Personal Mythology, by Betsy Aoki

First it was the nightmares. Months of nightmares.

Sisyphus would be standing at sunrise, at the top of a hill with wildflower-sprinkled meadows and the edge of a forest spread out before him. He would bring his arms out wide, stretch them out to the fingertips and inhale the fresh draughts of spring. The wind caressed his bare shoulders, raising warm goosebumps. Hidden birds called to each other, preparing nests.

And then he would be thrown to the ground, breath knocked out of him, the blow shattering the bones of his back, while a long dark shape rose above him, blotting out the wisps of cloud and blue skies.

Sometimes the stone was round, like an obsidian or cobalt beehive as tall as a house, and it attacked him from the front, smashing his legs first and then rolling over his stomach and arms as he lay there, screaming.

Sometimes the rock was angular and jutting, with crystalline spikes and knife-edged planes, as tall as a skyscraper.  It would skewer him first, so blood would coat the spikes before it rolled. It could be any shape and Sisyphus would know it, by the way it took the horizon away.

The stone always knew him in these dreams.

Carry me, the looming shape would whisper. Carry me.

As the nightmares became more frequent, Sisyphus stayed up later and later, took pills, drank whiskey until he fell unconscious, anything that kept him from dreaming.

That worked, for a time.

---

Then at his warehouse job, where he moved heavy crates, pallets and cardboard boxes, Sisyphus started hearing things when he was awake. Seeing things.

One Friday he had a massive box on a dolly, some fancy elliptical or treadmill for a gym, trying to shift it over to where Shorty could help him maneuver it into the waiting truck. Sisyphus blinked, and then he saw it again: that mineral silhouette.

Carry me.

He almost dropped the box on his foot, he jerked back the dolly so quick. Shorty hadn’t noticed; he was looking over at their manager and yelling something about baseball.

Sisyphus was shaken. He had almost crushed his foot. He couldn’t work with a broken foot. If the rock could somehow show up here, he wouldn’t be able to run.

The guys got the gym equipment loaded okay, and then Shorty’s steady chatter during the delivery kept Sisyphus preoccupied. It was only driving home that night, slowing down at an intersection, that he saw the dark shape again, in the shadow of a truck cast by a streetlamp.

He stomped on the brakes, forcing the car behind him to screech to a stop so suddenly it rear-ended his Jeep as it tried to swerve past. Pulling over into a nearby parking lot, Sisyphus and the other driver exchanged numbers, insurance, swear words.

A black boulder suddenly appeared behind the other driver, as Sisyphus stood madly scribbling insurance info on a takeout napkin.

The rock shifted slightly then, getting ever so close to the man’s back. Blocking the copper sunset sky. Promising what would happen if Sisyphus didn’t obey.

Carry me.

Sisyphus rushed his apologies, leapt into the Jeep, and drove home as fast as he could. Let the rock follow him. He didn’t want to bring other people into this.

---

After a sleepless night, Sisyphus made up his mind, and went to the Museum of Mythological Artifacts. It was the last day of the traveling exhibit that bore his name and he had never wanted to come here.

But if the rock were still alive, this is where it would want him to go.

Carry me.

Sisyphus tried not to notice the stares of the other museum visitors as he made his way to the Hades wing, hunting for the right room. His was not the kind of celebrity people would want.

He’d been intimate with one very large, very craggy, mythical rock. He’d had his hands all over it, cut to shreds some days—and his back and his legs had all been strained in the service of said rock, whom he’d named Nykolas. The hill, which you’d think he would have known just as well, having trodden on it, fallen on it, and bled upon it, somehow paled in comparison to the way Sisyphus knew Nykolas.

Centuries had passed, with Sisyphus carrying Nykolas up the hill and the rock rolling back down. Over and over and over.

Carry me.

Then Sisyphus had been rescued by a Viking hero with a large hammer, and that particular area of the underworld had been remade into a waterslide park.

