daughter of heaven || percy jackson

1.12

⎯⎯ ୨ 1.12: my heart is gold ୧ ⎯⎯

MELANIE WASN'T REALLY sure on what she expected the entrance to the underworld to be. perhaps pearly gates, or a big black portcullis. but the entrance to the underworld looked like those lines at airport security and some big ass expressway.

there were three separate entrances under one huge black archway that said you are now entering erebus. each entrance had a pass-through metal detector with security cameras mounted on top. beyond this were tollbooths manned by black-robed ghouls like charon.

the howling of the hungry animal was really loud now, but she couldn't see where it was coming from. the three-headed dog, cerberus, who was supposed to guard hades's door, was nowhere to be seen. the dead queued up in the three lines, two marked attendant on duty, and one marked ez death. the ez death line was moving right along. the other two were crawling.

"what do you figure?" percy asked annabeth.

"the fast line must go straight to the asphodel fields," she said. "no contest. they don't want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them."

"there's a court for dead people?"

"yeah. three judges. they switch around who sits on the bench. king minos, thomas jefferson, shakespeare-people like that. sometimes they look at a life and decide that person needs a special reward-the fields of elysium. sometimes they decide on punishment. but most people, well, they just lived. nothing special, good or bad. so they go to the asphodel fields."

"and do what?"

grover said, "imagine standing in a wheat field in kansas. forever."

"harsh," percy said. "not as harsh as that," grover muttered. "look."

a couple of black-robed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking him at the security desk. the face of the dead man looked vaguely familiar. "he's that preacher who made the news, remember?" grover asked.

"oh, yeah," melanie said. she'd seen him a couple of times back at the yancy academy dorm.

he was this annoying televangelist from upstate new york who'd raised millions of dollars for orphanages and then got caught spending the money on stuff for his mansion, like gold-plated toilet seats, and an indoor putt-putt golf course. he'd died in a police chase when his "lamborghini for the lord" went off a cliff.

percy said, "what're they doing to him?"

"special punishment from hades," grover guessed. "the really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. the fur-the kindly ones will set up an eternal torture for him."

"but if he's a preacher," percy said. "and he believes in a different hell..."

grover shrugged. "who says he's seeing this place the way we're seeingit? humans see what they want to see. you're very stubborn-er, persistent,that way."