Spite

Written by -A. and Illustrations by -S.

“I’m a ferryman.”

The creature must have been about seven feet tall with pitch black ram-like horns that curled into opposite directions on his head. His skin was the color of a dark bruise, with silver phosphorescent eyes that glowed like little torches in the dark tunnel. Those eyes never left him and had a gleam of growing irritation by how narrowed they were getting.

“One of the ferrymen anyway,” the creature amended, and his voice sounded far away despite being close, like he was speaking from inside a deep well.

Mark tried to reconcile his immediate fear. Yes, the creature looked like something out of a nightmare, but it hadn’t attacked him – he hadn’t attacked him (from what he could tell, the creature seemed masculine), merely standing there on the rowboat, holding a long oar that dipped into the water.

“You can call me Sticks,” the creature said, long hands that tipped into claws winding tight around his long oar. “Now, get in the boat.”

The boat had two occupants already, both middle-aged men like himself, who were in business suits, staring down at their laps with a vacant expression on their faces. When Mark hesitated, Sticks rolled his glowing eyes. “Or you can just stay there.”

Staying here also did not seem appealing. The dock was creaky and old, with only a lantern hanging off the boat to light the tunneled walls. Behind Mark, the dock tapered off into nothingness. It was like the rest of the world hadn’t been filled in beyond the five feet of dock, like a coloring page that was left blank all around the corners. Only emptiness. Just the idea of venturing into that emptiness made Mark comply, clambering into the boat – which made a strange clink-clank sound, that was decidedly familiar.

Mark sat in front of the two men, who both continued to make no indication that they knew Mark, Sticks, or each other, even existed.

“Excuse me,” Mark began to say to them.

“Don’t bother,” Sticks interrupted, moving his long, thin limbs that were indeed stick-like (and maybe that’s why he was named Sticks?) to make the lantern brighter – there was what looked like a crank on the side. “They are not awake like you. Must have been a bad crash. I wonder who slammed into who? Well, I guess they could have been in the same vehicle.”

“Crashed? What do you mean?”

Sticks tilted his horned head at the water – and it looked like there was a nick in the base of Sticks’ right horn. Or a deep indent, like a claw had scraped it. It reminded Mark of a boy in high school who’d been mauled by a dog after teasing it with a stick. His knee had looked something like that. “See for yourself.”

The lantern’s light flickered against the river, and Mark looked down to see the boat’s occupants reflected in the water, because of course they would be, only there was something amiss. The men in the water were covered in blood, the one on the right, the stouter, thicker man, had a large piece of glass embedded in his neck. Cuts and scrapes littered his face, and his torso seemed sunken in, like it had been crushed with great force. The man on the left’s reflection could not be seen as clearly because of the way the men were angled, but his whole front was a bloody smear; like his clothes had been torn and scrapped across ripped open skin with bones sticking out every which way. If Sticks was right, and they had been in a car crash, this man no doubt had forgone wearing his seatbelt and so was shaved open on the road.

“These men are dead,” Mark whispered. And if these men were dead, then…

Dread seeped down Mark’s spine like a thick syrup. He turned his head and slowly, slowly met his own reflection.

There was a spoon sticking out of his left eye.

It was quite deeply embedded. Less than half of the metal handle was poking out. A path of blood flowed down from the deep puncture that smushed his eyeball into his brain. The blood drenched his white polo shirt, all the way down his rounded midsection.

Mark touched his eye automatically, but there was nothing there. Just the feel of the regular thin skin of his eyelid, the small hairs of his eyebrow. Only it all felt muffled somehow, as if he was wearing invisible gloves that blocked most of the sensation. The spoon was only in the water’s reflection.

“Someone must have really hated you,” Sticks said, throwing the water another quick glance. “What is that in your eye, anyways? A knife? Nail?”

Mark stared into the spoon-less right eye of his reflection. Dull. Lifeless. The only thing with any color was the red trail of blood.

“I’m dead,” Mark said. “I’m really dead, aren’t I?”

“The river reflects your corpse,” Sticks bellowed. “What it looks like now, anyway. I’ve had passengers that just reflect rotting skeletons, so yours isn’t too bad by comparison. Try to empty your head like your companions.”

