Child of Hades {Interactive Story} (PJO/HOO/TOA)

THREE: All The World

Pain.

Hallucinations of pain and touch are very rare in schizophrenic disorders, but 20% of patients with schizophrenia experience some sort of tactile hallucinations. I could feel the man gripping my shoulders in Simon's car on the way to school yesterday, but then again it may have just been Simon. I'd never felt pain from a hallucination before, and I did not have a very rare strand of schizophrenia.

Chiron brought me into the woods. He said each schizophrenic required a different approach to get through to. He said he didn't like his idea, but he knew for me it might be the one thing that worked - especially if I wasn't listening to Simon anymore.

"These woods are very elusive, filled with monsters, satyrs, wood nymphs - I know, but I encourage you to continue listening. Demigods fight monsters; after you fainted, Simon used quick thinking to kill the Catoblepas, which earned him his own scars."

It was very rare to feel pain from a hallucination.

I understood why Chiron didn't like his idea. We weren't too far in the forest, but he stopped in front of a tree, frowned at it, and rapped his hand against the thin, short trunk. Unfazed (it became very clear to me that nothing would make sense, I'd given up being surprised), I watched the tree slowly dissipate into a girl.

"A Dieffenbachia tree," Chiron told me, and the girl turned to face Chiron like he was the worst thing she'd ever seen. Her skin was the same colour as the bark of her tree, dark green with streaks of white. Her hair was long and bright green and tangled. "Poisonous. She'll behave around me, but if you ever enter these woods without me or a cabin councillor at any time outside of camp games, she won't be as respectful. Any wound from a Dieffenbachia nymph will not heal without a god's touch."

As a schizophrenic I never felt pain from a hallucination.

Yet when Chiron told the nymph to cut me wit her nail, and in a flash without a chance for me to step away she did, I felt the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life. In an instant, the pain stopped, but the cut just under left my elbow throbbed a sickly shade of green. The nymph stuck her tongue out before transforming back into a tree.

"Hey!" I cussed.

"Pain is real. Although I would rather not have done this to you, as it goes above everything I stand for, I trust you understand?"

"Pain is real." I repeated, looking down at my arm. I pressed my right hand against the wound and winced. It hurt when I touched it, but not when I let go. "If I think it's a hallucination, touch my arm and I'll feel the pain. Pain is real." I understood. This gash on my arm, not bleeding, just there, was the most real thing to happen to me since yesterday. "But Chiron, nothing else makes sense."

"Pain is real," Chiron smiled softly at me. He pulled something from his pocket and gingerly put it in my hand. My iPod nano. I looked down at it and heaved a heavy sigh. "I had to make sure it was safe for you to use. It is coated in celestial bronze, but more on that later. It's a beautiful piece of work." Together we walked back out of the forest. He told me to get along, go to breakfast, that someone would show me my cabin and get me some new clothes. I listened.

~

Terra, gold hair and all, bouncingly led me to cabin thirteen, on one of the tails of the "Omega", past twelve other completely dissimilar cabins shaped in a U. Cabin thirteen was made of what must have been obsidian. It had no windows, and above the door hung a large, human-like skull. It smelled like a morgue. Torches hung off heavy columns, but the fire they held was green.

"Greek fire. Good for explosives." Terra commented, pulling open the heavy iron door. Inside were three unmade bunk beds pushed up against the back wall. In the centre of the room was a five-foot high drinking horn, emblazoned with gold depictions of what could only have been Hades - from birth to sitting on his throne in the Underworld. I surprised myself by how much I retained from english, because during the mythology unit I was on Olanzapine, which made me totally space out all the time. On Olanzapine it was like my head was a huge, cotton pillow.