Persephone Underground Read online

  “I loved you, Seph,” she said. “When you were in foster care, I always loved you. In prison, I….I thought about you every single minute.”

  “I know, I know it mom. I love you so fucking much.”

  A small grin played over her mouth at my burst of profanity. Then she got serious.

  “You know why this happened?”

  “Mom, don’t. Don’t talk.” I said, half pretending that if she preserved her strength, she wouldn’t die.

  “It happened because my poor choices in this life killed that poor girl. I deserve this.”

  I cradled her against me, and turned mom’s head in my blood soaked lap. I wanted to look deep into her eyes one last time.

  “You didn’t deserve this Mom. You were wonderful to me. I forgive you! Do you hear me?” I shouted through my sobs, “I forgive you, and Allyson…she forgives you, too!”

  Mom closed her eyes as though my words brought the relief of high dosage pain medication. Then she fell asleep, her pulse so thread, I knew this nap of hers would stretch into eternity.

  I got up slowly, found a pillow and placed it gently under her head. I picked up her bed sheet and laid it over my dead mother; then went over to the large mirror she kept on top of the dresser.

  The powerful, tall Indian filled it – the version of Hayden I had always hated.

  “Your debt has been paid,” he said. “Almost.”

  I turned to address the barking dog I could hear, clear as a bell through Mom’s open sliding glass doors leading out to the balcony; Fury was back and waiting all those stories below, but there was no time to run downstairs and chase him.

  Hayden reached through the glass and pulled me in, so I could wake up in hell – not as a visitor this time, but as a permanent resident of his Underworld. I was ready for that now – as ready as I had ever been.

  Chapter

  25

  I followed my cruel lover, Hayden through the mist, reasoning maybe it’s not that odd to know different versions of the same person. I experienced it all the time on the surface. Ever since I can remember, I have acted a different version of myself with every friend. When I like the person I am with, I seek them out more. I loved who I was with Marc and Demi. I even loved who I’d become when Mom was around.

  I could barely think or see from my profound grief and shock in losing her. I was unsteady, crazy, drugged out of my mind. It was the way I always felt in the Underworld. I was my worst self here – so terrified, I let my imagination take over. On the surface, the nerdy, weak Hayden and I would laugh and joke and confide in each other. The version of Hayden that I hated – the runway model leading me down this foggy path – made me lock up like a clam. I barely said a word when I was with this version of Hayden Furr.

  He’d never know the real me. I thought of the clamshell mirror I’d put in my pocket, earlier. I gasped in relief that I could still make out its shape in my jeans pocket. It was a centering feeling – like at least some of what I was doing was real.

  The fog around me was so thick, I lost the ability to walk a straight line. Where in the world were we? In some kind of holding tank between the real world and his Kingdom of the dead? As much as I hated Hayden, it alarmed me when I lost sight of him. I needed my guide.

  I paced my way around a tight circle, reminded of the spell I’d cast in my own bathroom a few days ago – trying to rid my now dead mother of a cold. Once the fog lifted, I realized where I was.

  I was in Mami Wata’s kitchen.

  The old woman waited for me, a tea service resting between her and an empty chair. Miz Furr sat beside her mother, her face angry and grief stricken. Mami Wata conveyed different emotions. Oddly enough, she looked relieved.

  I knew why just as soon as Hayden’s mother shot her first question at me.

  “Lucas left behind that gun so you would kill yourself. Why didn’t you?”

  “I’m not ready” was all I could muster. I knew they were waiting for an apology but I could not offer one.

  Of course, I needed to apologize for the loss of her son, but I was too angry and confused. Why tell this ruthless family I was sorry, damn it? Sorry they killed my whole class and my teacher, maybe – but sorry for them personally? No thanks! I’d tell them to go straight to hell, if not for the irony. Perhaps, in a way, Hayden was smart to do what he needed to do to get away from them.

  Fresh waves of grief and guilt washed over me, just for thinking that. I checked myself. The sweet boy I knew was gone; it was a tragedy indeed.

