The Cult of Romeo

X. The Theft of Fire

Act 1, Scene 10

I closed the office door quietly behind me and grimaced at the mess we'd made. When I turned around to face the exit back to the party, my breath hitched. Looking down the corridor, it was as though the whole building had somehow extended.

The door felt further, the space grew darker and the night quieter.

The rain had stopped outside and so the sound of our breath vibrated against every surface, making it feel like faint whispers in my ear. Even Julien looked creeped out beside me as his eyes were wide and calculating the surrounding area.

The lights flickered on and off, a sour yellow then plunging us into a serene darkness as the thunder rumbled in the distance.

We faced one another and held a silent conversation with our eyes, a matching hazel that most Monet's shared. When we were very little, Julien and I would trick our friends at Sunday school into believing that we had twin telepathy. We'd stay up the night before and practise sentences over and over again to say at the same time until people eventually began to believe us, both that we were twins and that we could read one another's minds. 

We'd practised our telepathy so much that sometimes it felt as though I actually could read what he was thinking. And now, we were thinking the same thing.

"I'm not scared," he defended.

"I never said you were," I replied with a raised brow.

"You're egging me on!"

"I'm doing no such thing."

Julien nudged my side and puffed out his chest before taking the first step forward with me hot on his heels. Though he tried to remain calm, I saw how his body sort of hunched over as though he were trying to hide. Normally, a reaction like this to the dark would have granted me a free pass to tease Julien but with a killer on the loose, it seemed only right to be afraid.

"Surely, it wasn't this scary on the way to the office," Julien murmured and checked over his shoulder every half a second to see whether I was still there or not. "Tell me a story."

I thought about it for a moment as a shiver ran up my spine and I stuck close to my cousin's back. "In Greek mythology, there was a titan called Prometheus who cared for and sympathised with human life. When Zeus had denied the people the pleasure of fire, Prometheus climbed up onto Mount Olympus and stole the fire from Hephaestus, the god of fire's, workshop and gifted it to the humans. When Zeus found out about this, he was far from happy; he was furious, in fact. He chained Prometheus onto a rock on top of a tall mountain where every day he'd send an eagle to eat Prometheus' liver. The titan remained on top of the mountain, suffering for thirty years before Heracles found and released him."

Julien remained quiet before he groaned. "That was a terrible story."

I shrugged.

"You can see the past and that's what you decided to tell me? About some guy's liver being eaten every day for thirty years?" We neared the exit in slow steps and my heart sped up with every second. "Well? Are you going to tell me the deeper meaning of that story? Why you told me that right now?"

"No reason," I laughed shakily. "I'm just cold and thought of fire."

Julien hummed into the silence and the shuffling of our feet quickened as I slightly swayed.

After a beat, I added, "it's also a story without a happy ending, like many stories from Greek Mythology."

"At least he escaped," Julien offered.

I snorted. "After thirty years? Imagine the trauma."

He raised a brow with an amused smile. "So what does the no happy ending have to do with our situation right now?"