SINGLE PAGERS

Here are 3 NEW ‘Single Pagers’ for your review. Each ‘Single Pagers’ is a complete “Short Short” Story, told in one page, that are at time linked by common characters, A selection of previously posted stories are still here. Each is intended to help go somewhere unexpected (that might encourage you to read the next)…

A new Alphabet City Series will be starting soon!

Please come back…

Selections from the Legends of the Diner series are posted at the bottom.

Your comments, suggestions and requests are appreciated.

MPC

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MOST RECENT THREE: (Followed by Best of ALL)

GARGOYLES

        “The gargoyle blinked,” Gail LaCalem said, almost too softly to be heard.

        “My point, exactly,” William Barnes replied, smiling as he pointed to the two spreadsheets, laid out side by side on the conference table. “And the final audit will show that both unit leaders have been skimming. That’s my take.”

        “No,” Gail whispered, shaking her head. “I mean it really blinked.”

        “What are you talking about?”

        “Across the mall, there’s one on each corner at the top of the Graymar Building.”

        “O.k. I see two really odd faces, with pointy tongues hanging out. So what?”

       “Those are not just odd faces.  Those are gargoyles,” Gail said, and then suddenly, she shouted, “There! It did it again.”

       “Good Lord, Gail.  Have you lost your mind?”

       “Maybe, yes… but, just keep watching.”

       A moment later, Gail jumped in her chair, and Barnes said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

       “I don’t think it’s smart to say that, out loud,” Gail whispered in fear.

       “What do you mean?”

       “What if it can see us and understand what we’re saying.”

       “That’s impossible.”

       “What are you talking about?” Gail answered.  “I don’t think we are both crazy, but we both just saw a gargoyle, that’s carved in stone, blink.”

       Across the plaza the Gargoyle blinked one more time.

       William gasped and then said, “O.k. Now, I propose we slowly back away from the glass, and if we are smart, we will never tell anyone what we saw.”

       And as they both backed away, slowly, on the other side of the plaza, one of the Gargoyles, who was watching them closely, flicked its’ granite tongue and hissed to the other, “How about a snack?”

       “Way too soon,” the Gargoyle on the far side replied.  “Ask me again in a decade.”

FIRST THOUGHTS

     The ongoing conversation between Rebecca and her son, Will began three weeks before he was born. In the morning when Will silently asked how bell-shaped curves might apply to the two of them, Rebecca was certain she was having a psychotic break. 

       A request from her unborn son that she reconsider her conclusion by re-reading a study focused on mental disorder, that he had absorbed, because she had read it in the public library at his request, made matters worse.

       When Will said, “Na, we can both see how insanity is unlikely, since we are in fact communicating in words.  Your memories are being transferred to me, constantly, even the ones you have been blocking for years. This was included as a possibility in the release you signed before entering Dr. Plank’s research study.”

       Rebecca decided she had nothing to lose by keeping the situation to herself.

       On the day before the two agreed he would be born, they also agreed that no one else could ever know what was happening between them.  They concluded that Will would pretend to cry at birth, which he did.

       The two never spoke words out loud together, until he was well over one year old..

      “Some might say we owe Dr. Plank,” Rebecca said before a follow-up at the Center.

      Will frowned and replied, “I don’t think so, Na.  He did not do this for us.”

      That morning Will took hold of Dr. Plank’s little finger and spoke into his mind. The message was simple and direct.  The result was that the man never went near Will’s mother, Rebecca, again.  He also never had another meaningful night of sleep for the rest of his life, and stopped pretending to be either a research scientist or to practice his unique brand of medicine, all without understanding why.

       On a quiet afternoon in May, as Rebeca and her young son, Will, sat on a veranda of their home in the Piedmont, purchased when Rebecca won the lottery with numbers developed as a probability by a three-year-old Will. The pair agreed that when he was twenty-two he would win a second time, which he did under an assumed name, legally created one year earlier, so that no one would ever make the connection.

MR. DEALE PARKS

     There was a tap on the door. Prof. Reginald Sedgewick, the Dean of Admissions, looked up at a grey-haired woman with a notepad on a clip-board in her hand.

      “Did you find Mr. Deale?” The Dean asked his assistant, Margeret Clarkson.

      “No one seems to know where the young man is, and it is impossible to call him.”

       “Why impossible?”

       “It appears he does not own a cell phone. I did call several students who might know him… at least they take classes with him. I asked them to call me if they find him.”

      At that moment Margeret’s phone attached to the clip-board, sounded a musical tone. She looked at the screen, touched the accept tab, and asked, “Did you find him?”

      The voice on the phone replied, “Yes, Ma’am.  He’s on his way to you now.”

      Five minutes later, Mr. Billy Deale, a most unusual shaggy-haired student wearing tattered jeans and a frayed University sweat shirt, sat in front of the Dean’s desk.

      “I’m sorry you had trouble reaching me.  I was parking.”

      The Dean frowned.  “I had no idea that you have a car.”

      “That’s right, Sir.  I don’t, but when the weather is nice, I like to study in the park.”

      “Ah… Parking.  You certainly have a unique way with words.”

      “Thank you, I think.”

      “Why do you say you think?”

      “Because I have always been puzzled by how to use the word, unique.  I understand that it means one of a kind, which means that unless someone is singing a song in a chorus, the way everyone uses their words is special to them.”

       The Dean sat silently for a long pause, and then said, “Of course.” 

       “Please,” Billy Deale asked. “Am I using the word parking the wrong way?”

       The Dean was silent for a next pause, and then said, “Of course.  That would explain it.  Did you insult a professor, who was correcting a student called, Miss Grey?”

       “I was afraid for him. He was turning red, so I suggested he might wanna cool off.”

       “Of course… Carry on with your parking.  If I had any sense I would join you.”     

SAMPLE OF BEST:

STORY #1:  A THOUSAND MILES

      At the intersection of two narrow, blacktop roads on a flatland that was miles from the nearest mountain ridge, an old, hand-painted sign, attached to the top of an iron post, was embedded in the desert floor.

       The sign read, “YOU ARE A THOUSAND MILES FROM NOWHERE. IF YOU ARE SMART YOU WILL TURN AROUND AND GO BACK.”

