My Cardboard Balcony

Pay the Ferryman by Belinda Roddie I came across the river Styx and felt the soul inside me melt. I'd thought the next life more than this, and not this pot of tears and tricks that carried me from Orion's belt. Kharon was waiting in his boat, his hair pulled back, revealing bones, and once I boarded, we started to float down streams forced down a devil's throat, the water gushing 'round blackened stones. As we both sailed the river Styx, I gripped the boat's sides, splinters trapped between my fingers, my eyes lit by flames that glowed blue once they met the air from which all life was sapped. I asked Kharon, "Much farther now?" and yet he did not answer. He just cast a dim, skeletal frown. His wordless questions: Why? And how? And just what was the point of me? And just what was the point of all the bodies huddled on the bed of Styx, making their panicked calls to ferrymen who rode to halls of ever growing swarms of red? ...

"Who's standing in your driveway?" No one I knew. She was tall and handsome and dressed in all blue. She wore a big hat all jaunty on her head, and the only different color was on her lips: Dark red. She waved with gloved fingers as I pulled up beside her, a smile revealing the slyness inside her. I asked her, "Excuse me, is there something you need?"