Hating Hades

P R O L O G U E — Dilara.

​“Dilara…”

A chill ran down the length of my spine, goosebumps breaking out across the expanse of my skin as my mind registered the sound of someone whispering my name. It had been so soft that I found myself wondering if perhaps I had imagined it, but there was something—call it instinct—telling me that it wasn’t. It had felt like the whisper had come from someplace far away, yet it felt like it had been too close for comfort.

I had no idea what had come over me, doing the one thing that I was not meant to do under any circumstances.

I slowed down.

I looked at my surroundings, my head turning as I did so, desperately trying to find a face to which the voice that had whispered could belong. But with every second that passed, every inch that I looked over without finding anyone—or anything—my frown deepened. I could physically feel the way that the muscles in my forehead were turning down, settling between my eyebrows like a deadweight.

​“Did either of you hear that?”

I turned back around, finding that I had fallen behind by a few paces, but I had spoken loud enough for my companions to hear me, for they were turning around to face me. I took in the sight of the identical frowns that my two younger brothers were sporting, and without even having to hear what they had to say, I knew that they had no idea what I was talking about. They hadn’t heard anything.

​“Hear what?”

I allowed my shoulders to drop, accepting the fact that they would be of no help to me. I averted my gaze to the floor, deciding to take these few moments to regain control of my breathing. I was thankful that they had stopped because it would have been impossible for me to speak to them if we had still been running. Once I felt like I had composed myself enough, I raised my chin, along with my shoulders, and looked at each of them in turn.

​“I thought I heard someone saying my name, but I must have imagined it.”

I barely even hesitated to shake my head, partly at their horrid hearing abilities, but mostly towards the fact that I had actually gone as far as saying that I had imagined it, for I knew, with every fibre in my being, that it hadn’t been. My imagination wouldn’t have been able to… to sound so real. As if to prove myself right, I conjured up the memory of it once more, desperately trying to recall as much detail as I could. The most prominent thing that stood out to me, was the gruff, gravelly texture of it. I would even go as far as claiming that it had sounded foreign, but there was no way for me to be sure.

I was pulled out of my wandering thoughts when my eyes registered Zeke and Elijah moving. I felt my eyes widen slightly, slightly surprised to find that they were already jogging again, although there had been a part of me that had been expecting them to do it. Letting out a resigned sigh that caused my shoulders to lift and then drop, in quick succession, I took off after them, trying to push the whisper to the back of my mind.

The only thing that I couldn’t manage to force to the back of my mind, was the feeling that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was struggling to close the distance that had formed between my brothers and myself, something that had never occurred before. It felt as if my feet had doubled in weight, taking twice the amount of strength to cover less than half of the distance. As if I my sanity hadn’t already been put to the test, I found myself realising that the distance between myself and the next streetlight was only getting longer and longer.

But what scared me the most, was that Zeke and Elijah were even farther away from me than the streetlamp was, and that it would only be a matter of seconds before they turned the corner and disappeared behind an apartment building at the end of the block. I became painfully aware of the erratic way in which my heart was starting to thump, feel the way that it was pounding against my ribcage. It took me a second to long to realise that I was waiting for them to turn around and realise that I was too far behind them, for them to realise that they were about to leave me behind…

But that never happened.

They just continued to run, oblivious to my absence, until they had disappeared from my view, as I had been expecting them to. Without even intending to do so, I felt myself slow down, my body finally acknowledging the tiredness that I had been ignoring since we had left home. I didn’t understand what was happening. Maybe I was suffering from some sort of burnout…

How else would I be able to explain what was happening around me?

​“Dilara…”

This time, I didn’t dare hesitating, whirlin around as fast as I could—something that proved to be a bad decision, for my ankle twisted at an odd angle when I did so. It caused me to stumble, and for a frightening moment, I thought that I was going to fall, but I caught my footing soon after the thought entered my mind. My eyes were moving around frantically once more, darting from one side of the road to the other, my limbs going limp as I started to acknowledge the fear that I was feeling. It seemed to paralyse me, wrapping around my throat and starting to choke me.

My eyes focused on the shadows, my heart thumping loudly in my ears as I searched desperately for something, anything. Was I indeed delusional, as Zeke and Elijah often claimed, or were the shadows moving towards me?