       “Holy cow!” Jason said, as he stepped out of the car.  “Just like Steve told us.”

       “Look there,” Brent, replied, pointing to the far left of the road they had just taken.

       At the edge of sight, a growing line of dust was forming.  After a few minutes, the dust began to fade, but then reformed as an expanding cloud, moving in their direction. Within minutes the dust revealed an approaching state police cruiser, that slowed to a stop next to the two friends.

       The dark-tinted driver’s window rolled down.  A white-haired trooper sat behind the steering wheel. He was dressed in a state-police uniform and wearing black sunglasses.

       “Are you boys lost?” the trooper asked.

       “No, sir.  Not that I can tell,” Brent replied, “A friend of ours told us about this strange sign, and we decided to see it for ourselves.”

       The trooper looked up at the painted board and nodded. “I’m going to guess that your buddy did what the sign says and turned around. Right?”

       The two friends looked at each other in surprise.

       Brent frowned and said, “That’s right.  He had come out here by mistake.”

       At that moment the trooper’s dispatch radio spoke. “Baker One, come in.”

       The trooper rolled up his window, talked briefly, then re-opened the window.

       “Your buddy did the right thing. If you’re smart, you’ll do the same,” the trooper told them before closing the window and swinging the cruiser around to leave at high speed.

       Four hours later, after trying all three directions, each of which was heavy with pot-holes and led to dead-ends, the two friends were back at the sign, wondering why they had not listened to the trooper’s advice, a debate that would go on for years to come.

STORY #2: EXPRESS ELEVATOR:

        There was a loud bang, and the elevator bounced to a hard stop.

        “What the hell?” William Barnes said, looking around him.

        “So much for the Express Elevator,” Dr. Mohammed Safar, added, softly. “Would you like to call it in or should I?” he asked, nodding toward the red Emergency Phone.

        “Please allow me,” Bill Barnes replied, with a lopsided smile.

        “Your call, My Friend.”

        Once the handset was lifted, a voice from the speaker said, “How may I help you?”

        “We’re in the Express Elevator ‘B’, that stopped part way.”

        “One moment, please.” After a pause, the voice said, “That Elevator should arrive at the top floor momentarily.  Please be patient.  There are 65 floors.”

        “You be patient.  This damned elevator is going nowhere.”

        “There is no reason for abusive language.”

        Dr. Safar touched his new friend’s arm and said, “Please allow me…”

        William Barnes nodded and handed him the phone.

        “This is Dr. Mohammed Safar,” he started.  “While my colleague’s language may be a bit colorful, I can assure you, he has more common sense than you ever will.”

       “Please hold,” the operator said, and the speaker began to play music.

       “Now, that’s why they call it Express,” Mohammed said with a shake of his head.

       “O.k. try that one on me.”

       “Because it was designed to help you fully express what you are thinking.” And then the doctor started swearing in Farsi and did not stop for an entire minute.

        “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” William Barnes announced, “And I didn’t even understand a word you said.”

       “Ah!  But I suspect you did.”

       “O.k. You got that straight.”

       And the two new friends spent the next five minutes waiting for a voice on the emergency phone, loudly sharing swear words in five languages.

STORY #3: WE THREE

        Angelique stopped at the Midway Deli on a Wednesday in May to buy three sandwiches wrapped in silver foil, as she had done each workday for a month. The difference that day was that she found it difficult to stop crying.

       The day before she made the mistake of telling the office manager, Kat Carter, what she had been doing each day at noon.  She was not exactly sure why she told Kat, who went to their boss, John Grant, who fired Angelique for being stupid.

       Her trouble had started when she became aware of three senior men, who were always on a park bench, talking together at noon. Angelique felt an unexpected need to do something for them. All three could use a shower at minimum, but they always nodded to her, respectfully, each time she passed.  Angelique had decided they were not a threat on the day when she saw a man in a business suit offer each a dollar and they all waived the man off.  The next morning Angelique bought three sandwiches.

       "What's your name, Angel?" the white-haired one, who was clearly the oldest of the three, asked, as she handed him one of the foil-wrapped sandwiches. The man was dressed in tattered blue jeans and a vintage "Grateful Dead" sweatshirt.

       "That's almost right," she laughed. "My name is Angelique."

       "Well, of course it is," said the second. He was outfitted in worn combat fatigues. "Thank you, Miss," he added, as he took the sandwich she handed him, and then said, "I'm Chad, and my silver-topped pal is Mitch.  And if you are lucky, our buddy Benjy, will stay silent, instead of rambling about why we should all keep away from mezzanines."

       To which the third shaggy-haired friend grumbled, as he bit into his sandwich.

       On the day when Angelique cried, Chad asked her why, and when she told the three what had happened, Benji shook his head and said, "Oh, we'll just see about that."

       The next noon, when she brought three sandwiches from home, Mitch raised a hand. "We all agreed it's time to get back into the game. The company where you worked is being bought.  The snitch will be gone, along with your boss.  In a week, Miss Angel, you'll fly to Boston for management training, then we'll explain the rest. O.k.?"

       Angelique cried one last time, forever, then told them, "You truly are three kings."

STORY #4: OUT OF THE BOX

      As he walked across the university campus, Dr. Douglas Melrose wondered how many times he would make that walk in the next months and years.  Having been recruited as the head of a new Ancient Language Section with full tenure, Dr. Melrose knew that he was not likely to be leaving his post soon.  He sighed, wishing that his life-time companion, Lenore, had survived to see him accomplish her dream for him.

       Suddenly, a sandy-haired young man in a loose sweatshirt was trotting beside him.

       “Hey, Gramps.  What’s happening?” the young man asked.

       “Excuse me?” Dr. Melrose replied with a frown.

       “Not necessary.   You ain’t done nothin’, yet.”

       “Is this a joke? Who put you up to this?”

       “Wow. Two questions at once. Which goes first?” the young man replied in an odd drawl, then laughed and said normally, “My turn, how’d you like my gangstah-speak?”

       Without realizing that he had done so, Doug Melrose stopped walking in the middle of the campus square, and was standing still, amazed, when the young man went on to say, “I stopped you ‘cause you needed to meet me, right now.”

