Patricia Maters was utterly dumbfounded. One minute, she was under water, her lungs burning, unable to reach the surface. The next, blackness. And now… where the hell was she?
When she looked up, she couldn't see the sky. All it was was a roof with stalactites that looked precariously close to breaking off and falling, spearing someone. There was evidence of previous accidents strewn around the place.
In the distance, Patty tried to make out the horizon, but all she saw was endless darkness, a faint lilac haze in the distance. The place went on forever.
A giant underground cavern, Patty decided.
The line of people crawled along sluggishly. The place was crowded. Chocker blockers full of people… but the longer she looked at them, the more transparent they became. Patty frowned and tried to concentrate on one young woman in a line that was moving at half the rate that Patty's line was.
Patty couldn't pinpoint what exactly was changing about the woman's appearance. She couldn't look fully at the woman. Before she knew it, the woman was just a transparent ghost of the woman she had been a second before.
Patty began to feel her stomach churn with butterflies. An old myth she had read in primary school, that hadn't seemed so important at the time, was resurfacing in the back of her mind. Something about… was it the Underwear? Or was that Underworld? She decided to go with the latter.
People who died made the journey on a boat that crossed the River Styx… It was all coming back to her. The man Charon who had asked for a coin. She had reached into her pocket and brought out her lucky charm without thinking. It was actually a five yen coin, Japanese currency. The coin was a thin gold circle with Japanese decorations engraved in the gold, and a small circular hole cut out of the middle, about a quarter of the size of her pinky nail.
Charon had inspected the Japanese coin for a moment, then shrugged and put in the breast pocket of his Italian suit. "Better 'n' nothin'," he'd muttered. Then she had been pushed into a futuristic elevator full of other people just as confused as her. Patty recalled the uncomfortable feeling of her ears popping as the elevator took them down, down, until it had morphed into a boat and they were sailing across a black river polluted with strange objects like golden stopwatches and broken mugs.
Patty was still soaking wet from her last swim, which had ended up costing her life. In the cool, dank air of the underground cavern, she shivered and hugged herself, missing her home.
After what seemed like hours, she reached a platform at which three official- looking men sat at with blank, staring expressions.
Those unblinking stares were aimed at her now. They studied her, sizing her up. Patty felt self conscious under the scrutinizing stare of these three intimidating, silent men.
Just when it became unbearable, one said in a monotone, "Patricia Maters. Drowned in the Mediterranean Ocean while on vacation."
The judge in the middle continued in the same bored voice, "Was attending Saint Sinclair School. Both parents, Elizabeth Eno Maters and John Hienrick Maters are currently alive."
"Born in England, 1805. Died at age fourteen," the third judge ended.
The three judges turned their full focus on Patty. She tried to melt into the cold ground, her face starting to feel hot, a sharp contrast against the now- freezing air.
"Asphodel," the first judge sighed.
"Asphodel," the other two repeated in bored voices. An unseen force pushed Patty off the platform. Another scared looking, shivering child much like herself took her place at the stage.
"Oliver Secreay. Killed in motor vehicle accident…" Patty was herded by the crowd into an endless field. Transparent beings floated (literally) aimlessly. The young, dead girl shivered involuntarily. Was this what she was doomed to suffer through for the rest of eternity?
An uneventful century passed.
Patty struggled to hold on to vague memories that sometimes resurfaced within her drugged mind. But she always forgot moments after she had remembered.
Lord Hades visited maybe once a decade or so, made the rounds, checked on his kingdom.
Eventually, Patty got used to the horrible screams that could be heard from the Fields of Punishment. She also learned to stay clear of the Furies when a fellow ghost was dragged away by Alecto, never to be seen again, simply for trying to get a peek at the Lady Persephone's magnificent, spectacular precious gem and crystal gardens.
Another thirty five years was gone before she even realised it. It was around that time that a peculiar kind of ghost arrived in Asphodel, confused, like every other newly dead soul, distraught about her mother, who was also dead and somewhere in the endless fields of doom.
