Dismal are my earliest recollections, which take me back to the time when I was a regular woman taken from my home in a time of desperation. I hadn’t always been dangerous. I hadn’t always been a subject of fear. Searching back into my memories, which fade along with the passing days- reminisces of what I remember hint that I had been torn away from a life, that only remains in my dreams. These reminiscences are hazy. And day by day, things I promised myself to remember, still only come back as reconstructions of what I was thought to have done. Where I am now, I cannot disclose. How did I end up in this wretched state?  

I was a mother of one girl; and my husband having died two years after our marriage, we were two very lonely and hard-off in the world. We were very poor, very poor indeed. Powerful droughts had killed off the last of our crops, and it was during the time of near starvation that I made a decision that would lay its cataclysmic effect on the world. I cringe even to this moment when I think of the extent that I dared myself to go. I stole from the temple of Jupiter. I had to feed us somehow. It was my only choice; my only choice.

When I started on my way home, a basket of food in hand, I felt a fierce blow of wind rush up from behind me. The air filled with dust turned a muddy gray, and the sky above transformed into a sheet of black. But before I could be consumed entirely by the storm, into the distance I heard a faint cry. And at that second of time, I remember hiding my face in my hands, knowing it was the sound of a young girl- my very own. Taking in the last glimpse I would have of the world, darkness began to surround me. I was taken off to be condemned.

“You are going to suffer. Blunder does not come without a price,” the king of the Gods said, as he whirled me across the darkness to be dealt by Hephaestus, that mysterious unknown. 

From then forward, I was no longer my previous self. Although my body was still the same fine form, I had been bestowed upon other gifts only the most powerful Gods possessed. However, it was without the mental ingenuity of these higher beings that I did not possess. This made my gifts entirely irrepressible. Subjected to emotions filled with intense passion to fervent curiosity, my life was out my individual control. I did things I knew I should have not done. It was not because I was completely stupid that I eventually opened the box so blatantly dangerous before me. It was that I had come to a stage in which I was being controlled. I had taken myself over; slowly and unnoticeably metamorphosing into an automaton expressing the exact opposite of the “gifts” I had been given. 

Epimetheus was unimpressive; possessing neither substantial wisdom nor a handsome figure- but yet would never fail to provide, on every occasion, an endearing love for me, in the shape of understanding. And by loving me so, he was ultimately accepting his own doom statement- whether we wanted to admit it or not. That is what I was. And I can still remember his loyal eyes when, on the day we both fell to fate, I heard from that confused, foolish, indecisive mouth of his that love such as the one he held for me: remained forever.

I tried; I really did, from keeping myself from opening the box, but in time-I gave away. The first time I set my eyes upon it, I became very grave and impatient, eagerly leaning forward, moved for the first time in my existence by the call of Evil. I went ever so far as to even bury the box within the depths of the forest. And as its call grew more powerful (or as my mind withered and weakened), I found my days filled locating the sturdiest tree I could find to tie myself to using several lengths of rope. However, Jupiter always found a way to keep it coming back- and as my fight grew longer, my will became weaker. Gnaws brought on by curiosity took over every part of my mind. My life, or what was left of it to be claimed my own, turned into a constant craze to find out what was in that plain, wooden crate. Besides my convincing and pleading for this insanity to end, I was truly no longer myself. I was just an excuse, for the Gods to unleash chaos.

As I lay here among the rocks (once again in a place I cannot disclose); and my husband along with his brother are to be tortured at this very moment, my heart is weighed down by the burden of the world in which I have been brought to destroy. These are my last words- the last things I may be able to think with the reasoning of my own. I am an automaton. I want the world to know though, that was not I always one. I had a heart to love, a brain that I did not use often to reason, and a voice to speak the innermost contents of my heart. With my dying moments, I know have failed to put these true gifts into any use. But I want the world- the one I do not deserve to remain in any longer- one more thing. Not everything has been lost. As for happiness being taken over by sorrow, and duty taken over my burden- the Gods despite all of their perfected “gifts” made a mistake. In that very box, that led me to a binge of insanity, it was not the evil’s temptations that I could not overcome. It was in the corner of that wooden crate- lay hope. It was its compel that called to me the greatest. And it is still there in that very box today, waiting to be found, waiting (not very patiently) to be uncovered. It is waiting- the gift designated only for us- and it is there shining the light of day leading us to brighter days ahead.