       As Doug could only stare, the young man did a twirl, then said, “Oops… Gotta run,” and trotted off, just as Dr. Harry Seymore, head of the recruitment committee that had convinced his old friend to join the faculty team, walked up to him.

       “Do you know that young man?” Doug Melrose asked, looking around the square.

       “Which one?” his old friend asked.

       “A strange, but friendly student in a university jersey, who was just talking to me.”

       Harry Seymore turned pale.  “Impossible,” he said.  “They told me that was a campus myth and that I had been dreaming, due to heavy travel and lack of sleep. He greeted me the first time I walked across campus.  They say that he only does that for those of us who will be here for the duration.”

       “Wait a minute.  How long ago was that?”

       After a hesitation, Harry, shook his head and told Doug, “Twenty-six years.”

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Stories in this Diner Series will be refreshed soon. Please return.

LEGENDS OF THE DINER: A SELECTION OF LINKED STORIES

IDENTIFIED BY NAME AND NUMBER

(Individual Stories not currently posted refreshed on request)

LEGEND #1: DESERT SONG

     Suzanna, the waitress, was alone just before dawn when she started singing, “Crazy,” along with the voice of Patsy Cline, coming from the antiquated juke box.

     The outside light was slowly growing, and Susanna was unaware when a vehicle pulled to a stop, facing away from the Desert Junction Diner, nor did she hear the door in the middle of the windowed front wall open and close.

     When the music stopped, a gruff voice behind her said, “You’re still the best singer around, Kiddo.”

     Doing a half spin, Suzanna turned with one hand pointing straight up, and one on her hip, to face the lean figure in a blue and grey state trooper’s uniform.

     State Highway Patrol Officer, Daniel O’Grady was standing on the other side of the row of round-topped seats, with a neutral expression on his face.

     “The usual?” Suzanna asked, smiling, and, then nodded in his direction.

     “Oh, why not?” O’Grady answered, to complete the ritual.

     “Three Adam Nine,” A woman’s voice from the black speaker on O’Grady’s heavy service belt called out.

     O’Grady touched the speaker and repeated back, “Thee Adam Nine.”

     “You at The Diner, yet, Dan?”

     “That’s affirmative.  Just arrived.”

     “Well, tell Sue I said, ‘Hi’.”
     “She heard you,” O’Grady responded.

     “We have a four forty-one without injuries five miles west of your location.”

     “Roger, that,” O’Grady said. “Rolling.”

     “Over and out,” the voice said, as Suzanna poured coffee into a disposable cup.

     “Catch you, later,” the Officer said to the Waitress, as he dropped two one-dollar bills into the large cookie jar set next to the old-fashioned cash registrar.

     “Another day in Paradise,” Suzanna told him and they both shook their heads, as the next version of their sunrise ritual ended at the Desert Junction Diner.

 LEGEND #2: THE WALKER

       The full moon in a cloudless sky lit the flat plain in silvery grey from the Desert Junction Diner to the mountain ridge. Suzanna was about to pour a cup of coffee for State Highway Patrol Officer, Daniel O’Grady, when she stopped, holding the pot in the air between them, staring through the windowed wall that faced the mountains.

        Officer O’Grady turned and put down his cup.  In the distance was the image of a tall man with broad shoulders, lumbering across the flatland toward the Diner wearing combat fatigues and a slouch hat.  He also wore an eye patch over a deep vertical scar.

        When the Walker neared the road in front of the Diner, a car that had slowed to pull into the parking lot, suddenly accelerated and kept going straight, pulling a cloud of dust behind.  Without hesitation, the big man crossed the road, walking steadily toward the door at the center of the Diner, then entered and took a seat at the counter.

       “They say you have the best homemade apple pie in the region,” the Walker said in a gravelly voice.

       “That would be right,” Suzanna told him. “Made fresh by Mrs. Hanrahan at her home in Myrtle Grove every morning.”

       O’Grady studied his coffee as the waitress poured a cup for the Walker and placed a slice of apple pie in front of the big man together with a fork and a napkin.

       Without looking up, Officer O’Grady slid a twenty-dollar bill across the counter.

       “Suzie,” O’Grady told the waitress, “If you could please give this gentleman a piece of pie to go, whenever he is ready. This should cover both of us with something for you.”

       The Walker turned slowly to look at O’Grady. “Officer,” he said with a nod.

       “My pleasure, Colonel,” O’Grady replied.

       The waitress looked from one man to the other and could not think of a word to say.       

       At that moment the speaker on O’Grady’s belt beeped twice and then called out, “Three Adam Nine. We have a report of a suspicious person on foot in your proximity.”

       With a nod toward the Walker, O’Grady said, “That report does not require action.”

       “Ten four,” the speaker said, as the two men ate their slices of apple pie in silence.

LEGEND #3: CACTUS FLOWER (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #4: SLIP SLIDING (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #5: ONE BIG CAT (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #6: DESERT DOG

       The sun was close to rising when the last big-rig of the night pulled away from the Desert Junction Diner. Suzanna, the blonde-haired night waitress, was pouring a cup of hot coffee for Old Carl, when he looked up and saw a dog stagger into the parking lot.

       “Might be best to call the Highway Patrol to shoot him,” Old Carl told the waitress.

       “I don’t think so,” Suzanna said, as she filled a soup bowl with cold water and then walked slowly out the front door.

       Over the next weeks as the big tan dog regained his strength, Suzanna hosed him down every Friday night behind the Diner, since he attracted dirt to him like a magnet.

       “I think Dusty has named himself,” the waitress said, as she studied his face, but then she stopped. “Look here,” she said. “There’s a number tattooed inside his ear.”

       The next night Old Carl told the waitress, “I had a chat with the veteran’s home in Pinewood Creek. Your pal was a guide dog, kicked out by an idiot for snarling at the men who came for the body of his owner, who had died of old age at the home.”

       “But Pinewood Creek is more than fifty miles from here.”

       “You got that right.”

       “Are they coming for him?” Suzanne asked with a sigh.

       “Nope.  They asked if we wanted him, and I said, ‘Yup.  I imagine there’s a lady here who has taken a shine to him.’ And they said, ‘Ok by us’.”

       A month later a would-be robber with a gun made the mistake of his life, as he walked into the Diner at two in the morning, when only Old Carl was at the counter.

