Persephone’s Fall – Page 40
The nightmare arrives like a malfunctioning movie projector, flickering images behind my eyes that refuse to coalesce into anything coherent. Warbling sounds like choked screams. The first recognizeable image is Hades. The next is Zeus.
They both look so sad.
That rushing sound, waves of rain blown by the wind against glass windows. The sighs of old women, disappointed and disillusioned, tired of life. Ready to die. Where is Hades? Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me here like this.
Part of me, some academic part with thick horn-rimmed glasses, perched on a stool with a thin cigarette clenched between her fingers, trying to look intellectual, knows this is a dream. That snob bitch is laughing at me. But the rest of me, the real Persephone, is terrified. Wandering lost in the dark, hurt and alone, that image of sadness, of Hades and my father, burnt into the backs of my eyelids.
I didn’t know I was still able to be this scared. I’ve held my body out over three hundred feet of empty space, below me only cold concrete, and not felt one shred of fear. It’s not death that scares me. There’s no death in this dream. Only hollow winds and empty rooms, flickering lights that illuminate nothing except more blank space.
Hades and Zeus, looking so sad, only it’s not really sadness, it’s disgust. Behind their eyes, behind the tears, I see it in both of them, and this is the real nightmare. They don’t understand. How can I make them understand? They never will.
I wake up gasping, shivering, soaked with sweat and tears. For all that, I can’t even remember what the dream was about, if it was about anything at all. Only that final image remains. Hades and Zeus, looking down, anger disguised as sorrow. Disgust masquerading as grief.
It’s cold and dark in my room, in this empty apartment, on this empty floor. It’s cold and dark, and I’m so alone.
