I watch my friends dance around me. Souls dance. Empty, nasty, shells of dead people. Taunt me while my family blows me kisses. Soldiers salute me, as if they were still here. Maybe it is better to be dead. Staring at their bloody mangled corpses wrecked and rotting in the streets. This is everyone's destiny. Swords glint and flash around me like butterflies or shooting stars. I remember when I could see the stars. Let me escape from this war torn hell. This is not where I belong. In this world, escape is death. Maybe that is a good thing. I watch as men laugh and drink and rape away their sadness. Men with souls buried so deeply under layers of blood, dirt, and longing, they almost don't exist. Everyday I see a new little boy with a spark in his eye and a beat in his heart, destroyed within minutes. Every time I know that little boy could have been me.

A Trojan runs at me with his sword ready. I hear it slice the air next to my ear as I roll out of the way. I come back quickly and feel my sword flying into his stomach. Sick satisfaction hearing his guts churn and burst inside of him. That is 17. It comes easily now. I used to have to plan out every move but now I let my sword lead me. It used to disgust me, make me queasy. Now it gives me a rush, makes me feel alive. I run away from the dying Trojan. Crouching behind a low wall, I wait for another one to come. Maybe I should have just let him cut me.
My world has been dipped in a pool of blood, squeezed to ring out the innocence, and left to bake. When it is all nice and cooked, repeat over and over until it is charred and unrecognizable. No need to worry, I can still recognize it.

I left my home at 16 for the war. But my home left me months before that. Disease had finally taken my mother, a good, strong woman. She feared being left alone again after my father so she had never remarried. Maybe that fear is why she took two of my sisters to Asphodel with her. After that, both my brothers ran off together with two neighbor girls. I had one sister left, Adelphe, and I was scared as hell to lose her too. When the war came around, I jumped on the opportunity. That was my chance to leave a mark for our family. I told myself it was my responsibility to make our family remembered. in reality it was my escape. My opportunity to avoid being abandoned by the only family I had left. Now I almost wish I had stayed. Too late.

Helios falls behind the buildings, turning the smoggy metallic air a darker shade of gray. I peel myself away from the ground and search for a decent place to sleep. An empty house calls my name. I settle down on the wood floor behind a dresser, just in case anyone comes looking. My eyes are heavy, I feel sleep pulling me down. Maybe I’ll never wake up. Would that be a good thing? Sleep pulls me down to the edge of the ocean, the end of the earth. Here is Charon floating above the River Styx. The shade next to me whispers, “Who are you?”
Who am I? What had I done? I hear my mother’s voice whispering to my brothers and sisters; You will be a rich man, and you will be a successful man. You will marry a rich, successful man, and you will marry a prince.
What about me, mom? I asked as a little kid.

You will be a good man, Elpenor.

I jump awake. I heard a voice. “Elpenor….” No, nobody here knows me. Again, “Elpenor!”
It is a girls voice, “Elpenor! Don’t leave me!”
It is my sister, Adelphe.
“I always thought you were different, Elpenor. But you’re not.”
“I am! Look, I’m in the war! I’m saving our family.”
“You abandoned our family.” She spits the words at me like a curse.
“I was trying to help! They abandoned me first.”
“I didn’t abandoned you.” She disappears and I’m left talking to the shadows in someone elses home.
Tomorrow I will make my family proud. I will kill one of the great Trojan warriors, Hector or Ajax. I will be the hero my family never produced before. I will make a mark and be remembered. If I die, it will be a courageous death in battle and with more honor than any other. People will talk about me and call me "young hero" and "brave man."
     This is what I told my self every day until the end of the war. "Tomorrow is the day." But tomorrow never came. Ajax and Hector died, but not by my hand. Then the Trojan Horse, if only I had thought of that idea. Maybe I could have built it. Maybe tomorrow will be the day, even though the war ended, there could be one more battle. But there isn’t.
     So we all get on our ships to go home and see our wives and families. Well, the others get ready to see a family. Glasses clink and music rings in celebration, I pretend that the glasses are raised for me in honor of my achievements. What achievements? I survived the whole war, that is more than anyone expected out of me. Not that anyone would care either way.
Maybe when I return, my brothers will return as well. I will come home to a house filled with homemade bread, and open arms. A home designed to let the sunshine in and the laughter reverberate off every cobweb. Just like it was before disease raped my mother’s perfect body and took my sisters along for the ride. Before the neighbor girls stole my brothers. Before the war.  All of the other soldiers expect to come home to a family and a feast, but for me that seems like a foolish dream.
I lay on the deck each night, finally able to see the stars again. No matter where I am, just look at the stars and know that I can see those same stars. That is what my eldest brother told me before he left. Maybe he is looking at the stars somewhere, so is my sister, Adelphe and my other brother. Maybe even my father. Under the stars we are still a family. It should have only taken two weeks for me to get back to Ithaka and unite our family. But of course it didn’t.