       “You gonna give me the money or what?” the robber snarled at Suzanna.

        “I don’t think so,” Suzanna said, as she threw a potful of hot coffee into the robber’s face.  The gun went off, shattering the mirror behind the counter. The robber staggered back, dropping his gun in a desperate need to wipe the coffee from his eyes, even as a tawny shape came streaking around the end of the counter, knocking him off his feet.

       Dusty, the Desert dog, straddled the robber, as the man felt around him for his gun

       “Oh, I really don’t think so,” Suzanna said, as she belted him in the head with a pan.

LEGEND #7: LADY DRIVER (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #8: THE DIGGER (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #9: THE RIGHT THING (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #10: OPPOSITE ATTRACTION

       At three in the morning the debate from the previous day had been in motion for two hours.  The more they argued across the counter at the Desert Junction Diner, the more frustrated the blonde-haired, night-time waitress, Suzanna, got with what she was hearing from Dr. Jason Blair, of the Community College, called ‘Doc’ by everyone.

      “When are you two going to figure it out, and either stop all this fussing over nothing or learn how much you enjoy arguing,” Old Carl, a regular from Winter Grove, told them.

      “What are you talking about?” Doc asked, while Suzanna, simply shook her head.

       “It’s easy to say that opposites attract, but it’s a whole other thing to live with it,” Old Carl told them.  “I would give anything to have Mabel back, so we could fight about everything, because that was the way we liked it.  And, boy, we really did it well.  We argued about the names of our kids. We argued about the color of the next car and whether we should go to town tomorrow or a week from Wednesday.”

       As Old Carl was speaking the front door opened and the burly driver of a big-rig walked in, stepped up to a round-topped chair, sat down and said, “What’s happening?

      “They’re at it again,” Old Carl said, speaking to his cup of Joe in reply.

       “Jeese,” said the Driver.  “What else is new?”

       “What are you talking about?” Suzanna asked him, as she poured a cup of coffee without being ask.

      “Is everyone around here in on this?” Doc asked.

       “Well, I would guess so,” Old Carl said with a frown. “The arguing is going to continue as long as you’re both alive.  So, you better hope you fight a lot.”

       Suzanna and The Doc were married at sunrise a year later in the parking lot of the Diner.  Twenty-five big rigs were parked in lines in the lot and along both sides of the two-lane road in either direction, together with a dozen private vehicles and three State Trooper cruisers, pointed nose-out.  Old Carl handed each a ring for the other.

        Dusty, a tan guide-dog, rescued by Suzanna two years earlier sat alert, between them, as their witness, and barked once when Suzanna looked down and asked, “Ok?”

UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES

Full Length Stories will be posted below that offer Unusual Plots, each written with an end twist… or two.

If there is a subject area of interest to you, a simple “Please Tell Me More” through the Contact Section of this site will start the ball rolling.

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SPECIAL NOTE: Due to a request, “FERRYMAN” is re-posted .

Thanks for reading. (Note: Your comments / criticisms through the CONTACT section of this site are appreciated.

CURRENT FULL LENGTH STORY: FERRYMAN

         I row the boat to Hell. 

          That's what I have done for as long as I can remember.  That's what I will do until the Universe splits in two like a broken urn and all the souls flow out. 

            Once, they called me Charon.  Now they call me Mister.

            That afternoon was like any other, as I slowly rowed up the river with only a Fork-man in the bow.  An ancient rain swept across the waters, obscuring all vision until with a hiss the gloom briefly parted, showing a ragged spit of land ending in a decaying dock that sagged to within inches of the dark surface.

            A sudden gale tore windows in the murk, revealing the endless vistas of a river bank in either direction.  The boat lurched, pulling hard against the single, blackened oar, but I stood in place, leaning into the wind, holding the oar tightly with both hands. For the thousand millionth time I saw the line of long-dead ships, beached and broken on the river's edge, enormous creatures of the depths, rotting and rusting for eternity beneath a sunless sky.  The Merrimac.  The Bounty.  The Great Eastern.  The Titanic and the Maine.  And then the window closed. 

            With an even sweep of the blade, I turned the boat into position to land.

            Each docking is different.  Each docking is the same. Sometimes as I wait, standing in the stern, with the boat roped to the crooked post at the end of the dock, I can see part way up the road that leads down from the land of the living.  Sometimes I can see them coming down the road, looking at their feet, afraid to look up, afraid to see the dreadful hounds who rule the hills on either side, knowing that with each step they take, the gap is steadily narrowing between themselves and the waking horror.

            But when I saw the dock that afternoon, I knew that something was different... that something was wrong. Shivering on the dock, sodden with rain and despair, four men and three women stood huddled together, staring off into the nothingness.  Standing not far from them was another...a slender, dark-haired woman dressed in a simple blue dress with an amber colored scarf around her neck.  As soon as she saw me, the woman raised her hand above her eyes to shield them from the rain.

            "What's this?" I asked.

            The Fork-man merely belched and shifted his long, three-tined fork from hand to hand.  It was his first trip up river.

            The boat bumped against the dock and the dead souls began to moan.  That was the Fork-man's cue.  Laughing like a scarlet jackanapes, he jumped out of the boat and began poking the cluster of dead into a line, occasionally stopping to run his lumpy hands over the breasts of one of the women, or to poke at the crotches of the men with the handle of his fork.  The moaning increased, punctuated with short screams and cries for mercy, none of which meant anything to me.  Besides, I was far too fascinated with the woman, who was standing apart from the rest, watching.

            The Fork-man showed no interest in her at all... which was the way it should be.  There was a calmness to her... a dignity, complete and still.  That's not to say all damned souls stand before my boat cowering.  I've seen them standing proud before me, the blood of their fathers on their faces and their hands, the knowledge of their crimes in their souls.  But this soul was different... because this soul was not damned at all and, of infinitely greater importance, she was not even dead.  That simple fact went against the order of things... a rare and dangerous contradiction, one which I found to be deeply and immediately disturbing... and yet, perhaps, a little thrilling as well.  Something would be happening today.  Something different.

