Hell Was Real

~

Hell is real.

Nico saw the words for the first time on an old billboard rising up from the dead grass and the melting snow. He laughed. Hell wasn't real. He only knew of the Underworld.

Hell is real.

He read the words at an old library. The book showed paintings of demons torturing souls just as ruined as his own. He didn't falter his gaze. He still didn't believe.

Hell is real.

But it wasn't beneath their feet. No, the only thing he could call Hell lived inside him.

Hell is real. BELIEVE IT

It was the way he looked at Percy. It fueled his jealousy, fueled his anger. It was the way his heart clenched in on itself.

Hell is real.

He saw it in those who attended a funeral in a New Orleans graveyard. Their tear-filled eyes didn't hide it.

Hell is real, but it wasn't the gruesome sight he expected the casket to become. Once underground, it would only be pretty for a week.

They it'd begin to leak.

Hell is real.

He saw the way they blamed themselves. He saw the way their souls hurt.

Hell is real. He knew it to be true.

And it wasn't hot. No, it was cold. Freezing. His soul was shivering.

Hell continued to be real.

Hell was the cold jealousy he felt whenever he saw a couple walk by. Hell was the way his stomach churned and his heart broke. Hell was the nightmares. The way they broke him, shattered him. Pieces fell

onto the floor

of his soul

Hell is real. The sign had said it all. He should have listened.

Nico was sitting in the park when he witnessed another die. His soul was too compromised to feel much. He smiled.

At the face of death, he laughed.

Death wouldn't take him to Hell. No, it would free him from it.

Hell is real.

The sign tried to warn mortals of what was in them, not what was below them. Nobody listened. They never did. Please listen please please LISTEN

Nico grabbed a man and tried to shake it out of him. He accidentally strangled another. In the dead of night, he crept through a city and spoke to each soul he met. His shadows tried to cleanse them.

But even in a city of thousands, no one could be saved.

Hell is real. He screamed it. Hell is real. He knew it.

Hell. He was in hell. it was real oh god was it real it hurt and burned an icy burn and the pain was worse than anything oh god it hurt

Hell is real why didn't they listen why didn't they realize oh PLEASE LISTEN

Hell is real. Nico knew it to be true. As he watched Percy kiss Annabeth, he knew he would never escape it.

Damn, did it hurt. If only he had listened.

Hell is real. He sobbed the words at night and at day and at all hours because his soul could do nothing else oh god hell is real

hellhellhellhell

Hell was real, at one point in time. If only he remembered. But after hell had ended and the pain had become nothing more than an annoyance, he didn't feel much at all.

Nico was used to the cold. Hell was real, he wrote the words down. They didn't make sense. If Hell was pain, he wanted it back. He wanted it to be real again. Anything to escape the dark, numbing nothing.

Hell was real. He didn't tell a soul. They wouldn't believe him when he said that it died along with him.