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He was running once more. That’s all he knew. His breath was hissing in his ears and his leg muscles were hurting from the effort. He could hear the clang of metal as he was fully geared up in his bronze armor. He could also hear the screaming. Screams were coming from every direction. His feet seemed to be ankle-deep in water which was making his march more difficult. However, no, that was no water. He recognized the familiar and not at all pleasant scent of metal and he knew the liquid was thick. It was blood. He could almost feel it clotting on him. There were momentary flashes of fire in the darkness and then more screams… Soon faces and people followed. Screaming distorted faces came to get him. They were mixed people; soldiers and civilians that seemed to be rushing at him. He raised his sword which he had no idea he had before, and slashed. He slashed again and again as more blood gushed out of wounds and showered him. All he could do was keep cutting as more dead bodies fell down. He recognized the fires and screams of Troy. He could almost see the wooden horse; his creation, burning in some long distance along with the walls of Holy Troy. He swore people moaned his name as they fell dead.
“Get back! Back!” he cried desperately, “Leave me alone!”
He slashed again and then his eyes widened in horror.
“C-Captain…”
He recognized the tall figure with the dark brown hair and brown eyes or rather what seemed to be left of them as they were glassy like fish eyes as his head was leaning to the side soullessly with the slash he had just inflicted open at his throat; blood gushing out of his lips.
“P-Polites…” he croaked out
“Odysseus…” Polites moaned, “Why…why…it’s…cold…”
His skin was pale and soft; unnaturally green as if it had been underwater. He was bloated at places as the flesh was already hanging at other places. Some parts of his body seemed to be bitten by the fish of the sea.
“No…no…no…” Odysseus whispered taking a step back and another and another
Suddenly from the depths of the bloody pool came more hands, one or two tried to grab him by the ankles. He turned around to see the thin figure of Eurylochus. His skin was also grayish, seaweed was coming out of his black mouth as water was gushing out of it.
“Captain…” he growled unworldly, “This is all your doing! Your fault! You doomed us all!”
“No! Eurylochus! Please…” Odysseus cried, “I didn’t…I…I didn’t mean…”
As screams and moans increased accompanied by the sounds of swords and cracking of bones coming from a distance, more faces and bodies kept coming out of the bloody pool around him… More men appeared; some of them bore wounds on their bodies that looked like giant holes, something only spears enormous for human hands could cause, a few others had limbs missing and 6 out of them had their skulls crushed; parts of their brains missing or jaws shattered beyond recognition. And more bodies covered in algae and seawater appeared.
“Lycaon…Alkimos…Amphialos…Antilochus…Amphidamas…” Odysseus whispered as tears burnt his eyes, “No…please…no…Perimedes…no…”
He tried to back down but he couldn’t. There was a circle of dead men coming closer and closer, moaning unworldly and calling his names. The hellish choir of screams and cries in the background was making his ears buzz.
“I told you not to do that…!”
At the sound of that soft, mellow soprano voice, Odysseus turned around. At a distance he recognized the tall figure of Circe as her auburn red hair and green eyes left little doubt of her identity.
“Circe…please!”
“You doomed yourself, Odysseus!” Circe whispered, and even if she did, her voice echoed clearly in his ears, as if she spoke inside him, “I had warned you…you didn’t heed my advice”
“No! Please, Circe! I didn’t do it…I…I didn’t…”
Circe pointed her white finger towards him in accusation.
“Their blood falls upon you! It’s time you paid!”
“No!” Odysseus yelled in panic, “I beg of you, Circe, please help me!”
“I told you, darling…”
The new, deep voice made his blood run cold as he turned towards the other side to see the dark figure of Calypso standing tall as if she were a shadow, behind the sea of people that were approaching him. Her honey eyes almost shining in the darkness.
“I told you to stay with me…” she repeated, and suddenly she was right behind him as if it took just a blink of his eyes to do so, “You could have been immortal! You could have been happy with me…and yet you abandoned me! I loved you and you abandoned me.”
“No!” Odysseus cried out, “You were scaring me…you kept me prisoner…you…” he chocked on the words, “…You violated me…!”
“Like your own people violated me?”
Yet another figure manifested behind him, making him jump out of his skin. He recognized that slim, small figure. Her robes of the priestess were stained with blood as was her face.
“Cassandra!” he croaked out
The she-prophet both blessed and cursed by Apollo glared at him; a thousand accusations shining in her eyes.
“Your schemes brought your people at my doors! They defiled me! They violently took my virginity away! The one that I had offered to the gods for eternity! They made me a slave!”
“I didn’t do it! I am not at fault!”
“What about me then?”
Odysseus turned his head again and he never thought to see that face again in his life. That face so much younger than his, gray and loose from water covered in mud and algae from the sea.
“P-Palamedes…” Odysseus croaked out, “No…no!”