  Mami Wata poured a round of tea for everyone, while I endured Miz Furr’s scathing looks – it was as though she intended to melt me with her hateful stare.

  “I know you blame me,” I whispered, a tear falling down my face and plopping into my steaming cup.

  The two women began to discuss my friend, Ronnie. We had a round table discussion about her role in all this. Apparently, they had lost track of her. She’d run away and even Lucas couldn’t turn her up.

  “She should pay, not Persephone,” Mami Wata brought up to her daughter.

  But Miz Furr wasn’t having it, arguing that even if Ronnie had been the one to tell Hayden about her and Lucas, it was me who was the catalyst in his finding out. I was different from all the other Persephonies – trouble from the start. I wouldn’t take their kidnapper bate that all the other girls ate up with a spoon. I wouldn’t end things on the surface so I could live in hell and serve their boy. I was a thorn in their side, and always had been,” my principal argued.

  She finished her rant, saying it was a mistake to vet me for the Underworld. She should have chosen a different girl – a more obedient one. Miz Furr rose shakily from her seat, both arms steadying her at the kitchen table. I shrank from her. She looked horrific in the weak light of the kitchen.

  Domino – Mami Wata’s stolen dog – woke from his nap on the rug by the sink and began to bark. Everyone in that room thought Hayden’s mother meant to snap my neck.

  “Robin – don’t!” Mami Wata tried to intervene, but Miz Furr pushed her down in her seat and merely spit in my face instead. The saliva burned my cheek as though it were inhuman spit – as though it were acid. I yelped in pain as I wiped it away.

  “You’re responsible for all of this carnage, Persephone – every last dead body.”

  I thought of the AR-15 left on the balcony of my mother’s murder scene and realized what was happening. The Furrs intended to frame me as the shooter. They would tell the police they found the school shooter’s gun in my home – that I entered Marc Furr’s class, angry at him for rejecting me as their foster child, now that his wife was pregnant; angry at all my fellow classmates for snickering at my foster dad’s homosexuality behind his back.

  It was a lame and flimsy plot, the Furrs concocted. If they had bothered to actually, truly get to know Marc and Demi, they’d see how ridiculous it was. If it didn’t make any sense to me, I hoped it wouldn’t make any sense to police, but as I listened to Miz Furr explain her version of what happened at my school, my mind reeled. I knew that following this, my life on the surface was over. I could never go home again.

  “You were so angry, weren’t you, Persephone? You had your eye on Hayden’s gun the moment you saw it in the root cellar. You stole from him, then hid the AR-15 in Mr. Springer’s closet, waiting for just the right time to open fire on your class. You wanted to make it look like you were an innocent bystander, hiding out in there. You bided your time, and right after your last kill at my school – Mr. Springer – you went home and murdered your mother in cold blood.”

  I just shook my head at Miz Furr, continuing to cry into my tea. My tears filled the cup from half full to nearly brimming over. I stole a glance at Mami Wata, who could not bring herself to look at me. I figured out on my own what this darkly enchanted drink was. In order for it to work, it had to be chock full of my own tears and grief.

  I raised the teacup to my lips and downed its contents in two gulps, coughing and nearly choking to death. I al
most couldn’t hear what Miz Furr spat at me next. I began to swoon, convinced they had fed me cyanide.

  “We all know why you hated your mother. We all know that her drunk driving accident is the reason you get…this…confused. Maybe you didn’t know what you were doing with that gun,” Miz Furr said, a bit of fake sympathy mixing in with the condemnation in her voice.

  “But…” she continued, “I’m sure you knew what you were doing, when you convinced your friend Ronnie to destroy my son. And now, you’ll stand trial down in hell to atone for your sins.”

  Mami Wata signaled for the cruel version of Hayden to come forth and presumably carry me away. He emerged from dark shadows, Domino barking and growling as he materialized as though from thin air. He stood between his grandmother and mother, proof in a way that perhaps I should be spared. Hayden wasn’t really dead, right – or else how could he be standing there? He could never die. I argued my innocence to Miz Furr, judge, jury and executioner.

