The Condemnation of Pluto

* To preface, I decided to try something new and post an original short story that I wrote. Feel fry to give any feedback, I would greatly appreciate your opinions. I hope you enjoy!           

            Loving her was like watching a bowl of water simmer. You stare down into the big brass pot full of water, there are bubbles forming on the bottom, but it never ends up boiling. I remember how much it hurt to love her. Although, nothing would have prepared me for how much loosing her would hurt. It felt as if someone had reached inside of my chest, through my rib cage, and was squeezing my heart, tighter each minute. There is nothing that I can do to ease the pain. I can’t eat; I can’t sleep, most days I do not even get out of bed. The days that I do get out of bed I roam around aimlessly, trying to find some meaning to my otherwise meaningless life.

            I sit at a mahogany dinning table, staring down blankly at a plate of food that I do not plan to eat. Sitting atop the golden plate lays a pomegranate salad. Pomegranate is the only fruit that will grow in the underworld. This is because of the original sin when Adam and Eve ate the pomegranate. It was banished into the underworld, the same as I was. I hold the jewel-encrusted fork, picking through the salad. I keep going back to when all of this started. I could have prevented everything, but I just had to get involved and mess everything up. She could have gone on perfectly fine without me, but I have no idea how I would have gone on without her; although that is what I am doing now.

            I take myself back to the first time I ever saw her. The white marble floor is cold under my bare feet as I make my way to the throne room, just like every other night at six O’clock. Every night all of the gods and goddesses come together in the throne room to have a meeting and, using the portal, watch over each of our territories. I just came from the main hall after having an amazing feast of wine, bread, and cheese. The truth is that I probably drank a smidge too much of the wine, but it helps me get through these meetings. As always I am the last to enter the throne room. I am slightly late and everyone stops what they are doing the second I enter, shifting their gaze on me. I flash the crowd a charming smile. “I know that I am incredibly handsome, but it would probably be easier to get work done if you stop staring at me,” I admitted with a smirk.

            Jupiter glared at me disapprovingly. “We are staring due to the fact that this is the third time in a row you have been late this week.” He admitted. Jupiter, my brother, sat on his throne. Even though all of the gods were supposed to be equal, Jupiter and his wife Juno were considered the king and queen of all the gods. My other brother, Neptune, is the god of the sea. They both have many sons and daughters spread all over the world. I am the god of fortune and jewels; which is reflected in my throne, and everyone else’s. Neptune’s throne is made up of running water, glistening from the sun shining on wherever the stream is that he took it from. Every now and then if you are lucky you will see a fish jump out of the water.

            I amble over to my throne. It is gold laced with millions of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and other jewels; all of the jewels make the throne seem to sparkle. As I sit on top of the throne I laugh to myself at how pathetic I look barefoot, wearing jeans and a gray undershirt that clings to my muscles. The only thing that gives the impression I am not completely out of place is that the throne was made to fit me perfectly. As I sit I am comforted by the familiarity of the room, the constant chaos of the gods and goddesses yelling to get their point across. I could not tell if it was this or the wine, but I was smiling.

            After a brief introduction Jupiter opened the portal giving us an inside into the mortal world that we dictated to make sure that everything is safe. I always found this part the most interesting. The mortal world seemed so simple, carefree, easy. I envy the humans who do not have worry about keeping people safe and dealing with angry gods all of the time. We are now watching Neptune’s section of the world, which is all oceans, sea, rivers, and lakes. We see the mermaids and nymphs beckoning us to come closer.

            I snap back into reality as someone calls my name. “Pluto, my lord?”

            “What do you want?” I snap at the servant.

            “My lord, today is the day that you must come to the gate to greet people into the underworld.” He pleads. It is obvious that the servant is nervous around me still. I have only been in charge of the underworld for about a month now, and being banished to the underworld because of murder, does not exactly make people feel comfortable around you; even if they are dead.

            “I just need to change and then I will begin the journey.” I quietly breathe the words, which are barely audible. I make my way up the staircase lined with velvet carpet and into my chambers. I put something on that is much more appropriate for encountering a new batch of the dead and glance into the mirror before I leave. I stop dead as I look at myself noticing some of my qualities that seem so foreign to me now. I am tall with dark brown hair. My eyes are brown with specs of green close to the iris, with a wild look in them. I used to be extremely tan, my skin borderline brown; although with each passing day spent here it becomes paler. I cannot help wondering if this is what she saw when she looked at me. And again I am transported to the first time I ever saw her.

