prompt: ferry, title: psychopomp and circumstance in misc. flash fiction

It all started when I died, which isn’t so strange, because everyone dies. Thing is, that’s where most stories end but where mine began. I was hauling cross-country, loaded with compressed gas, when all the sudden, this bus vectored in at ninety degrees then everything went heat and bright-white and then… nothing. And then something again.

I awoke on a bleak river shore, two coins in hand, surrounded by middle-aged men I intuitively knew were the passengers on that fateful bus, certain I knew them but couldn’t quite place them. In front of us, a ferry and a cloaked pilot waiting departure. I had been nominally Christian but wasn’t surprised to find the Greeks had been instead correct. Somebody must be right, I guess.

We got on together, handed the gray man our coins and he rowed. It took the longest time, this river wider than minds could imagine, the other men and I got to talking. They apologized, it’d been a long raucous night before, their driver must have been overtired.

Suddenly, I realized who they were. “Wait, you guys are that Eighties band Styx?” “Were”, they replied, “but yes.” “Hey, uh, Charon, right?” I asked the dour man up front, “You seem like the quiet type but even you’ll appreciate this, these guys are the band Styx, and you’re taking them across their namesake, that must be weird, even for you, sir.”

The ferryman looked back at me directly for the first time, nodded and turned his craft toward some different destination. In time, we made land in a place of screaming and flames where he discharged the others but held me back. As we rowed away, I found coins in my hand again and he spoke: “I’ve only done this twice before, but I must reward you for saying. How I hate those assholes, you’ve no idea how many times people realize they’re on river Styx and start singing goddamned Mr. Roboto.” “Two others?” I asked.

“Jesus, as you’d expect, but also a young Russian man, beaten to death by the KGB for trying to defect to the West to entertain. On the ride over he looked on his body where the batons once fell to break his flesh and said in Soviet Russia, Styx cross you! It was too goddamned funny, had to give him a mulligan, as I’m giving you too.”

“And Jesus?” “Once Jesus realized He was crossing the Styx, He sighed, said He’d already been crossed on two Styx that day before noon. Funny guy, Jesus. I don’t get much to smile about on this job, you’d imagine, but a good joke or knowing those goddamn Roboto guys are burning in Hades, well, that’s worth the price of admission.”

That’s when I woke up, in a hospital bed surrounded by loved ones and beeping machines, two Drachmas in my palm, doctors astonished I’d woken back up three days after that crash. Only a miracle, one of them has decided. If they only knew.