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Suzanne and the Ferryman

 Suzanne meets Stan at the hotel. She’s anxious this time, flighty, long dainty fingers tapping on the counter. The sex is rushed, she drinks too much before and even more after. Suzanne botches the makeup in the bathroom mirror, it lacks her usual professional consistency presented at the office— hair wild and uncouth even after the usual meticulous twenty brushing swipes. 


It’s raining out when she climbs into the car. A drizzle becomes a downpour, making winding turns through thick woods a dreamlike slog. Moss heavy branches hang low and Suzanne feels like they’re malevolent fingers reaching for her. The drenching escalates until her windshield is perpetually submerged, everything outside a dark chaotic painting of gloom and wetness and shadows. Suzanne reaches for glasses that aren’t there. Swerves. Feels stomach-churning emptiness as road beneath becomes empty air and treetops. 


Suzanne wakes to the scent of wetness, and earth. Copper on her tongue. Trees reaching up to dark marble colored bellies as crested and ridged as ancient maps all surround the bewildered woman. The realization of Death, of being dead— is almost mundane, like remembering where she left her keys. Suzanne knows she’s dead. Body wrecked, tumbled, tossed and broken, entombed in a little car that came uncoupled from familiar road. 


Suzanne wanders. Hands outstretched reaching for guidance and salvation, or just to protect against the whiplash of uncompromising branches. The cool wetness clings to her skin. Rain dripping down her nape, rivulets across each notch of her spine. The road that should be here and all the anxiety that comes driving it after meeting with Stan most weeknights should be here, the way home, the way to the shower— but there’s nothing but a inky black river she’s never seen before. It’s flow is glassy, dark. Winding through a clearing. Pelted by cool raindrops. She wonders if this is Hell. 


Coin?


Suzanne jumps. Turns wildly, falling on her ass to wet muck. There’s a man there, leaning against a tree. Beneath a wide slouch hat is just darkness, pitch as tar and as unwelcoming as starless midnight. The voice is iron heavy, craggy like so much glacier-ravaged ground. The man is tall, unnaturally tall. Forest clinging growth winds across his robes, makes him as textured as this impossible forest. 


He speaks again. 


Coin? You wanna cross— doncha?


Suzanne asks to cross what, and why. 


More beyond is the answer received, hat tilted to the river. 


Hands pat sodden pockets, reach for a purse that isn’t there anymore. Something glints. Her wedding ring. When presented to the Ferryman, there is cool and mirthless laughter that oozes out into the otherworldly gloom. 


No value to you in life, no value to me in death.


And with that, Suzanne was alone, clutching a useless forgotten thing in the rain.

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