My name is John Hades. If you’re not familiar with Greek mythology you might be mispronouncing my name, or not, but technically, yes. The name has always brought along some sort of post-apocalyptic vibe to my life. Every time I hear someone say my name, it’s like the end is near, and I’m the one responsible for it. A girl I used to date once wrote a very dark story called, ‘Through the Eye of Hades’. I told her to change the title to something else before publication otherwise I’d leave her. She did change it, but I ended up dumping her anyway. Her name was Denise – an irritating girl, as irritating as her stories in which she would over-reference her favourite writers in a way that it was so obvious. That wasn’t the reason why I dumped her, though. I loved the sex, but she was allergic to my cat. So, in a way, I left her, but I wouldn’t let her leave me. I wouldn’t let anyone that entered my life, go. Not that there are many people in my life, despite being in college. I just loved watching how I brought out the darkest in her. When we first met, she was this inexperienced, happy small-town girl. I literally seduced her like the serpent in Eden by feeding her magic mushrooms for dinner. (Important note: The serpent in Eden is proof that there is always evil lurking in something good. However, harmless evil, because here, temptation is portrayed as bad, but the decision is yours. Pure evil will grab you instantly by the neck.) Everyone reacts differently to the effect of psilocybin. I didn’t trust who she was on the outside and believed that the mushrooms would tell me the truth. If you were a genuinely happy person you would normally experience some form of euphoria when you eat mushrooms. Denise, on the other hand, went through a drastic change of perception, which eventually led to a panic attack. It started with her pupils dilating, followed by her seeing cockroaches crawling down my walls. She imagined the fast-creepy crawling sounds and immediately jumped on my couch, screaming. “They’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me!” she kept whining. It struck me that her biggest fear was death, which didn’t surprise me, because her dad owned a funeral home. She told me about her childhood nightmares and how she once saw her dead grandmother waving at her from down the hallway. Interestingly enough, that mushroom trip inspired her to her first piece of dark...