A Kind Boulder

That is a very long hill to fall down. A steep muddy path that snakes up the cragged hillside and continues up infinitely into the black void that is the ceiling of Tartarus. I know every piece of this hillside, each step, every obstacle that must be avoided when tumbling down. The hill is so huge if I did not know the safest route down it would surely mean fragmentation. The top will never be reached, and I’m quite sure that there is no summit on this hill, so I must study carefully every foot advanced up this hill, to note every danger that will affect my descent down. For that is my duty to fall down this hill, his is to bring me back up, we both carry out our tasks to our fullest potentials.
Here he comes down the hill to pick me up again. He has been at this for a very long time, he never stops, I have never seen him sleep or eat. How heavy his eyes must be, how his gut must burn at every waking moment. He moves around me, aligns with the hill and starts to push with all of his strength.
I don’t know why he pushes me up every time. I always expect him to stop, drop to the ground in dead exhaustion. But, he never stops, and when he first starts the ascent he looks at me with a fierce face, entranced in determination. He looks like he has something to prove, I can tell that his heaving muscles are fuelled by anger coursing through his veins.
If I had his job I would have quit long ago. My job is simple, I simply must roll down a hill, remembering the numerous hazards that are along the way, but he must remember all the same hazards and use every bit of his strength to fulfill his duty. We both are ordained by mighty Hades to perform this odd task eternally, I don’t understand its function but I will do it unquestioning if is the will of the gods for me to do so.
The sight of his face begins to disquiet me more and more the farther he progresses up the grade. Stamina drains from him. His determined face is disheartened as his once rigid eyebrows slump off to the side of his eye and his mouth stretches towards his ears. His eyes maddened by anger glow with crimson rage. He grunts and puffs and howls as though he were a head of Cerberus.
He has never spoken to me; in fact he has never spoken. At all times his face is solidified, contorted, maddened, and eventually broken. It amazes me how he on every effort he makes further progress up the endless slope. How he can believe that there to be an end? Will he find some trick to push without rest? He destroys himself every time tries, his face looks like it is about to break, burst open from every bulging vein, crack from chin to cranium, wither up as he blows his last muggy breath against my surface. He will drop me soon. I must prepare for the roll down.
“Damn you Hermes. Damn you for grabbing my right bicep, flinging me into the air to drag me away from sweet Corinth into this hellish pit! What did I do to be committed to such punishment? I know in my life above I was not a purely good man: those poor travelers I killed, how I wish to restore to my brother the throne I stole, and my poor niece….Ahg! The grief!
But that is not what I have been banished here for. No. I have been banished here for being cleverer than almighty Zeus! Because I proved him to be no better than I! He calls me immoral, that I am in defiance of the god! Yet he expects to rape my sister and get away with it without anyone knowing about it! He thought the threat of locking me in the underworld would buy my silence, but I fear no petty threats, especially from a degenerate like him! For when he threw me into this pit before, it was here I found the vileness of all that is godly; the souls of the dead drifting in Styx. As I looked into the gloom green stream I saw young men with lances shoved through their torsos wearing proud armor of mortal glory; for bronze has no glimmer in the river of death. Then the maidens, the young and old with slashing of swords torn across their prone bodies, sailors without breath, and horrible sickness that leaves all deformed.
I would once again despoil the sick pleasure of the gods. Using only my cunningness I locked dastardly Thanatos in his own chains; and in his absence death ceased. I fled to the world above to find it without hatred or disease, an immortal paradise on earth! Only to be spotted upon my return by barbarous Ares and killed on the spot, for he had already freed Hades; and the joy of bloodshed could not be relinquished by the god of war. I knew Hades would not be fooled again so I was then clever enough to trick his wife into releasing me, so that I could see my own beloved wife again and be at home and live without the gods! At that happy reunion, you damnable Hermes, dragged me away with the beats of your absurd foot-wings.
All you gods love to watch us suffer in life and death. There is no redemption in your eyes! There is only submission, and I will not submit to such vile gods, gods that are no more righteous than the lowliest humans. So, I will push this damnable rock forever until your savage humor is placated and you no longer are amused by my suffering. Against all you powers, through all pain I will push this rock farther and farther up this hill and there is nothing such pitiful gods could do to stop me.”
He ceases to move and stands there shaking refusing to release me. I now understand why he will not cease, because manifested in me is all the powers that seek to crush him. That is why he toils and I roll along the ground, he has the weight of cruel earth against him that seeks to hold him down. I have been with this man for a long time. His suffering does not lie about the gods—they must be unjust. I must find a new way down…
I had nicked and shattered my edges as I rolled boundlessly across the broken earth, leaving the fate of my shape in the hands of the fall. He comes down to see a smaller boulder, one now small enough to sit on, and as he sits his perspiration drips and gleams on the side of my newly exposed shale.