Mark stared at his reflection for a long while as the boat pushed off the dock and drifted down the river. It was hard to look away from the spoon stuck in his eye socket. The memories came to him gradually, like the lapping of water against the boat.

How could she kill him? How?

All he’d wanted was a little attention, a little gratitude for everything he’d done as a neighbor – and he’d done so much for her! Mark built her a fence in just a weekend when she’d been away visiting her parents, all because she’d mentioned deer eating away her precious flowers. As soon as she’d moved in a few months ago, he’d done nothing but make himself available should she ever need anything – Mark was handy around the house for an accountant, and she was so young, fresh out of graduate school with some useless artsy literature degree. She was a new homeowner (no doubt her parents had bought her that house), he was being neighborly, doting even, since she was new to the neighborhood and didn’t know anyone.

All he wanted was to make her dinner that night. Lay out the fancy silverware. Have some one-on-one, undivided attention, some conversation, maybe some wine and a movie. To talk. Get to know each other more. But no, she hadn’t even bothered to look at him, to even meet him eye to fucking eye. She’d just continued working away, laying some tarp over her precious flowerbeds because it was going to storm that night. She’d waved him away, like he was a nuisance distracting her from her carnations, her rosebay, her poppies, her precious French marigolds (and hadn’t she even realized that he’d memorized every flower she planted - and he didn’t even particularly like flowers!). Mark just wanted to make her acknowledge his efforts. He deserved that. He deserved so much more than that, but it would have been a start at the very least. She hadn’t even thanked him properly for building the fence for her.

He’d seized her by the back of her neck and hoisted her up – squeezing tight when she flailed.

Dragging her into the back of his house had been easy. He took them right to the dining room – just to show her. To show her how much work he’d put into the dinner of steak and potatoes and even the salad with the tiny tomatoes all chopped up. The broccoli soup as an appetizer. All cooked by him. It’d taken forever. There was lit candles, and gleaming silverware that had been his grandmother’s, with each utensil laid out in the proper way – forks to the left, knives to the right, along with…the spoons.

Mark had shoved her head down into the table, where he’d laid her place, forehead slamming right into her dinner plate. Yes, that had been too much. But he’d been angry. Humiliated. There was only so much ingratitude a man could take.

An apology was on the tip of his tongue.

Then a gleam of silver in the corner of his eye.

Mark had felt pressure. Falling to his knees, he’d lost his balance and ended up landing face-first onto the floor. The spoon had pushed further into his eye socket. He remembered the panic swelling in his throat – he was just forcing out a scream when there was a shuffle, and then a foot at the back of his head – her foot – and then one hard STOMP.

He had felt the spoon sink further in, heard a crack of bone, and then…black.

Killed by a girl, and with a spoon of all things. How dare she? What a death – what would his parents think? Old and infirm as they were, with only his sister Nancy left to take care of them. They relied on his money month to month. And when they learned he’d been killed with a spoon, by his stupid little neighbor who gotten hysterical over nothing. It was nothing!

Now he was dead and being ferried down this river with a towering horned creature and two other dead men. What if Sticks was taking him somewhere bad – like Hell? Sticks certainly didn’t look angelic – more demonic. What happened when they reached their destination? Surely, if his soul was here, some god would await him at the end of the river to render judgement?

Should I jump? Mark wondered, gazing at the river more intently. He couldn’t tell how deep it went, and the current was steady. Dark shapes were moving under the water near his reflection, swimming upstream with the boat.

“What’s in the water?” Mark asked.

Sticks scoffed and it echoed down the tunnel. “What do you usually find in rivers?”

“Fish?”

“Sure,” Sticks said. Mark gripped the wooden edge of the boat, feeling the grooves in the wood. It made the boat wobble, and he heard that clinking sound again. God, it sounded familiar, and it was coming from below him – inside the boat?

Focus, he told himself. Figure out where you are. . .

The tunneled walls were damp enough that the wetness drip-dripped down into the water. Before long under his careful observation the walls seemed to shift and stretch, and get darker, damper, as if it were alive – like a throat. The air funneling down the river became hot, and cloying, like breath. Were they on a river, or being swallowed down the maw of a monster?

