I was at a loss for words. I just stood there silently, my mouth wide open like an idiot. With the entire world around us paused, the street was completely silent, safe for the sound of Mo’s shoes hitting the pavement as she walked towards the two frozen Greek gods.

“So much of it doesn’t make sense to me,” she explained calmly. “The plot, the characters, the themes — it’s all so… messy.”

She approached Hades and looked intensely into his eyes… or, rather, the empty holes in the flaming skull that served as his head.

“Like, take this guy, for example. He looks cool and menacing, sure, but…”

She then grabbed his head with both hands, completely ignoring the flames burning her. I instinctively took a step forward and was about to shout, “Be careful!”, as if that would have been any help at that point, but I didn’t even have the time to say a word. With a single, fast gesture, she ripped the skull off his body, and threw it away. Without a head, Hades’ body slumped and fell on the ground.

“But really,” she continued, “who gives a shit about him?”

She got down on her knees on the asphalt and began fiddling with the body. I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing, but I had a feeling that if I got closer, I wouldn’t like what I’d see. Nevertheless, a knot in my stomach, I began slowly walking towards her.

“From the very beginning,” she kept talking, “it’s been ‘Ares this’, ‘Ares that’. You set up the literal ‘God of war’ as the main villain, you even tried to make it personal by having him be Athena’s half-brother… But he never does anything, does he? In reality, it’s all about this ‘underworld army’, and about Hades. That doesn’t make sense.”

I heard a loud cracking sound. As I finally reached Mo and stood above her, I realised she was trying to break Hades’ arm and tear it apart.

“Damn it, I’m so hungry right now…” she groaned. “Aren’t you hungry too, Ash? Aren’t you starving right now?”

“Not hungry enough to eat that…” I replied in disgust.

“I’m so freaking hungry…”

She ignored my reply, and pulled on the arm with all her strength. It eventually broke and separated from the rest of the body, and Mo immediately began chomping on it. It wasn’t the first time I watched her eat a human(?) limb, so I shouldn’t have felt any different, but for some reason, something about this scene made me slightly uneasy.

“Where was I?” she resumed with her mouth half full of flesh. “Oh yeah, Ares. Seriously man, where is he? Isn’t he supposed to be the main villain? He should be the one standing there, giving this serious speech, having his own ideals clash with Athena’s.”

“Well, he’s… He’s not in this particular scene, but he shows up later! You just haven’t seen the whole story yet!”

If she wanted to see Ares, I would show her. As if hitting “fast-forward” on a video player, I advanced the dream to another scene further in the story. Athena, the damaged city, everything around us began to move at accelerated speed — everything with the exception of Hades, which Mo’s actions appeared to have ‘removed’ from the story. Without even paying attention to what was happening around her, she continued to feast on his lifeless body.

“Look!” I shouted, having eventually found what I was looking for. “There he is!”

Athena was now clashing swords with a blond-haired man in silver armour.

“This is the final story arc!” I explained. “Having spent most of the story sitting on his throne in the underworld, and with Hades having been defeated by Athena, Ares decides to take matters into his own hands and fight his half-sister himself!”

“Ah, so this guy is Ares? He looks cool.”

Mo stood up and walked up to him. Ares dodged one of Athena’s attacks and knocked her with a well-placed hit of his shield. Taking advantage of this split-second of vulnerability, he prepared to strike.

“He looks cool, but… It’s all pointless, isn’t it?”

 She paused the scene once again, grabbed Ares by the head, and just like she did with Hades, she tore his head off with a single pull.

“Why did you do that for!?” I screamed at her.

She did not answer, and instead began to tear his corpse apart, once again starting with the arms, and stuffed her mouth with bits and pieces of it.

“Did I mention,” she replied, “that I was,” taking small breaks to eat more, “hungry?”

“You could have finished eating Hades first before killing another god!!”

“Ah, but that would have been pointless, wouldn’t it? Because Hades… isn’t really dead, is he?”

While still in the middle of chomping Ares’ flesh, she snapped her fingers, and the dream began to fast-forward once more. We were now a few moments after the end of Athena and Ares’ fight, with the former pointing her sword at his throat as he was on his knees, wounded, powerless. Athena had the upper hand on him, but couldn’t find it in her to end his life, and instead decided to spare him. This scene was a small ray of hope, a glimpse at a good ending where the two siblings made peace and ended the war. This hope would be short-lived, however, because…

“Hades fucking betrays Ares, doesn’t he?” Mo sighed.

