Hemp - "Waiting Game" (Myth)

Hemp's Topic: Modernize, rewrite, or reboot a myth.

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"Waiting Game"

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two,” Charon, the ferryman, said to the two men standing on the river’s edge. Neither man could see entirely through the dark water on which the Charon’s skiff floated. Nor could either man entirely make out the coast line. Beyond being blacker than oil, the dark water seemed to absorb all the geographic signs the men were used to seeing.

“We both brought the obolus. One each. That’s the rule. You can’t ask for more now that we’re here,” Aristo, the younger of the two men argued as he shook the silver coin as the pointy-eared ferryman. With red hair, the young man usually stood out, but did he so even more in a cavern with the ferryman and the older man.

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two,” Charon responded without tone or intonation as it stood in the boat unmoving and undisturbed.

“Ferryman, we can’t go back. If you don’t let us pass, we’ll have to wander the river banks for a hundred years. I miss my wife and she is waiting for me. It has been a long time since I’ve seen her and I am this close to touching her again. Please. Let me pass,” said Basil, whose graying hair was only out done by his grayer beard.

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two,” said the ferryman.

Basil stared in disbelief at the ferryman and his red-haired counterpart and then walked away scraping his feet on the rock floor. As the older man turned away, Aristo mouthed the words, The toll is now two to himself

“I’m not going to wait here forever!” Aristo yelled as he charged at the ferryman’s skiff.

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two,” Charon said as the red-haired man sailed through the ferryman’s formless body, plunged into the water headfirst, and slowly sank to the bottom of the Acheron River.

Time passed and talking proved useless with the ferryman. Begging, threats, negotiation: nothing persuaded the ferryman. The situation was all the more frustrating in that Basil’s eyes had adjusted and he could slightly make out the other shore; it wasn’t far at all. Basil even looked down the at river’s bottom where Aristo plunged into the water. Basil could make out the faintest outline of Aristo’s body; to Basil, it didn’t look that far. While the ferryman’s answer was always the same, Basil began to ponder his own question: How will I get another coin?

After what seemed like several days to Basil, a young woman appeared suddenly through the mist of the riverbanks. After she appeared Basil clutched the largest rock he could find and shrouded himself in the mist and darkness as best as possible. Walking past the old man with noticing him, she approached the ferryman,

“I wish to pass and I have brought the coin,” she said holding out the silver obolus.

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two.”

“What do yo…” She turned suddenly to see the old man charging at her with a rock in his hand. She tripped the old man and the rock fell from his grasp as he tumbled to the ground. “Why are you d…” She stopped speaking as he haphazardly lunged at her. She sidestepped him once more and he fell to the ground harder this time hitting his head hard on the rock floor.

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two,” the ferryman said as the woman stood there looking at the dazed old man a few feet in front of her. She looked at the ferryman, the man at her feet, and suddenly understood her situation. She began to bash the rock into Basil’s skull. With hands covered in blood, she picked up the old man’s obolus, approached the ferryman, and held both coins out to him.

“The toll is now paid. You may cross over,” the ferryman said after taking both coins from the woman and slipping them into the sleeve of his robe. She stepped in the skiff and ferryman carried her across in silence. Upon returning, the ferryman encountered a young male and female waiting for him. The old man’s body remained, surrounded in an ever expanding pool of blood.

“I wish to pass and I have brought the coin,” a blond woman named Daria said holding out the silver obolus.

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now four.”

“Four!” Both humans screamed. Both people explained their situations to the ferryman. They attempted to cajole, persuade, and even threaten him, but no tactics worked. After a few minutes, Daria walked away to think and the black haired man, Eustace, quietly asked the ferryman about the dead body a few feet from their presence.

“He could not pay the toll. The toll was two,” the ferryman replied.

“But he doesn’t even have one coin? And you said the price was four....” Eustace said to himself quietly before answering his own question. Now he understood the situation. He walked over to the blond woman and formulated a plan. They would jointly attack each new person until acquiring enough coins for each to pass. Once agreed, they waited in darkness.

Before long, an elderly old man limped by the pair. Once past, they leaped on him and smashed his skull with rocks until his screams were drowned in blood. With the coin gathered up, the duo waited once more.

Not soon after, a five-year old boy arrived whistling and tip-toeing near the water’s edge. Daria refused to attack the child, so Eustace proceeded on his own. The whistling was replaced by frantic gurgling as his head was held under water. Four more visitors arrived and were slain by Eustace and Daria. They each stood before the ferryman to present their coins.

“I wish to pass and I have brought the coins,” Daria said holding out the silver coins.