A bony accusatory finger stretched towards him.
“You…” the unworldly husky voice croaked, “You…killed me!”
“No! You drowned!” Odysseus panicked, “You fell and drowned…I saw it!”
“Yes…” Palamedes retorted, “You did nothing…your hand did this!”
“That’s a lie!” Odysseus screamed beyond himself, “I wasn’t…I didn’t… You… You hurt my son! You nearly killed him! And you dragged me into that hell! If it weren’t for you I…I would be at home now! With my son! With my wife!”
“That was all you ever cared for…” Eurylochus spoke again, “No one else mattered to you…no matter how much you cheated, stole or killed you didn’t care…”
“No! No!” Odysseus now yelled as tears of rage filled his eyes, “I…I did so much for you! I…I fought monsters for you…I sold myself for you! Bastard! I did so much for you! Don’t you dare to say that to me!”
“You took Troy by trickery!” Cassandra spoke as well, “You fought at night and you destroyed thousands of lives…”
“And for what?” Calypso continued, “To return to your wife…the wife that doesn’t wait for you…the wife that is happier without you!”
Her eyes shone dangerously, almost like coals over embers of fire.
“Your dearest wife just lives happily without you!”
“NO! DAMN YOU WITCH! DAMN YOU!”
The baby cry made his blood freeze as he looked down at the bloody river and saw the mangled body of the baby grabbing his ankle. The scream that was released from his own lips couldn’t have been produced by a human!
“NO!”
He violently kicked himself free out of the grasp beyond his wits in terror as he ran towards a curtain he had no idea there was there and then he opened it to face the most terrifying sight of them all. Penelope was there, as beautiful as the day he left her, leaning onto a couch. There was a male figure behind her, he couldn’t distinguish his features as he was hidden in the shade of the curtain (and of the olive canopy of the bed…HIS bed…the bed he shared with his wife…) but he seemed tall young and vigorous. Penelope leaning against him like a dove looked at him in contempt.
“Why did you come back?” her melodious voice full of accusation, “We were better without you…happier without you!”
“Penelope! No, joy of my life this cannot be! You promised me…we promised to each other…! No! This can’t be!”
“How long will I cry for you? How long will I wait for you, Odysseus? How many more people will I bury that waited for you?”
Anticlea…his mother…his father probably would follow… Tears of horror fell from his eyes as the unworldly screams increased mixed with the horrendous song of the sirens that pierced his eardrums.
“No! Penelope! How could you!”
“You deserve to die for what you’ve done!” Penelope replied merciless.
Her voice was no longer sweet; no longer warm. She was colder than ice and sharper than any sword, spear or tusk that ever pierced his tormented body.
“You…Sacker of Cities…like any butcher you took so many lives and destroyed even more! So just you would get out of war fast without being called a coward! You will pay for what you’ve done!”
The horrendous room seemed to be growing distant and the living dead seemed to have surrounded him now…
“Come…Odysseus…” Polites moaned
“Join us to hell…” Eurylochus growled, “Come with us as you should have done a decade ago!”
More moans and groans surrounded him as skeletal hands, more terrifying than any claw he ever saw, came closer and closer. Odysseus was mad beyond words.
“NO! LET ME GO! UNHAND ME! NO!”
Horrified beyond description he looked up at the direction of Penelope who was growing all the more distant from him.
“No! PENELOPE!”
He punched and kicked maniacally, he hit someone with his elbow and he swore he must have uprooted some arm or some handful of hair. He no longer cared.
“NO! YOU SHALL NOT DRAG ME DOWN WITH YOU!” he bellowed, “I WILL SURVIVE, DO YOU HEAR ME?! I WILL SURVIVE! I WILL SURVIVE! NO! NO! NO!”
As the bodies engulfed him his breath stopped and his eyes turned black…
~~
Odysseus gasped and shot up from his sleep violently breathing in and out
His wide chest was hurting from the amount of effort he was putting at the violent palpitations that were supposed to bring Oxygen to his body. His clothes were drenched from his sweat and his forehead was burning as if he were feverish. He looked around frantically at the room as he tried to remember where he was. He remembered he was in Scheria, the island of the Phaeakes. He was finally on a friendly land with people that seemed willing to help if he let them in. The room was simple and yet comfortable where he slept softly for the first time in more than two weeks. It looked cozy even if Odysseus was nowhere near at comfortable at that moment. Then his mind, already moved by fear he realized the only reason he could see was that there was light in his room! Fast like a snake he turned around to grasp the throat of the intruder who dared to invade in his room only to receive a girly whelp of surprise and feel the tender flesh beneath.
“It’s me!” Nausicaa rasped out, “It’s me…!”
She was standing over him in her nightgown, covered in white and in her white veil, holding a ceramic lamp that was the source of light. With the traces of the dream still in his mind, Odysseus came back to reality. He sighed in relief as he released her.