Sisyphus now had a new life, helping deliver heavy packages to folks who couldn’t get out much. It was an eight-hour shift, not eternity, and he could go to bars with his work buddies afterwards and feel like he wasn’t carrying his load alone.

But they didn’t know him, really. Not like Nykolas had.

You waste people’s time, talking. No one wants to hear that shit.

Sisyphus wasn’t sure he knew his own insides, being numb a lot of the time.

Heart pounding, he found the exhibit of blue-black jagged slabs and chunks, in a specially lit floor-to-ceiling glass case. It was quite a big case because Nykolas had been a very big rock, a bit like an egg-shaped cobalt meteorite.

The curators had decided not to try and restore the large stone to its original shape like they had done for bits of ancient pottery. Instead they chose to display the pieces in their aftermath positions, with the furthest away elevated on glass shelves so as to remain inside the footprint of the glass case. Out of deference to Sisyphus still being alive, they hadn’t put a fake man in the display, but they’d carefully strewn the shards as they had found them around the invisible outline of his body.

You were just a ghost in hell. I was the one that mattered.

His forearms and biceps twitched, remembering. His knees and back ached when he crouched down to look at the bottom of the giant glass cube.

The rock guts nearest Sisyphus were blue-black on the outside, striated with purple and red, reaching out like dendrites from the floor. Others resembled geodes, with teeth-like crystals shining clean and slick from gaping oval jaws. Some of the jaws looked melted.

Sisyphus distinctly remembered the Scandinavian god’s hammer spouting flames that set fire to parts of the hillside as it battered at Nykolas’ edges. The god had had lightning around his hair and beard as he fought, and it was possible he’d also sent electricity straight into the rock while Sisyphus was in no shape to check.

Right now, no one was near this exhibit.

“Nykolas?” he whispered. “Are you in there?”

As he stood up again, shaky-kneed, he thought about what it would take to break the glass, gather Nykolas into his arms again.

Once again feeling he had a role, a task. Paying penance for his shame.

Carry me.

No doubt the case had magical locks on it. Those square corners said: see, how important it is to learn this lesson, don’t touch. The glass with its transparency said: see, we are showing you the truth, the insides of the unjust burden.

They made everything evil in museums look like garbage. Broken. Containable.

When Nykolas was whole, Sisyphus had wept, sometimes. Sisyphus had been the garbage.

Once he had successfully set Nykolas down atop the hill, above the slope line and onto the grassy flat, Sisyphus would watch as the rock grew in its rage.

 Something about the journey up—too much jostling, too many stops, too much blood or sweat off Sisyphus’ back—infuriated the rock. It would shudder in the grass, muttering angrily. It would keep growing, dwarfing Sisyphus even as he got back on his feet, panting.

Swiftly the rock became a mountain, a cliffside, a stone face with glaring eyes set to crush him. If Sisyphus stayed too near as Nykolas transformed, the rock itself would fall on him, slicing and flattening and mangling his body into a soft pulp.

Sisyphus had let Nykolas fall on him exactly once. It was how he found out in this hellscape arrangement that he couldn’t die. Any injuries from carrying the rock gradually went away but the key word was gradually. Gradually was a long time in Hades.

Centuries at least.

So, each time after that, when Nykolas made himself into a mountain of pain and fear and loomed over Sisyphus at the top of the hill, Sisyphus found the final reserves of strength to back away. To dart to one side as fast as he could, legs shaking. Acid eating his stomach. The rock face had no pity.

And as Sisyphus staggered for the other side of the hilltop, Nykolas would reach for him with piercing crystal spikes.

Then the rock would turn swiftly round, and roll back down the bottom of the hill, the hill it had taken Sisyphus days to push, carry, tug or otherwise coerce Nykolas up. Undoing all his labors. Proving Sisyphus, once again, a broken man. A man who couldn’t keep his promise to the gods, to keep this rock contained. A failure.

