My little brother came in and looked at my picture. Then he seized my paintbrush intending no doubt to spoil my painting. We started wrestling on the floor and he pulled my hair. “Get lost” I yelled out in pain and shoved him toward a bookcase. He hoarsely whispered “go to hell”.

As I looked around me I saw a sign saying ‘River Styx’. Since that was the only path I could take, I did. There was a crowd in a queue for a boat ride. I heard really strange snippets of conversation. “Did you have burial rites?’ one asked the other. A woman wailed she didn’t have a coin under her tongue.

Finally I realized to get across the river I needed a coin and burial rites. A thorough search of my jeans produced a coin. To solve the problem of burial rites I smuggled myself onto Charon’s boat but like an honest passenger I dropped the coin on the boat so Charon would find it.

A man was hanging on a tree laden with pears, apples, figs but when he reached for them the wind blew them away. Below him was a pool of water but when he stooped to drink, the pool would sink from sight. When I asked him what he did to anger the gods, he told me his story.

He was actually a son of Zeus and he used to eat at the gods table on Mt Olympus. Once they had even visited his palace in Lydia. To test their omniscience he had killed his son, boiled him and served him to the gods. I was horrified. The gods realized the nature of the food, restored his son to life and sent him to ‘Tartarus’.

I headed for the other direction and was almost flattened by a revolving wheel. To my surprise a man was tied to the wheel. I asked him who he was. He replied that he was Ixion, the first person to murder one of his kinspeople. After he had received purification from Zeus, he ungratefully tried to have an affair with Hera. To fool Ixion, Zeus had created a cloud in the shape of Hera. Ixion was deceived and fathered the Centaurs. Being bound to the eternally revolving wheel was his punishment.

I decided that I should be on my way. Vague forms and shadows hovered around me

Some topics in this essay:
, Mt Olympus, Hera Ixion, Hades Persephone, Cerberus Charon, Ixion Zeus, revolving wheel, burial rites, noticed sign,