Hades

By Cheshirekat

No information available at this time. Author will provide once available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669819431

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Copyright © 2022 by Cheshirekat.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/05/2022

Xlibris

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Contents

In Language

Desert Phantoms

Beautiful Ends

Of Mythos

Currency

The Revelry

Koræ

Chthonic Evolution

Underworld Influence

Questionable Gestures

Homecoming

Illnesses of Man

Brother of the Sea

River of Traitors

Unique Mintage

Factions of Reality

Moonlighting

Ripe for the Taking

Encoded Information

Eye of the Storm

Hope

Emergent Form

Turning Seasons

Helm of Darkness

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The Beginning of Winter

…for anyone who has known the madness

of what it is

to love a woman…

In Language

W hen put to language, I think of the words ‘endless’ and ‘infinite’. Like a star-strewn sky that keeps its secrets.

I think of the words ‘beauty’ and ‘power’. As the musculature of animals rippling across their bodies as they move.

I think of the words ‘grace’ and ‘savagery’. Like the spread feathers of a falcon as it rises.

After so many years, this ball circling an even larger ball caught in the dance of time. Suspended in another dimension. Broken into psychological units, characterized by patterns, seasons, minutes, seconds, moment to moment. Deep in time the nerves of the earth, the roots of great trees connect to the soil in a fractal of mycelia. The individual molecules processed at a rate as fast as sound, becoming part of some greater living whole. Each individual made up of smaller physical units. Selfishly out for its own, muscling for rank in a tangle of other lives.

And yet, I feel her like the seduction of the trillium in the depth of the woods. The lust for some tropical shore. Elusive and lovely, in the faint smell of the desert night. As all of this has formed. As we are formed of the same universe that molds our shape through time.

Bearing witness to all of eternity, I was there at its beginning and I will foreseeably, be there at its end. As space was torn from time in a way that they could not be joined again, death is separate from life in a manner that is hard to quantify.

Once they have transitioned unto me they are the memories of the things that they recorded and made. The transition from present to past is so profound we change tense in language for their arrival to Hades. The living world modifies its view into an otherness that accommodates their now unchanging state. Where others remain as a permanent fixture like echoes to their former lives. To all others they have been absolved of existence and to me they have only just awoken. Dissolving as they do until the last iteration of their influence leaves the universe.

When it is gone another forgettable memory of a short and fevered existence sheds from the underworld. As a shade drifting into absolution to become some intangible facet contributing to the miracle of the universe. Until then they spend an amount of time decaying as a shade, outlasting their legacy in a place where time has no meaning. As if it is some semblance of equality.

Like waking from or falling asleep into some articulate dream, this persistent illusion will come to pass. Their legacies rise and fall like dunes of an expansive desert. Where rare oases might exist beneath an endless sky against an endless earth into a particular horizon. The foreverness of Hades spreads outward in every sense. In the same way that the observer is always the center of the universe.

Imagine an hourglass with stars for grains, the celestial bodies pour out at an even rate into oblivion as they spool around a quantum entity that cannot even be understood when looked upon. Time slips away in this predictable and obvious way, devoid of events to shape its meaning it remains impossibly intangible and still commands a kind of urgency. As if a critical aspect of the universe juxtaposed against space made real through imagination. To what merit does this imagination bear? To a mortal life, what meaning do they hold in their in their ephemeral moment of being?

Like other things, this is an illusion created by a lack of understanding with ones place in time. Similar to the way that gravity is not a thing, it is the effect of a thing. As if putting the movement of the trees to language without knowing the word for wind.

What is to be made of their biological forms? On a planet where enslavement is some reality of their existence. When compared to other forms how are these in any context unique? Compared to the other things of the underworld their design is almost minimalist in its approach. Still, there remains a beauty to the human experience.