Nykolas only had the one trick: shapeshifting and then rolling down the hill. But Sisyphus always fell for it. Because of the fear and pain. Because he couldn’t let the angry rock fall on him again.

Running from the punishment you deserved.

Sisyphus had been a cunning king in life, but in the afterlife, he was all body: a sore back, and muscles that ripped and tore, and feet hard as horn. He would trudge back down to the bottom of the hill where Nykolas, gray and smooth as an egg, supposedly tractable, apparently agreeable, waited for Sisyphus to take his burden up again.

Sisyphus could read the pattern of mineral shapes on the glass floor of the case. Nykolas had been trying to expand into its largest face shape when it was destroyed. He saw now half a cheek, all of the left eye.

The face you loved. Don’t deny it.

A few more jutting spikes of hair, the outside curve of a lip.

Sisyphus shivered, remembering the thousand knives of crystal skewering his arms and legs, Nykolas’ jagged face falling onto him, cracking his cheekbones. Nykolas had worn Sisyphus’ blood, grinning, for weeks after. Thousands of journeys up. Thousands of journeys down.

Nykolas would murmur to him, sometimes, as Sisyphus labored up the hill. Sometimes words of encouragement, affirmation for his broad back and his bracing legs. Sometimes the words would go beyond coaching to yelling: why couldn’t Sisyphus go faster? Hadn’t he been a powerful warrior? Didn’t he want to please Nykolas? Nykolas who could say to the gods that Sisyphus had finally completed his task?

Sisyphus had so badly wanted to be worthy. He still did.

But the worst moments were when Nykolas said what Sisyphus himself was thinking, as he struggled up the hill in a blur of unbroken toil. Sisyphus had lived many good human years, but those were now over and in fact, this hill and Nykolas were his only reality.

You’d just be a man walking up and down a hill, without me.

Sisyphus startled. Had he heard that last sentence out loud, coming from inside the glass?

The tragedy of hell is, unlike the mortal world where humans might forget pain readily, easily, neurologically—it wasn’t possible for a body who had been to Hades to entirely forget. Sisyphus’ body had learned all of Nykolas’ lessons down to his cells.

Sisyphus could feel himself flinching and his legs twitching, lower back trembling. Pictures flowed into his head. It would be so easy. He envisioned himself picking up the entire glass case, with Nykolas in it.

The rock would become whole again, their link re-established.

Carry me.

A big gloved hand clapped his shoulder.

Sisyphus looked at it, then up at its owner’s face.

It was that red-bearded Scandinavian god, wearing some kind of cool rust-colored leather bracers, darker brown leather pants and a snake ring on his middle finger. Looking over the god’s shoulder, Sisyphus saw the museum guards had just placed a fancy engraved hammer on the table with the other weapons not allowed inside this display room.

Because of course the mystical hammer could have broken the case—all the cases.

It had broken Sisyphus’ world.

“Was a good fight on that day,” the Scandinavian god said gruffly. “Couldn’t have broken the rock apart without you holding on so tight. Kept it from moving as I hit it with Mjölnir.”

“I’m Thor,” he added as Sisyphus stared at him. “You probably don’t remember me. You hurt your head.”

Sisyphus remembered Thor; how could he forget? He’d been mid-hill, with Nykolas murmuring how loathsome and despicable Sisyphus was, how filthy, a man-beast.  He’d never seen the god coming.

Thor had yelled something in bad Greek and then Sisyphus had felt impact, bigger than Nykolas falling on him. Thor’s hammer had struck the rock on his back. Sisyphus fell.

Nykolas had fallen sideways, rolling off Sisyphus. And Sisyphus, as he’d done when he’d lost hold of the rock on other journeys up, had run over to it and held it, preparing to hoist it back upon his back again.

But Thor, ignoring everything but what his hammer was telling him—a hammer suddenly on fire and torching the hillside grasses—had been like a bellowing whirlwind. Hair wild in all directions. Beard on fire with a lightning that didn’t burn Thor’s face, but scorched the air around it.

