Sonny led Lethe down a hallway too dark to see the bodies slouched up against the walls. Lethe stepped over the rankled members, trying not to disturb them in their agony.

At the end of this very long hall was a door with an iron bolt. On the other side of the door, a massive presence pressed up against the window slot. Sonny called him “Cyclops”. Lethe recalled the story that his father used to read to him as a child. “Odysseus and his men were trapped inside a cave for two nights,” the Doctor’s calm reading voice pulled Lethe out of his surroundings. “The only way for them to escape was by driving a wooden stake into the eye of the Cyclops . . .”

Then Sonny grabbed Lethe and yanked him forward.

The body guard’s colossal arm jutted into the circumference of the room. Any false move could result in upsetting this touchy, unstable giant. Lethe proceeded with caution. The Cyclops grimaced at Sonny.

With bated breath, Lethe approached the infamous Mammon . . .

Dressed in a cappuccino-colored robe with golden swirls and red velvet trim, Mammon leaned back against a cushioned wall. His oval head was framed by a mane of thick coiled hair that spread from the edges of his forehead and down into a lush beard. He resembled Poseidon, the god of seas, oceans, rivers, springs, and lakes, with his flowing beard of curls and his high, noble forehead. The symmetry of his face was terrifying. His coiled mustache dropped at two perfect angles from his dark nostrils to where his lips closed slightly, showing no sign of emotion. His emerald eyes bore into Lethe as if he were in the process of hypnotizing him as well as reading his mind.

A strange calm swept over Lethe. All the colors in the room, including Mammon’s robe and the cushions on the wall, acquired a deep, red richness. Lethe tried to pull himself out of this trance but he couldn’t. Mammon’s inscrutable gaze bore deeper and he lost all sense of things, why he came, what he was looking for, where he was, who he was.

“Are you the real Mammon?” He heard echoing in his mind.

“Are you the real Mammon?”

“Who is the real Mammon?”

(Table of Contents)