Chapter 2: Icky Wakes.

I wake in the dark, and there’s a man robed in the moonlight of the opening in the cloak of dark. 

“Am I dead?” I ask the shape of the man. 

He doesn’t move or say a word. The world of black starts to glisten, what had been the pitch now has the smoothness of melons, of smoothed rock. It is smooth rock. Walls of it. A cave of it. 

“Hey! Am I dead? Is this the way to Hades?”

Less black, some light from outside, but the black of the cave behind me solid, and the sour air of bats is narrow and this ache and tiredness in my bones, my calves, my heart is so great I lay my head back down on what might be drift wood and sleep. 

*

Eyes open and there’s no moon. Out the portal is gray sky and the smell of ocean that pushes in with a waft of breeze splitting the sour smell of bats and the shit they leave. I sit up. No man. 

The tingling is gone, and there’s a new sense of dryness in my mouth, not ash, but sand. Crouching, ambling, bracing walls and stumbling like I’m learning that I’m too tall to stand upright and some how everything feels like learning to move in this afterlife is like learning to ride my own legs again. 

Out the cave I’m certain I’ll see the line of others going to the ferry to Hades. I have no pockets, and no purse and my eyes can see so that means no coins to give, pay my way, so I’ll have to sweet talk the ferryman. Maybe grab some grass and make the blades sing a sweet tune to get the coins for the ride. 

But outside there is no ferry. No line of the dead waiting for their turn to board a ferry. There’s only dark night ocean and a shelf of whitish rock extending like a paddle out over the sea. 

Out by where the rock shelf broke above the sea where the waves crash and little spits of foam fling in the air is the naked man. He holds two seagulls out toward the ocean, one in each hand, like thanking the a bobbing boat out there. The birds are batting their wings and their legs are kicking and they squawk and the circle of seagulls above seem to squeal back and even in the clear night all of it seemed to roar together: the waves, the gulls, the breeze. I didn’t see any boat. 

“Where is the ferry?” I shout. 

The naked man turns back to me. The birds keep beating and suddenly the man holds them up, like a victory. A brownish gull, somehow visibly brown in the dim moonlight, swoops down in between his arms and strikes his head, scratches his forehead, and he bellows and let loose one of the gulls and rub his head. When his hand retreated, the scratch is gone. Then he comes toward me mumbling, speaking a face of sound I did not catch. 

“Where is the ferry?” I asks. “Did we miss it? We are dead, right?”

 He laughs. He chuckles. He pats my shoulder. He is naked. The hair in his ears tufts out, and the hair of his body shudders in the wind and from the air moving from flaps of the long tired wings of the lone seagull still in his hand. 

I point at the ocean, mime a boat with my hands. “Boat?”

He holds up the seagull. “Za-e ruin abdu-ak rig.” 

“No boat?” 

“Urin abdu-ak rig! Rig!”

Was this the language of the dead? What was he saying? 

He holds the bird out to me; it gives more weak flaps and a short gasp. He keeps saying “Rig! Rig!” Maybe it means seagull. Maybe these gulls the muses or angels, or fairies or demons or daemons or something that we are supposed to catch and fly high over the ocean with them until we could look down and see the boat to Hades. But he kept saying “Rig.” And I keep looking up at the other gulls circling, planning their swoops, debating if I’m fast enough to catch one in the air. But the tired gull in hand could not fly itself, much less the two of us. 

None of this makes sense. So, I shake my head. I say “rig.” I say “rig” to the night sky of birds above and out to the sea and down at the rock at our feet, hoping something would talk to me with a voice of clarity. 

Then, the man, naked in the moonlight, looks up at the moon, coughs, or maybe shudders a sigh and then smiles. He holds the seagull out to me, and then as quickly jams it head first into his mouth and bites off its head, spits out that head with its beak still trying to squawk and he lifted the body and let the spurts of blood squirt into his mouth. Then he offers the dribbling and twitching body to me. 

It is then, I faint.

If you forgot the last chapter.

If you have no idea what's going on with this, here's the idea.