            We were now looking at the portal onto Jupiter’s territory, which included the small town in South Egypt. There was a raging storm over this town that had been going on for the past few hours. Most villagers were inside of their homes trying to stay dry. There was one girl who was still working in the fields even though she was drenched with water and the storm was getting worse. Jupiter zoomed in closer on her face. She had beautiful black curly hair, and fair skin. Her cheeks were slightly flushed a light pink color that matched her full lips. The girl had a scarf wrapped around her head that was attempting to keep the rain out of her eyes. I was enchanted by not only her beauty, but that she was working in a storm that had the potential to kill her. Suddenly Jupiter turned the portal off. Everyone was staring at me again. This time not because I was late, but because I was standing in the middle of the room.

            I force the image out of my mind and focus on the mirror in front of me. Very calmly I walk over to the mirror and without realizing what I had decided to do, I punch the glass with all of the force in my body. In slow motion I can see each piece of glass fall to the floor, breaking into smaller pieces. Reluctantly I look down at my hand that I used to punch the glass. It is torn open and bleeding. I back up and look at what I have done. In a sick way the mess is beautiful. I stumble into the bathroom, half aware of the situation and half not caring, to wash my hand off. I rinse the blood off in cold water. Then move to a cabinet to find tweezers. Once I find them I try to pick out the rest of the glass remaining in my hand. After it is out I bandage it up to prevent more bleeding.

            On the way out, I look at everything and then at the time. I decide that it would be best for me to just clean everything up when I get back. Like a pouting child I stomp out of my chamber and into the halls, annoyed at what I remembered. I cannot get her face, soaked with water, out of my head. It is driving me mad. I dream about her, see visions of her, and imagine the past. I would never want to forget her, but I want to move forward and I can’t. I am still in love with her.

            My servant is waiting for me at the end of the stairs. I know that he is concerned with me arriving on time and he is responsible for me. As we walk out of my castle doors I am surrounded by darkness. If it was not for the lantern held by my servant, I would not be able to see anything. There is a chariot up ahead. I know, without being told, that it is meant for me. The entire chariot, including the reigns, is made out of metal. Leading it are three skeletons of horses, with fire burning in their eyes. The front horse’s hove scrapes against the dust ground, as if he is getting ready to take off running.

            I step inside of the chariot and as soon I shut the door we begin at the fastest speed imaginable. If I were mortal I would have fallen back, but because I am immortal I calmly take my seat across from my servant. I decide that it would be a good idea for me to get some sleep. I have not been able to sleep for a month now. I begin to drift off slowly and then the next thing I know I am back turning over in my bed on Mount Olympus.

            Why can I not get this girl out of my head? I wonder. She is just a mortal girl. There are more beautiful than her and I have never met her, so why can I not stop thinking of her. I need to see her face again. I need to hear her voice. I give up on the attempt to sleep and crawl out of bed, flinching as my toes reach the floor. I fumble around in the dark, putting on some clothes. I slowly open the door hoping that it will not creek. I then proceed to tiptoe back to the throne room. It looks different at night. Even though I am not supposed to, I turn on the portal into the mortal world. I spend what feels like an eternity looking for the girl. I have almost given up hope and then I see her, asleep in the fields, with a basket of collected crops by her side. It has ceased to rain, but she is still wet. The girl looks so peaceful. I wish I knew her name. The sun has started to descend over the horizon and begins to light the throne room. I have to know her. I know what I must do.

            With a start I awaken from my deep sleep and find my servant sitting in front of me watching the darkness in the window. “How long was I asleep?” I ask him hesitantly.

            “About an hour, sir. We should be arriving in thirty minutes.” He then went back to looking outside the window. Remembering her hurts so much. The rest of the trip goes by relatively quickly. I focus mainly on what I plan to say. I fear that after everything that has occurred I have grown cruel.

            When we arrive to the pond of the afterlife I get out of the chariot and am greeted by Charon. We climb into his gondola. Charon is standing at the front drifting through the Styx River where bodies of the dead fight and reach their hands up, trying to climb into the gondola. Pale, bloody, and broken fingers wrap around the side of the boat. Before they have time to lift themselves up or even touch the boat with another hand, Charon swats them away like an unwanted bug. We head inside of a cave that is built out of bones. More lifeless bodies cling to the side the cave. The lantern flashes along the side of the cave, just long enough for me to see a face. It is cracked open, with rotted flesh still held on to part of the skull.

            As I stare into the face, a shiver wonders its way up my spine, making all of my hair stand up. My servant forces his way in front of me. “My lord, you should not be looking at this.” He tries to explain. He is probably right; I should not be looking at the bodies of the dead. She had to make it into the afterlife. She was a good person and I would know if she didn’t. Somehow that made everything worse and better at the same time.

            Then suddenly I was back there again. As the sun rose higher and higher into the sky, I knew that I had to act quickly. I could not wait another second. I shrunk myself down to mortal size, and passed through the portal, which was still focused on the field. As I was transported into the other world, it felt as if I was falling. I felt the ground slip out from under my feet. The next thing I knew there was a soft warm barrier between my body and the hard ground. I look up dazed, at the blue sky. The sun was so bright that it caused me to squint my eyes. I could feel the heat radiating onto my skin. I excitedly stand up, remembering why I am here.

