Dave was a ferryman. Dave was the ferryman; ye olde hooded one, the humble gatekeeper of Hades, yadda, yadda. Corey, the original ferryman, had fallen overboard and didn't know how to swim.
Or so the story went.
Dave’s boat was decades overdue for an upgrade. He still didn’t have a motor, and had to make do with slimy, splintery paddles. The powers that be had never even given him so much as a cushion for his lower back. And don’t get Dave started on smoke breaks and workplace temperature. The River Styx, a sexy, sunsetty Chris de Burgh music video, it was not.
Dave wondered who his next passenger would be. A drug lord with the blood of hundreds on his hands? A CEO of a fast food company? A Christian rap-rocker with a taste for youngins? Or his favourite; the average Joe, run-of-the-mill asshole who didn't quite grasp why he was there. It was a toss-up if those ones ended up at the River Styx or the Pearly Gates; nepotism, luck of the draw, politics. You know how it goes.
Dave’s patrons rarely messed with him; he was the mysterious figure in the velvety, moth-eaten robe with sunken black holes for eyes, and they were the new kid in school. Uncomfortable. Worried they’d fart, get a boner, or be torn to shreds by one of Satan’s minions.
The ones that knew why they were there, weren't so much for the talking. Occasionally someone would try and negotiate with Dave or make a run for it, but mostly they just wanted a head’s up on whatever atrocities lay ahead. Dave actually didn’t know, so he just made shit up. He found striking terror in their hearts made the ride unbearable, so he’d keep it sparse and only mention the funner things he’d heard of over the years - like the skeleton key parties, boiling Coca Cola jacuzzis, and sex pterodactyls.
But today -- or tonight, he was never quite sure -- Dave was in a chatty mood. He was itching to shake it up. Every single day, all day, he did his job. Point A to point B. It was simple. The route was well-worn; rarely any hiccups.
Sometimes, a teeth-gnashing, Hell Serpent would torpedo the boat, but within the first century Dave was pretty sure he’d harpooned all of those fuckers into the next dimension, if there was a next dimension. Dave didn’t like to think about that.
But Dave was bored. He was over his job. He wanted to rip off his robe, let his skin scraps hang out. Jitter-bug. Sky-dive. Go to a concert. See a movie. What Dave really wanted more than any thing, was a companion. Someone to talk to. Someone to hold his clammy phalanges and tell him that he was all they'd ever dreamed of. Maybe give him a little river head every now and then.
He’d heard of orgies deep into the mainland, but Dave was never invited. Not even as someone’s plus one. Not that that was his scene, but it would still be nice to be included once in a while.
Dave had spent years archiving his feelings in the dusty bins of whatever remained of his grey matter. But sometimes he couldn’t control his thoughts. Quite frankly, he was sick of it. He wanted more out of his afterlife. He nervously sipped on a goblet filled with regurgitated Southern Comfort as he waited for his next appointment.
Then, through the brume, he saw her. The thick air seemed to part for the woman approaching his boat, as if trying to move out of her way, so as not to get her dirty. Her thick curls backlit by the ethereal glow of phosphorous feces and radioactive livers and spleens.
As she drew closer to the briney shoreline, the calcified stone that was Dave's heart twitched with the remnants of life. Or it was indigestion from SoCo on a bottomless stomach. Whatever it was, it was far from the usual.
The woman reached out to him with a coin in her hand. He couldn't speak. He was mesmerized. As he took the coin, he felt her warm skin, still so pink and full of blood. She bent over and climbed into the boat, giving Dave a real socketful. She had an ass Dave could drop a load of maggots into for days.
What could a gorgeous being like her have done to deserve such a fate? Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding; she accidentally ran over her neighbor’s unruly cat, or left her straightener on and set fire to a family living in the apartment above hers. But with legs like that, he guessed she was a lady of the night. A provider of passion. Perhaps she had murdered a violent John and was a hero to women everywhere.
