Pandora lazily ran her fingers along the beautiful carvings that adorned the entryway to her house. Her house. There were few sounds in the universe more melodious to her ear than that.
Epimethius had gone with Prometheus to hunt—no doubt in an effort to prove something manly to themselves. They really seemed to approach the practice with what Pandora would readily term “childish antics.” But, she did appreciate the fresh meat they brought. Unfortunately, in the meantime she was left alone but clean an already spotless house or chat with those unbearably empty headed river nymphs. She had told Epimethius that she wanted to go hunting, too, but he had just laughed and said something about a “manly sport.” Pandora didn’t like that at all. It seemed like it was setting a very bad precedent and she got the terrible feeling that it would have unfortunate consequences for thousands of years yet. And all this, despite the fact that everyone knew the greatest hunter in the world was Zeus’ own daughter, Artimis. Manly sport indeed.
Pandora suppressed that line of thought. It would do her no good to think like this. And anyway, there was finally something else interesting to pay attention to: a brilliant white chariot was winging its way toward her.
She would recognize those pegasi anywhere. She had, after all, been born on Olympus.
Yes, behind that obnoxiously bright glow, she could just make out the outline of her father, Zeus.
Technically, he was only part of her father. She had been made by all of the the gods and so had seven fathers and five mothers. Each one had blessed her with the characteristics they thought best: beauty from Aphrodite, ingenuity from Athena, sweetness of disposition from Demeter, strength of character from Poseidon, appreciation of life from Hades, fear of spiders from Hermes, and so on down to Apollo who had wanted to give her blood lust but—on a blessed intervention from Zeus—had settled for courage instead. Secretly, though she suspected that when it came to the actual crafting of her person, Hephaestus had done the bulk of the work. But perhaps that was just her bias showing since he was the only one of the bunch who was as pleasant to talk to as he was unpleasant to look at.
Zeus pulled his chariot to a stop in front of the bemused Pandora, who was still standing in the doorway of their hut. She quickly advanced to the foot of the chariot and made a deep bow.
“Great Zeus, this is indeed an unexpected honor. To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence?”
“Hmm?” The speed and directness with which he had been flying seemed at odds with his now distracted nature. “Oh hello, Pandora.” he said. “I didn’t expect to find you here. Quaint little hovel, isn’t it? It certainly is no Olympus, but cozy enough for you and Epi-whats-his-toga. Speaking of…are your husband and my uncle stuttering somewhere about around here?”
“Epimethius and Prometheus are gone at the moment, lord.”
“Good.” Zeus proclaimed, “It was you I was coming to see anyway.”
Pandora felt not just a little confusion at this point, but chose to ignore the incongruity and instead said, “How may I serve you?”
“Well,” Zeus said. “I have this jar, see,” As he said this he produced a small ceramic jar about eight inches tall with a lid that fit snugly into the rim in a rather ingenious way (Athena or Hephaestus’ work, no doubt) so that it created something of a seal. “that I’m rather fond of, and I’m afraid that what with all the comings and going and, of course, the ever present threat of attack from disgruntled citizens or vengeful Titans and all that, I’m afraid it might get broken up on Olympus and that would be a shame since I’m so very fond of it.”
Pandora stared at the jar, trying to figure out what it was that Zeus wasn’t telling her. She hadn’t been around for very long before she met Epimethius and moved off Olympus to this much smaller and much happier little home, but she knew Zeus well enough to know that his sentimental side consisted of laughing uproariously as he filled his childhood cave with lead before flattening the entire mountain range.
“Anyway,” Zeus continued on, “I was wondering whether you wouldn’t be able to keep it here in this nice peaceful valley of yours for me?”
“Of course.” Despite her misgivings about his odd behavior, Pandora was only too happy to help, especially for one who had given her so much—indeed, accepted from Prometheus the instigation of her very creation.
“One thing.” Zeus said offhandedly. “You must never open it. Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances, open it.” Then, as if trying to lighten the mood, he added, “There’s a good girl.”
