Hell Flower

A/N: I've been wanting to write a story based on Greek Mythology for a while, so this be it! You might want to brush up on Persephone and Hades before reading it, though.

He waits for me on the mattress, smiling that wicked smile of his. Any trace of gentleness in his expression is poisoned by greed and want.

“Well?” he asks.

“I will not be your plaything,” I say. My fingers move on their own accord, out of my control. Unbuttoning my blouse and tugging down at my skirt, removing one article of clothing at a time until I lay bare.

“I will not be your wife,” I say, taking one step forward. My mind tells me to stop, but my feet move forward. I am drawn. I am chained. I am trapped.

“I will not love you,” I say, slipping into the mattress next to him. His weight rolls over me, hot – too hot – and crushes me.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and his voice whispers to me in the darkness.

“Welcome to Hell, Persephone.”

[Click "read more" to continue...]



--

I hurt, but I don’t cry.

--

I pick at my food, but can’t find the hunger to eat. He lifts a fork to his mouth, pauses, then frowns as he sees that I am starving myself. He leans forward.

“What do you not like about your plate, Persephone?” he drawls.

“Everything looks burnt,” I say, avoiding his gaze. “And dead.”

“Well,” he says, amused, “It would be difficult to cook my poultry while it is still alive.”

The Lord of the Underworld thinks he is funny.

And I refuse to humor him.

“It makes me sick,” I say, and shove it away.


Next meal, he prepares a leafy salad and fresh baked bread.
I don’t eat that either.
Even if it looks good.

--

“What do you want from me?” he asks one evening.
I draw the blankets over my body and slide over to the edge of the mattress. The farthest away I can get from him. But he comes close, putting his hand on my shoulder. Hot. Always hot. Lashing out like an open flame, my skin blistering under its touch.

“I can give you anything you want.”

What I don’t say is, “No you can’t.” Because he took that from me when he stole me away.

What I say is, “I want to return to Earth.” Because I know that will irritate him.

“Earth,” he says scathingly, almost disbelieving. “But not to Olympus? What entices you to Earth of all places?”

I stiffen, then rise from bed. “You can’t think I much like it here,” I say, choking over my words because I’m speaking faster than I can think. “I would have chosen anything over this place. Here, I’m a prisoner.”

I hope my words sting, but I only see that his eyebrows have disappeared into his hairline.

“Oh?” he asks. He reaches for my hand, traces circles on my palm with his thumb. “What a coincidence. I am too.”

I swallow. If I stay quiet, he will think I have been shamed into silence.

So I ask, “Why did you take me?”

He rises too, leaning forward without ever letting go of my hand. I twitch away, but he does not care. He hooks his finger under my chin, then forces me to face him. His eyes flash red.

“Because you were the most beautiful,” he says. “And I had to have you for my own.”

What I don’t say is, “I am not yours. I won’t ever be.”

But then he lets out a growl, and I realize that I have said it after all.

My mistake.

--

I wake in the morning alone on the mattress, except for a bouquet of flowers that lay by my feet.

--

“Where is the furnace?” I ask.

He licks his finger and turns a page of his book.

“Why?” His eyes dart up at me, intrigued. “Making dinner like a good wife should?”

I hold up the bouquet.

“I’m burning these.”

--

He whines as I drop the flowers into the flame, petal by petal.

“You don’t like them?”

I wonder if he is kidding.

“You seemed to like the Narcissus before, when I laid them out for you.”

I pluck another petal.

“They looked better on Earth,” I say. Before the ground below my feet cracked in half, and you pulled me down to Hell with you.

He puts his hand over mine to stop me from pulverizing the last flower.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

I snatch my hand away, and am about to say something like – if he really were sorry, then he would not have taken me away. He would have not wronged me so. He would not have done it in the first place.

But then I realize, isn’t that what all apologies are for?

I don’t bother to hide my disgust when I glare at him. Don’t touch me, I want to say. But they’re pointless words.

He blows out a sigh, then lets his hand fall to his side.

“I just thought you wanted a bit of greenery around here,” he says idly, like I hadn’t pushed him away. “That’s all.”

--

I put the flower in a vase and set it beside the bed.

“Perhaps I had a poor choice of words before,” I say into the dark. I had been feeling slightly guilty.

