Last Daughter of the Gods - Finale

As my Auntie warned, the Soul Eater was a problem. After Mother helped Father escape the only living thing remaining in My hall was me. And in full-blown Flesh Witch mode, she was seriously hungry. But even a one-trick pony like me could take care of a bloated brute like her.

I chanted - “Wishing well, oh wishing well, open Tartarus for this gift I impart, a monster to cage that hasn't a heart.”

She dropped like a stone, blubbering and howling till her voice no longer carried to the well's opening. I'll leave her in Tartarus for now or maybe forever. I haven't made up my mind.

Auntie hasn't shown any interest in taking her back, that's for sure.

You're probably wondering about Daddy. It's true his escape was not a part of my plan. But the Fates love irony even more than English professors. He was arrested and charged almost immediately following his departure for the murder of Michael Constantinos. Turns out that outside of Hell, Hades has no power at all.

Mother was taken in as well, but since she was in Greece at the time of Michael's abduction and slaying, she was released shortly afterward. Now she can spend the entire year in her beloved homeland rather than a mere six months. Mother has always landed on her feet.

I'm still working with lawyers on a new trust document to manage My business venture, Hell Inc, but have not fully decided what sort of wares to peddle. Pretty sure it will be ghost themed, though.

But that's just a side gig.

Like Death, I am a child of darkness and always will be. Wearing this crown and sitting on My throne however magnanimous I want to be will never change that.

Some will believe me kindly and pray to me as they lie sleepless in their beds. But those who one day see me flash like a misbegotten likeness in their mirror, will believe, even if only for a moment, in demons clothed in angel raiment. All that was sane and rational the moment before their peripherals catch that unfortunate glimpse will succumb to childish terrors and memories of creatures hiding beneath their beds.

Resist me if you like, hide in logic and science, pretend that nothing in this world exists that cannot be explained. Play your music loud or turn the TV volume as high as it will go, surrender yourself to noise, sleep with your lights on low. There is no more logic in hiding from the darkness within your own hearts than when you hid your head as a child under the bed covers and believed that made you safe.

You may believe that by setting goals and working harder than the next guy that you can control your own destiny. But each choice you make forms a pathway in time whose end cannot be known nor can the steps taken upon it be retraced. You can dodge and weave like a rabbit running from a fox, but the enemies that you should fear are the ones you will not see approach you until it is already too late.

The man who slumps in his chair after his heart stops, does not wonder what actions he might have taken or avoided to evade the moment his flesh failed and felled him.

The choices that led him to an early death may have numbered in the thousands. Or his choices may not have mattered at all. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be. Death will cut one man down in the pride and power of youth, and another in the senility of old age.

Those who perceive me in their dreams or in unguarded moments while staring a little too hard at their reflection in the mirror, see only my shadow self.

In the moment of death, when the final memories from your life flickers before your mind's eye, you will awaken to my true likeness and face my cold and steady gaze.

Unlike my Father, I will not torment those of you who kneel trembling before My throne. I will judge the worthiness or worthlessness of your lives. Those of you who treat your human and animal sisters and brothers with cruelty and contempt, I will consign to the second death. The rest will know peace and kindness in the same measure they meted them out in life, for that is just.

Now that David and I are reunited we can join one another in the only place that a ghost and a Goddess can. In the dreams of others.

So, if some night as you sleep you encounter a woman weeping for joy in the arms of her handsome lover, her naked body white from her head to the soles of her feet, goat horns curling out of her bright hair, do not be afraid.

There are far worse things I can do while you sleep.