“Why?” Pandora wanted to know. “What’s in it?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing at all.”
“Surely there must be some—”
“No, no. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.” Zeus said. “Just remember, take care of it, and never open it.” So saying, and with a nonchalant wave of his hand, he flicked the reigns, wheeled his chariot around, and took off the way he had come.
Pandora was left, without a word to say, alone, standing in front of her “quaint little hovel,” holding the small ceramic jar, and wondering what everything that just transpired could possibly mean.
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It was another six hours before Epimethius came home. Six interminable, unbearable, mind-numbingly inexpressibly tortuous hours. Pandora was determined not to open the jar. She absolutely, positively refused to open the jar. You couldn’t—she thought to herself—start a thriving civilization, introduce the concept of standard currency to replace the less effective and more antiquated trade based society, repeat the process with a larger, more effective civilization with a maximized economy so that the resulting monetary unit is viewed as “exceptionally strong”, and then use that final currency to pay her to open the jar. Zeus had said not to, and by all the clouds that flow from Olympus, she would not.
And so the first hour passed.
It’s not like she didn’t have better things to do anyway. She had been curious to know what would happen if she sterilized her food exceptionally well and then sealed it away utilizing the natural processes of heat and contraction to make a sort of self sealing vacuum. She thought she might be able to keep it good for longer that way. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a seal good enough for the vacuum to work…Zeus’ jar was quite ingenious in that way. She had never seen a seal so effective. If she just took off the lid to see how it worked…. It’s not like she would be “opening” the jar, just looking at the lid. But no, she knew better than that. There were other things to do. Who would ever want out of season cucumbers anyway?
She made dinner, cleaned the house, weeded the garden, weeded the vineyard, weeded the yard, looked at the sea, braided her hair, mended a tunic, threw rocks at a bigger rock, isolated the white crusty substance forming on the ground near the stables for an experiment, prepped breakfast for the next day, built an alter to Hera, hosted an internal criminal trial complete with three judges and a jury of fifty two peers on the injustice of husbands leaving their wives to hunt instead of growing domestic stock like any responsible Grecian should do, added sulfur to her experiment on a whim, hauled water, wrote the worlds first exposee, wrote the worlds first heavy handed critique of an exposee, shoddy journalism, and the exposee genre in general, awarded the worlds first literary prize, received the worlds first literary prize, gave a wonderful acceptance speech about being a persecuted artist, felt misunderstood, invented the phrase “threw in the towel” expressly so she could throw in the towel on her thankless literary life, added some unused charcoal to her experiment and—forgetting that it was a gritty powder and was not at all wet—set it by the fire to dry, Rebuilt sundry items of furniture which had previously been situated near the fire, checked the time, and wondered why, if there really wasn’t anything in the jar, Zeus would make such a point of telling her that it was empty. Thought about opening the jar to find out. Decided that there were other things she could do than think about some old jar.
And so the second hour passed.
The third hour passed slowly as Pandora stared at the jar. Appreciating its curves and it’s exquisite finish.
Finally, after four and a half hours, she decided that it may be better to put the jar out of sight. Taking the little ceramic masterpiece carefully in her hands, she placed it in a cupboard that Epimethius had made just the other week.
Fifteen minutes later, she buried it in the back yard.
That was where Epimethius found her two hours later when he returned home, fresh venison over his shoulder.
Prometheus was similarly laden.
“I don’t see why it takes six hours to catch two deer.” She said a quick kiss later.
“These things take time, dear.” Epimethius gave her a quick grin at his self-supposed wordplay.
“I don’t see why.” she repeated stubbornly. “You do, after all, have a god helping you.” She gave Prometheus an arched look.
“I would never.” Prometheus placed a hand on his chest, lowered his eyebrows, and protruded his lips in a hurt pout. “To use my godly power in a hunt would not only take away the sport, it would hardly be fair to the poor animal.”
Pandora gave to to bags of testosterone her flattest stare.
“If you want to be ‘fair’, then you’d have to teach the monkeys to use bows and then try hunting them.”
