The other sailors and I had finally had a chance to breath, the stress of the Syrens far behind us. The weather was nice and I had settled into the mind numbing job of rowing the ship.

All of a sudden a roaring sound tore through the silence like the sound of a thousand battle cries. Everyone panicked dropping their oars and standing up quickly. The rational part of my mind was screaming What are you doing? Never leave your post! With no one manning the oars the ship would spin out of control! But all rationality was lost in my panic. How many times had the haggard sailors home form many years at sea missing a limb here or there or chunk of skin from their face their face; warned us of this sound. "Charybdis," they had said "daughter of Poseidon and Gaia, princess of the sea, a dangerous monster never to be crossed."

I swarmed towards the back of the ship with the other men fear end adrenalin pumping through my veins making it hard to think. Suddenly Odysseus came forward his loud voice booming words of encouragement. I suddenly grasped on to reality and headed back to my post starting to row throwing every fiber of my being in to getting away from the giant whirlpool that we were heading into.

In the back of my head I noticed Odysseus dressed in his battle armor two spears in hand standing warily on the deck looking around the fog that seemed to be closing in around us. He knows something I thought mildly contemplating yelling out and asking him what ailed him. I then thought of Ophelia she would have said laughing her beautiful bell laugh "you over think things way to much! Give the man a break! He just escaped the Syrins and Charybdis! Give him a moment to process things and calm down!"

I sighed heavily and continued my rowing. Suddenly six gruesome heads came down over us from the mist each one scooping a man in it's head.

"It's the monster Charybdis!" I yelled joining a chorus of screams.

The men that the monster scooped up were six of the best most quick witted men in our lot and their loss would impact us more that three times the amount of the lesser ones. Their bodies wriggled as their heads were held inside the monster and they screamed their last words "Odysseus! Odysseus!"

He knew. I thought my body suddenly taken over with my rage. A dark red film started to cover my eyes and I unknowingly circled my hands into strong fists overcome with the desire to hit something.

I'm writing this journal a few days after the events had happened. Now that I have calmed down I had realized that if Odysseus had warned about Sylla that we would have had reacted the same as when we found out about Charybdis and panicked. As much as I hate to admit it Odysseus acted in bravery by not telling us anything and going out on the deck, spear in hand to kill the monster.