The moon’s reflection echoes dark in the stillness as a choir of mosquito wings hum a woeful dirge. Three parts blood, two parts water the river is as still as ink. A cold wind puckers and blows making the surface shiver and a ripple rises like goose flesh.
Burlap hooded and black as the night the ferryman poles this dinghy down the Styx on capricious tides. I, his lone fare. As the wind blows he points a bony finger at the bow. I turn to see and stare. He grins gleeful to show the eternal fires awaiting my flesh for fuel and drawing so so near. His advice: that I contemplate my life of sin, and ponder the fate of those who never learn. “Why?” I smile back with narrow eyes, “My soul is anxious to burn.”