Chapter Twelve: The Curse Of Orpheus

''' Chapter 12 '''

''' The Curse Of Orpheus '''

     As soon as I stepped foot on the road, I wanted to look back, but I forced myself to restrain. I needed Madison back more than I needed to look back. The first ten minutes of the climb were easy, but soon it got even harder.

     My head felt like a pair of invisible hands were trying to twist my head backwards. That is how powerful temptation to look behind me was. Fighting the pull was straining my body so much, that a scar appeared on my left cheek, in the shape of an ‘x’. I endured this for another fifteen minutes.

After thirty-five minutes of my ascent for the Earth, voices around me echoed in my ear. “Turn around and look, you know you want to see if she’s there.”

I almost looked, but I told myself to snap out of it, I could see the light now I had been climbing for over two hours now. I was about five minutes away from the entrance.

 The final five minutes of the journey were the worst by far. I know what you’re thinking, what could be worse than the combined efforts of unbearable curiosity, an invisible force trying to force your head backwards, and voices egging you on to look back? Well here is the answer: nothing. Everything stopped, it was deadly quiet. It made me wonder if she was really behind me. I was being lured into a false sense of trickery, and I almost fell for it. But I told myself these words.

“Connor, she is behind you. You are almost there, now move and don’t look back or all will be lost.”

<p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin: 0in 0in 10pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 20pt">I climbed the last few feet of the road to the Earth. I had reached done what no other hero had done before and reached the sunlight with a soul from the Underworld. Just to be safe, I walk about ten more feet before turning around.

<p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin: 0in 0in 10pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 20pt">Sure enough, lying at the entrance to the Underworld was the unconscious body of Madison Benoit.

Chapter Thirteen: My Love Returns