This is a special peek of the Deadseriousness newsletter Let’s Get This Dread, in which I, Lester Lee, send exclusive funny, not boring Algorithm slop. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
10 years fighting the Trojan War, away from my wife, just me and the soldiers. Months, sweating, crafting a 30-foot wooden horse with the fellas. Heavin’ and hoein’. Then, days, weeks, crammed inside that wooden horse, packed beard-to-beard with bros—nothing but musk, BO and predictions on the next Olympics. (If you’re asking me? I like Pelops in the chariot race.)
3 more years at sea, tortured by Poseidon, because we may or may not have blinded his human-devouring cyclops son. Somewhere there’s a lesson to be learned about following sheep.
Eurylochus always in my ear, nagging me. “We need food, we need shelter,” it sucks out here: we get it.
The sorceress Circe, the first woman I’ve had a meal with in over a decade, handcrafted my crew to swine.
Spoke to demons at the river Styx, Sinon’s ungrateful ass, these kids don’t want to work anymore.
I endured the Sirens’ songs, lovely at first, both sonically and visually, before the overwhelming sense of dread, terror, loss and agony flooded my mind, body and spirit. (Would’ve loved to just see what their island was all about)
And now, unbeknownst to me, I’ve been stranded on an island with the nymph Calypso. All memories of my wife, and child, and obligations, wiped—Calypso rubbing my scalp, feeding me delicious lotus flowers, against my will.
Eyes dry from watering too much. Toes cramped from curling. My face grows wrinkles from smiling so often.
The horror!
I have to get home. I cannot bear another full body massage. or being woken up at night with Calypso nibbling my ear. A man needs his rest. Enough.
At some point, I think I have to shower alone.
Zeus, if you hear this prayer, please save me from Calypso. Hurry, she wants to play naked Twister, again…
