Hades

Chapter One

Chapter One

I've never been afraid of death.

It's always surrounded me with its dark embrace, hovering above me like my own personal cloud of doom and stealing away those who got too close to me. It took my parents when I was ten, killing them in a car crash that almost took my life too. Six months later, it took the most important person in the world to me, through the most horribly contorted way possible. And only eighteen months ago, it took one of my best friends, donning the guise of cancer. Death was a cunning, twisted snake, and for some reason seemed morbidly obsessed with my life.

So, I wasn't unfamiliar with the heart wrenching, gut twisting pain that death delighted in handing out like candy. Despite that though, I wasn't afraid of my time: the time when death finally decided to stop knocking down the people I loved and take me instead. It sounds bizarre, I know, but I liked to convince myself that I needed to face my fears and not let them conquer me into blind submission. Being the obsessive person I am, I even took it one step further and often allowed myself to daydream about life after death, refusing to believe that we just stopped existing after our bodies gave up. We all had to go somewhere after we died, whether it be heaven, or hell, or purgatory. I refused to believe that death was the final, ultimate full stop to the end of our stories. Instead, I convinced myself that no matter what happened, no matter how or when I died, in this Heaven-esque world I would be happy. I would be happy, I would be with the person I loved, and the pain of life finally wouldn't be able to get to me. I would be free.

Little did I know, those daydreams would become a reality much quicker than I ever expected them to.

— — —

"Evie!"

I bob my head in time to my music, crossing my ankles and tapping my toes as I stare at the book in front of me. As determinedly as I stare at it though, the words on the page don't diffuse into my brain as easily as the words streaming into my ears do. Before I know it I'm humming along to the music, the page as good as blank to me.

Who would've guessed that reading a book for university wasn't as easy as reading a book for leisure? I guess the pleasure really is taken out of it when your whole university career depends on you reading that book.

"Hey! Autumn!"

My eyes snap up at the sound of my last name. I whip my head from side to side, my gaze already narrowed to scold the person who yelled out, and quickly spot the culprits striding through the row of trees behind me, grinning from ear to ear.

"Oh that's typical, now you hear me."

"It's hard not to when you bellow like that." I retort. "Seriously, do you think you could've yelled any louder? I don't think America heard you."

The one on the right snorts. "Do you really want to encourage him? You do know Spencer, right?"

"Is that a challenge I hear, Olly?" Spencer smirks, cheekiness twinkling in his blue eyes. I don't miss the gut-punch he aims at the dirty-blonde standing next to him.

"You hear everything as a challenge, Spencer."

I shake my head with a smile, pulling my headphones off my ears and letting them rest on my collarbone. "What are you doing here, boys? Don't you have a lecture, like right at this very moment?"

Spencer shrugs his broad shoulders, plopping himself down on the grass next to me. "Not anymore. For some reason, the lecturer seemed more than happy to oblige when we suggested they cancel today's lecture."

"Suggested or coerced?"

"What's the difference?" Olly snaps a twig off the tree behind me and hurls it into the lake glittering in front of us. "Either way, she was extremely receptive to our proposition."