Maybe together they could transcend damnation, and enter a heightened state of felicity.
He helped her take her seat, as she teetered on her platform shoes. She didn't shudder when she caught a whiff of the stinking tendrils of cadaver flopping off his bones. She just smiled.
Once she was seated, Dave asked, "Where would you like to go?"
"I get to choose?" Her giggle was girlish but hoarse. A lived woman.
Dave smiled. "Not usually. But I'm feeling adventurous today. We could go anywhere, do anything.”
"Isn't that against the rules? You’re naughty." She batted her lashes and looked around, pointing toward a soft orange glow on the distant horizon that Dave hadn’t noticed before. "You ever been in that direction?"
He shook his head and pushed off from shore, “I’m Dave, by the way.”
“Dave the Ferryman. Has a nice ring to it. I’m Odessa. Nice to meet you.” She crossed her feet under the plank of wood she was sitting on, like a lady.
If Dave had a pulse it would be racing. He didn’t know what to ask her. What’s your favourite colour? Seen anything good recently? So he went for the obvious. "How did you find yourself at the River Styx?"
"A cliché; murder-suicide. My boyfriend was cheating and I got jealous." She gripped the edge of her seat tightly, her knuckles turning white. “And then, I accidentally killed myself overdosing on sleeping pills, I assume. I was trying to make it look like someone came in and killed him and I slept through it because I took too many sleeping pills. That was gonna be my alibi. Didn’t really think it through.”
"I can’t imagine what a fool he must’ve been to cheat on someone like you. When we make it to the other side, I can show you a nice time over some mead."
"He was such a piece of shit. You know, this one time he was staring at my sister's breasts right at the family dinner table. Even my grandmother noticed. It was humiliating. And he was always hitting on my customers. And my co-workers. I don’t even know if he officially left his previous girlfriend when we started dating. But I love him. You know how it is. I love him so much that I hate him. Or is it, that I hate him so much that I love him?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Dave said. “So what did you do for work?”
“I was a hairdresser. That’s how I met my ex. Or is he still my boyfriend? We didn’t officially break up before I stabbed him to death with a cuticle pusher. He had such beautiful hair. God, what a waste.”
Dave cleared the remnants of his throat, hoping to restart the conversation. "You see land, or anything?"
"No land at all." She dropped her fingers in the water.
“You might not want to do that,” Dave cautioned before trying to get the conversation back on track. “Anywhere in Hades you’ve ever been curious about? Not sure what they’ve been saying up there, lately.”
“I don’t know much about this stuff. I’m not, like, religious. My ex-boyfriend’s family was pretty religious. It’s always the religious ones that raise the real fuckers, you know. They screw them up with all that bad boys go to Hell stuff. And then it’s like, they’re incapable of committing to the best thing that’s ever happened to them.”
“Uh huh. Well, there’s some cool stuff to do here. Lots of bogs to go hiking in. Volcanoes to watch kill villages. Orgies…” He trailed off, looking for a reaction.
"What kinds of people get sent here? Is it only murderers, or are there other kinds of sinners, too? Like say, cheaters?"
"Depends," Dave said. His face expressionless. It was easy to hide emotion when most of your muscle tissue had wasted away.
"Have you ever taken a man named Hyde Burnish across?" she asked, staring intently at Dave.
Dave shrugged. This wasn't going as planned.
"Dark hair, tattoos on his arm? When he talks, he kind of--"
Dave's bones were weary, rickety even, but rigor mortis didn’t slow him down as he pushed Odessa overboard.
“Swim that way,” he feebly gestured towards the nearest shoreline, as she glared up at him with a soaking wet face.
“Dave, please!” she sputtered.
He'd be on schedule for the next appointment if he backtracked now. As he paddled away, her blood-curdling scream was cut short as she was pulled into the murky deep by twelve-inch fangs.
Dave snorted. Guess he didn't kill all of the Hell Serpents after all.