“I humbly accept your apology,” a voice from the mattress says gaily. “Now come here, slave.”

…Perhaps it was not guilt I had felt, after all.

--

I look to Olympus and say, “I am miserable.”
When nobody answers I ask, “Why am I miserable?”

A grumble from my left tells me to be quiet and go to sleep.

--

“Here,” he says, hastily thrusting a mirror into my hands. “An oracle. Now you can watch the stinking Earth all you want and stop being so miserable all the time.”

--

Well then.

--

He never fails to roll his eyes and scoff when he sees me with the mirror. It is when I am peering into the mirror that he desires my attention the most. What? Does he not want me to use his gift?

“Are you done yet?” he asks, bored.

I don’t reply, and stuffs his face into a pillow and groans.

--

I watch as a group of farmers rise from bed and get ready for the day. The same thing, the same cycle. Working in the fields, and sweltering in the heat. Tirelessly, endlessly. But it changes nothing.

The Earth stays brown.
The crops don’t grow.
The soil is dead.


But I don’t feel miserable when I watch them.
And that disgusts me.

--

“Mother is furious,” I warn him. “It is not wise to incur Demeter’s wrath.”

The Lord of the Underworld looks befuddled.

--

“If you don’t stop looking at that mirror this instant, I will kill everything and anything on that blasted Earth and drag it down to the pits of Tartarus. Just wait and… All right! All right! I won’t! Fine! Stop looking at me that way. Can’t take a bit of a joke? Gods!”


--

Demeter’s wrath has been incurred.

He is not happy.
He stares at the message in his hands.
Direct orders from Zeus that he cannot disobey.


I am to be freed.
And he can do nothing to stop me.

--

That doesn’t stop him from trying.

--

“I don’t even like pomegranates,” I say skeptically as he hands me the basket filled to the brim with plump red fruit. When I don’t take it, he forces it in my arms.

“Just take it,” he pleads.

The Lord of the Underworld does not plead.

“As a memory of me,” he says. “Please.”

The Lord of the Underworld does not say please.

So I take it.

--

The Earth is green again. Lively and vivid.
Spring has finally arrived,
And everything is as it should be.
Then I breathe again,
Because I haven’t been able to in a long time.

--

The first thing I do is dump the basket of pomegranates into the river.

As if I am falling for his tricks again.

--

I stay through Spring and Summer
And when Autumn nears,
I wither.
And the Earth withers with me.
Spring has lasted too long.
I have remained too long.
I burn the soil, I bring down drought.
I kill the harvest and steal the crops.

The humans suffer.
And I suffer too.

--

One day, his face appears to me through the mirror. It surprises me so much that I almost smash the mirror into a rock, but he his voice calls back to me.

“If you remain on Earth, your eternal Spring will destroy everything,” he warns.

I keep quiet.

“I don’t allow them to live,” he says. “But you don’t allow them to die.”

--

I find a patch of withering Narcissus flowers in a field.
They really are pretty.
Even when dying.


I was once pretty too.

--

“You will not let the soil die,” I say. “You will let it live until it is their proper time to go.”

“And in exchange?” he asks, though it seems like he already knows the answer. “In exchange, what do I get?”

I suck in a breath.

“Me.”

--

“Persephone, if you merely wanted to come back to me there was no need for such an elaborate…”

I interrupt. “But I have conditions.”

He waits for me to name them.

“I want my freedom too.”

--

The Earth breathes again.

And I return to Hell,
waiting for next Spring.

--

I scrape the side of my face with the knife.

I will not be lovely.
I will be broken,
and fragile,
and wicked.

“Stop that,” he scolds, taking the knife away from me. I flinch at his touch, hotter than I remember it to be. His face softens. He sighs. “Let’s find you some bandages…”

“You are cruel,” I accuse him. “You are kind to me, and that is why you are cruel.” I push him away. “I do not want your kindness.”

“You don’t mean that,” he says simply. “Because you chose me.”

What I don’t say is, “I chose you. But I did not choose for you.”

He tucks a pomegranate in my hands, then brings it to my lips.

“It’s time to bind our time together,” he says. “Are you ready for eternity?”

I bite into the pomegranate, and it bleeds out red.