A Shrine to an Unknown God

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THE DARKNESS NEVER leaves me. Instead, it comes to life, manifesting itself into some sort of cavern.

In fact, here the darkness is so complete I can feel it. It's its own organism, coiled around me like a snake. The walls are damp and pulsating. It's like it's breathing.

I run my hands over my body, inventorying the damage I took when I was alive. Gaping, jagged wounds in my chest and stomach. No pain whatsoever, just a mushy, squishy sensation as I poke at them. My skin is—my skin isn't quite real, isn't quite solid. But it's not nothing, either. It's somewhere between an illusion and a reality.

All I feel is a distant sort of numbness. Blank, null, like all of my emotions have been carved from inside of me, leaving me with nothing but this dull emptiness. This is my life now. This damp cave and my body half-here and half-not. Fighting it would be futile. The only remnant of the circumstances surrounding my death is a question, so vague I can barely put words to it. Is Apollo dead?

I plunge my fingers into my mouth and reach beneath my tongue. I'm expecting to find a coin hidden there, from my funeral. So I can pay the psychopomp Kharon to ferry me over the Acheron and Styx. Instead all I feel are my own gums.

"I wasn't buried."

I try to say it out loud, but instead of my words tumbling out into sound, they liquify, dribbling down my chin in icy droplets. This realization should wreck me, should destroy me, should make me feel something, but instead the only thing I feel is a tugging in my gut. Telling me to go deeper inside the cave.

I listen to it.

The walls open up around me as I walk. Not that I can see them. I can only feel them opening, feel the darkness getting bigger, feel the space between my head and the ceiling expanding. The sound of water rushing over rock follows me, growing louder the further I go. Slowly, red beads of light appear on the horizon, each spread so far from the other they appear to be their own cities.

I've reached the bank of a calm, dark river, the water rolling over smooth stones. These beads of light must be the settlements of the Underworld, nestled up against the Acheron and Styx. Just like in life, the dead flock to sources of water to found their cities.

Half of them are on the same side as me, the towns of the unburied dead. Doomed to stay here, just on the outskirts of the Underworld, for eternity. The other half, on the other sides of the rivers, must be the Fields of Asphodel, Elysium, the Isle of the Blessed. One, maybe even Tartarus.

There's a dock at the river's edge, the floor of it glowing like the planks of wood are on fire. Shades crowd around it, fighting with each other to get to it. The pulling in my gut tells me: join them. So I do.

But I'm no longer in control of my own body. If the pulling in my gut instructed me to drown myself in the Acheron, the River of Pain, I would.

I elbow my way through the crowd, half-feeling their skin as it brushes against my own and half-not. Most of them, sensing fresh blood, part for me. The rest, so frantic to get on Kharon's ferry after so long on these dark banks, claw at me. Mouths gaping, soulless eyes drooping. Skin loose and gray and translucent.

The glow of the dock reflects on the water, sending rays of red arching along the dark waves. There's no sound other than that of the river. Surrounded by all these people, the silence is unnerving and out-of-place. Looking down at that dark water, some part of me urges me to jump in, just to see what it would feel like.

A smooth black boat cuts through the water. Standing at the stern, a man rests his hand casually against the tiller, his face covered by a heavy cloak. Kharon, ferryman of the dead. No matter how close he gets, I cannot see his face, although it gets to the point where I can completely make out his hand. The—(as Marisol would call them)—ashy knuckles, the long yellowed fingernails crusted over with grime. He's drenched in shadows like the night, the boat lit by only a single weak torch.

When he reaches the dock, he anchors the boat far enough away that if any of us tried to join him without his help, we'd fall into the Acheron. He points at one shade and says nothing. They hand him a golden coin, and in return, he helps them onto the ship. Then another, then another. Then me.

Again, I shove my fingers into my mouth. Expecting that in the time it took me to get here, I would have been buried. Expecting to find a coin there. Again, all I find is my own gums. Trembling fists clenched at my side, I shove my way towards the front of the dock. Knowing that if I just explain to him who I am and what I've done, that not burying me was a mistake, he'll let me on.

"I am Antigone Katsaros, daughter of Dionysus," I say, my words still dribbling down my chin.

He raises his eyes to meet mine. All I can see are the flickering balls of little flames nestled in all the darkness.

"They made a mistake," I explain. "They didn't bury me, but I'm half-god, so—"

"Then you stay here with the rest of the unburied souls." His voice is as cold and as slow as death, grating like the shovels we use to bury our deceased. "There is no special treatment for the half-divine. No matter what you did in your life, you do not get to rise above the laws of the dead."

Silence falls. Kharon points at the shade standing next to me. She offers up her coin.

Just as easily, I am lost in the crowd of shades fighting with each other to get to the front of the dock. I let them push me back.

All my life I have known one thing. That being half-god made me a hero by association. That glory ran in my bloodstream. That if I fought well and fought for what's right, dying was nothing to fear. That I'd make it to Elysium and get a chance to do it all over again to try for the Isle of the Blessed.

But now, because of something completely out of my hands, I've been turned away at the gates. My eternal paradise falls just out of my reach. I'm destined to waste away for eternity on the bank of the Acheron.

A stone's throw away from the dock is a settlement of defeated, unburied shades huddled around a fire. I join them, settling myself onto the earth, the muddy sand sticking between my fingernails. We say nothing to each other.

It seems this is what my afterlife will be.