            The first of the damned stepped onto the boat.  It had formerly been a middle-aged man with thin hair and a fleshy face.  He was wearing an absurd plaid suit with a bright green tie and a yellow plastic badge that said, `Convention Delegate:  Hi!  I'm SID'.  He was moaning and shaking his head from side to side.

            I held out my hand, palm up.  The sight of it startled him and he looked up at my face.  An icy finger of wind pulled aside the edge of the cowl that wraps my face in shadow.  That was when Sid started screaming, a high-pitched horrible sound, like a rabbit being killed.  The Fork-man laughed and jabbed him hard in the small of the back.  The fork came back wet.

            "Give him the coin, Sidney," the Fork-man told him.  But the man kept screaming.  "Give it to him now," the Fork-man said and did something to him that you do not want me to describe.  The man dropped a gold coin in my hand and shuffled to a seat in the bow where he collapsed, arms wrapped across his bowels, trying to squeeze himself back together.

            The others did not need any further prompting.  One after the other they gave me their coin, trying not to see the hand before them.  Each in turn took a place in the bow, moaning the ultimate sorrow.  When all of them were on board the Fork-man hopped on after them and immediately grabbed the oldest of the men, who must have been eighty when he died, and started to undress him.  I leveled my steering oar and butted the Fork-man with it behind the left ear.  He went down in a lump.

            "Not on board the boat," I said.

            He jumped up, spitting and glaring hatred at me.  He aimed his pitch fork at my middle.  Reaching up, I pulled the cowl completely clear of my head, and he looked into my face.  That was something he had never done, and it froze him cold.  "My boat... my rules," I said, opening  my hand.  The cowl dropped back into place.

            "Sure.  Sure," the Fork-man spluttered.  "The Boss-man would want me to... well... co- operate."  And he sat down fast.

            "I like it quiet on my boat," I said to no-one in particular.  The moaning stopped.

            That's when the woman on the dock spoke to me for the first time.

            "Excuse me, Mister," she said.  "But I would like to go with you."  She had stepped up to the edge of the dock next to the boat.  I slowly turned toward her.  "Is that alright with you?" she asked.

            Try to understand this.  She was afraid... profoundly so. But she was not a coward.  There is no shame in fear... there is in fact no bravery without it.

            "You don't want to go where this boat is going, woman," I told her and reached for the rope.

            "Please, Mister, I know that this is the ferry to the bad place.  And I need to get there.  I would greatly appreciate your help."

            The Fork-man laughed at that.  The smell of him was horrible, even for a Fork-man.

            "The bad place!" he screamed.  "The bad place!"

            "What bad place is that, woman?" I asked.

            Her look was level and her voice was soft.  "It's Hell, Mister," she said to me.

            The Fork-man fell right off his seat laughing, which started the dead moaning again.  I pointed the butte of the steering oar at him and he managed to contain himself...  barely.  He was beginning to annoy me mightily, but then they all seemed to annoy me in those days, both the damned and their keepers alike.  I was tired of them all.  Tired of the sameness.  Tired of myself.  So, I turned back to the woman.

            "How did you get here, woman?" I asked.

            "I walked."

            "I mean, how did you get on this road?"

            "I can't tell you that."

            "Can't or won't?"

            "I told it that I wouldn't say, so I can't.  It was a promise."

            The Fork-man chuckled to himself.

            "Yes, of course," I told the woman.  "A promise.  But, no matter.  You cannot come with us.  You are, after all, alive and definitely not of the damned."

            "But I have to get there, don't you see.  I just have to.  I have to see my husband."

            For the first time the Fork-man seemed to take genuine interest.  At least he stopped giggling and leaned forward. "So your old man's in Hell, eh, bitch?"

            "Yes, and I want to go to him."

            "What will your kiddies think of that?  Or are they doing the old, slow turn on the spit, too?"  And he screamed at the wonder of his own humor.

            "Our boy's in Heaven," the woman said calmly.  The Fork-man grunted at the word and spit into the water.  It sizzled when it hit.  "So, I figure he'll be well taken care of and happy," she continued. "He doesn't need me as much as Bill does."

            "If your man's in Hell, he's got just what he needs.  And you can take that one to the bank."

            "Some folks have been saying that, but I know Bill wouldn't have done anything bad enough to be shot dead, if little Billy had stayed alive... but that doesn't matter anyway.  I just know he needs me to be there."

            "Great!" screamed the Fork-man, "Come on aboard!"

            But I lifted my hand.  "Sorry, woman," I said.  "There is no help for you here.  Only the damned and the dead on this boat."  And I started to push away.

            "Wait a minute, not so fast," growled the Fork-man, rubbing the place where I had hit him.  At that moment I knew there was going to be trouble... only I couldn't guess how very large that trouble would become with so very little encouragement.

            The Fork-man pointed a blood-red finger at me.  "There's nothing in the rules about dead or damned.  It's souls, Buster.  Just souls.  And the slut's a soul if I ever saw one, and I say you gotta let her come along if she wants."

            I realized that I had underestimated the Fork-man.  He was, of course, right.  Despite my swelling hatred for the monotony, the order of things is essential to me... in fact it is the core of the reality that binds me in my place at the stern of the boat.  I looked at the woman and tried one last way.

            "No coin,"  I said.  "She has no gold coin."

            "Damn," said the Fork-man, and scratched his head.

            "I've got this," the woman said it very quietly.  She held up her left hand, and I saw the glow of yellow metal.  Very carefully, she pulled off the plain gold ring from her finger.

            "Ah," I said.  Somewhere, far away, muffled thunder rolled.

            The Fork-man howled with laughter.

            "That's not a coin," I said.

            "It don't matter none, Buster.  I weren't born yesterday.  That coin stuff is strictly Mid-evil.  Payment is all it's about.  Any kind of a gold will do.  Just give it to him, slut.  He's gotta take you, now.  You just bought yourself a ferry-ride to Hell."

            Which was, of course, true.

            Very few others from the living have bought their passage down the river on my boat, but there have been some, all driven by the same strength of need.  There was a Greek musician, who came with a dreamy madness in his eye and left with cold insanity.  He had looked for a woman, shaped by heat and song into flesh, and having found her, lost her again.

            There was a poet, too... wrapped in a quiet, calming love... a slow-thinker, seeking perfect knowledge.  He thought he found the mystery and returned to tell the world, but believe me when I tell you, it was only whispers and smoke compared to the realities of Hell's perfect torment.