I became a part of the fleet of Odysseus. The great tactician, war-hero, skilled in all ways of contending. The famed Odysseus is only a few ships away from me. And then on the same ship. If I have nothing else to leave as my fame, at least I have seen Odysseus in the flesh and blood. He even talked to me, that alone is one little thing to be proud of. One little speck of importance dancing in a sea of disappointments. I almost forget about my family and my home. Nothing else matters now but dedicating my life to this journey. We took a detour getting home and it is adding months of extra time to our trip. It does not matter though, a few months feels like nothing after ten years of fighting.

Open ocean, salty air, scanning the distance, this is my life. New islands, new people, less people every day. That is the adventure. A traveler, I have been on more adventures than my family. Does that count for something? I can still see the stars. Maybe I’m not a warrior or a hero, but now I am a traveler. This can be my mark on the world, I will be the man who touches every speck of sea and land. So far I am off to a good start. Though Circe’s island is where the real adventure begins.

I arrived at the island with the rest of the crew a year ago. Circe then transformed each of their bodies into pigs and set them out to play with her other victims. I escaped her spell and warned Odysseus. Hermes gave him a solution to regain his crew. Once all the pigs took the shape of men, Circe offered her island as a temporary home for us. We have lived here for a year, I am anxious to continue forward but I can still see the stars. Rumors also has it that we will be leaving soon.

I sit on the roof atop Circe’s house, this is my favorite place in the world right now. It is my home. I drink my wine, every sip blurring away my mistakes. I feel it dribble down my throat and chin, bringing a smile to my face. I see the stars, millions of them fighting for space in the sky. While my war is over, theirs is eternal. There will never be enough sky to give home to all of these stars. Like my family; not enough room for all of these problems. So we left one by one. But there is always sky to keep the stars connected even when they are invisible. They will always have a home. Home.

“Home...home…We are going home!”
My brain jumps out of my skull and hits the ground before my body can follow. I follow my heavy head which is lolling me sideways and zigzagged. I follow the voices calling home. My feet know where they are going. Left. Right. Left. Right. Right. Down. Down...down… my head is following my feet now, while my feet follow my head. I am not walking anymore. I’m falling. I was on a roof and now I am not. My head sees the ground first, welcoming the sand into my face. I land. No I don’t…
I am on a boat again. At the end of the world, crossing the river Styx. Why am I here? I try to jolt myself awake. I am dreaming. You are not. The voices whisper, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. You are dead.

Dead. Fell off the roof, now I am dead. Surrounded by darkness, I look to the sky and I don’t see the stars.  Just look at the stars and know that I can see those same stars. One family under the stars. What happens when I can’t see the stars anymore? Tiny balls of light dancing out of my reach, those were my inspiration. Where do I go now? Find my family. Find the stars.

I wander in the ebony fields, searching for a family that may have died years ago. “Mother!” I shriek. Not one shade turns their head. I shout the names of my dead sisters. I scream into the darkness and nobody hears me, no sound comes out. The ground falls out from under me and I hit the ground, again and again. I claw the air, if I can dig it all away the stars will shine through. My hands grasp my head and try to hold it on my shoulders while it tries to run away. The other shades gracefully float around me without paying me a second glance. I yank at their legs and shout in their faces. Not a single one seems to notice my existence. No one recognizes me.

Days or years drift by, blending together. There is no time and all the time. I stand by the boats and check every face. Who am I even looking for? Maybe my sister or my brothers. I want company down here, I want my family back. Maybe it is a good thing that I have not found them, that means they are still alive. Unless they are all together somewhere down here, all without me.

“Elpenor?”
My imagination hears a voice.
“Elpenor?”
It is not real. No one is looking for me. No one knows me.
“Elpenor! My baby!”
It is my mother and my two sisters.
“Elpenor, why are you here? What did you do?”

What did I do? I fell off a roof. Did not become a war hero. Never made it around the world. I got drunk and fell off a roof. I did not make a mark on the world. I will not be remembered as anything important. “I died.”
My sisters have a friend, he was a soldier just like me. The one who designed the Trojan Horse. He has a low manly voice, “You are that young guy who fell off the roof right?”

That is my fame. That is how I will be remembered. At least someone recognized me. I look up to avoid eye contact. I don’t want to see the embarrassment in my mother’s eyes. You will be a good man, she once said. I haven’t done anything to meet her expectations. I look up at the darkness and almost look away. But I see it. Way out of reach, one tiny little glimmer of white among the blue-black sky. Its a star. In Asphodel, I can still see a star. Maybe it will be okay.