That gave the two men pause.
“Point taken.” Epimethius said at length. “Is everything alright, dear?”
Pandora breathed out the tension that she was still feeling from the jar.
“Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just been such a long day all by myself.” She wondered for a moment whether she should tell them about the jar, but there was no way they would be empathetic to her quandary. Epimethius hadn’t, after all, even seemed to yet notice the altered state of their hearth, or if he did, then he wasn’t asking any questions. That was the way it always was with him. She had once fed him “mystery meat” and he hadn’t even bother to ask what it was…not that it had actually been anything out of the ordinary—still, the point remained that he hadn’t asked. Some burdens were better born alone than with the unsympathetic.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“It’s nothing.” Pandora said.
For the rest of the evening, she tried her best to interact with her husband without appearing distracted. They had dinner, Prometheus—as always—gave effusive compliments to the cook and then left, Epimethius told Pandora about the hunt, leaving nothing out; she told him about her day, leaving everything out, and the pair retired to bed.
It was dark and Epimethius was snoring as Pandora lay awake, listening to his respiring, watching the moonlight creep across the wall, and thinking about the jar.
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For a week, Pandora was almost able to put the jar out of her mind. She only thought about it in the face of some triggering reminder such as the ceramic dishes that they ate off of, or the pitcher which so closely resembled its shape, or the fresco in their entryway that bore similar colors to the jar, or any sort of air or empty space which Zeus was so adamant was all that the jar contained.
However, after a week, she began to worry that the jar would be ruined, buried out in the yard like it was. So, it was back to the cupboard with it. In all this time she heard nothing from Olympus, no direction, no explanation, no reason why the jar was so special. First she thought, it couldn’t be that special or Zeus wouldn’t trust someone else—let alone a non-deity—with it’s keeping. Then she thought, it must be special, or he wouldn’t trust someone else—especially a non-deity—with it’s keeping. Surly Hades would be a better custodian of such a piece. The fact that it was here, then, indicated that it couldn’t be trusted to the other gods. That was about as comforting as alimony from Ares.
By the time the week was up, Pandora felt thoroughly tired and completely upset.
She was lying next to a gently snoring Epimethius with visions of the unknown thing in the jar floating in her mind. In her sleep deprived, emotion fueled imaginings, whatever the jar contained was personified. She saw herself lifting the lid just an inch and feeling a rush as a form with unnatural substance but without a face flowed out and took shape before her. She imagined feeling a combination of joy and horror at its dangerous flowing beauty as it turned a featureless head to stare into her future.
It was silly, of course. She knew that. The jar was, in all probability, as empty as Zeus claimed. Certainly, it was not the home of some benevolent spirit any more than the prison of a terrible faceless power. But, the idea was one of those that takes hold and will give neither inch nor acknowledgment. Try though she might to put the thought out of her mind, the scene played itself over as many times as any bad theater troupe, which is to say, there was no end to it’s awful antics and encores. Now the faceless being was menacing with its cowled robe and deep hood, now it was resplendent with an opulently embroidered tunic so that it may as well have been wearing a fine tapestry. At one time, it would move toward her as if to inflict some bodily harm, at another it was a peace bringer offering safety. At every repetition, however, there was one constant. She would feel in immense flush of imaginary relief at just knowing the contents of the jar. Good or bad made no difference, it was the knowing that was important.
Even the strongest will cannot stand against itself. Pandora carefully got out of bed and picked her way across the room. She didn’t want to wake Epimethius.
Once in the tabulinum she moved less carefully. A moment later, the jar was in her hand.
The moonlight shone through the window to glint off the beautiful glaze. Strangely, every time Pandora looked at the jar it seemed there was a different image on it. This time she could see a pair of what were obviously twins, with dark hair and welcoming features, walking contentedly, hand in hand by a small brook. The image changed as she rotated the jar until it showed a spacious arena of some sort filled and actually overflowing with people all in the action of gazing intently at a figure up on a platform in the distance. Next came an image of laughing men, all with light hair and eyes too blue to be made from a ceramic glaze, gathered round a table sharing a drink. She had rotated the jar nearly all the way around and was surprised when she saw the initial side once more. The twins were still there, still walking hand in hand, but this time they were not surrounded by the peaceful scene of water and woods, they were in a barren field surrounded by smoke. The look on their frozen faces was…abrupt.