“Where are you taking us?” Mark asked.

“To the end,” Sticks said, and it had a terrible note of finality.

He didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair – there had to be something Mark could do.

A floral scent began to permeate the air. It was faint at first but then became stronger and thick in the space of the tunnel. Sticks had a physical reaction to the scent – he urged the boat along faster with the oar, his eyes brightened to an even more silver sheen, eager, and his mouth curled upwards in a sharp smile that was truly disturbing. Sticks halted the boat and tethered it to a protruding rock at a place where the tunnel broke off into a cave-opening.

Sticks turned to Mark and arched over him, so they were nearly face to face. “If you move, I’ll chuck you in the river.” Then he sloped off into the opening.

Mark stood once Sticks vanished from sight. He went to take a step off the boat and stopped himself. Where would he be going? Down the cave, where he would run right into Sticks? He could untie the boat, but then what? What about the two silent dead men already on it? Would he have to deal with them waking up? They didn’t seem like they would protest. But would Sticks catch him – or some other creature? Going down the river was unthinkable. He didn’t want to meet his judgement or his end faster.

Then he could hear humming and spun around to see another boat just like theirs, with a lit lantern and a tall creature with a long oar. The creature was the one humming, and it sounded high and airy – feminine. This ferryman also looked a little different from Sticks. The horns shot up straight from its head, like two thin arrows, and her skin was a dark moss green. The creature also had glowing eyes, but a flickering red, like lit coals and sunken deeper into her head.

She too had passengers, one young woman and another younger boy who couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Both were holding hands, and had their eyes closed, and were…smiling? Relaxed, at least, but Mark couldn’t imagine why. He looked down at their reflection in the water and – they looked as if they had been crushed. The woman’s torso was flattened, as if she’d been run over, and the boy’s skull looked like it had been smashed in, his face practically scrapped off.

There was a sudden whimpering, and Mark looked over to the two men that occupied his boat. Tears were pouring down from their listless, unseeing eyes, and Mark knew – just knew – that these men had run over this mother and son on the street.

Mark looked back at the passing boat and noticed something was inscribed on its side – Tranquility. He looked back at the ferryman who now was staring openly at him. She did not stop her peaceful humming, or her rowing. It took effort to look away from her red-coal eyes, and his own eyes felt hot, like she had been boiling them in his head with just her stare. He blinked away wetness as the ferryman and her passengers disappeared down the winding tunnel.

Mark grappled over the side of his boat to see what was inscribed.

The word written there was Spite.

I’ve got to get out of here, Mark thought frantically. But where do I go? Where? He was still debating when he heard the echoing patter of Sticks returning, and quickly sat back down.

Sticks grumbled darkly as he untethered the boat, and there was that clink-clank sound again, and this time Mark could see it in his mind: the closing of a kitchen drawer – the silverware drawer – and the clink-clank sound it made.

“Is there silverware on the boat?” Mark asked, shuffling closer to Sticks. Now that Mark was closer to the ferryman he notified patches of different colored skin, more violet than bruise blue, and textured. Scales, like the ones you’d find on a fish, covering the backs of Sticks’ claws and splashed over his forearms. There was even some along his temple, over his left blazing silver eye. “It that what I hear? Or am I hallucinating things?”

Sticks threw him a look that might have been a little impressed.

“Yes,” he said, and then he lifted the oar out of the water and placed it down on the bottom of the boat (it smacked one of the men on the side of the head, but Sticks made no reaction or apology), which was just long enough to accommodate it.

The current continued to guide the boat down the river, as Sticks lifted a little latch on the floor of the boat that practically blended in, lifting out a box filled with…silverware.

There were all kinds of silverware. Forks with decorated handles of lion and unicorn heads that seemed antique, and golden knives too, with names and coat of arms engraved on them. Tiny silver forks, meat carving knives, meat carving forks, salad forks, a lone spoon, and even a cake spatula that had an engraving of a lady on it in a big fancy gown and huge wig.

