Maybe you don’t have to do this, I thought inside that moment.
I could toss the gun away. Apologize. Figure out some other way to escape.
But what other way was there? Last night, he’d more than proven how tightly he’d wound his mouse trap.
No, this is the only way, I told that part of me that felt like we’d truly connected when we had sex.
If Hades died, this all stopped. I could go home. Demand my father hand over custody of my sister in exchange for my silence. Finally, take Daphne to Disney World.
And that was why I squeezed the trigger. One time. Then another five. But…
I clicked several more times, and still…Nothing.
Hades probably could have grabbed the gun from me after the first fruitless click. Definitely after the second. But he didn’t.
He just watched me try to kill him, his gaze cold and patient until it finally dawned on me…There weren’t any bullets in the gun. Oh, my God. There weren’t any bullets in the gun. Had there ever been?
“Are you done?” he asked below the muzzle’s snub nose.
He didn’t wait for my answer before snatching the gun away from me and twisting off the bed in a way that made me fall to the side in a heap.
“It was smart of you to make that deal with me before you tried this.” His voice was flat. All business. “I honor my pacts. No guns. That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
Had I imagined the tender looks he’d given me? When we danced? When he lifted up to gaze into my eyes for his final release?
I must have. I’d never seen anything as hollow and dead as his silver eyes in the cold morning light.
“You fucked me over….” The sentence started out just as flat as all the others, but he broke off. And suddenly, his face was all emotion. Ravaged and hurt.
And that look hit me like one of the bullets that turned out not to be in the gun.
But then it was gone in a flash. And his eyes were back to glittering, like they used to when he regarded me from a higher position, full of malice and hate.
“You fucked me over once,” he repeated, his voice cold as ice. “That’s on me for forgetting whose daughter you are and believing one word that came out of your duplicitous mouth. But if you fuck me over again…I mean, if you even think about pointing another gun at me or trying to escape before your five years are up, then you better make sure as hell it’s loaded. Otherwise, I will take you back to that house you grew up in, snap your neck in front of that father who spit you out, and shoot him dead. Do not test me.”
“Hades…” I started to speak. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t like I had a good rejoinder for “I’m so pissed off you tried to kill me, I’ll snap your neck if you fail to kill me twice.”
I had a deep urge to explain myself. But how do you explain yourself to a monster? He knew what I did, and he knew why I did it. And he didn’t care about reasons, just like he didn’t care about my innocence.
So I clamped my mouth shut, and we stood there in silence until he said, “Wake up, Persy. We’re here.”
Three years after I tried and failed to kill Hades, I jolted awake and found myself…not in New Orleans, but in the cab of the black F-150 Hades was driving up to Nashville.
Yet another nightmare.
I still drew daily baths for Hades. He hadn’t touched me since I pulled that trigger, but he’d kept his word, and I slept in his bed most nights.
But over the years, we’d switched places. I was the one who suffered from night terrors, while he easily slept through the night.
The recurring one about me trying to kill Hades was the most disturbing nightmare of all. Even worse than the one where I finally made my way back to my sister after my five years were up, only to have her tell me she hated me forever and never wanted to see me again.
That sister nightmare was only what I was afraid might happen, and it had nuance. Sometimes she hated me in her room. Sometimes she hated me at our mom’s grave. Sometimes she hated me out on the back balcony of our house while fireworks burst overhead.
The trying to shoot Hades one, however, was a completely accurate play-by-play. Every single time.
I’d read all sorts of internet articles about dreams when I was trying to help my sister after our mother’s death. Some oneirologists, as they called the people who study dreams, thought they were the equivalent of a nightly mental cleanup—a tool our minds used to process fear and work out our problems. They claimed that some people had used lucid dreaming to achieve closure with relatives and friends, without it mattering if they were dead or alive. And a lucky few had even managed to rewrite their traumatic experiences in a way that brought them closure.
Not me.