Sisyphus had held Nykolas tightly, trying to get the damn rock up and onto his back again, and Thor had been hammering bits off it, over and over. Even as Sisyphus got Nykolas onto the usual place on his own back, the god wouldn’t quit, with blows that made Sisyphus stagger.

“You”—and Thor would crack the hammer down

“Don’t” – – another swing

“Have to”—a double grunt

“Carry”—inhale

“This”—hiss

“Fucking”—then some other Scandinavian swear words Sisyphus didn’t know

“—THING!”

They’d almost made it to the top of the hill this way, Sisyphus feeling Nykolas growing lighter and lighter as Sisyphus struggled upward, a berserk god with a hammer at Sisyphus’ back cracking off greater and greater chunks.

Almost at the crest, Sisyphus had sunk to his knees, thrown off balance by a blow above his right shoulder. Nykolas had been screaming non-stop all the way up.

Worthless shit, how can you let him do this to me

I’m the only one who stuck by you in this hellhole

It’s been you and me against the hill and now this

Nothing without me

I’m the only one that ever loved you

I’m the only one who ever will love you, you—

CRACK

Thor had struck the heart of Nykolas, and the explosion sent shards and splinters into Sisyphus’ back, legs, hips and the back of his head. Blood everywhere.

Pain. So much pain.

Sisyphus had heard Thor curse once more, before he blacked out.

When Sisyphus awoke much, much later, it had been in some human hospital. His recovery had amazed all the human doctors.

The doctors hadn’t asked much about Nykolas, and Sisyphus wasn’t sure what he could say. How do you talk about loving a rock? How do you talk about hating one? What about a rock that talked to you in your head for hundreds of years?

A rock more real to you than the humans at your day job, or the ones gawping at curios in this museum. More real to you than you yourself.

You are nothing without me.

Standing at the glass case, Sisyphus brought his right hand to the back of his head feeling the raised scars before he brought his hand down again.

Thor seemed to be expecting a reply.

“Uh, can you hear anything coming from the case?” Sisyphus asked. Both of them were standing within arms’ reach of the glass case. If he could hear it, surely Thor could.

Thor looked at Sisyphus, squinting, his red wavy hair glowing in the dramatic track lighting.

“No,” he said amiably. “But it wasn’t my rock.”  A shadow crossed his face. “Generally, if things start talking to you that shouldn’t, it’s better to smash them. Or look for Loki hiding somewhere.”

Thor’s eyes scanned the rest of the cavernous room—the other artifacts from Hades, pomegranate seeds, a pitcher of wine, a sloping pile of salt. Watercolor paintings from artists who had never been in Hades; a few oils in glass cases from the ones who had been and came back alive. The two men were alone, with amber afternoon light pouring through the windows.

Nykolas’ spiky edges sent purple-red dazzling flecks across the other glass cases.

I used to be so beautiful.

Sisyphus was shaking and his cheeks were wet.

Thor’s eyes came back to Sisyphus’ face.

“Hey bro, you want me to smash it again? We’ll get into a lot of trouble for breaking into the case, but I will, if that’s what you want.”

Thor had him by the arm now, backing him away from the glass. The museum guards were looking at the two of them across the long room.

“Is it trying to get you to pick it up again?” Thor’s eyes were kind. Also, quite blue-green, Sisyphus noted.

Thor sat him down on one of the large benches the museum had placed so you could admire the painting on the opposite wall. They weren’t facing the Nykolas display any more, though the landscape of Hades depicted with its wailing souls and craggy hills was all too familiar to Sisyphus. He shuddered.

“It was talking to me,” Sisyphus admitted. “But I can’t hear it now.”

“Was it saying ‘Put me back together?’“

Sisyphus frowned. “Yes. No. Not exactly.”

“Cause that’s an unfortunate side effect of Mjölnir; you really can’t put much back together easily once it has pounded the hell out of it.” Thor spread his big gloved hands in apology, the serpent ring on his middle finger catching the light. Its ruby eye glinted.