  “But…but, his weaker version may be gone, but Hayden is standing right there!”

  As soon as I said it, the handsome Indian disappeared. I looked fervently around the room, desperate to know where he had gone.

  “You stupid, stupid girl,” Miz Furr said, shaking her head. My family is the undead. My sweet, skinny, shy boy – the one you knew on the surface – was real until you and Ronnie killed him. Now, only his demon is left behind – the apparition you just saw disappear.”

  “Is there a demon version of you, too?” I asked, voice shaking.

  With that, Miz Furr was gone – she had vacated her chair. I thought I was alone with Mami Wata, only to see something slither around the corner of the kitchen – the last straw for poor Domino. The dog sprinted from the room whimpering, as a long, ugly mermaid tail switched over his bedding.

  I vomited at the sight of her; my salty tea water, made mostly of what had leaked from my eyes, covering the kitchen floor in a shallow bath. Hayden’s mother swam through it all – a giant, slimy mermaid.

  It was a little like the scene from Alice in Wonderland, when she cries a sea of tears. My kitchen chair broke from water weight and damage, and I was up to my shoulders in turbulent ocean waves, floating away.

  I looked for Hayden, thinking that he might reappear and save me – but it was Mami Wata who came up from the depths of our shared, hyperbolic sea. Her tail was blue and green, and actually kind of beautiful.

  “Hold onto me, my child. I’ll take you to Hayden.”

  I sat on her back like she was a human jet ski, and we shot forward. She had told me just one thing before we cut a path to the Underworld. Mami Wata said my trial was soon to begin.

  Chapter

  26

  I held tight to Mami Wata’s hair – long and black with tiny seashells and pieces of coral entwining it. It reminded me of a horse’s mane – the plastic kind I clung to just a few years ago, when Mom decided I wasn’t too old for Disney’s Magic Kingdom and we rode the carousel together. It was one of the first things we did when she got out of prison. I think the family court judge actually laughed a little bit about that at my custody hearing.

  “Now that you’re out of foster care, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to Disney World!”

  I started to shudder and cry over the bittersweet memory of my mother and me enjoying the amusement park. Mami Wata noticed it, certainly. My tears gave her that cold and calculating look. Her mind was running about a million miles per minute, but it didn’t slow her down. We were at open sea for a bit – one of the glistening blue realms of the 7 seas. She swam us toward a cave, and the world got dark – the way it’s supposed to look in hell.

  I laughed at how useful my Disney World memory was. It made me feel better, thinking about all its rides, because as my eyes adjusted, the water channels in this dark cave began to look a lot like Pirates of the Caribbean. Hayden had never showed me this part of the Underworld.

  It was noisy, as there were people imprisoned in dug out holes, blasted into the sides of the cave, iron bars separating them from us. I could have sworn I saw someone who looked like Marc Springer, but without the pirate clothes and hat. He wore a sad, burlap gown that made him look like a sack of potatoes.

  I tugged on Mami’s Wata’s festooned lock of hair with such force and curiosity some of the scallops broke loose and fell into the clear water around us.

  “Who are those people – in the jail cells?” I asked her. In addition to the Marc look-alike, there were women and children, old people, teens. I must have seen at least one hundred people in total, incarcerated and calling out to be set free.

  “They are the dead, cast down here for wrongdoings and misdeeds. Lucas and Hayden will decide what’s to be done with them.” The mermaid struggled to tell me this, as her head had to crest the waters each time she spoke to me.

  We entered a lagoon in the coolest part of the cave – its waters a deep, Atlantic blue. Mami Wata called it a cenote; at its center was a small rocky island – just big enough for two stunning, blue coral thrones.

  Lucas sat in one, but not as his human self. Down here, he was pure canine – pure Fury. The pit bull drooled on the hand rests of his jagged, salt throne. Hayden, the 6 feet five-inch Indian chief of muscle, wore a vest, cut open to his navel. I swear – even from my vantage point of Mami Wata’s back several yards away – I could make out his washboard abs and the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, shouted his instructions at us.

