This story originally appeared in ChiZine, October 2011, and was reprinted in Broad Spectrum: The 2012 Broad Universe Fiction Sampler (October 30, 2012, and in Love Stories.
INFERNO
Last time this happened, I was Orpheus.
Ethan was lost, pale, gone in a haze of Zoloft and Lithium and anorexia, and he assured me he was in hell, and I missed him so much that the rocks and trees wept. And when neither of us could bear it any more, I descended into the underworld and went to the King. I sang such a song of grief that I even moved the King of the Underworld to tears, and he said I could bring my Eurydice back to the light of day if only I didn’t turn back and look upon him. As I walked through the fluorescent halls and the smell of bleach and urine I knew this was hell, and I couldn’t bear the thought of my beloved locked away from the sun like this forever. So I led the way singing, and the janitors and nurses wept and cleared a path for us as we walked down the hall.
As I opened the front door, I turned. Ethan had a tic and couldn’t stop moving his left arm. He threw his right arm over his eyes and screamed that my hair was on fire. Maybe I should lay off the henna. And then he was gone, vanished back into the underworld like smoke, and I was alone.
Apparently, being Orpheus doesn’t work.
I don’t imagine you would want to be my Eurydice anyway, my darling. I think you think of yourself more as a Lancelot, all shining armor and devotion to your lady fair. But there are no stories of Lancelot in the underworld, at least not that I know of. Lancelot was from the wrong part of the world for Dante’s attention.
Perhaps I should be Inanna instead. I like that. Inanna is sexy. It fits in a way, you and I have a lot more spark than Ethan and I ever did.
So I come and join you in the underworld, my love. I don’t see how this has happened again, and this time, since I am not Orpheus, they won’t let me in as a visitor. So I come in the only way I can. At the first gate, they take my purse. At the second, they take my jewelry. At the third, they take my shoes. By the seventh gate, I’m wearing a simple shift, like an inmate. The rituals of the dead are ancient and cannot be questioned.
Your eyes when you see me are worth it. Before I know it, you’re in my arms again, at last. You’re warm and lucid, with hot lips and roaming hands. You’re like the sun. You warm all the parts of me that are cold, clear to the bone, and you make me feel like the Queen of Heaven. I’m looking out of the corner of my eye for a relatively private place to take you when dull, bored men in white tell us we aren’t allowed to kiss and separate us.
The doctor is a woman with cold, dark eyes; she calls me words like “sick” and “codependent.” I expect this. Inanna is a corpse in the underworld for three days.
I would suffer to get you back, but in those three days your eyes are cold, lifeless, dark. We are corpses together, my love, locked away from the sun. Inanna and Damuzi, together in hell. It’s not the Christian hell; it’s cold and dark, full of the dead and the smell of industrial cleaner and the metallic tang of what passes for our food, and we all rot together.
After three days, I smell. Not as badly as I would if I were truly a corpse, but my hair is stringy and sweaty and my eyes are sunken. When I lay my hand on your shoulder and say, “I did it for you,” you turn.
“This isn’t your story!” you say. Your voice is so loud, your face so red, you turn so quickly that I think for a moment that you might strike me, and in that moment I decide that Doctor Ereshkigal is right. I shouldn’t be here.
“You’re right,” I say to you, and tell the Doctor, “Keep him.” I turn on my heel and check myself out, feeling like I have condemned you to hell in my place, and think that I may never love again.
PURGATORIO
The world has gone grey, like a monastery.
“I just have some issues I need to work on,” you tell me. You’ve lost weight, your color is bad and your eyes are haunted. You avoid looking me in the eye, like you’re afraid I’ll see through you, see into your heart.
I don’t feel like Inanna any more. I don’t feel sexy. I’m tired and my heart aches from seeing you suffer. I feel like Mary in the Pieta, only Mary was lucky enough to hold what was left of her beloved son and weep over him. But you’re not my son. You’re my lover, despite the way you’re avoiding touching me.
In lieu of hugging you, I say, “I know, sweetheart.”
“I just, I didn’t get this way overnight, and I’m not going to get better overnight. I’m a work in progress.” Your voice breaks, like you might burst into tears at any moment.
I want to cry. I want to wrap you up in a blanket and feed you soup. “I baked you cookies,” I say.
“I don’t deserve cookies,” you say.
I want to grab you and shake you for being such a fucking drama queen. Shake you until your teeth rattle. But it’s no use; this is your story, and forgive me, darling, but you’re not the storyteller I am. One note, like plainsong. Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem.
You’re neither a monk nor an ascetic. I shove the bag of cookies into your hands and brush your hair out of your eyes.
You shudder away from my touch and almost drop the cookies. “I’m not allowed to eat sweets. I have to eat complex carbohydrates, like brown rice.” You hand the bag of cookies back.
I grit my teeth and force my voice into patience. “You’re not going to tell me what’s wrong?”
You shake your head, a bit too vigorously. It’s a little frightening in your fragile state. You look like you might snap in half. “I can’t. I want to, it would be such a relief, but I can’t. I just… I need to work on some issues.”
“Okay,” I say. “I love you. Feel better.”
And then you start to cry. Dona nobis pacem.
PARADISO
I don’t have a happy ending for you. I suppose this is still your story, and you’ll have to make your own happy ending.
But I have a story, too. I am Persephone, back from the dead. My mother and I go to the botanical gardens and admire the roses together, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen her so happy.
There are butterflies, and greenhouses full of orchids and cacti, and so many flowers. I reach up and run my fingers over the roses, petals like velvet. Soft, yielding. Sensuous. It’s been too long since I’ve taken a lover, but I’ve shed old Mary’s robes in favor of a gauzy dress and sandals.
Unlike Persephone, I don’t intend to go back to you in the underworld. If you want me, you’re going to have to come out of the underworld yourself and get me. Not like Hades with his dark chariot, like Dante. Like someone who doesn’t plan to go back. I don’t care how. Hell, you be Inanna for a change. Damuzi was the Sumerian Persephone, after all.
I don’t care what story you pick. You’re the author of your own story, after all. Just pick one.
When I see you coming out of the tunnel you’re blinking, like you haven’t seen the sun in a long time. “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all.”
My mother stiffens at the sight of you, and this odd speech of yours makes her shiver. But this is a story I know.
I hand you a peach. “We should go walking at the beach.”
You look at the peach for a while, like it’s going to bite you. Finally, you bite it, and, like Persephone in reverse, I feel it trap you in the here and now. We go to the beach, where you take off your shoes and roll up your jeans. I take off my sandals. The sand is hot. The water is salty cool and stings a little where my sandal rubbed my foot wrong. We talk about what it would be like if there really were mermaids, if we could hear them singing, each to each, and agree that they would not sing to us. With each step, you become more solid and real. With each bite of peach, you become less Hades and more J. Alfred Prufrock.
I’d like to say we live happily ever after, but this isn’t that kind of story, is it?
Want another short story? There’s one here.