            But none was like this straight-backed slip of a woman. She was barely more than a girl in body, yet so full and solemn in spirit.  Her soul was as smooth as the surface of a mirror.  It caught what little light there was in that grim place and brought it back lantern-bright.

            Throughout the tedious passage she stood watching, taking in the shifting visions in the gloom.  In the heavy, surging moments of storm, when the others cried in terror, she clutched the sides for balance, staring into the wind. But mostly she was still, the simple beauty of her face balancing hope with sorrow.

            The air grew thicker, and the rain grew warm.  Giant flapping forms passed nearby in the gloom.

            The Fork-man had been staring at her for a long while before he spoke, "Where you from, Sister?"

            "Nash's Mountain.  West Virginia."

            "Issat where your man got iced?"

            "We were living in Chicago."

            "Chicago!  What you need to go to Hell for?  You already been there!"  He started to guffaw and then suddenly remembered me. "Oops," he said.

            "Why do you answer him?" I asked her, surprised to hear myself speak.

            "There was no insult in the questions."

            "That creature is the embodiment of insult," I told her.

            "Perhaps that is his purpose," she replied.

            The Fork-man started to speak again, but I raised my hand and said, "Enough.  It's a long way to swim."

            He scowled, but settled back on his seat, picking at the cleft in his left hoof with his fork.

            "I didn't mean to disturb you none," she said to me. "I'll hush up now."

            I nodded and leaned into the oar, churning the gray water behind us.  I wondered at the irony of the moment, a quiet bit of conversation at the very lip of Hell, and suddenly I wanted to speak again and to hear words spoken that carried neither malice nor fear.  I have little imagination and even less curiosity.  I am in principle dead, if not in fact.  I know I am alive when the anger comes, sweeping into me like a gale on the river.  Anger for the sameness.  Anger for the pointlessness.  Anger for the simpering, whining, moaning fools and those who live to bloat themselves by inflicting pain.  Anger.  It carries me along.  Keeps me at the oar. Keeps me from my own special horror... which is called Despair.  And now there was, for an instant, a touch of something else.  But I have been a long, long time at the oar, and so I saw that moment of relief for what it truly was... a trap.  And I was determined not to let it spring on me.  So I leaned into the oar and kept my silence... I leaned into the oar and let the anger push us on.

            They were all waiting for us when we arrived on the other side, and I do mean all of them.  The thing about Hell is that it changes.  Day to day, in fact moment to moment, the Boss-man can bend the shape of reality into whatever he wants.  I have seen it when the river bank is the edge of a limitless plain stretching without vanishing point or horizon forever, with each soul eternally isolated from all others. At other times it is a dank and narrow cave filled with the flesh heap of dead human spirits that crawl over and through each other like maggots.  And eternity itself is bent there, too.  One minute is the same as a million.  A soul just arrived knows as much of the torment as one who has been there a thousand years.

            On that afternoon the damned were all clustered in a string of shallow, burning lakes, starting just beyond the shore.  Boiling water, pitch, oil, metals... all types imaginable... countless in number and yet all somehow within sight of the beach where the dead souls would be leaving my boat forever.

            The instant we landed, the damned where dragged by Fork-men from my boat, tortured, defiled, and dumped screaming into a bubbling sea of pitch.  Only the woman remained standing in the bow, taking it all in, or at least trying to.  I still do not understand how she could manage that.  All who come there are affected by that place.  They scream and beg and tear their eyes from the sockets.  But she just stood there, shivering ever so slightly, looking at the faces of the damned...  searching them.

            After a time, she climbed cautiously out of the boat and then turned back to ask, "Please Mister, could you tell me, who do I see about my Bill?"

            All of the Fork-men within hearing screamed in wicked mirth.  Twisting and gesturing obscenely and tearing into the damned.

            At that moment, above the babbling din of Hell, there was a demented roll of laughter, a sound like the distilled ravings of all the mad-houses of all time, and the Boss-man rose out of a lake of molten steel and walked over to us, like a mountain on the move.

            "This is far too good to be true," he rumbled.  "A volunteer!"

            He was beautiful and awesome and terrible to see all at the same time.  Sleek and powerful, massive in proportion, he was draped in vermillion robes lined with living flesh.  His face was carved from pliant alabaster.  His eyes were pits of raging darkness, seeing into the core of dead men's souls.  This was the Sovereign to the Dark Domain.  There was no doubt of his evil or his power.  Whichever way he turned, horrified thousands clawed and scrambled to be out of the line of his glance.

            "Are you the Devil?" asked the woman.

            All across Hell Fork-men screamed even louder with laughter, and the damned simply screamed.

            "We have many, many names.  How many do you have, Sweet Meats?"

            "Three.  Ruth MacElridge Cain."

            "Ah, yes.  We know your husband well.  Very well."

            There followed a long period of laughter, obscenities and gestures of unspeakable natures from both Fork-men and the damned alike.

            The woman stood still, no longer shivering... waiting until the noise level had dropped enough for her voice to be heard.

            "That's who I came to see.  I want to help him."

            "To help him.  And how do you intend to manage that?"

            "I want him to know that I love him.  And will forever. It's what I promised him.  It's what we promised each other. It's why I had to come here, no matter what."

            "Oh, really.  That's an interesting idea, although totally ridiculous.  You are here, that is a definite fact.  Which means that you are now in our Thrall, and we have just grown bored with this petty dialogue.  So we think we will provide a little amusement for ourself and our minions with you as the center-piece."

            He flicked his tail as an indication to his lead Fork-men who were screaming lewdness in every language ever known while jumping up and down, shaking their forks in the air or fondling their crotches in anticipation.  But just as the closest Fork-men started to move in the woman's direction, the air was torn apart by a mighty blast of trumpets.

            Through the smoke and sulphurous rain above our heads came riding a vast army of angelic warriors, cloaked in brilliant light and led by the golden image of a young man in gleaming armor.  Here was Michael, Arch-angel of the Lord. 

            The Fork-men pulled back screaming in confusion as shafts of pure-white light struck among them.

