"𝚟𝚒𝚡𝚎𝚗" | 𝚙. 𝚓𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚜𝚘𝚗

𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚏𝚒𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗, 𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚎

They Shop For Water Beds

OR

Percy's Destiny as a Murderous Water Bed Salesman

-

IT WAS STELLE'S idea, but just in case she ruined their lives forever, it was partially Annabeth's.

She loaded them into the back of a Vegas taxi as if they actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please." She smiled real sickly sweet.

The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized them up, unimpressed. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Annabeth asked.

He shrugged. "Some of 'em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe 'em through first."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card. 

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it." she invited.

He did.

His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.

The cigar fell out of the driver's mouth. He looked back at them, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles... uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica Pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. Anyone could tell she liked the 'Your Highness' thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

On the road, they had plenty of time to talk. Percy told the rest about his latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more he tried to remember them. The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited all their memories. He couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like, though he was sure it was somebody he knew. The servant had called the monster in the pit something other than 'my lord'... some special name or title...

"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."

"Maybe..." he said, though neither sounded quite right. 

"That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said, "That's the way it's usually described.

Stelle observed silently, rubbing her throat. She stashed the bits of information from Percy's dream away for now; instead she thought about how they were going to go about demanding things from a god.

Annabeth and Percy kept discussing, but their voices faded into the background of her mind. She nearly rubbed her skin raw. Stelle closed her eyes, resting her head onto the cool glass of the taxi.

Her thoughts wandered to her father, and if she was ever going to see him again. She wasn't sure what she preferred.

-

"Why don't you want to do your work?" her father said, sitting next to her on the couch. "Do you want to be on the streets when you grow up?"

The little girl beside him kept her head down, unable to meet his eyes. She wondered if it was normal to be yelled at like this when she were six. She wondered if her daddy was normal. She wondered if she was normal. "No."

Even then, her small voice sounded pathetic to her. No. Was it normal to be having thoughts like that?

"Do you want to see what's going to happen if you don't listen to your teachers and your daddy?" he said, switching on the TV.