There is something affirming in the temerity of the living and I admire it greatly. The act of delving the things that they don’t know, digging into the depths of places that they have not yet been. I admire this humanity. Their will to try. Their foolish desire to get further into the obscurity of the universe as they themselves are the manifestations of that universe in search of sensation integrated into human form. Beyond the darkness of some kind of intangible æther their minds flourish in dimensions they have not yet fully come to grasp. So often they cannot fathom how they are in it and of it. As children playing out their time without getting handle on their true design for eons. Human lives are but a fevered dance as they try to frame time with experiences. Ignorant or unwilling to awaken to their place.

For too long I have shied away from the precipice of this moment, hesitant to frame the meaning with words and actions. It is time to rise to the challenge of existence and express the nature of life and death.

As though we have been circling a singularity and never truly crossing the event horizon.

It is time to put it to language.

Desert Phantoms

I n the distance I hear the thunder. The setting sun across the desert backlighting anvil clouds. They fluoresce beneath their textured surface like bioluminescent organisms. Floating silently across the landscape like enormous neurons sending electrical impulses between the heavens and the earth. I can feel it in an uncharacteristic moisture, as if the sky yearns to connect to the soil. The electricity filling the air with stillness in this dreamy sensation where no mind is ever truly separated from any other, especially not Persephone from me.

As I look across the landscape it feels familiar as a dream where I have lived this moment before and I wonder on the last time I have been here. Realizing it is merely the presence of ourselves that gives our time meaning, where we interpret that meaning endlessly to our own ends.

My phone rings. On the other end it is Lachesis. Hades. It’s time. I’ve already sent you the address.

But… I’m stalling… I groan.

"Oh come on—

You don’t even have to hit up Hermes or get on a plane for this one…"

In the background the thunderstorm crawls across a brilliant pink sky that is starting to fade into darkness. Bats begin to take to the air. Their disorienting flight skittering them all over the place. On my phone I can hear the yammering of Lachesis explain something about the company car. How they rarely ask me to come in… to maintain a certain balance … these type of situations generate a lot much needed resources for the needs and maintenance of the underworld… But the sunset in the distance, as the thunderheads roll over the desert—

This moment is almost perfect.

Almost.

Almost like she’s here with me. Stalling from her other engagements. Sending messages of her electrified moisture the size of mountains floating like silent sweet nothings across the desert.

…are you even there? …Just do this Hades, we’ll leave you alone for a month!

Alright Case— Got it. I say and hang up cutting her off somewhat.

I close my eyes and imagine the feel of her hair running through my fingers like silky water. Listening to the voice of my queen as soft thunder in the distance. The smell of colitas permeates the stillness of the storm as the interesting supersonic noises of bats shriek unidentifiably past me.

A parking lot on all sides framed in dust and distant mountains. I sigh and crack all the knuckles in my fingers, and then my wrists, and then my elbows and shoulders.

I check the address I’ve been given and it seems correct. Who builds an office in the desert? Honestly, what takes refuge in an office? I would’ve retired to the depths of the forest but I am biased. I find it somewhat alarming how often restless souls seem to take up residence in seemingly obscure places but they are not all there. Literally and figuratively these things have lost touch with reality, what’s worse is how often they don’t realize it, they try to persist beyond their usefulness and unknowingly become a part of the problem.

There is a keycard with the name of the building on it and petty cash in an envelope. I imagine this is like lunch money from Atropos or something, some kind of bargaining chip in her rationale.

The keycard opens the door. Once I’m inside the building I can feel them immediately. Like the smell of stationary and tedious meetings I feel the wraiths that have come to occupy this space. There are more than I thought there would be. I suddenly realize how outnumbered I am and feel their trepidation as a kind of tension in the space between life and death.

Down the hall a door bursts open and then slams shut. A stack of papers violently bursts into a shower of documents.

An office building, seriously? Is this what you came to do? Couldn’t get away from the nine-to-five?

I almost want to laugh.

There is a white noise feedback that sounds like shrieking on low volume, then a cold blast of air rushes by me tearing posters off the wall as it travels down the hallway.

I sense unsettled energy filled with some kind of unguided rage. Behind me a cold permeation of the air emanates. Inharmonic hissing reverberates as I turn to face this surface-dwelling shade that rises taller and taller.