            The Boss-man shook with anger at the sight of them.  "Wait just a bloody minute," he shrieked.  "This is my stinking domain, Michael, my boy.  Mine.  You and all of your lighter-than-air pin-brains have less than one minute to be gone.  Our power is far greater than yours in this place."

            Michael raised his shimmering staff.  High in the air, row upon row of mounted angels pulled to a stop in perfect precision, each angel sitting tall on the broad back of a pure white horse.  Below in the smoke and gloom countless figures twisted on the ground.

            "Perhaps," said Michael.  "But you do not want to risk the consequences if we must do battle, which all of us are prepared to do.  We want the woman and we want her now."

            "The woman?  What woman?  All we have here are lost souls in the Thrall of the Prince of Darkness."

            "Not quite.  You have taken this one... here," and he lit the woman in a shaft of light, "before her time and without a sentence of damnation."

            "She is in Hell of her own accord.  That makes her mine."

            "She is not damned.  She comes back out."

            "Mikey Baby... This is very tiring.  In fact we think we're about to become annoyed.  And nobody wants us to be annoyed.  First this woman tells us what she wants to do... WHAT SHE WANTS TO DO!... excuse me.  And now you show up with the floating floor show from a bad musical and tell us that we have to let somebody go?  Are you completely insane?  The deal has always been that all souls who come here stay here, unless we say otherwise.  And now you want to change it.  Think hard, Michael.  If you change the deal the whole balance goes, and we, all of my helpers and I, will feel free to do whatever we wish on your precious Earth."

            "You cannot threaten us," Michael said with total calm. "There is one soul too many in Hell.  The order of things is out of shape.  One must come out."

            Rainbow colors danced around the Boss-man's head as he thought.

            "And if one soul goes out," he rumbled, "Do you swear that we will not be shorted any more souls?  Do you swear that is a deal and will be preserved."

            "Yes," said Michael.

            And the Boss-man burst into raucous laughter. It was horrible to hear and worse to see, even in a place completely marinated in the horrors of all time.  His laughter speared itself into the damned, blistering their skin, making them dance and writhe around him.  It burned the spirit to hear it.

            "All right, Michael!" he bellowed. "You win!  You get one soul back.  You win, simpleton.  Here is a soul for you."

            And he pushed the woman toward my boat.

            Just that easily, he had surrendered.  The angel warriors stared in disbelief.  The Fork-men were stunned.  He had given in.  Even the damned stopped moaning.  The rain stopped for the first time in eternity and the wind died.  A silence spread like a slick of poisoned oil through-out Hell.  And then one small voice was heard.  It was the woman.

            "No," she called. "I don't want to leave!  I want to see my husband.  Bill!  Bill!"

            "Fair enough," roared the Boss-man, "And right on cue!" and he reached down into the roiling sea of pitch and pulled out a twisting, broken object that used to be a man.  The Boss-man held him high in the air by one heel and taking two gigantic horny fingers reshaped him into something approximating the original form he had brought with him on the day he died.  "Here he is.  Here is your husband...  William Cain, thief of nickels, killer of whisky bottles."  And he dropped the man down onto the ground in front of the boat.

            Of course, I recognized him immediately, he had just crossed over recently.  But I would have remembered the day he crossed over even if it had been ten thousand years before.  That is, after all, a part of my own special torment... I remember them all.  Every one of them.

            William Cain stood there coughing and shivering.  He had been a large man in life, wide in the shoulder and well muscled.  But now he was slumped in upon himself.  His eyes were filled with blood.  The pain in him was so complete that it was difficult to look at him square on.

            The woman screamed, "William!" and ran to him, throwing herself into his arms.  But the man's legs gave out, and they both tumbled to the ground and ended up kneeling, holding each other.  "Ruth.  Oh, my sweet Ruth," said Cain.

            And the Boss-man laughed again, spewing fear and pain in all directions.  "William Cain," he cackled. "You and your whore are about to get your wishes.  The woman has said she wants to stay here, which suits me fine.  And I just know that you would give anything to be able to go.  The deal is that one soul can go out of Hell.  And if you choose, William Cain, in the spirit of compromise for which we are famous, that one soul will be you.  You... and you alone.  You go... the woman stays.  How does that suit you, William Cain?"

            The man and the woman stood up.  Everything was still.  All of Hell and the Army of the Righteous watched.

            William Cain was frozen, a miserable statue of despair. It was plain to see the thoughts eating their way through his mind like poisonous larva.  The incredible agony of the place.  An endless agony beyond any measure of endurance.  Hell is the great eternal agony-machine, complete with an endless legion of Fork-men doing all they can to make any imaginable alternative better than staying.

            With his face a mask in a Greek tragedy, the man looked down at the woman.  His voice was torment itself as he said, "You don't know, Baby. You just don't know what it is here.  You know I had the weakness in me before, but now... "

            And the woman touched the ravaged face and said, "Hush, Bill, just let me look at you."

            "Hurry, folks, speed it up," laughed the Boss-man.

            With a sobbing cry William Cain hugged the woman to him. "Good-by, Ruth," he cried, and with the last of his strength, lifted the woman and threw her into the boat.

            "Get out of here, Baby," he told her.  "Get out of here now."

            "William, no!" screamed the woman as she started to climb back out of the boat.  The man fell down to his knees, shaking with the need to be leaving.

            "No!  No!  Stay there!" William Cain pleaded.

            "Oh, this is wonderful.  WONDERFUL!" cried the Boss-man.

            She was at the man's side again, reaching for him, but he held her back at an arms length.  "I'm so weak, Ruthie.  You got to understand this.  I need you out of here.  I need you to go back.  I need you to remember through your whole life and even when you die.  And when you see our boy in Heaven, tell him that I loved you and him, no matter what, like I promised.  Tell him that I'm sorry for what I've done to you both.  Ask him to forgive me.  He can't know unless you do it.  You got to understand, Baby.  You got to go."

            "WHAT?  That's not the way it goes," shouted the Boss-man as though he had been prodded.

            "But Bill, I want to be with you... "

            "I know, woman.  Oh, Lord, I know.  But Ruth, to tell him, you got to go.  You got to go where I can't.  You're the only one who can tell him.  You got to."