I barely even realised what I was doing, my limbs moving on their own accord, carrying me backwards. It felt like the shadows were calling to me, trying to get close to me. I turned around, my eyes taking in the distance that separated me from the patch on light beneath the lamppost.

One minute I had still been staring at it, with the lump in my throat only becoming bigger and bigger, and in the next, I was running towards it with every ounce of strength and determination that I had left in my body. I ignored the slime that was sticking my throat closed, and I ignored the burning of my lungs as they begged for more air. The only thing that I remained focused on, was that patch of light and getting to it safely. I couldn’t understand how, but I knew that I would be safe there.

I chose to believe that it was tar that my foot caught on when I finally broke through the circle of light, and that it hadn’t been something else catching my foot. My body went tumbling to the ground, and as I braced myself for the impact of the tar, my hands shot out in front of my face in a desperate attempt to protect it from the damage that it was about to receive. Sadly enough, my reaction hadn’t been fast enough, for my hands hadn’t even made it to their destination before I collided with the ground, a shockwave of electricity shooting through me as I did so.

The pain seemed to be originating from my cheek, and I could physically feel the way that the dirt was digging into the wound—something that I knew because of the burn that had started to spread through the wound. My elbows and forearm had similar sensations originating from their wounds, but they were much less painful in comparison to my cheek. I found myself rolling onto my side, letting out a cry of pain as I did so, my minding shooting blank as the only thing I focused on was my pain.

But my escape had been short lived, for only a moment later, something cold wrapped around my ankle. Every single muscle in my body recoiled as I scrambled backwards, desperately trying to go further into the light so that my entire body would be submerged by it. At this point, my heart felt as if it was going to bounce out of my chest at any minute now, the adrenaline that I could feel coursing through my veins doing nothing in terms of giving me strength or courage.

In an attempt to regain my composure—a rather desperate one, I admit—I started to inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth, feeling the slime-like substance in my throat try to push its way into my mouth. My eyes focused on the border where the light connected with the darkness, and what I saw there, managed to dissipate what little control I had managed to regain.

A few inches away from my face, was the outline of two feet that were clad in a boot-like shoe, one that I would have expected military personnel to wear. I closed my eyes for a moment, finding myself praying that I was actually just delusional, that none of this was real. But when I opened my eyes again, the shoes were still there, their wearer not having moved at all. Going against every instinct in my body that told me to just get up and run, I started to tilt my head upwards, preparing myself for the sight of the rest of the man.

My eyes made their ascent slowly, first taking in the unusually long legs that were attached to the feet, and then the bulky torso, and then finally…

The shadowy outline of a face.

My eyes darted from place to place as I desperately searched for facial features, knowing that they would help me recognise whoever this was in daylight. But to my complete shock and disbelief, there were none. Not a single feature that I could make out, for all that there was, was a swirling darkness that had come to life. I could practically feel the graze of its fingers as it reached towards me, hear the way that it called my name, trying to lure me in.

​“Dilara…”

The loud honk of a horn pierced through the silence, snapping me out of me dazed state of fear. I turned my head around, looking over my shoulder as I tried to see where the sound had originated from. It was difficult for me to focus, for there light from the streetlamp seemed to brighten by a tenfold, nearly blinding me.

I managed to raise my arm just high enough to shield my eyes, barely succeeding in doing so. It didn’t make much difference in terms of improving my eyesight, but it made enough of a difference for me to realise what was about to happen. A paralysing fear sunk into my body, reaching as far down as the tips of my toes. It felt like I couldn’t breathe, let alone move. A vital nerve had been severed—or perhaps my fight or flight response didn’t exist.

Because I wanted to run.

Or perhaps I needed to.

But as fate decided to intervene, that didn’t happen.

My body refused to do so much as move an inch, my limbs somehow managing to feel heavier and heavier with every second that passed—every second in which the vehicle continued to speed towards me. It felt as if someone was messing around with the physics of time, for it felt as if everything had slowed down—a pace so slow that I thought that it would stop at any minute now. Even my heartbeat seemed to slow down, the sound echoing louder than ever before in my ears.

My body seemed to spring to life in the same way that a decade old car would have, each and every one of my muscles tensing as I tried to scramble backwards, desperately trying to put some distance between myself and the oncoming vehicle. My body had barely moved out of the circle of light that had been formed by the lamppost, before the vehicles headlights illuminated me once more, forcing me to come to a startling realisation.

That it was too late for me to do anything other than accept my fate.