“The toll is now paid. You may cross over,” the ferryman said after taking all four coins from the woman and slipping them into the sleeve of his robe. She stepped in the skiff and ferryman carried her across in silence.

“I wish to pass and I have brought the coins,” Eustace said holding out the silver coins.

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now eight,” Charon said as the skiff moved away from the shore. Eustace stared as the ferrymen and Daria floated into the mist. As the skiff floated away, he noticed that he could still see the outline of the ferryman and Daria when they stopped. The shore wasn’t all that far away, perhaps forty feet; the black river was more like a black channel.

More new souls began to arrive. However, Eustace was unable to seize the advantage because the new souls were now arriving in groups and the presence of dead bodies on the banks of Acheron tipped them off. As the numbers increased, so did the violence and so did Charon’s price. From four to eight and then sixteen: the more visitors who secured the price, the more bodies piled up, and the more the Charon raised its toll. Even with widespread violence amongst the arrivals, no one could survive long enough to collect riches necessary to satisfy the Charon. Through plunder or coercion, someone could perhaps raise hundreds of coins, but few could keep up with the Charon’s staggering prices.

As Eustace looked around and he witnessed the kind of carnage that he thought he had left behind. Organs lay on ground next to their former owners and blood stained the rocky ground. Bodies were stacked on top of one another in front of the ferryman as though they were an offering.

Although meeting the Charon’s price seemed impossible, many still tried. However, distrust infested the ranks. Alliances bonded and then dissolved under the pressure of ferryman’s toll. Eustace himself had betrayed and been betrayed several times. Although Eustace could not raise the fee, he was still present when Charon raised the price to 2048 coins. The last of the Departed has won the toll through gambling.

Like Eustace, those who remained were all considering the same two questions: Where am I going to get two thousand coins and where do you go if die in the Land of the Dead? Above all the turmoil stood Charon in his ferry waiting to collect his toll. To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two-thousand forty- eight.

After one his betrayals ended in him dumping a body into the black water, Eustace noticed something. He could still a vague outline of the body at the bottom of the river. Nothing else was in front of his eyes: to Eustace, it almost seemed as though a tunnel cleared the darkness from his eyes to the body at the river’s bottom. During this time, Eustace thought of something: earlier, he had seen how near the other side of the river was. If the other side was not that far, river was not that wide and if he could see the body hit the ground, the water couldn’t be that deep. And if the water wasn’t that deep or wide, the bodies could be used to…

Eustace began to run up and down the banks yelling and flailing his arms.

“Listen to me! I know how to get across,” he pleaded. Some stopped to listen, others ignored him. “Listen! We don’t to wait for the ferryman. I have a plan!” He screamed at his fellow souls. Some began to look up and pay attention. Eustace hoped that there were enough bodies to satisfy his plan. Eustace began to explain his plan to the others and their work commenced.

“Dump it in the same spot. They have to be in the exact same spot! We need to build across and up,” Eustace yelled to the people helping him dump the bodies into the water. Very quickly into the project, Eustace realized that this plan might work. He could see the pile of bodies increasing in height and length as the remaining souls tossed more and more bodies into the black water. During all this time the ferryman remained stoic and unmoving. To the Eustace and the other souls, he appeared either ambivalent or oblivious.

After hours of piling, the bridge of bodies was complete and Eustace was the first to cross. He eyed the ferryman at every carefully placed step on the rib cages and legs of the human fodder. Once Eustace reached the other side, a mad rush began to cross the bridge. While some souls were able to scramble across the bridge, others were forced off into the black water and slowly sank to the bottom next to those who had already been piled. The disorganized pressure began to make the bride wobbly. As all the rest of souls rushed the bridge, it began to give way. Some souls joined Eustace, but most either fell into the black water or remained on the other shore.

As Eustace looked around, he started to look around frantically. This side was exactly like the one he had just left. He saw no signs that the ferryman had ever deposited a person on this shore. Just like on the other side, Eustace was in an obsidian-colored rock cavern with high ceilings and the black water about twenty feet from the cavern’s walls. There was no door to for an exit or trail to light the way. Eustace heard the water rustling and turned around to see the ferryman’s skiff.

“You have not paid the toll and cannot cross over,” the ferryman said looking into the eyes of Eustace. Eustace waited for Charon to elaborate, but nothing further was said.

“Then can we go back?” Eustace asked.

“No, you have not paid the toll and cannot cross over,” Charon replied.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Eustace asked with panic in his voice.

“You must wait,” the ferryman said as the skiff glided away into the mist. After a moment, Eustace and the other heard what they wished to never hear again:

“To cross over, you must pay the toll. The toll is now two-thousand forty- eight.”