What Was Lost

I am not supposed to be here. At least I think I’m not. It’s hard to tell sometimes what it is I am and am not supposed to do.

I have been wandering, for how long I cannot say, but it must have been a while. It’s not like my feet ache or that I feel exhausted, but I can feel the time around me shifting. It’s odd because night never comes, just gentle light resting upon my body and around the vast empty land that surrounds me.

I am not supposed to be here, or is it that I don’t want to be here?

From the distance I can see an archway, fluffy and white. That is where I am meant to go.

When I am upon the entrance my eyes take in the sign I could not see before, the words looping and curling into one another.

Will you, will you, will you try

Please, oh please, just let us die

The words mean nothing to me and so I keep walking to where I am supposed to be. A single path lies before me surrounded by tall walls. I walk, a wall, and so I turn until the path is clear.

Unbidden, the words on the sign echo in my head, I push forward leaving them behind with the trails of my footprints.

I do not know what I am looking for, but I know it is hidden within these walls.

Another dead end, I spend only a moment wondering if there is a reason what I want is so hard to find, but then the thought catches a spark and burns to ashes.

Someone does not want me here, but I must be here.

Why is my destination so far away? I walk, more enclosed walls, I backtrack and still it is walls. Something bubbles within me until it fills my body with boiling frustration.

I pause, I have not felt in a very long time, but how much time? How long have I been here? There is no answer, only walls stretching to the sky. I keep moving.

When I finally reach a circular clearing I release a sigh, it was over. Whatever it was.

In the center lay a single tan chest engraved in symbols I did not understand but knew I had before. It did not matter, the moment I laid eyes on it I knew with striking clarity that it was mine.

I wasted no time gripping the rough edges and wrenching it open.

I immediately fell back as whirling black smoke rushed out, I let out a gasp as memories slam into me.

“No,” I whisper, hands shaking. I ran to the chest, my box pouring souls into the world, and tried to shut it. “No,” I repeat, unable to undo what I had done so many times before.

I promised this time I wouldn’t forget.

“Oh Pandora, you just can’t help yourself, can you?”

I turn to the God, trepidation bleeding from me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I forgot again.”

The God sighs, weary, old, tired. I’m sure I must have known him but too much time has passed, and he is hardly who he used to be.

“How? How can you forget?”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” I cry. “To wander and wander all alone. It starts the same, I’m determined, I have a plan, surely it won’t happen this time, but days turn to weeks to months and then the voices start, the hallucinations form and, and my sense of self flees. I don’t know who I am, what I’m doing, and I am certainly not thinking about a group of Gods that quite frankly got what they deserved!”

Except I had been taken down with them.

“You insolent child, all you have to do is stay away from one single object on this entire desolate planet, how difficult can it be?” he spits.

 “You get to rest before being made whole, how difficult can that be?”

“Made whole?” A laugh fights its way from his throat. “You call this whole? My very being has been ripped from death and twisted and mended before being pushed into this realm. A realm that doesn’t want me, that grips and claws at me for daring to exist. Each time, more and more of me is destroyed. Who I once was doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“That’s not my fault,” I say.

“But you can stop it,” he replies like it’s that simple. Like me being forced to lose my mind was just a small price to pay.

A giggle enters the tense atmosphere. “Come now, you should be working together to defeat the big cruel monsters that put you in this situation.”

I turn and see it standing there. The sheer power radiating from it makes my head feel like it’s splitting into four. From the glimpses I occasionally get, it certainly looked human shaped, but I knew that was far from the case. Of all things, it took the voice of a child. To appear less threatening or to invoke fear in even the most innocuous of things, I couldn’t say.

“What are you doing here?” the god asks.

An unnecessary question, it would have told them anyway. This thing certainly liked to hear its own voice.

“Mm, I wanted a live viewing of the show. I thought it would really amp up the emotions from me and I was right. I’m getting chills from these performances.”

“These are our lives,” the God shouts.

“So I’m into reality TV? You’d think I was a criminal with the way you’re glaring at me.”

“I think cursing an entire species to never fully die might make you a criminal,” I dryly say.

“Did I do that? Honestly I forgot.”

The worst part was that I could believe it. I didn’t remember all the ants I had crushed throughout my lifetime either.

The Gods molded me themselves, they had taught me talents and gifted me personality. The thought of there being something more powerful than them had never even crossed my mind.

Never crossed their minds either.

When It appeared I was long dead. I never got the details but apparently it hadn’t taken long for our all-powerful Gods to be murdered. It wanted to correct its mistakes and brought them all back. And everything they touched.

I am lucky that enough time has passed that I do not remember being ripped into life.

“What do you want,” the God cries. “If it’s suffering, we’ve done it. If it’s pain, we’ve felt it. Just please,” he sinks to the ground, hands clasp together. “Please let us die.”

“But then who would I have to play with? All the other realms didn’t last nearly as long as you. I like that everyone here is so adaptable. So, no I don’t think I will let you die. I mean you will eventually, no ones body can through that forever. I guess that means the balls in your court.”

“You’re a monster,” the God says.

“And you have limited time to hide that box again. The labyrinth was a good idea, it took her a millennium to find it. Might want to recycle that one. Now off you go.”

And with a snap of fingers, my box and the God disappear, leaving me alone with It.

“Do you remember?”

“…yes.”

“And your answer?”

“I refuse.”

A rebounding laugh. “Well maybe in the next life.”

I don’t want a next life. I asked once, why It chose me to do this. The answer? Poetic justice. Zeus used me to punish humans and now It uses me to punish the Gods.

“Can’t you just stop?”

A pause, then footsteps towards me. A hand gently strokes through my hair, and I am disgusted at how I relish it.

“But then I would be alone again, and you know oh so well how tortuous that is.”

I know what it wanted me to do, consume the Gods and then live out eternity with It. Just a desperate soul with too much power desperate for connection.

I sigh. “That I do. Where to now?”

“We have time, let’s find ourselves out of her Pandora.”

“I don’t think that I’m her anymore.”

“No? Well I suppose you can also look for a new name.”

A new name, a new determination. I failed but next time I would hold out for sure. Until then, I had a labyrinth to escape.