“Have a look,” Sticks insisted, folding his long limbs into a creepy crouch as he hunkered down beside Mark with his box. Nothing the creature did could not look creepy. Right now, he reminded Mark of a plague-doctor in Medieval Europe crouched over a dying patient. “I’ve got loads. I collect them. Perfect for impromptu picnics. Do you know what a picnic is?”

Out of the same hideaway, the ferryman pulled out a deep burgundy velvety cloth – no doubt the picnic blanket.

“I’ve got fish in here too,” Sticks went on, obviously pleased he could finally share this collection with someone. “And some bread, of course. Bottle of wine” – there was a clunk, and Sticks swore something unintelligible – “I had the wine bottle rolled up in the blanket.”

Sticks made sure the wine bottle was unbroken and stashed it back into the little hide away. Just the thought of this creature planning little picnics with silverware and wine made Mark want to scream. Was this some sort of afterlife mockery?

“Not like I can go out and buy anything,” Sticks grumbled. “I must take what I can get down here, but I try to make it as nice as I can for her. It’s a good set of silverware, isn’t it?”

No, it was not. It didn't match at all, and looked like it was plucked off a dining table in every century, from the cavemen days (some of those knives looked like they were sharpened by rocks) to even ancient Rome, maybe? There were Chinese and Japanese chopsticks from who knew-when, some European cutlery from probably the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, and some Victorian finery too, he was sure of it.

“I’m afraid I can’t appreciate it,” Mark said, pointing to his left eye. “Given the manner that I died, you see.”

Sticks’ glowing eyes shined at him, and he leaned over to look at Mark’s reflection in the water. A clawed hand shot out and grabbed Mark’s upper arm with a yank, making him yelp as the creature held him over the water to get a closer look. Mark nearly went in, but the ferryman held onto him with incredible strength, nearly lifting him off the boat entirely.

Then Sticks inhaled sharply, looking at Mark’s left eye in the reflection and the thin metal poking out.

“Is that…?”

“A spoon,” Mark grunted.

Sticks dropped him back into the middle of the boat. Mark launched into an explanation. He felt death by spoon needed an explanation. But he had barely started when Sticks rolled his eyes and cut him off.

“I don’t care about how some young lady spooned your eye into your skull,” Sticks said. “I care about getting that spoon. How about we make a deal?”

Sticks stood and took back up the oar, hitting the other man this time square on the head (was he doing it on purpose?), and dipped it back into the river, rowing idly.

“If you reach into the water, you can pull out the spoon from your eye socket. Think of the river as your last tangible connection to the earthly world, like a one-way portal. Then you give it to me. That means I’ll have two spoons,” Sticks said to himself. “Poppy and I can have a spoon each. We’ll be able to eat – uh, well, I’ll have to think of it, something liquid…”

A portal sounded promising, extremely promising. “By portal, do you the river –”

“You are dead, Mark.”

Sticks’ voice saying his name made him shudder, like the ferryman had reached into his body to grip and literally shake and rattle his spine with just his voice.

“You said it would be a deal,” Mark replied weakly. “What do I get in exchange for the uh…spoon?”

“Same as what the others got,” Sticks said. “I’ll let you choose when to hop off my boat. It can be as soon or as late as you want. You know, give you your time to make your peace with being dead. You humans like that, don’t you?”

“Can’t you row me somewhere else?” Mark asked, not liking this deal at all. “There has to be somewhere else I can go.”

“The river goes to one place,” Sticks said with a shake of his horned head. “I row and row and pass by dock after dock collecting the dead that belong in my boat – and when my boat is full – I always end up at the End - End. I march you humans off my boat and make the rounds to the docks again. That’s it.”

Another dock soon appeared, and there was a younger man, with spiked hair and a face that looked like the skin had been stretched out a bit too much. He was reed-thin and when Mark looked in the water, he could see him looking much the same, only with his mouth wide open, as if in a frozen scream.

The man with spiked hair stumbled into the boat, nearly barreling into Sticks who batted him away with the top part of the oar. He sat beside Mark, and now that Mark registered the seating available in the rowboat, there was only space for two more people.

