1.

In the beginning, there was only his brother Sleep.

Mortals lived for a short while, procreated and then died almost as swiftly as they came.

They migrated away from the cold, away from the heat, towards areas where they could hunt animals at their leisure.

Their’s was a slow evolution.

The animals that hunted the mortals were merciful.

There was no violence with the death of these first men.

But then they began to think, to ponder, to feel.

And Thanatos came.

2.

He is only a god. He is only a body, a mind, a feverish desire for violent and tragic death to all mortals, trapped in his own sarcophagus resembling a naked male youth.

He is not the last breath of a mother dying after childbirth. He is not the fire that consumes the children.

He is not the crack of a neck, the clot in the artery or the darkness that pervades the mind as mortals fall down, down, under his spell.

Down, down to his Lord’s kingdom.

He is only a god. He is not the all-consuming power in that precious moment where life slips away.

He is the beauty of death.

3.

Thanatos separates himself from the hunger for violence that lurks within him.

He is just a god, he tells himself. Like his peers, he is able to succumb to the temptations of lust, of greed, of gluttony, of wrath, of envy, of sloth, of pride. They are all able, despite their perceived power, to fall victim to these overbearing emotions, these feelings.

The hunger, the insatiable urge to just hurt others is something else. Something powerful. Something more powerful than himself.

So he doesn’t blame himself. He blames the urge deep within him.

He’s named it Phlegm- for the disgust it induces in him, for the fire it starts in the pit of his stomach and for the protection it offers from his clinging, parasitic fellow immortals.

4.

In his beginning, Thanatos’ only solace from the monstrosity he embodied were the butterflies.

The monarchs flitted about his cave in Hades, their wings a shimmer of light through the stale, dark air.

How fitting, he thought. That I, lonely I, have power over three kings.

Monarch, King of the Butterflies,

Hades, King of the Dead and

Zeus, King of the Gods.

All of them would shiver, but all would flock to be near the pure stench of the death that seeped through the fine mesh silk of his alabaster pores.

Because they knew, they knew too well, it could never touch them.

5.

Sometimes he thinks his brother is too kind.

Though Thanatos is by no means violent himself, the evil within him hungers for pain, for grief, for others to suffer. The evil within him tells him to speak with Hypnos, sweet Hypnos and tell him to make the mortals he takes suffer in their last waking moments before they give in.

Give in to Hypnos’ death.

Phlegm, Thanatos’ death, always wants more victims, more, more.

And pounds alongside the ichor that runs through his veins. Pounds, pounds, slamming against the confines of his skin, driving up his esophagus, invading his vision, whispers words filled with malcontent in his ears.

And he thinks, I am only a god. Only a god.

He is not a god and a king, like Hades or Zeus. He is not a god and a patron, like Apollo or Hermes. He is not a god with a purpose like Asclepius or even Hypnos.

He is unspecific, and torn between the paths he might take.

6.

There was a time when the Fates didn’t care so much about their duty.

There was a time when Atropos, Clotho and Lachesis would flock to his cave along the riverside, just like the butterflies which do so now, and talk for hours upon hours about nothing quite important at all, just staying in his presence, knowing that he could not, would not, ever harm them.

Thanatos would never harm them.

Maybe the evil that nested within the center of his chest sometimes wished that Lachesis’ monochromatic head would fall off her shoulders and onto the floor; maybe sometimes his chest would clinch together with the desire to stifle his Queen Persephone, beautiful Queen Persephone, until she breathed no more; and maybe sometimes the only sight the feeling in his chest wished to witness was the fall of the King of the Gods as he descended down Mount Olympus, white head first, and plummeted to the ground to a most violent death.

A most violent death.

Whenever Thanatos catches the monster in him making him think this way, he breathes in deeply and breathes out more so. He closes his eyes and dampens the raging river of fire that sweeps across his shut eyelids and tickles his nostrils with the aroma of pain.

7.

Phlegethon.

It is his river, one of the five in the Underworld.

He thinks they all have a river. Himself, Hades, Persephone, Hypnos, Hecate.

His King and Queen know that Thanatos, despite his ability to socialize with them quite ably when necessary, enjoys his own private time, talks to himself, to Phlegm, and thinks, observes.

Oh how he observes.

He knows that Phlegethon is for him, and Acheron for Hades, though his King, his friend, would sneer with disdain upon being associated with such a weak, amiable river.

But Thanatos knows all about Hades’ tears, his loneliness, his infidelity.

Phlegm knows too.

And Thanatos knows that Cocytus is for Persephone; he’s seen her crying forlornly by its banks several times over the past few millennia.

He doesn’t generally go over himself to comfort her, but occasionally he will ask Monarch and his minions to flutter over, sit on her shoulders and offer her some warmth.

She knows it’s his doing.

And Thanatos knows that Lethe is for his beloved brother Hypnos and his docile, forgiving nature. If he ever deigned to tell Hypnos such, Hypnos would just smile his handsome, lethargic smile and bat the fancies of his younger brother Thanatos away.

Yes, forgetfulness went quite well with Sleep.

And Thanatos knows that Styx, the river of Hate, runs through the veins of Hecate. This it pains him to know, for Phlegm wants to act, wants to help Hecate through her suffering, make her the Queen of the Underworld, and bestow her rightful position.

But Thanatos stifles the fire, always stifles that Phlegm, and lays in his cold cave with the butterflies.