My head aches and pounds as I open up my eyes. I slowly sit myself up from the hard stony ground that I was laying upon. As my eyes adjust to the dim light, I look around, bewildered at the unknown place that I am in. The air is dank and hot and it burns my nostrils with every breath. As I pull my weak body up off from the ground I begin to regain my wits. I have no recollection of how I got to where I am now or why I am in such pain but I intend to find out.
As I hobble blindly forward, I hear the faint sounds of screams coming from all directions. It is dark and the only things I can see are the blurry outlines of faint shapes and the occasional flash of blinding light followed by an intense wave of heat. As I walk forward the screams get louder until they are at a low roar as I approach a rocky river bank. The water at first appears to be normal but as I stare into it longer I begin to see humanoid figures beneath the water, climbing on top of each other as if attempting to reach air, but as each one nears the surface another strikes him down in attempt to make his own ascent.
“Shit,” I say. “Against my better judgment, I would have to say that I’m in hell.” As I stand at the shore cussing, lamenting, and just generally having a really bad time, I see a skeletal figure in the distance, approaching slowly but steadily toward me in a small dinghy. “Looks like a dude in a boat, what was his name again? ” As I curse my unsatisfactory public school education for entirely failing to teach me about classical Christian myth (probably because they want to avoid the idea of “Christian myth”) the boatman moors his boat.
He calls to me in a gravely voice, ” Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Your soul has been unfortunate enough to be forsaken by your god and you have… Hey! Are you listening to me?”
“What the hell was his name? Lou… Ale…. Zoosomething… ”
“I am Charon the ferry man! I have come to…”
“Yes! Charon! Thanks a lot man. ”
“Do not thank me so quickly young one, for I am here to take your soul to its final resting place in a place of pain and suffering.”
“Well… That sounds very not awesome. I’m going to have to pass on that one.” I turn around to get the shit out of there as quickly as possible.
“Wait!” Charon yells to me as I stop running, which I don’t mind because I hate running anyway. “You cannot escape your fate that easily boy. If you wish to negotiate your fate then you must pay me a toll and I will take you to the Morningstar himself. ”
“That sounds pretty all right.” I reply tentatively. “What’s the toll?”
“One gold Athenian coin.”
“Well, I don’t have any of those. Do you take debit?”
“Uh… Yeah sure hold on a minute.” Charon fumbles around in his robe for a moment and pulls out a cell phone with a little credit card reader. “All right let me see the card. ” I hand him the card and he slides it back and forth in the reader, getting increasingly frustrated as he does so. “Damn this stupid thing, just hold on a minute. I’ll get it to work. There! Now sign with your finger.” I sign the little screen with an X because there’s no way I’m giving him my signature, and I get in his boat and we begin to push off from the rocky shore.
“Ow ow hey! Watch where you’re going! There’s other people in this water you know!” say the people attempting to claw their way out of the dark, dirty pool.
“Sorry! Sorry!”
“Now young one.”
“Hey man, I’m nineteen, a little old to be calling ‘young one’ don’t you think? Unless you’re referring to the t.v. show because then I’m all right with it.”
“Silence! I am as old as the stars in the sky and the rocky core of this Earth. I shall call you young if I wish.”
“All right, Charon. Heh, isn’t Charon a girl’s name?”
“Be quiet or I will turn this boat around!” And I spoke no more on our trip across the waters of the river Styx towards the castle home of the King Lucifer, the Morningstar of Hell.
End of Part One
—Keenan Calhoun
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