“And if I give you the spoon,” Mark reasoned, “I can stay on this boat for as long as I want? We get to the End – End, as you say, and the others depart, and I get to stay here, on this boat, with you?”

Sticks nodded. “For as long as you can stand it.”

Mark knew he had to agree. If anything, more time in the boat would buy him more time to think of something. He was a likable man. If Mark befriended Sticks, perhaps he would help him more. Spending more time with the strange, thin hulking creature could only benefit him.

With Sticks’ guidance, he leaned over the boat and reached into the water. Immediately, felt the skin of his fingers burn. “Do it quick,” Sticks snapped. “Ignore the tingling.”

Mark wanted to say it was hardly tingling, it was painful, but he submerged his hand into the reflection of his left eye socket and felt his fingers close around the metal of the spoon. It felt slimy. Or was he the slimy one? Unnerved, he pulled the spoon out, turning his head away and flinching into the boat so he wouldn’t have to see what it did to his reflection.

But he had the spoon. It was covered in blood, and caked on…eye-tissue, and God, were those his eyelashes? There was a bend in the curve of the spoon, too.

Sticks swiped it from his hand, an almost feral glee overtaking his face. He used his claws to scrap off the gore from the spoon, flicking it into the water with a plop.

Mark shuddered in disgust, watching Sticks spit on the spoon to help ‘clean’ it some more. He wondered who this Poppy lady-friend was, and if she minded the way Sticks kept his silverware. Couldn’t Sticks use the river water to…

And that’s when Mark got a good look at his own hand. What he thought was just wetness from the river was not just that; on his right hand his fingers were covered in slime – slippery, palish grey…scales. He had fishy scales all over his fingers, up to the middle of his palm. He rubbed at them, but they wouldn’t come off, wouldn’t peel away.

“Side effect of the water,” Sticks said after he finished his spit-shine. “Gives you scales. Not something you want to splash around in, let’s say.”

There was another heavy scent of flowers in the air, and it cloyed against his nose, made him feel warm despite the damp in the tunnel. Once again, Sticks reacted to it. There was another cave opening coming up, and Sticks guided the boat towards it once again.

“Why am I smelling flowers?” Mark asked. “And what’s down these tunnels? It isn’t another way out, is it?”

Sticks shook his head. “Of course not. There’s no way out, I told you. But there is a garden on the other side of the tunnel,” he explained as he tethered the boat to another piece of rock. “It’s walled off, but there’s some tiny openings here and there. It’s where Poppy must stay. You could say she works for my boss’ wife.”

“Is she your particular…friend?” Mark tried to be as delicate as possible. Really, the idea of this nightmarish seven-foot lanky monstrosity having a love life was even more ridiculous than death by spoon.

Sticks gave him what could only be described as a flat silvery stare. “Stay on the boat.”

“Can’t I come?” Mark pleaded, following Sticks off the boat and onto the rocky surface. He was careful not to slip. “I won’t be in the way, I promise.” He saw anger brewing in the way Sticks looked over his sharp shoulder. “I – I can teach you how to properly lay a table! The fancy way – my dear grandmother taught me. You know, which piece of cutlery goes where. There’s a precise order to these things, you know. Where the knife goes, the fork, the spoon, the directions their pointed in…”

Sticks turned around and seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he turned back and started moving. “Fine. Keep close and stay quiet.”

Mark resolved to do just that, but it was difficult to keep close with Sticks’ long strides. He was still quite a bit aways when Sticks reached the end, where there was a layered stone wall, with snaking ivy creeping along each crack, weaving in and out. The cavern branched off into two directions, left and right. There was a bigger cluster of ivy that Sticks swept away. There was an opening, and he bent down and peeked inside – it was about four feet wide, once he carefully moved aside loose stones.

“Poppy?” Sticks called out in a deep whisper. Eagerness crept back into his features, and into his voice this time, making it even lower in pitch. The ferryman leaned more of his body into the opening, probably skinny enough to be able to wriggle through. Mark and his midsection would not be.

After a moment, Sticks’ top half reemerged and hovered over Mark again.

“Down the right tunnel there’s another opening in the stones,” Sticks said. “I’m going to check to see if she’s down there. Sometimes her lady has Poppy working down near the statue garden. I should be able to catch a glimpse.”