Pandora looked away, unsettled by their appearance as much as by the changing nature of the jar’s glaze. For a moment, she felt the same disgust that had periodically presented itself at the thought of the unknown horror that was surely lurking for her in the bottom of the jar. But that feeling quickly resolved into an pressure so powerful, so overwhelming, that the very air she breathed seemed to compel her to know.
For this moment the universe was an empty void. There was no floor nor ceiling, no peaceful valley somewhere in Greece, no greedy world being partitioned off between greedier deities, no universe to contain them, no Nox nor Euros to give birth to everything that is and was and will be. There was simply Pandora and a jar and a desperate need to know. Almost without thinking her had reached out to grasp the lid of the jar. She told herself that she should check the seal, just to make sure it couldn’t accidentally come off. It would not do, after all, to have a mouse crawling into the King-of-the-God’s favorite jar and making its home there. The lid was indeed tight, which—Pandora told herself—was a relief. She pulled just a little bit harder so that she could be sure of how tight it was. After all, what if it fell off the shelf? She should be prepared for any eventuality and it was prudent to know beforehand how safe the jar really was. Safe. the answer was very safe. She pulled harder. It seemed incredible that a jar could be designed with so tight a lid. Something, she told herself, must be wrong with the lid, perhaps from when she buried it; she owed it to Zeus to fix it. By now she was staining against the jar lid with everything she could muster from her relatively new arms. Surely, the lid couldn’t—off. The lid popped off and rolled across the floor.
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Somewhere on Olympus Zeus stirred in his sleep.
“Lord, Zeus!”
In a moment he was upright with one less lightning bolt next to his bed and one more large circular indent of rubble in the wall next to a nearly vaporized and very peeved Hermes.
“What is the meaning of this?” Zeus growled to the younger god.
“You said to wake you.” Hermes said petulantly.
“I only said to wake me if…. Oh.” Zeus emoted no reaction. “So she finally opened it?”
“Just minutes ago.”
“Took her long enough. I was beginning to think we made a gross miscalculation in our design.” He said with a yawn that could have consumed the Euphrates river. “You may see yourself out.” He waved a hand indolently at Hermes who vanished almost faster that even Zeus’ deific eye could follow.
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Pandora stood frozen while the lid—having been pulled from her hand and sent flying across the room—finished rolling along the floor, bumping into the wall and spinning to a stop. If it had still been in her hand, she would have slammed it back on the jar in an instant. As the lid lost its momentum, it started making small circles with its rim faster and faster until it stopped moving all together.
Slowly, ever so slowly, a black shadow oozed out of the jar. Even in the moonlight it was distinct as it flowed out of the top and fell to the ground like a heavy mist. It was blacker than anything Pandora had ever seen before. It seemed to actively devour light, scarce as that was in the night, as it collected in a contained puddle on the floor. The puddle became a trunk which grew, stretched, got pulled upward in much the way hot taffy moves when pulled by gravity. Soon, two arms and a cloaked head appeared out of the void. Pandora gasped as she recognized the figure she had imagined in that repeated scene so many times in the last week.
“What are you?” She whispered.
“I am the future.” The creature’s voice sounded like a concentrated wind being blown through a mesh of thin hay.
“What future?” She was afraid to know the answer—afraid to know what she had done.
“Your future.” The creature turned its faceless hood toward her. “Mankind’s future. Every things future.”
“What is your name?” Pandora’s mouth was dry, so dry.
“I am called loss. I am called bereavement. I am called justice. I am called mercy. I am called inevitable. I am called hateful. I am called death.”
“Why were you in the jar?” Perhaps it was not the question that should have been asked, but it was the question Pandora needed to answer.
