Free BURN IN HADES by Michael L. Martin Jr. Page B

didn’t mean – I was just—”
    She pressed the blade up under his chin, forcing his head upwards. She twirled the blade away from him and dropped it back to its original position on his back holster. When she tossed the compass back into her sack, the spoon lost its mysterious connection to her chest and fell to her lap. She pitched the spoon into a dark corner of the cave. “Fetch,” she said.
    He paced over to the corner and hunted for his spoon, feeling with his hands in the darkness. A burned soul crumbled in his hands and startled him. He fell backwards.
    “What is it?” said the Raven. Her rope dart held its head high preparing to strike.
    “Nothing,” said Cross. “A Nothing. Just a nothing.”
    Every spirit and soul burned to a crust when they died a second death and were called Nothings. Cross usually avoided being near them and refused to touch them for fear of bad luck or something.
    Nothing’s were hellish things. Webs of charcoal-colored muck grew around their boney structures as though a spider had tried to rebuild their charred flesh. Yet, the decayed Nothings were delicate as an egg shell. The simple prodding of a stick could crumble their hard outer layer to ash, spilling their juicy black insides and reducing the rest to dust.
    He spotted his spoon deep in the center of the black powdery chippings of the Nothing. He covered his mouth and nose with his arm and squashed the awful Nothing under his boot. He picked up his spoon from the ash in a hurry.
    White dots fell out the scoop. More of the white speckles lay in the soot of the Nothing. Strangely, they seemed to be grains of rice. He checked around the area for more rice grains and only found them within the Nothing.
    He turned around to see the Raven flipping the amphora upside down to view its bottom. While her attention held, he sneakily swirled the spoon in the Nothing. Uncooked grains of rice formed out of the ash.
    He pinched a grain, and blew the ash off of it. He smelled the grain, stuck it on the tip of his tongue, crossed himself and ate it. It was real rice. He swept the rest of the rice away with his hand before the Raven could see it.
    A great whoosh sound boomed behind him, and Gimlet grunted. Cross spun around ready to strike. Water gushed upwards out of the Raven’s amphora like a geyser splashing the cave ceiling. The water stopped spewing just short of drenching her, but she was wet enough for him to see through her shirt. The water must’ve been shivering cold.
    His nerves calmed. He forced his gaze away from her chest area and tried to focus his stare on the water dripping from the spiky cave ceiling. Dazzling blue and violet flowers bloomed on the ceiling and patches of garden sprang up from the floor in the puddles.
    The Raven plucked a flower from the ground and smelled it. “Ankhami,” she said with her eyes closed. She twirled the flower by its stem between her fingers and tossed a few chosen objects into the blanket. They vanished inside it. She rolled the blanket up and stuffed it in the burlap sack. “That’s four, five and six for me,” she said.
    She kept all the best objects to herself. Out of his three objects, the Latin cross was the only thing he was interested in. Not just because of its wondrous glow, but because of what it represented. It gave him a sense of being and reminded him of his prize in peaceful paradise. One day all his troubles would end. He hung it around his neck. The spoon could come in handy, if he was ever desperate enough to gorge on Nothings, but he was fine with his barbot diet. The comb was pointless.
    “What the hell am I gonna do with this spoon and comb?” he said.
    “I’ll take them off your hands.” She held her palm out.
    Cross stuffed the spoon and comb in his pockets.
    “Congratulations,” she said. “You’re now worth thirteen objects.”
    She offered him a drink from the empty flask. He took it and drank from it. The liquid seemed to appear at his lips, while the