            I look over, but the girl is no longer asleep on the ground. Faintly in the distant I can hear the sweetest voice humming. The sound was soft and rich like pouring molasses. That must be her, I thought. I recognized the song that she was humming. It was a lullaby, usually sung to small children. As I approached her I suddenly stopped, still a ways away and just watched her. She was cutting the wheat and putting it in the basket, but the way she did this made it look so graceful. She reminded me of a tiger, beautiful and graceful, yet fierce and independent.

            As if she could sense me watching her she turned around and gazed right into my eyes, as if she could see into the innermost parts of my soul, parts of me that I could not bare to let anyone else see. She smiled a taunting smile, parting her pink lips, and then continued to work. I followed her with my eyes for a while, until I finally built up the courage to go and talk to her. “What is your name?” This has been the question that I have been most interested in.

            “My name is Ariadne.” Her voice felt like velvet. I just stood there bewildered and stunned with everything about her. “And you are?” She asked, slightly confused with my silence.

            “I am Pluto.” Her face lit up with the realization of who I am. She seemed almost afraid of me. She turned to leave. “Please don’t leave. I am sorry to make an introduction this way, but I saw you and could not resist meeting you.”

            “So you really are a god?” She asked aghast.

            “Yes, I am. Although I do not like to focus on that fact.” I half smiled. We talked for some time and I completely fell in love with her. I vowed to her that I would give up immortality to be with her. Before we parted I placed a white flower in her hair. “To remember me by, until I come back.” I promised her that I would give it up and then come right back and we would go into hiding, so that we could be together.

            I transported myself back to Mount Olympus. By the time I got back the light was already beginning to fade and I was smiling like an idiot. When I stepped out of the portal, Jupiter was sitting in his throne. He must have seen everything, for he looked extremely grim. “Brother, what have you done?” He asked in sadness. “You must know that I can not allow you to do this.”

            “Jupiter, please. I have to.” I pleaded, although I knew that it was useless.

            “Guards!” Five guards grabbed me and forced me down the hall, locking me inside of my chamber. The night felt as if it would never end. I destroyed the entire room, put it back together, and then still had time to pace. It felt like years had gone by when the guards came back into my room and ordered me out. They guided me back into the throne room. And then everything seemed to happen in slow motion yet at light speed at the same time. I saw a body lying on the floor. No! It cannot be her. 

            “Ariadne!” I screamed, finally breaking free of the guards ran over, and fell overtop of her. “What have you done?’ I cried.

            Jupiter spoke first. “What have we done? We found your knife embedded in this mortal women’s chest. You killed her.”

            “Killed her? I am in love with her!” I screamed. I didn’t even care anymore. This is not happening. It is just a dream; it has to be. The more I tried to convince myself the less I believed it.

            “Brother, you know that there is punishment for killing a mortal.” Neptune whispered disappointed.

            “We have decided that you will be banished to the underworld and you cannot leave, unless we send for you.” Jupiter continued to speak, but I could no longer hear him. I looked into Ariadne’s face and I could not breathe.

            The gondola ride is finally over and we step off of the boat and away from the river. I do not even want to think of having to cross it again. We pass through the gates and are faced with the three-headed dog. It pants at my feet, hoping for me to pet it. I scratch behind each set of ears and then focus on the crowd of dead standing in front of me now. I am not sure what to say, but I begin to speak anyway. I am so preoccupied with the past that even as I am talking, it does not fully register what I am saying. I cannot live like this, I think. I have to go back to Olympus, once and for all to find out who actually killed and framed me for my beloved’s murder.

            I finally finish speaking and then wait until everyone has entered the gate to turn to my servant. “We are going to take a little trip.” I told him smugly.

            “My lord, with all due respect, I am not sure that would be an entirely good idea. You know that you mustn’t leave the underworld.”

            “Well Mercury, I am tired of being told what I can and cannot do. She deserves justice and we are going to get that for her.”

 “You want me to go with you, my lord?” he asked shocked.

 “Of course I do. I am going to need backup.” I said smiling. Mercury looks terribly excited that I would ask him to come with me. “The portal tapes everything that happens in the universe. If we can get to the portal and watch it then we can find out who truly killed Ariadne.” Before long we were at the gates of Mount Olympus. They were made out of pure gold only allowing those pure of heart to enter into the palace. For some unknown reason as I put my hand on the gates to try and climb them they flew open without warning. Well that was easy enough, I think, laughing.