“Huh!? How did you know!?”

“Well, I’m in your brain, aren’t I? Although, I didn’t even have to read your thoughts to see this coming. That twist was painfully predictable. Like, if he had such a huge army to himself, why didn’t he try to conquer Earth by himself? Why obey Ares? It was obvious he would eventually betray him and turn out to be the big bad.”

“W-Was it that obvious…?”

Athena lowered her weapon. The two siblings exchanged a smile. She extended her hand towards him to help him up, but before he could take it, the ground began to shake. Fissures began to form, and—

“Skip.”

The scene fast-forwarded. A giant chasm had now opened in the middle of the battlefield, and Hades, now the size of a titan, had emerged from it.

“Hades!” shouted Ares. “How did y—”

“Skip.”

We were now seeing the final battle play out. Athena and Ares had put their differences aside and teamed up to defeat—

“Skip.”

The battle was over. Athena was on her knees, by her mortally wounded brother’s side.

“Why…?” she cried. “Why did it have to end this w—”

“Skip.”

Ares expired his last breath, with a smile on his face. For he knew that Parthenos’ legacy would live on through her sister.

“Aaaaand… The end!” Mo exclaimed. “Sorry, I had to hurry things a little, we’re kinda running out of time… But, do you see what I mean? Your story is a mess, Ash.”

“A mess…”

“It really feels like at one point, you had Ares in mind as the main villain, but then you thought of Hades and cool demons, and incorporated them into the plot. But then you realised Hades was a cooler villain, so you went with him instead!”

“I… I guess that’s probably how it went, huh…”

“And the themes… It’s like you started writing a simple story, and then tried to make some pseudo-intellectual themes retroactively fitting into it. That whole thing about that proud advanced race and their legacy, about wanting to enlighten other civilisations and being revered as gods. Was that supposed to be an allegory for colonialism or some shit? It’s half-baked, you need your characters to spell it out loud, it simply doesn’t work!”

“I thought there could be some interesting parallels with—”

“Plot holes!” she shouted, interrupting me. “Your plot is full of holes, it’s like Swiss cheese! Take that ‘Talaria Drive’ thingy that’s supposed to be the key to space travel, for instance. It was at the centre of that war between gods at the beginning because Ares needed it to conquer Earth, and was eventually lost when Zeus destroyed the planet, right?”

“Uh, yes, but…”

Mo then grabbed Ares’ dead body off the ground and shoved it at my face.

“Then how the fuck did he get here!? He ‘followed’ Athena? How!? With what technology!? What, did he just dig a tunnel in the underworld for a few centuries and eventually popped out in the middle of Greece? That’s a gigantic plot hole!!”

“I… I didn’t think of that… But I can come up with something…!”

“And then what? Introduce even more plot holes in the process? Oh, and let’s not talk about the obvious ‘inspirations’ everywhere, barely anything in this story feels original!”

Why was she like this?

“Seriously Ash, the more I think about it, the angrier it makes me!!”

Why was she being so critical all of a sudden?

“This is your masterpiece?”

Was this what she was thinking from the start? From the moment I began telling her my story?”

“This is the story of your dreams!?”

Does she hate my story that much? Does she hate me that much?

“Sorry if that sounds harsh, I know you cared about it a lot but… It’s just not good at all!”

I wanted to reply to her. I wanted to tell her what I thought of her criticism. But not a single word could come out of my mouth. Only a thought.

“I hate her.”

I did not say it, but I heard it spoken in my own voice. Was that my heart speaking? Was that what I really thought? After all, if she hated me and my story, it would only be logical that I hated her back.

“I hate her. I hate her! I hate her!”

My inner voice repeated these words over and over. Louder and louder. Angrier and angrier.

“Hm?” Mo stopped her rambling. “Aw, what’s that, you hate me now, kid?”

“Why…?” I muttered in a trembling voice, as if it took all of my strength to get this single word out. “Why did you ask me?”

“Huh? Ask you what?”

