I was waiting for my next patient when I heard the door burst open. In walked a tall man with blue skin and blue fire for hair wearing dark grey robes. I approached him but before I could speak he cut me off. "Hey doc," he said closing the door behind him, "the name's Hades, lord of the dead, how ya doing?" he said as he shook my hand and started heading towards the couch. "Oh, I'm so sorry, how rude of me," he chuckled as he sat down, "I forgot to ask for your name."
"I'm Dr. Russell," I said with a slight chuckle myself, liking the change of pace with this patient. "So Hades, if you don't mind, I'm just going to ask you some questions."
"Okay, that's fine, but first I've got a question for you. What's your first name?"
"Why do you want to know?" I asked with growing suspicion.
"Just curious," he replied shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.
"It's Taylor."
"Taylor, that's a cute name. Got a lot of spunk, I like that. Perfect for a pretty girl like you."
"Hades, are you flirting with me?"
"What? No, no, of course not!" he responded defensively. "What, a guy gives a girl a compliment and all of a sudden that means he likes her? I was just trying to be nice. Jeez!"
Touché, I thought. Gaston could learn a thing or two about how to flirt with women from this guy. "Alright, first question, tell me about your childhood."
"Well there's not much to tell. I was one out of six so I came from a pretty big family. Not to mention a pretty messed up family too. As you know there aren't that many gods, so there's A LOT of inbreeding. Actually all of us are related someway or another. Anyways, of course the golden child of the family was Zeus, little mister spoiled man who got everything. As for me, well I was the 'weird' kid, the one everyone stayed away from. Everyone was afraid of me or didn't like me, except for Zeus, who of course loved to make fun of me for it. But whatever, I got over it."
"Really? Because your repeated attempts to destroy your brother and take over his kingdom say otherwise."
"Well that's another story. See Zeus is actually younger than me, believe it or not, I don't know, maybe I just got lucky in the aging part of the gene pool or something, anyways, and yet he gets the family fortune and everyone is up there having a grand old time with each other while I get stuck down here doing the dirty work. If anything it should've been the other way around. But nope, he gained the family fortune and title and banished me to the Underworld. So yeah, of course I would resent him for that and try to take back what is rightfully mine. I mean do you have any idea how frustrating it is working down there. Day after day, hundreds of people come up to me, angry, confused, scared, begging me to somehow save them or whatever; they're so whiny and annoying!"
"And let me guess, Hercules was next in line to take over Zeus's position, so you wanted to get rid of him too so you would have less competition?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"But one thing I've always wondered is that as lord of the dead, you have to keep track of everyone who dies. How did you not know that Hercules was still alive?"
"Eh, plot holes, what're you gonna do?" he said shrugging his shoulders.
"So now moving on, tell me about your love life."
"Honestly, I've only ever had two relationships. Well, more like one, the other wasn't technically an actual relationship, but whatever. Anyways, first there was Persephone, who's technically my niece since she's Demeter and Zeus's, both of who are my brother and sister's, kid, but again, inbreeding, it's a common thing among gods; why else would we all be so freaking messed up? Anyways, we were madly in love, and eventually we got married and started living together. But because of her mom she was only aloud to live with me for half the year. We thought that it could work, and we tried it out for a while, but after about a century we realized that it wasn't working, so we broke up. And then there was Meg. Again, we were never an actual couple, but man, that body. Boy was she quite the little hot stuff. But of course she had the hots for 'Wonder Boy,' so of course nothing happened. Although ever since arriving here, I couldn't help but take a gander at the horned lady, she seems perfectly my type, but alas, she has expressed little to no interest. So yeah, it's the single life for me I guess."
"And what about your sidekicks? How'd you end up with them?"
"I got stuck with them, part of the packaged deal of ruling the Underworld. Figured while I have them, might as well use them to do my dirty work."
"Like kidnapping Hercules?"
"Hey, I thought that if I did it, it would be too obvious."
"Alright, last question. If you were to be released from here, what would you do?"
"I don't know, maybe continue to scheme up new ways to fulfill my revenge, after all the last few times didn't work out too well. Or maybe find a nice girl to spend an eternity with. Hey, maybe once I'm out of here we can…"
"No. Sorry."
"Hey, worth a shot," he said standing up.
"Well Hades, it was certainly nice talking to you," I said with full sincerity.
"Same here doc," he replied heading for the door. Before he opened the door, he stopped in his tracks. "Really? Not one date? I could show you a good time."
"I'm positive. But thanks for the offer." I opened the door and watched him leave. As I closed the door, I actually had a smile on my face. Hades was actually the most fun patient I've had and I actually enjoyed working with him.
I sat down at my computer and checked the list, hoping that the next patient would be another good one. "Yzma," I read. Well I guess I'd just have to wait and see.