“Princess…” he gasped, “Gods forgive me…forgive me, I didn’t mean…”
“Forgive me the intrusion…” the maiden spoke again in a whisper, “I heard you from down the hall moaning and gasping I thought…”
Odysseus felt his heart being clenched by fear.
“Did I…Did I speak in my sleep…?”
He had hidden his identity from his hosts and managed to remain anonymous. If his dream forced words in his mouth then…
“No…” Nausicaa whispered honestly, “Nothing I could make out anyways but you seemed pretty bad…”
“Thank gods…” Odysseus sighed in relief, “Forgive me for the scare, princess… I did not aim to alarm you in the middle of the night. It was just a nightmare… Just shadows and screaming in the night…”
Nausicaa placed the lamp by his bed and sat at the edge of it.
“They say that night horrors visit us when we have guilty conscious. Do you have things you regret, kind guest?”
She could have stabbed him in the heart; it would have hurt less.
“No, princess” he lied, “no more than everyone has, anyways. However the trip…the shipwreck and the tides…adventures…sadness and horror…can break any man…”
He mopped his sweat off his forehead with his hand. He swore he could still see the blood.
“I have my regrets like any other human…and my fears too…”
At least that was true enough, he knew. Nausicaa looked at him sincerely and nodded.
“You are a curious case, kind stranger. My father was impressed by you. You certainly hide wisdom”
Odysseus scoffed a bit, in a humorless manner. Yes, wise… Wits that match the gods they had said…a man of many wiles they had said… And yet here he was; stranger in a strange land…alone without companions afraid to even reveal his name to hosts because of over a decade of torment and sorrow…
“My wisdom brought me here,” he thought bitterly, “my arrogance and selfishness… I wanted, so badly, to go home and I committed a war crime for it! I could still be at war in Troy now…but I would still be Odysseus of Ithaca…the king of Cephallinians… But I would still be honorable despite my reputation…I would be…I would be me… Not a nobody hiding among strangers…not a ragged beggar and a ragged man”
And yet, did he have regrets for his actions? He surely did, but would he really make things differently? Odysseus realized that he wouldn’t. He would regret the slaughter of Troy to the rest of his days, he knew it, but would he have taken another route to take it? Somehow he doubted it. He still knew he would come up with a scheme to take it as fast as possible. Quite frankly, Troy was his biggest regret but also his biggest pride. A mortal man taking a city almost by himself? If the slaughter and the atrocities to the gods hadn’t happened Odysseus realized that he would be proud of his idea to overstep the rules and fight in the night. If the slaughter didn’t happen so brutally he could even feel pride at his plan… He moaned pitifully as he passed his hand over his face once more. He saw a few white hairs on his hand from his beard. Yes, he realized once again, he was just a pitiful human doomed to grow old and die. His years of torment had changed him…and he wasn’t sure if it truly was for the better…
“I am no longer young, princess…” Odysseus said in defeat, “Wisdom can have also the name of experience which always comes with age; even if experience doesn’t always equal to wisdom, your compliment is definitely a balsam to any old man’s heart…”
He remembered being praised for his wisdom. He felt so proud back then! Even now he felt wild pride people recognizing the skills he believed he possessed. However now, after 20 long years Odysseus was tired…even this joy was not enough to heal the cracks to his soul. What wisdom did to him during all those long years he roamed about the seas? At the moment he felt like the worst among the fools that ever lived on the planet. Nausicaa blushed softly. Odysseus watched her brush a lock of hair behind her ear, averting his eyes.
“I certainly do not think you are old as you say…my father does not think so either. If you wished so, you could stay here forever and relax…finally be free from your torments…”
She looked at him for a brief second before shyly lowering her eyes again.
“And I would gladly become your wife as my father also wished”
Odysseus looked at her. Even in the dim light he could see how beautiful she was. Soft and clean wheat colored skin and long brown hair, large brown eyes that could wake the passion in any man’s heart; Odysseus was both flattered and in wonder how she saw him; a mortal maiden to the beginning of her youth seeing him a shipwrecked beaten up man to the beginning of his old age, and thinking how she wished to be his wife. She wasn’t an immortal goddess who might as well take interest in experiencing the fleeting nature of humans, this was a human maiden; someone like him. Usually maidens of humans would be attracted to youth, beauty and strength. The fact that she seemed genuinely interested in him both flattered and alarmed him. Her hand made a move to touch him. He gasped and avoided her by leaning back.
“Don’t…” he said softly, “Please don’t…”
Nausicaa averted his eyes once more, clenching her veil around her.
“Did that goddess you mentioned do that much to you…?” she whispered
Odysseus lowered his eyes.
“Is not something I can easily talk about, Princess…however that’s not the only reason…”
It was a half-lie and he knew it but he was also telling the truth.
