My hands pull at the cuffs straining my arms above my head as he takes me ruthlessly. His prisoner to take from and eventually kill. All I can do is hold on, helpless as he takes me over the edge.
"I'm supposed to kill you but I can't stop fucking y...
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"There is no greater fame for a man than that which he wins with his footwork or the skill of his hands."
Odyssey by Homer
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There is a method to madness.
Or that is what I tell myself.
It is easier to say the fire and decay are there for a reason. That in some way the pain can be justified. At this point, it is the only thing that keeps me sane. This facade I have grown accustomed to, a life consumed by fire. My special bit of control over the dark. Madness is different for everyone, it can be carnal desire, addiction, proclivity. The part of you that can't stop wanting or wishing.
Madness is its own beast. It is the part of me that still lives inside begging to be let out. The same fire that demands to be felt at any cost. I worry that if I fixate on the darkness of my past it will finally consume me. Much more than my parents and the girl I was. It is the life I was forced to live and everything I lost trying to escape it. There can only be my list, my vengeance, and then my peace.
No Orion, no Vee, no gods, and no promises. Just their names on a list, my victims to kill, and then my memories to erase. I can't remember the night Olympus fell.
I have come face to face with death many times in my life but that night and the time I spent in Olympus is something I never want to revisit. Stories I vowed to never tell another soul, nightmares that I promised to take to the grave. For so long, I kept it caged and hidden, out of sight, far from the broken terrain of my mind. All these years I have been trying to forget my past as a god.
That was until I saw him.
Orion.
Vee is always there, the stupid, pathetic girl that thought she could be saved. The girl that once signed her heart to the stars and I can hear her whisper his name in my head. An incantation, still calling out in a room filled with screams and blood. My Orion.
My madness is memory.
The way remembering has become its own labyrinth. I wait at every corner for the creature to finally appear and devour me. It would be better, in some ways, for this pain to leave when I do. However, my work is not finished and as I come face to face with the great Hunter, I wish I could tear his heart from his chest and then my own. Maybe it would stop this feeling. This weakness.
I have run away from my memories for so long that it almost feels unfamiliar to me. They have remained a stranger, the way they must be for me to survive. As I hang from the chains in the dark room, now alone, I can hear the songs. Low tunes, my mother's voice, Daddy's, their screams. Ares. Orion. Eros. Apollo.
