I swear, writer's block just won't stop! Anyway, here it is. You guys are allowed to hate me.
Disclaimer: I do not own this.
Starring Nico di Angelo
OC of Rob
Nico walked down the streets of Elysium on one of his rare visits to the Underworld. The dead glanced at him as he walked by—it wasn't often that they got the living in the dead realm. But none protested or really cared.
He slipped into a fast food restaurant and ordered a coke. The dead didn't really have to eat, but they liked to keep up with the normal living customs. It made them feel alive again.
The coke, on the other hand, was a million times better than the soda up in the real world. Nico had no idea how they did it, but if he ever died he'd come to this place just for the quality of the food. And the burgers actually looked like what they made them appear to be in the commercials.
"Living, huh," said the guy behind the counter. "Not every day you get one of those over here. In fact, we never do. What're you doing here?"
Nico shrugged. "Visiting," he answered honestly as he sipped from his beverage. Gods, this was good.
The man squinted at him. "You're that Nico kid, aren't you?" he said. "The one who helped God win both wars down on earth? You're pretty famous up here. And you're, what? Sixteen? Seventeen?"
Nico nodded.
"You know," continued the man, "you're pretty lucky to have come out of those battles. I died because of a rattlesnake."
"Really?" Nico asked, intrigued.
"Yeah," he said, suddenly distant. "It all started on the day I went to the pet store to buy a hamster for my wife's birthday. There was this mysterious looking man hanging around by the entrance and he told me he had a great price for a snake he was selling. 70% off. How could I refuse? I'm Rob, by the way."
Nico nodded politely, still sipping from his soda. The only downside with the ghosts in Elysium was that they loved to talk about how they died. But of course, being in Elysium, they had some pretty wicked stories to tell. Nico once met this teenage girl who had been on the plane that crashed in the Pennsylvania fields during 9/11. She had helped beat up one of the terrorists. Then she died when the plane crashed.
"Anyway," Rob continued, "what the man didn't tell me was that the snake he was trying to sell me was a rattlesnake. Crazy, huh. Continuing, I brought the pet home and my wife was horrified, and demanded that I returned it. I tried to, but the man was gone. Eventually I grew fond of the snake, and even named him. I forgot what, but it was something fuzzy and cute, I remember."
"You wouldn't usually give a rattlesnake a cute and fuzzy name, but continue anyway," Nico just had to comment. He finished his coke and refilled it.
"But whatever. I take the rattlesnake home, and my wife orders me to kill it. I'm about to, but it escapes. Not sure how, but it somehow slithered out of the box all sneaky-like. My wife freaked out, alerted the police, and called a whole squad of exterminators to catch and kill a loose rattlesnake in the neighbourhood. It took people two days to find it, and it turns out if had been camping out under my bed the entire time."
"Nice," Nico commented.
Rob grabbed a soda cup for himself and filled his with Pepsi, drinking from it. "Well, my wife is making the bed when it comes after her. She screams and I run in all hero-like. I had been researching the kind of snake ever since it got lost, and I knew what to do. I kept its attention for the time that my wife managed to alert the exterminators and zookeepers.
"But our house has an alarm, you see? And the alarm goes off whenever the front or back doors open. So the snake goes in attack mode and tries to bite my wife. But I leap in the way and it bites me instead, right in the chest. I die on the way to the hospital, and then they kill Fuzzy." He snapped his fingers. "Fuzzy! That's what I named it!"
"So you got into Elysium because you gave up your life for you wife's?" Nico summarized.
Rob gave him a quizzical look. "Elysium?" he asked. "Nah, bro. Heaven."
Nico nodded, remembering that everyone saw the Underworld differently.
He finished his second coke, setting it on the counter. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Rob," he said.
"The pleasure was all mine," he said with a small wave. "And come back again soon, Nico. I've got other stories to tell."
Nico nodded and exited the fast food restaurant. "Keeping a rattlesnake as a pet," he said, shaking his head. "People these days."
So, yeah, I made up a character. I guess he's okay.
Review. Please. Even if it's a flame (though I hope it isn't!).