The young girl, perhaps a year or two younger than Patty, was unlike any ghost Patty had ever seen in her time in the Underworld.
The girl spoke in a funny way, in a dialogue Patty had not heard in a total of 135 years. English. A human voice.
The girl had a funny way of accenting her "R's".
Patty spoke with her once, yearning for news of the world above, for the girl was just so approachable and friendly. In her haste to learn about the New World, Patty forgot to ask the girl's name.
Rumours were circulating before long. "The daughter of The Lord belongs in the castle," people whispered, wondering why the girl was condemned to eternity in Asphodel.
A search party was sent to look for the girl's lost but very dead mother.
No woman by the name of Marie Levesque was found.
With all the talk about the strange new ghost, it wasn't hard to find out the girl's name. Hazel Levesque.
Over the next eight decades, Hazel became withered and transparent and, in short, miserable, a mirror image of every other soul in Asphodel.
People worshipped Hazel, her being the offspring of Lord Hades. Hazel had a strange habit of calling him Pluto.
"As in the dwarf planet?" Patty had once said, but Hazel had looked at her blankely, like she didn't understand. It was then that Patty realised it wasn't herself Hazel was staring at. It was something behind them.
Patty turned to see a boy of about fourteen striding towards them.
He wasn't anything special- wasn't handsome, or strong, or intimidating. But the crowds of the dead still pressed back against each other when he passed, as if he carried the plague miasma.
Patty found herself doing the same when he passed her, but it wasn't him that was emanating the presence of fear- it was the black, wicked looking blade he carried on his belt.
The boy was aiming straight for Hazel. And Hazel
was the only ghost who hadn't done everything in her power to stay far away from him.
The boy walked right up to her, with an arrogance that Patty admired and it was only when he was standing right next to an actual ghost that Patty saw how different he looked. It wasn't so much his physical appearance- the guy's skin was so pale and translucent he could have passed for Snow White if he added a bit of lip stick, brushed his messy black hair and wore a yellow dress- but there was life in his eyes. Hazel's eyes were dead- literally.
"You're different," he said in a way that reminded Patty of Lord Hades.
Hazel frowned. "How do you mean?"
"You're a demigod. Daughter of Hades, right? You remember you're previous life."
"A demigod." Hazel said slowly, as if tasting the word in her mouth.
"Yeah. Half mortal_"
"Half god." Hazel finished, nodding slowly, as if it explained a lot of things.
"I'm Nico di Angelo," the boy, Nico, said, holding out his hand. "Son of Hades. I'm going to take you out of this dump. I lost my other sister to an automaton. I won't let you suffer what she had to go through. The Doors of Death are open. You can live again."
Hazel caught Patty's eyes before her new brother ushered her through the zombie crowds; every single ghost's eyes followed the pair of siblings until the two had disappeared from view.
That was the last time Patty saw Hazel. But it certainly wasn't the last time Nico di Angelo showed up. He spoke to no one, hardly ever acknowledged the mobs of ghosts that crowded to meet the famous son of Hades.
Sometimes the boy would let down his guard, and would smile, or nod his head at a ghost. Once he even waved at Patty. Before she could regather her wits and wave back, he was gone, slipping through the clusters of ghosts that parted to make way for his Stygian Iron sword.
Gone like the memories of her previous life.
And though she no longer sported a beating heart, the place where her heart used to reside was empty now, and she could feel it every second of every hour, every second she could feel that empty, aching hole.
For when Nico had waved and smiled at her, for a second she had felt content. For a second, she had felt as if she could push the misery out of her head.
But the moment was gone before she could register that Nico had acknowledged her as an individual, and not as just one of a crowd.
He was alive. He was human. He would never in a millennia return her feelings. So she should destroy that yearning for mutual love before it got out of control and she could never be happy again.
Because, after all, she was only one of thousands, right?