“To tell you my story. You looked me straight in the eyes. You held my hands. You asked me to tell you my story. Why would you ask me that, acting like you cared, if it was only to demolish it like you’re doing now!?”

My voice was cracking. I was on the verge of tears. But that wasn’t going to stop Mo from speaking her mind.

“Isn’t it obvious? My goal hasn’t changed since the moment I got here. I want to wake you up, remember? For that, I need you to find out the truth about this dream. And that requires that you first realise the truth about this story of yours, too.”

“The truth about this story…?”

I knew what that truth was. I didn’t want her to say it. But she was going to anyway.

“Your story sucks. It is so bad that anyone you tell it to will hate it. And right now, of all people, you are the one who hates it the most. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Ash?”

I remained silent. I didn’t have anything to say. There wasn’t no point in saying anything anyway. She could just read my thoughts and get the reaction she wanted from there.

“I hate her!”

Maybe I did hate her a little.

“Again, sorry for being harsh,” she continued in a calm voice, “I wanted to be a bit more gentle about it, but it’s taking too long, and we’re running out of time. I have to do what I have to do to wake you up.”

I did not answer. She sighed.

“I wanted to like your story, really. It’s just that everything about it makes me so angry. But do you know what angers me the most?”

“What is it?” I eventually asked back.

“Parthenos.”

Mo’s stomach grumbled. I expected her to once again scavenge Ares’ dead body and eat his limbs, but she instead reached for my mother’s leg. Her ‘emergency snack’.

“It’s a nice name,” she continued while taking a bite of the now rotten leg. “It evokes the Parthenon, the real-life temple that was dedicated to Athena. It’s probably one of the first names you came up with. And from there, you probably thought, hey, let’s make more references to Greek mythology! That’s probably how you came up with the galaxy’s name, ‘Olympus’, referencing the mount that was home to the gods. Right?”

Spot on.

“I didn’t know you were so knowledgeable about Greek mythology,” I replied sarcastically.

“I don’t know anything about that,” she replied. “I came to not even knowing my own name, remember? How would I know anything about Greek mythology?”

“Huh? Then how do you…?”

“Olympus, the mount that was home to the gods,” she continued. “Ah, but then, Olympus would have probably been a more fitting name for the planet than the galaxy, wouldn’t it? That planet was literally the gods’ home in your story after all. But you couldn’t name it that, you already had decided on Parthenos. And it kept getting worse from there. Because in your story, Zeus does live atop a mountain. But that mountain can’t be called Olympus, that name is already taken! And there’s a temple on top of that mountain. Just like the Parthenon! Ah, but you can’t reference that either, because that name is taken too! So you settle for the next best thing that sounds ‘Greek-mythology-ey’, and that’s ‘Pantheon’. Which literally means ‘all gods’, but Zeus is the only one in there.”

I thought back to our arrival at the Pantheon, earlier in the dream. She did have a reaction to that name when I mentioned it. She had called it “strange”. Come to think of it, this was the first thing that seemed to have bothered her. Was this really it? Was this name really what angered her the most? Or was it…?

“It must have been so frustrating, right?” she added. “If you had thought about it a bit more before deciding on a name, you could have named the royal temple Parthenos, the planet Olympus, and maybe the galaxy Pantheon instead. Maybe the Greek mythology references wouldn’t have felt as forced. Maybe you could have come up with a better villain than the stereotypical and overdone Hades, who wasn’t even that villainous in Greek mythology compared to other gods like, say, Poseidon. Maybe the story could have been a little better, just a little better if you had put more thought into it. That’s probably when you began thinking about it more. Thinking of ways to improve it, of new ideas to add on top of the older ones. Thinking of new themes to make it more intellectual. Thinking of new twists and flavours to make it more exciting. Thinking, thinking, thinking…”

She looked at me straight in the eyes.

“I hate this story, Ash. Don’t you?”

It wasn’t just Greek mythology she was knowledgeable about. She also knew about this story. About how I built it. About how I felt about it.

“Everything you said up to that point,” I muttered, “could it be that you knew about it from…”

It was obvious where she actually got all of that.

“I’m not a Greek mythology expert, nor a literary critic, Ash. All I know, all I think, all I feel — it all comes from the same place.”

She was in my brain, after all.