot. The first thing he did was swear at me. I don't want to remember the horrible things that he called me but I can't forget them.

The worst thing he said had to be "You fucking Fag, you aren't my son and as far as you're concerned you no longer have a father!"

The second thing that he did was grab my jaw and throw me against our bookshelf. When I was rolling in pain, he decided to kick me and berate me when I couldn't fight.

He stopped eventually but I couldn't move and I couldn't fight back when he was done. I just lay on the floor and cried, blood and snot streaming from my nose and tears falling from my eyes.

I tore myself away from that mural and continued to run down that endless hallway until another mural caught my eye.

It was the morning after my birthday. I got up that morning with a black eye and numerous bruises and other injuries but ignored them. I'm sure he didn't mean to do that. It was probably just shock after all.

I was wrong. I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I walked into his room that morning because he hadn't shown up to work and his boss had called me to see if I knew where he was. When I opened that damn door, I sure as hell knew where he was.

I opened his bedroom door and I screamed in horror. Blood and bits of his body stained the white walls of his bedroom, a rusted bloody red. His dead body lay crumpled in a heap on the ground. I tentatively approached his body and I saw that he had cut his wrists and that he had also shot himself in the temple with his .45 caliber revolver that lay discarded on the floor beside him. I screamed again and fell against the wall, shaking my head in denial.

He hated me but he couldn't be dead he just couldn't be.

I saw a sheet of bloody paper on the carpet so I picked it up. I wasn't prepared for what was written on it. It didn't surprise me but it cut deeper then any knife ever could.

Dear Ryan,

Since you have been reading this, you must have now found my body which is good for you and great for me.

I wouldn't have killed myself if you hadn't been a fag. But you just couldn't be normal like everyone else. You just had to love men.

It makes me sick to my stomach to look at you or to even be near you. I'm glad that I succeeded so I don't have to deal with you sinful ways and your perversion of the natural world that god gave us.

So goodbye forever and I'll see you in hell.

Dad

I remember dropping the letter and crying. He was a hateful bigot but he was still my father and I still loved him. It was my fault that he was dead. It was all my fault.

I tore away from the mural and reached the end of the hallway when the thing chasing me suddenly grabbed my shoulders and threw me to the floor.

I stared up at the figure and it was me. I was the one chasing me.

"You're a disappointment! You're a fucking Homosexual! You're going to die you worthless piece of human trash! You useless and pathetic waste of space!" I screamed down to myself.

I shielded my eyes and I began to deny it. I wasn't a disappointment and I wasn't a useless pathetic piece of human trash.

"I'm not useless and I'm not a disappointment!" I screamed to the figure of myself towering above me.

I watched in fascination horror as the figure morphed into that of my father. Half of his skull had been caved in and I could see his brain slowly leaking out of his eye socket.

"You did this to me son!" He screamed at me. "You and your unnatural perversion killed me. Your love of man is wrong and it killed me. If you were normal I couldn't have died but you couldn't be normal. You just had to be different!" He berated me further until he withdrew a large steel blade from his pocket.

I tried to scramble away but before I could move very far, he stabbed into my chest with the knife. I screamed in pain as the blood spread like wildfire across my shirt.

I woke up in the infirmary with a scream of pain and alarm. I looked down at my shirt and it was soaked with blood and a large gash where the knife had struck my chest remained.

I briefly turned to look at Nico beside me before I passed out from pain and shock.