“Zeus put me there.”
So he had lied. He knew what was in the jar and had simply refused to tell her.
“How long have you been there?”
“What is time to me?” The creature called death began to swell. “Now that I am free, I will fill the whole world and I will be its unrecognized master. Only the immortals will be beyond my call, but even they will be beholden to it.”
Then, the black creature gave a terrible screech as it swelled to fill the room and started pouring out the windows. From the jar, now flowed other mists, other darknesses, each absolute but unidentifiably distinct. Each, as it emerged rasped it’s name.
“Pain,”
“Weakness.”
“Greed.”
“Disease.”
“Malice.”
“Anger.”
“Hate.”
“Discord.”
“Lust.”
“Addiction.”
“Ignorance.”
“Fear.”
“Untruth.”
…
Each one flowed out of the jar and began to expand in the same way that death had, to fill the world with their presence.
Pandora dropped the jar, realizing what she had done. The ceramic container bounced once and rolled in a small circle as the terrible entities continued to flow from it. She scrambled across the room to grab the lid where it had fallen and then back to reacquire the jar.
The stream of black mist had slowed now to a trickle. Still, she hopped she might yet prevent some terrible woe from escaping into the world. Scooping up the jar with one hand, she slammed the lid back onto it with what was certainly more force than was needed. Then she closed her eyes and breathed out, holding the jar with one hand on top and one hand on bottom.
“Panda?”
She spun around to see Epimethius standing in the mouth of the hall that led to their bed room. His hair was tousled and his mouth slightly agape.
“What was that?” He asked haltingly.
Pandora felt tears come to her eyes. “I…” What could she say? How to explain what she had just done? “I think I made a mistake.”
Epimethius came over to her and put his arms around her in a comforting hug. “Do you want to talk about it?” He asked.
“No.” Pandora felt the tears break free of their glassy prison and slide down her cheeks. “I’ve ruined everything.” She let herself cry for a moment while Epimethius held her, then she started at the beginning, when Zeus gave her the jar, and told Epimethius everything. When she was all out of words to say and tears to cry, she hung her head and tried to press it into Epimethius’ chest, but found only air as Epimethius pulled away. She looked up in trepidation to find horror in his features. He tried to speak several times but was not equal to the task and finally broke away entirely, his arms falling to his sides like so much dead weight. And with a troubled step, He turned and exited out the front door.
Pandora stumbled back until she felt the cool wall stop her. Then, she sank down to sit on the floor, still clutching the resealed jar.
She sobbed dry tears, not knowing what to do or even what exactly she had done.
“Please, help me.”
Pandora looked up in surprise at the voice, but the room was empty.
“Who—”
“I’m still trapped.”
The voice was pitiable, small, weak, timid. Pandora realized it was coming from the jar. She held the thing away from her as though it were a poisonous snake.
“You don’t understand.” The voice said. “You must let me out. I will save the world from the others.”
Pandora glared daggers at the jar, though she doubted that whatever entity was there would be able to see.
“You’re wasting your time.” She said. “I’m not letting you out.” She choked back a sob, thinking of each of the beings who had already escaped, thinking of Epimethius leaving without a word. “I’ve done enough for one night.”
“You must let me out!” The tiny voice seemed desperate. “I am hope. Without me, the world will fall into despair.”
Pandora laughed bitterly. “You’re no different than the rest.” She said. “You’ll just be an extension of our suffering.”
“Please!”
“No.”
“I will escape!” The voice was no longer pitiable and weak. As if realizing that its charade would not work, hope now spoke in a hard and raspy baritone, every bit as disturbing as the others’ had been. “When I do, I will turn each torment of my brothers into a thousand days of suffering till you beg for release from me.”
Pandora shuddered, but carefully stood and took the jar to the cupboard where she placed it before closing the door and sinking back to the floor again.
If there had been anyone passing by three hours later as the first inklings that dawn was coming began to show in the sky, they would have seen a beautiful woman curled up on the floor, sleeping fitfully, alone.