Mark inched closer and hoisted himself up to take little peek into the opening of the garden. It was an explosion of color. Pastels of flowers of every kind – he could see hanging roses of pinks and whites and reds. Trees heavy with sweet-smelling fruit. And what looked like a road of tulips of every color winding down a wayward path deeper and deeper in.

Knowing he needed to know as much about this place as possible, Mark opposed, wanting to accompany him.

“No,” Sticks dismissed. “You’d be too slow, and I can’t linger for too long. You can wait for me back at the boat.” Before Mark could protest more, Sticks sunk down to meet him eye-to eye. “I allowed you to come, but you never specified how far. Now, go back to the boat.”

Under that imposing shock-silver stare, Mark could only nod.

Sticks then skulked down the right path, a claw trailing along the stones of the wall, the screeching scratch of it echoing down the passageway until he was gone.

A heady scent of flowers drifted through the opening, a little earthy, and smoky this time. Mark heard rustling on the other side, and then a soft feminine voice called out: “Spite, is that you?” There was a hushed urgency. “I thought I heard scraping along the wall – are you there?”

Spite? As in the word that was inscribed onto the boat? Was that Sticks’ real name? Then why did he say Mark could call him Sticks?

“Spite?” the voice called out again.

Mark could not not answer that entreaty. He scurried up to the opening on the tops of his feet and looked through. On the other side was something – no, someone otherworldly.

The fine creature had hair that was not hair, but folded red petals layered down around her face, and down the slope of her bare back. And that skin was smooth, a fine mint green tint, with leafy confines of clothes wrapped around her top to bottom like a corset and skirt, preserving her modesty before bare feet. Her eyes were dark and entreating, black and endless, and Mark knew this must be Poppy.

In truth, she seemed like the personification of a poppy flower. A fairy, perhaps, trapped behind the stone wall of a garden that ran alongside a river ferrying the dead?

“I don’t know you, sir,” Poppy said in surprise. “You must be lost.”

“No,” Mark said, jerking closer at once. “I’m a passenger of Sticks – I mean, Spite. On his boat. We struck a deal. You must be Poppy, is that right? He’s looking for you.”

“Is he there?” Poppy asked in obvious delight. “I knew I heard him scraping. That’s how he lets me know he’s nearby.”

Mark felt a curl of distaste – no, it was too strong to be distaste. More like disgust. How could that freakishly long, monstrous creature possess the attention of a pretty, flowery girl such as Poppy? Was this just how it always was? Would even the afterlife operate in complete mystery, complete absurdity?

He must have been quiet too long, because he saw Poppy begin to withdraw. “You can let Spite know I will be here again tomorrow – tell him to go left down this passage, where the ivy grows thickest. There’s a little arched alcove – it’s another entrance to the garden, closer to my chambers. I just finished making it.”

Mark’s hand shot out and snatched her wrist. With the full force of his weight, he threw himself back and clamped down on her wrist, feeling the fragile little stem-bones press together. Poppy flew against the opening in the wall, and he had her half out already. She was a small little thing, much smaller than he expected. She could only be a hair over five feet and weighed next to nothing. It was as easy as plucking a flower.

Poppy struggled, and so he wound his arms around her willowy body to constrict her and hauled her out the rest of the way.

She let out a scream and he clasped a hand over her mouth. Mark could feel her lips against his palm and fingers riddled now with moist scales, making the hold slippery, slimy. A plan was quickly forming in his mind. He would keep Poppy with him and use her to find his way out of here. Why should he believe Sticks? Why would a ferryman tell him the truth about anything? Sticks hadn’t even told him his real name. His job as a ferryman was to row him down that river – the end would be the same, no matter how long it took.

Poppy had more potential. He would make her take him through this hidden alcove into the garden beyond the stone wall. Mark’s gut instinct was screaming at him to get away from the river and whatever waited at the end of it.

This garden sounded much better in comparison, and dealing with Poppy’s mistress, this wife inside the garden, sounded much better than whoever would be employing something like Sticks and those other creeping ferrymen.