Sisyphus glanced back at the glass case. Nykolas lay in pieces as before, twinkling patterns on the ceiling of the museum.

“Thor… I think… I think the rock was a person, like me.”

Thor waited. Generally mythological explanations came from other people to Thor, instead of the other way around, so he had learned to be patient about them.

“I think you—we—killed a real person when you broke that rock apart,” Sisyphus said finally.

“Person, or monster?” Thor asked. “From where I stood, if that rock was a person keeping you there in hell, that person was a monster. As soon as it broke, you were free to go.”

Sisyphus thought. In the hospital, some memories of his former human life had come back to him: his arrogance, his laughing assumptions as a king who had tricked the gods twice.

When he’d first had the rock and the hill explained to him, Sisyphus had seen the poetry of the situation even if he didn’t like it. It made sense when tied to his former hubris.

He had been so important in his badness, he had to be laid down low. Destroyed.

“The rock said I was nothing without him,” Sisyphus said. “The bits and pieces of him in the case said that too, just now.”

“Well, okay then, say that’s true. What kind of nothing do you want to be?” Thor asked. “The way I see it, being a nothing tied to a rock and a hillside forever or a nothing that can go get a decent cheeseburger, there’s no contest. Get the cheeseburger.”

The guys at work had taken Sisyphus for cheeseburgers. He had loved them.

He admitted as much to Thor.

Thor looked at the case and then at Sisyphus.

“Go back over to that case, and say goodbye to Mister Rock,” Thor said. “Then come back here and we’ll go get some cheeseburgers. I can tell Mjölnir’s getting antsy over there on the weapons table.”

Sisyphus walked over to the glass case again. Brown blood crusted some of the bigger pieces.  Sisyphus’ own dried blood, he realized, that he hadn’t noticed before because he was dazzled by the heart-shard, the one that looked so much like a purple-red geode.

Had there been a human heart inside Nykolas once? Or was that Sisyphus’ own blood, magically siphoned off somehow?

When had Sisyphus first thought to give Nykolas a name? Whose idea had it been: his, or the rock’s?

You’d just be a man walking up and down a hill, without me.

Sisyphus remembered puking his guts out after Nykolas ground him into pulp. Unable to move, a mass of bruises and wounds that bled and bled into the hillside. A femur bone broken through the skin. Ringing in his ears, in and out of consciousness. Afraid the rock was going to chew on him with needle-like crystal teeth.

He hadn’t known much of anything but pain for days. And flies he swatted with broken fingers.

And the peculiar twist of his spine that dogged him to this day.

What had it felt like for Nykolas, to crush him so completely, that one time atop the hillside? Was that all Nykolas had ever wanted: Sisyphus shattered, and then his meek compliance ever after?

Carry me.

“Goodbye, Nykolas,” Sisyphus said, laying a hand on the cool surface of the glass.

No alarms went off. The shards seemed wary, still.

“I won’t be coming back, but you should have a lot of visitors anyway. See how much better things can get when you aren’t stuck with someone for eternity.”

He could hear Thor talking to the security guards now, assuring them the Norse god was going to stay politely in the hallway with his hammer until his friend came out. And not break anything. This time.

The cabochon in the middle of the heart geode glistened like a bloody teardrop.

This is not how eternity ends.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “It is.”

Sisyphus felt the scar on his own heart rip apart then, leaving his sadness imprinted on the glass as he took his hand away.

The cabochon and its geode dissolved into dust.

And then Sisyphus went outside the room, to a world with cheeseburgers and a bearded god he hadn’t really thanked yet.

Maybe Thor would let him treat.

---

Betsy Aoki is a poet, game producer and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Fireside Magazine among others. Aoki’s debut poetry collection about women in technology, Breakpoint, was a National Poetry Series Finalist and winner of the Patricia Bibby First Book Award.