  My mermaid delivered me to the edge of the little peninsula, housing the two thrones. It hurt my fingers to latch on to it, but I clawed my way off Mami Wata’s scaly back and onto the limestone. In seconds, I was at Hayden’s knees, begging him for forgiveness.

  “I didn’t convince you to kill yourself back on the surface, nor did I shoot my classmates and teacher,” I said, breathless with the truth.

  Hayden was silent for a moment. The massive Indian was near enough to reach out and touch my bent head, my dripping hair. Instead he placed a hand under my chin and raised my face to look at him. I gasped with happy surprise. I could see the old Hayden in his eyes – the sweet one, the one who loved me.

  Something about the Prince of the Underworld’s face told me to relax – that this was all for show, and if he was going to act tough, it was for Fury’s benefit only. The pit bull continued to growl and drool, waiting to hear what more I had to say for myself.

  Hayden spoke first. “I know you didn’t do it. We have Marc Springer; we put him to trial just before you. He told us everything…”

  The prince paused. He had yet to release my face from his hands. His fingers caressed all of my features – thumbs running lovingly over my lips. He bent down close enough to kiss me, but didn’t. I could see, my head bent and examining the limestone, names carved upon the floor – hundreds if not thousands of them and all familiar to me, because some of the names belonged to famous villains.

  Long story short, every name carved into that floor were of very bad people who had died. I could not, for the life of me, find my mother’s name. It made me happy to realize she had atoned enough on Earth. Mom was a good person, so of course she didn’t belong in Hell.

  “Of course, you understand why we had to engineer things this way – make you look so guilty on the surface. It was the only way to bring you to me. Bring you permanently.”

  Hayden gripped Fury by his spiky collar, explaining that the seat the pit inhabited was meant for a Princess – it was still to be decided who that Princess would be.

  The dog rejected to my being here, that much was clear. The kindness left my lover’s face when he looked deep into my eyes and told me that Lucas and Robin despised me, and were trying to get him, their only son, to listen to reason – that he never should have picked me in the first place.

  “I’m not going to listen to them,” Hayden said in a soft, measured voice. “With you, Persephone, I was the best version of myself. I was getting stronger every day. I may have
been able to break these chains of Hell and come live on the surface in the permanent way my parents do…and always have.”

  My prince’s face darkened as it flooded, I supposed, with thoughts of Lucas and Robin. I could see he hated knowing they were brother and sister – that he was a freak, and they’d not only lied to him about that his entire life, but made him believe he couldn’t have a semi normal life like the rest of the Furrs – who worked in schools and nightclubs, or lived the quiet life of an old voodoo queen on the Boulevard of Champions.

  Even his undying love for me could not change the fact, Hayden was angry. I gave a sharp cry when he kicked me back into the water. Mami Wata had been treading there the whole time – her head and shoulders above the gentle waves in the cenote.

  “Take her away, grandmother. I have not yet decided if this is Princess Persephone or just another servant,” spat the Prince of the Underworld. “Make sure you take her to ‘the cell’ where my gift to her waits…waits ever so patiently.”

  Hayden added this with a laugh, and I wondered who I might be sharing my underground prison with; from the look on his face and the strange way he pronounced “cell”, I imagined it was someone incredibly special.

  Flashbacks. That’s the way I got through the horror and wonderment of Hayden’s Underworld. As cool as it was to be born on the back of a sea monster, I didn’t necessarily want to live through it. Mami Wata had explained to me, after the trial, and during our long journey, that time passed differently down below.

  The scene of the bloody crime at my school had been over 6 months ago; in fact, it was way down on the list now, of schools that knew casualties from gun violence. All those shot to death were just another statistic – powerful people like Lucas doing everything they could to stymy gun control. It wasn’t Bad Ass Academy I flashed back to, but my days as a foster child.