We walk straight into the palace. Everyone is in the dinning hall at the moment so the throne room should be free. As I walk down these halls memories claw at the edge of my mind that I keep trying to force away. We make it into the throne room and turn the portal on, rewinding it to the day of her murder. I see Jupiter in the throne room with a body in a heap on the floor. No! Jupiter grabs a dagger off of my throne and thrusts it into Ariadne’s chest. I sit there my mouth open. The portal has shut off by now. Mercury is hovering over me, not knowing what to say. Before either of us knows it, we start to hear voices coming down the hall. “I have to stay. Get yourself out.”

“Pluto, there is no way I am going to leave you now.” He gives me a pitiful smile that I return. I thank him with my eyes and then our time is over. Jupiter is the first to walk in. I walk up and punch him directly in the nose.

“You killed her!” I shout. I punch him again. Two guards grab my arms so that I can no longer move.

“I had to. I did what was best for you. You were going to become mortal and give all of this up for some girl. A girl that you did not even know.” He rebutted.

“I know that there has not been one second since the moment that I first saw her that I have not thought about her!” I scream. I know that I should calm down, but frankly I do not want to.

“We all agreed and we all agreed that sending you to the underworld was the best thing for you.” His guards moved Mercury and I towards the portal. Jupiter rotates the dial until he finds the place he is looking for. “This really is for your own good,” is the last thing my brother says to me before throwing me into the portal where I am destined to be alone and miserable the rest of eternity.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

            Why do people feel a sympathetic connection to some of the most horrid villains that literature and the media conjure up? Why is it that sometimes even the nicest of people annoy us to the utmost levels? What makes someone a bad person? What makes someone a good person? None of these questions have a clear answer. Everything depends on the situation or intention. The truth is that people are not just good or bad, this is impossible; there are varied mixtures of both inside of every person. This principle of life seems to be so elementary that we know this in the back of our head, but when it counts we can never quite remember.

            The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written by Robert Louis Stevenson in an effort to make us understand this principle. We classify people as good or bad depending on their actions, but the flaw with this type of judgment is that we do not know why a person may have committed this action. “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.” (From Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). In the novel the scientist Dr. Jekyll drinks an elixir that he believes will conquer evil, although what this potion truly does is turn him into the embodiment of evil. The Doctor can drink tonics to subdue these transformations, but he always ends up as his evil once the medicine has warn off. These transformations are described as internal fights, with the character struggling to overcome his evil but never quite being able to do so.

            The hardest part for everyone is deciding that they want to be good, that they want to change. A good majority of the time this is because people feel that they do not deserve to be good. This may sound somewhat humorous, but think back to a time when you know that you did something bad, perverse, or that you know you should not have done. How long did it take other people to forgive you? How long did it take you to forgive yourself? I would argue in most cases the later question took more time; this is also proven to be true in the book. This is because when people mess up and are truly sorry for what they have done they feel as if they are not worthy of other people’s forgiveness and believe themselves to be a bad person and sometimes maybe even evil. So they succumb to their evil urges because that is who they believe themselves to be. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” (The Perks of Being a Wallflower). This quote also works with love towards oneself. A comfort may be that everyone goes through these times were they do not even believe themselves to be worthy of their own love.

            “Jesus didn’t die for the good parts of you. He didn’t die for your potential. He died for the nastiest, worst parts of you, for the lowest points of your life. He died to save you and free you from that.” (Brody Holloway) I, myself, am a very religious person and I know that not everyone else is, nor do I expect them to be, but this quote gets a point across even if you are not Christian or even religious. The Bible talks a lot about good and bad which is why it is a good example for this topic. When Jesus came into a Jewish temple and saw tax collector booths set up everywhere he became enraged because he knew that a temple, a place of worship, should not be weighed down by earthly values and possessions. He walked around flipping over tables and making a huge scene. The point is that even Jesus was not perfect. He made mistakes and got angry. How can we expect ourselves to be perfect and always do the right thing if even Jesus made mistakes sometimes? It is simple we can’t.

            The original theme that everything cannot be categorized as good or bad seemed so simple, but when beginning to discuss the topic more in depth we realize that it is not simple at all and even though we realize this does not mean we act upon it as we should. Robert Louis Stevenson must have realized the importance of realizing this and wrote a story attempting to make people understand. There is no way to find out how many people understood this from the novel written 131 years ago, or even if this is what the author meant to convey when writing his book. Although given the world today where we judge everyone and categorize everyone into these two boxes we need a book like this to show and prove to us that there is no such thing as good and evil, but only some strange grey area that resides in everyone.

            If Dr. Hyde had not dwelled on his evil and instead attempted to preserver, there is a good chance that he would not have continued to morph into his alternative self. In life everyone is always so focused on the negative that they cannot see everything that is good. All people see is what they do not have, the places they have not been, and the person that they are not, that they forget everything they do have, all of the places that they have been, and the person that they are. Maybe this war that we are fighting is not good against evil, but optimism against pessimism. Everyone has a war surging on inside of them right now. Which side will you let win?