            "Stop them, you drooling cretins!" yelled the Boss-man, and the Fork-men charged, at which point the front row of angels started to move as well, terrorizing the leading edge of Fork-men, who fell all over themselves in panic.

            A grim-faced Michael raised his staff again, holding back the angelic assault.

            "Oh, Bill, Bill, I understand.  I love you and I know he loves you, too.  Good-bye.  Bill.  I love you so much."

            "I love you, Ruthie.  Lord forgive me, I love you more than I hate this place."

             That's when the Boss-man screamed, "Not anymore, you won't!"  He rose up into a giant point and hurled a flaming bolt of unimaginable agony at the man.  The man turned to see it coming, and the woman screamed, but the bolt never struck.

             All of Hell was suddenly filled with a mind-searing light and the sound of a million tolling bells.  All turned away from the brilliance as the Hand of God descended from above to stand between the torturing flame and the man.

             The Boss-man screamed again.  A twisting mortified scream.  He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, The Voice pushed all who are consigned to Hell down to the ground.  All the souls of the damned and the Fork-men and the Boss-man too.  Only three were left standing.  William Cain.  The woman.  And me.  The Voice said only four words and then the light burst into a trillion fragments and was gone.  The sound rang off like the echo of a mighty horn in the mountains.  The Voice had said, "The man goes free."

             That is how it happened that William Cain and his wife both set foot in my boat once again.  The Angelic Army sang out in peeling choruses of celebration.  It was a glorious moment... a moment that should have been the end right there, but that was not the way it was written.

             The Boss-man rose up out of the ground, and stood with his bloody hands on his hips.  He looked around him at all the squirming figures trying to get out of his sight and shook his pointed tail.

             "There is one soul too few in Hell!  Minus one soul!  Two are leaving and we agreed to one.  Michael swore, all of you heard it... he swore, and now God, Himself, breaks the deal!  That makes Michael a liar or else God has got to give me one soul back.  Either way I win!  Do you hear, Michael?  I win!"

             The field of Angels could only gape in stunned horror as they understood the meaning of it.  Michael had sworn in front of all the warrior angels of Heaven and all the damned souls of Hell, and now there would be one extra soul missing from Hell.

             "Charon," thundered the Boss-man, pointing a finger at me.  "Take them, now.  Find your way back to their miserable hole."

             "And who will pay the passage?" I asked quietly.

             "What do you mean?"

             "The Ferryman must be paid."  I said to him and raised my hand, palm up.

             "You must be joking, Twisted Old Stick."  He roared with laughter, until he realized that I was not moving, nor making a sound, just waiting.  And waiting is something I do well.

             "All right, then, enough of this... have your payment if you must,"  he told me, as he pulled two burning, golden coins out of the smoky air.  With a flourish the Boss-man dropped them into my palm, where after the briefest of moments they twisted into hideous salamanders, sprouted horned wings, and flew off into the gloom. 

            "Couldn't hang on to your new found wealth," he said.  "Isn't that just the way."

            I watched the flickering shapes disappear, and, as they vanished, the anger swept through me in a searing, frozen blast.

            "Now, take these two fools and be gone," said the Boss-man pointing up the River.  "I am losing a single soul today, but by all of blasted eternity, I am the winner here."

            That was when I heard myself say, "No, Lucifer.  Now you are not.  Watch as the balance is restored."  And for the first time since the Dawn, I stepped out of the boat, and actually entered Hell.

            For just an instant there was silence, and then all across the plain there was a tremendous, world-moving roar as all the damned souls in Hell cheered.

            The Boss-man literally exploded.  He burst into a monstrous tower of flame and reshaped himself into a figure one hundred stories high.  "What are you doing?  Just WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, you miserable dried up husk of nothing."

            "Surrendering myself to an eternity of damnation."

            "But you can't do that."

            "But I just did."

            "You cannot enter Hell, you fool.  Who will steer the boat?"

            "That is no longer my problem."

            "What are you talking about?  All the souls that should be mine will pile up on the other side.  Idiot!  Worm!  You are the only soul in the Universe who knows the way.  It is a part of the deal.  It is a part of the order of things."

            "You mean it was a part of the deal.  No-one cheats the Ferryman from his pay.  Not even you.  You have been busy fiddling with the order and this is the result."

            "We forbid it.  We forbid you to enter Hell."

            "But I am already in Hell."

            "Then we are throwing you out.  Get back on the boat, Ferryman.  Get back to work.  We command it!"

            "By your command... Twisted Old Stick,"  I said and stepped back into the boat.

            "It's done, Beast of the Darkness!"  Michael shouted.  "You had your missing soul, and you gave it up again of your own free will.  The balance is retained.  I have not lied...  the woman goes back... and The Lord God on High has freed this man to live out his life with honor."

            Pandemonium broke loose.  The endless shoals of damned souls were cheering and shouting and screaming as Fork-men jabbed and prodded them with a vengeance.  The Boss-man bellowed "Noooo... " twisting himself into a flaming tornado that swept fetid gales of blasphemy in all directions before it vanished into the burning lake beyond the shore.  With blasting trumpets and joyous voices raised in triumph the Angelic Army went streaming off to Heaven.

            And I?  Well, I slowly rowed the boat up the river through the familiar, ancient rain, heading back to the place of the living, carrying two passengers in the bow.

            As they were stepping off the boat, soon to be heading upward along the road, as so few had ever done before, the woman turned back to me.  She stood stock still looking at me for a long moment.  Finally, she took a step in my direction.  In the entire time since she had arrived at my dock, through all that fearful, terrible, wondrous afternoon in Hell, she had not cried a tear.  Now they were there.

            "I wish that you could come away from here," she said.

            "I did not do this for you," I said.

            "That may be... but it still doesn't stop me from wishing you would come with us."  And of course she meant it, too.

            No Fork-man can ever hurt me... and the suffering of the damned means nothing to me, but the trap had now been sprung.  Far off in the gloom, the wind, caught in the broken holds of long-dead ships, turned to muted laughter.  I shook my head.  "That is impossible, gentle friend.  Someone must row the boat."

            "I guess I know that," she answered.  She took another step toward me.  Slowly she reached out and touched the ruination that is my hand.

            "Thank you, Mister," she said.

            And she turned away and was gone from there. 

            Forever.