“I have a wife…she is waiting for me back home…”
For a moment that horrifying dream came to his mind but he shook it off.
“I have also a son who could be about your age… Please, do not get me wrong, kind Nausicaa…you are a very beautiful and attractive young woman, the woman who could awake passion and loyalty to any man but…”
He sighed.
“…But I am not for you. That is not what you wish either…trust me you would regret it later and so would I. I love my wife more than anything in this life. I could never betray her in such a way as to abandon my plan to reunite with her.”
Nausicaa looked to the side once more.
“Do not think of me as reckless…you cannot tell what I would and what I wouldn’t regret…”
“The thought never crossed my mind, Nausicaa…” Odysseus said softly, “But, trust me, you confuse your pity and sympathy for me for love…”
“I never pitied you…” Nausicaa said, “In fact, your strength and will to survive is only to be admired of and you have proven yourself a bit today…”
“Please say no more compliments, princess, for this old man might become too flattered and arrogant while he should stay humble!” Odysseus whispered in an attempt to make some humor out of the situation
He knew himself. He could say many things but no one could deny he knew his good and bad sides. He was easily flattered. He loved to hear that people appreciated his talents. He was so used at both ends of the spectrum; people berating his methods and people admiring his skills that he was capable of absorbing flattery like a sponge. His onyx eyes looked at the maiden in a paternal way.
“My answer will still be no, beautiful Nausicaa… I desire nothing more than go home to my wife and son…please, understand, it has been so long…”
“Is your wife so beautiful then…?” Nausicaa smiled sadly
“And even more”
“Even after all those years…?”
Odysseus smiled softly.
“That…I do not know” he admitted, “However Nausicaa…I had the chance meeting women who were renounced for their beauty and even then I chose my wife. She might not have been as famed as those women for her beauty, despite the fact it was great anyways, but the reason I chose her was her wits, her craftsmanship…her personality that drew me to her… This type of beauty will never fade…not even in a hundred years… I wish you, beautiful Nausicaaa to find a husband that makes you feel the same…”
Nausicaa sighed softly. That sigh made Odysseus almost blush. It was as if she had told him; “I already found a candidate…but I cannot have him…”. He also felt shy that moment and drew his covers over his chest. If that maiden was truly in love with him in such a small amount of time…even if she knew literally nothing of him… That interest was indeed sweet and flattering how even at his age and even after beaten up by the sea and time he was still aspiring love and passion and yet… Nausicaa stood up, fixing herself a bit.
“Is there anything I can do for you, kind guest?”
Odysseus looked at the corner of the room where shadows played. His imagination was playing nasty games with the light and shadows and he could almost see a tall figure there…terrifying and dead…covered in blood and sea… His black eyes looked at the princess pleadingly.
“Yes…please can you leave me the lamp…?” he asked, “…So the shadows of the night will not visit me again…?”
Nausicaa smiled in sympathy.
“Of course…”
She placed the little ceramic by his bed.
“The oil should last throughout the night…”
Odysseus lowered his gaze and almost teared up in gratefulness. He hoped Nausicaa hadn’t seen it. She certainly was different than Circe and much different than Calypso. She respected his wish and backed away. He felt grateful to her and sad at the same time how he wasn’t that type of person to give her what she wanted. She didn’t deserve the heartbreak but he had confidence in her. She wasn’t broken like he was. She could find a better match… He collected himself so she wouldn’t notice his tears that were forming to his eyes, threatening to come out.
“Thank you…” Odysseus whispered, “Truly…”
“Sweet dreams, stranger…” she whispered
That I doubt…he thought bitterly watching her leave his chambers and leaving him in peace. His mind ran back to the island of Calypso. The nights he was numb and the few hours of sleep he managed to get were silent like death. In a way it was redemptory of the nightmares he got almost every night but at the same time now Odysseus felt both relieved and horrified that his nightmares returned. Of course the nightly screams were making him almost lose his wit in sorrow and terror and yet now he felt like he finally was returning to himself; he was becoming again Odysseus; a human with feelings and regrets and memories. He was no longer an empty sack for the use of a goddess…and yet… He looked at the corner. The light was enough to show to him there was nothing there and yet as the flame flickered he could still imagine the tall figure of his friend Polites there…
“Odysseus…” he had moaned in his dream, “…It hurts…it’s cold…”
As tears flew once more from his already tear-burnt eyes, Odysseus held his head as he leaned forward on his bed.
“I know…” he whispered, “I know my friend…I’ve been there….I know… I’m so sorry…f-forgive me…”
He knew he would join them one day…then he would face them properly and apologize properly for what happened…but not yet…not yet. He had promised to himself he would survive no matter what… He would join them…just not yet…
Eventually he fell asleep…with the flickering light of the oil lamp by his side…
Sending away the horrors of the night… The Shadows and the Screams