Anything that led further away from that damn river of death, the better.

“Just lead me to that alcove and get me in the garden,” Mark demanded, pressing Poppy against him tight, the petals of what was her hair wrinkling against his shoulder.

Poppy shook her head and continued struggling.

Mark needed to get her to do what he wanted. Poppy was a flower, essentially, wasn’t she? And he knew there were ways to hurt a flower.

“If you don’t, I’ll yank out every petal you’ve got off your head,” Mark promised, thrilled when he heard her whimper in alarm. But a threat wasn’t enough, he reasoned. He had to let her know he was serious. Mark moved the hand away from Poppy’s mouth and gripped one of the silky red petals on her scalp, and it was really attached, wasn’t it? What sound would it make when he plucked it? What sound would she make?

She loves me, he thought as he pulled his fingers back, watching the bright red, fragile petal began to tear, a little split under the pressure near her temple, a few tears beginning to fill her eyes. She loves me not…

Then just as fast, he was thrown back by his hair – he felt several chunks rip from his scalp with the force, even before his body smashed onto the ground in a tumble of limbs. Dazed, and feeling deep cuts into the top of his head, he looked up to see Sticks kneeling over Poppy.

Sticks was murmuring into the side of her face, where she turned her head to meet him. His sharp claws, careful and extended, smoothed over the petals of her hair and cradled her face.

“I’m sorry,” Mark gasped out. “I didn’t mean it, it was a…a…”

He glanced towards the right side of the cavern, where Poppy had claimed there was an alcove opening to the garden. But he would have to pass the couple to run down there, and he didn’t want to risk getting too close to the ferryman right now, even if Sticks wasn’t looking in his direction. He would have his attention soon, he knew it.

Poppy pressed a kiss to Sticks’ mouth, and murmured something, before Sticks picked her up in his arms, glancing briefly over at Mark. His silver eyes glowed like lit matches in the dark, predatory, and ready to set him ablaze.

Then Sticks went to help Poppy back through the smaller opening, and Mark took off running. Back down the tunnel, as fast as his trembling legs could carry him. He was running back in the direction of the boat, true, but there was no other option. He saw Spite, the boat, and with trembling fingers, went to untie the rope. Maybe Mark could row himself out of here, maybe he could find another ferryman in another boat and beg them for passage. Start over.

He noticed the other three men in the boat suddenly look up in unison. Mark spun around and stumbled back into the boat, the rope slipping through his fingers.

Sticks was standing there; towering and hunched over with a sharp-toothed smile that seemed to stretch along the whole of his face. A long, spindly leg reached out and placed his foot on the rim of the boat, claws curling in to grip the boat, preventing it from moving.

“I’m so sorry,” Mark burst out, his whole-body quivering. “I was in a panic, you see. I just want to get off this river – surely you can understand that? It can’t just be over. Please, Sticks. Please – I wasn’t going to hurt Poppy. I just needed her help to get into the garden –”

“In the garden,” Sticks said, “you would have suffered a worser fate. But not to worry. I have an even better idea.”

“We had a deal,” Mark cried desperately. “I could stay on this boat for as long –”

“Yes,” Sticks hissed. “For as long as you could stand it.”

Sticks lifted his foot and STOMPED. The boat rocked with great force, and Mark toppled into the water, hearing the splashes of the other men falling in beside him as well. The water bubbled around his body, and it felt so, so strange. He tried to kick out his limbs to get to the surface, but everything, every part of him, was being sucked in.

In and into himself, compressing, his bones crushing, powdering, melting, forming into something smaller, tiny, and brittle. His eyes bulged, spreading further apart. His skin shedding away, rippling like the peeling of skin after an extreme sunburn, only wet and slimy and a thousand times worse. Pain lanced through every shrinking tendon and nerve, and it got harder to think, harder to think, harder to think…

Mark flapped his hands, gills gasping as they flexed in and out, fins propelling him forward through the murky water. He needed to reach the surface, and he would, he thought, as he swam with his fellow fish. The light at the surface was important, but the reason why was hard to remember, floating away in the current like the little bubbles coming from his lips. But he would remember, when he remembered to remember.