You’re not supposed to be here. I tell this presence. Time to go.

The figure grows larger and larger until the fluorescent lights in the hallway burst in sparks and the room goes dark. The cold grip of some invisible claw snags at me. Reactively, my mind penetrates this entity; formerly left on the side of the road after a car accident. Sheared from life faster than it realized. If I delve deeper I could probably figure out its whole story. How it got here, why it took up residence in this office, what its life was like— honestly, I don’t give a shit. Goosebumps from a cold grip cover my arm as I stand there giving it ample time to do its best, be as scary as possible.

And then I’m over it—

With a pulse my mind sends this entity reeling back through a closed door. Glass fractures as it shakes in the doorframe interacting with the physical plane. Computer screens flash on displaying static feedback in an obnoxious cacophony. Behind me a door bursts open and then slams shut, papers fly into my face. In the darkness my mind probes out to realize there’s others. I am surrounded by a bunch of angry weak things that refuse to accept that their time has passed. The way that they form little tribes like this has always confused me. Which makes me consider briefly that not all of them may be human.

There is another aspect to being Hades that haunts this world. As the rivers channel the dead they bring about the falling shades of other worlds as they coalesce upon the nexus of the underworld. Rivers connecting to other rivers that pour down. As if these ghosts are some kind of river pirates making a stand, refusing to make it out to sea where they will surely be swallowed up by some greater leviathan. By this metric I do feel a sort of empathy for them, aggregated as they have at an office building out in the desert. These lost souls at some point not so different from their living counterparts.

How the hell did this happen to you?

White noise and static screeching brings me back. A computer monitor near me erupts into a flashes of light and static interference. Almost making out coded words through the flickering screens.

Okay, we’re done here. I say plainly, as if anything could actually hear me. I feel an entity behind me, the malice for which it is experiencing this moment is respectably impressive but overall, pathetic.

I extend my hand into the air in a gentle gesture. Feeling the fields of the underworld coil around me I sense the entities behind the walls and in the electronics. In this moment I think of a morel in the undergrowth of the forest floor. My hand yearning upward in the dark office as a mushroom emerging through the layers of sediment like forgotten time piled upon itself. As a god’s power penetrating the fabric of another reality, touching fields of dimension beyond the veil. Time slowing ever-so-slightly. I feel these wraiths close around me. Like spores releasing in a soft wind the underworld wafts off of me in silence. I close my eyes, somewhat indulging in the moment. Lights flicker, doors slam shut, papers fly everywhere and I am caught in the midst of this torrent where I feel almost insulted by the lack of showing these restless whatevers have put up. And then I cast this gesture down with the force of innumerable invisible mycelia.

We awaken upon the shores of the Phlegethon. Embers peel from the landscape in torrents. The carapaces of extraterrestrial titans blister against a relentless furnace that seeks to bastardize mercy. Fumes of steaming chemicals and burning rock fill the air as my rage for their disrespect ignites around me in a firestorm. Tornadoes of flame absolving these useless souls in a burning torment. Violence boils in every direction for as far as any mortal form could withstand it.

How dare you. I whisper as we scape-shift to the underworld. The mere presence of the Phlegethon causes their souls to erupt in fire. They scream out their white noise reverberation sounds and evaporate into it as they are baptized in flames of Hades. Incinerated under their own lack of deserving and deleted from the fabric of the universe entirely, like it is some metric of how insignificant they truly were. How insolent this petty showing of children throwing a tantrum. Fearful of the unknown, as a perpetuation of fear upon the surface, unable to realize that it bore no meaning beyond an obscure paranormal experience for mortals. Their screams echoing through the caverns down to the burning shores lasting longer then their ethereal forms possibly could. Where I cannot help but know that they were so much more influential alive and are now utterly devoid of efficacy. How weak they are without realizing it.

It’s almost funny.

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Once I get back on the surface my phone rings and I hear a familiar and gentle voice, Hey Dee how are you doing?

"I’m alright, just getting done with… another day at the