Orpheus

TW: mention of suicide, mental illness and other dark themes

My sister's death was the beginning of the end.

We did everything together as kids. We were each other's rock. Our home. When something went wrong, we would also turn to each other for strength and comfort. She was an angel on Earth, and no one could tell me otherwise. Sophie was my polar opposite the way her pale, blonde hair matched that of our mother's and her round periwinkle eyes shone as a mirror into a place only she knew. While I was a good foot taller than she was with dark brown hair and eyes. Too much like our father. Both in appearance and in attitude.

Too often, I would get into fistfights with guys at school when they upset her. Sophie was too soft to stand up for herself, but she didn't need to when she always had me in her shadow. Always ready to get my knuckles bloody. But after our parents' divorce...something changed in her. Where she was always soft and quiet, she became more reserved and sheepish. There was a devastating kind of sadness in her eyes and at times I could hear her sobbing softly to herself in her room. I knew she was sad. I knew that there was something she wasn't telling me. But I always told myself she would say something when she was ready. I didn't know--wasn't prepared--for the fact that she never would be.

It was two weeks after her sixteenth birthday when I found her. Eyes closed in the most depressing kind of peaceful way. I thought she was just getting ready for a shower. Until my feet were suddenly drenched with water. I'd never been one to cry. Never one to scream. Something broke in me the night I found her lifeless in the bathtub. Still clothed with our mother's Ativan bottle on the side of the bathtub--empty.

I screamed, pleaded, sobbed as I begged her to come back. But there was nothing I could do to bring Sophie back. I had an idea. It was farfetched and what I thought was useless, but it was all I had. I decided to follow my sister into the afterlife. So, after grabbing another bottle of our mother's sleeping pill bottles-- I downed the contents. Hoping, pleading that it would bring me to her. I just wasn't expecting to wake up in a damp, dark cave somewhere.

I must have looked confused because the next words I heard sent a chill deep into my bones.

"Andrew Dames."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes? Who's there?" I called softly into the darkness.

"Come to save your sister, I see."

Whoever it was knew my motive and that singsong voice deep in the cave grew nearer. I felt whoever--whatever--it was circling me. A chill ran down my spine.

"Who are you?" I called again.

My face paled as the creature revealed itself before me. Towering above me, yet somehow human and... otherworldly at the same time, was the most devastatingly beautiful woman I had ever seen. Sleek, black hair that reached the cave floor and glaring red eyes that bore into my very soul.

"I have many names," her voice was a purr that raised the hairs on my arms, "Though you can call me Lucifer."

There they were. The Devil--herself. But what I didn't quite understand was why they seemed almost human. Why a human female? I didn't dare to ask as the next thing that came rocked me to my core.

"What would you give to have your sister back?" I had a feeling they could sense my desperation. Could taste it in their fanged mouth.

"Anything," came my urgent answer, "I'd give you anything."

A feline grin spread across their beautiful face, baring those razor-sharp teeth that filled a too-small mouth. "In exchange for your sister's life back," they began, almost tauntingly, "you will do my dirty work, so to speak. Do we have a deal?"

I watched, unnervingly as they sat there grinning at me. Waiting--knowing--what the answer would be.

"Deal."

"Excellent," in the blink of an eye, they were no longer a woman with the face of an angel but a man wearing a very elegant, black suit.

The change was so swift I had barely time to register it. Their hair was still sleek and black but was now styled in curls that hung ever-so-slightly into their still beautiful face. What were once piercing red eyes were now devoid of all color--even the whites were gone. Black as the night surrounding us. I peered into the lingering darkness at them. Curious.

"What are you?" I dared to ask.

They let out a low laugh. "I take many forms, child," their voice now deep and husky. Having lost the singsong that was the female from before. "Whatever form better suites my needs to get the deed done is the form I take."

There was a deathly sort of silence that hung in the cave as I let that information sink in. I nodded, now standing, and observed who I now knew to be the Devil themselves.

"Right. What do I have to do?"

In less than the time it took for me to breathe in one breath, the woman from before was back though they kept the eerie black eyes. They waved a pale, slender hand to their right. A vision of a man in his mid-twenties with sandy brown curls and brilliant blue eyes, sporting the purest of white feathered wings appeared before us.

"This is Michael," they declared, "You are to kill him before returning back to me for your next task."

The wings. The brilliantly blind light that shone around him. This was the archangel, Michael. I had to kill an archangel. Terror ran through me. How was I supposed to kill an angel? Let alone one that was said to be the general of God's army. I wasn't religious. But my mother was and had read me the scriptures as a kid.

"How the hell am I supposed to do that?"

Another laugh from them, followed by a shrug. "I suppose you'll have to find out."

With that, they were gone, and I was alone in the cave. I closed my eyes against the encompassing darkness. "And if I fail and die...again?"

"Then I suppose you and your sister will remain in the River Styx forever," came their distant reply.