The Assortment of Eyes

"Don't look, just keep your eyes peeled."

Awakened with a shudder by those words ringing in my skull like a sword's blade being endlessly and savagely forged, the smell of sulphur permeates my being as if my heart was instead a massive black hole sucking in every known thing, including this foul smell. My body aches as if pummeled by oxen, yet I feel light as a feather. The air is heavy and moist. A sinister electricity is somehow felt. Doom feels incredibly imminent.

What is this? Where the hell am I? Who are these people scattered around me? They are all naked, as am I, and we appear though made of sullen white ash. Hair unkept and in filthy tangles. Eyes tightly shut on some as if trying to thwart off standing directly in front of the Sun. Eyes wide open on some, aghast, as if seeing color for the very first time after a lifetime of not. Eyes unseen on some as they lie flat on their stomach. A few are sitting up. I am on my side. The earth below us is a sickly pale grey, a mix of mud and easily shifting sand. The ones on their stomachs have their faces in this muck. How do they find breath? As I try to speak in an elevated tone to seek out a loss of bewilderment in this situation through query, nothing comes. My insides feel like a long dead tree. Anciently dead.

"Don't look, just keep your eyes peeled."

Who is speaking? Who is able to speak? I sit up and shift around for a complete glimpse of my current immediate surroundings and see only two others sitting up.

"Don't look, just keep your eyes peeled."

I cannot decipher who is speaking. It is certainly not the two sitting up. They seem to not even notice the words as their heads hang so low as if all of gravity was heaped onto just them.

"Don't look, just keep your eyes peeled."

I again try to annunciate, this time to seek out the speaker of these words and again nothing comes. My lungs burn hard with the effort. The words were spoken this time with what felt like mocking. Mocking that was sinister in nature. The earth shifts mightily below me and I sink into it as if it has turned to quicksand. Just as quickly as I sank, I now rise to the level I was at. The smell of sulphur leeches from the earth around me. The smell is putrid to the point of what should be nausea, yet nothing occurs inside me other than the olfactory discomfort of the smell.

The sky is a palate of ash gray, charcoal black and a molten orange haze. This odd and eerie sky holds wisps of thin white clouds. The clouds move as if they are overly excited eels. It feels as if the sky is a leaden blanket and not at all endless with stars above. Thick. Merciless. Imposing with a sense of some kind of wicked consciousness. Thin jagged mountains of slate grey rock surround in all directions. What the hell is this place? How the hell did I get here? I cannot recall anything leading up to my being awakened abruptly by the seven cold words. It is not cold here, it is hot. It is humid. A sickly warmth entirely manifests as pure unpleasantness.

"Tears of pleasure, tears of pain, they trickle down your face the same..."

Bewilderment has changed to purely fear. I try to stand up and cannot. The earth below seems to prevent my willful bodily desire as if it is my destiny to stay in place. Vultures are seen on the horizon. I now realize there is a narrow channel of water ahead. It is barely ascertainable through the orange haze. A shape is visible on the carrion bird filled horizon. Nothing but a silhouette as some of the excited cloud eels descend to envelope the slowly moving shape. Sucked down as if in a whirlpool of lava. I become transfixed on that point on the horizon. It is not by choice, but by some channeling force that I am drawn to it, like moth to the flame.

"Don't look, just keep your eyes peeled."

There is no doubt that the shape is coming closer and it is on the narrow swath of water. I just now notice that all the ashen white people are now sitting up like me. Some kneading the earthen mud like they are trying to leave this place by digging down or instead kneading the earthen mud like kittens on the softest of blankets. This assortment of eyes, every one of them, are gazed in a trance like awe of what is coming...

"Death is every man's destiny. Don't look, just keep your eyes peeled."

Emanating from behind, a crow flies overhead. It circles above and is off towards the slowly moving, yet ever closer shape. I can barely break my unwilling obedient gaze from the river's horizon to even notice the bird. A light is seen in the mystery shape's silhouette. A soft glow. It appears to be slightly swinging. This glow is soft though harsh as fluorescent. It feels harsh. It is a harsh dreaded glow. Ominous. Somehow the marrow in my bones knows this. Somehow I am aware of this other earthly knowledge. Fear becomes all encompassing. I fear for my very soul as the sudden realization that my ashen white skin leaves me no need to fear for my physical body any longer. Somehow I know that my physical condition is fully akin to the ancient long dead tree that I felt and feel inside me. Somehow I know that I cannot cease to exist anymore but can feel discomfort and pain.

Straight ahead and very close, a second glow is seen in a flash. A lantern has lit itself. This glow illuminates from a lantern post that finds it anchor in this grey and desolate muddy land. A crow crackles loudly in the distance. The white clouds that enveloped the approaching silhouette start to dissipate from cloud to mist to nothing at all and a ship is now clearly visible. A small ship - a boat, with a wide bow, similar to a Viking vessel. A high and curved bow that tapers to a foot across with a curve as it comes to its non-celestial zenith. No celestial objects to be found in the thick orange haze above.

A ghastly site of a faceless ferryman draped by weathered tattered black robes has me full of fear. His face unseen in the ink black void of his hood. This ferryman guides and propels his boat forward with a thin and long simple pole as it finds the bottom of the shallow waterway. As he does, with every slow stroke, the lantern affixed to the top sways. The vultures hover directly above this ferryman's slow approach. A crow swoops down and finds the top of the bow and confidently perches there.

"Don't look, just keep your eyes peeled."

I now know that it is this crow that is saying what I hear and there is no sound to be heard. These words are straight from the mind of this crow to my own...

"Death is every man's destiny. Some men find more peace in death than others. You will find no peace. Instead, calibrated chaos awaits. Your soul shall be torn asunder. Your tears from henceforth shall be only tears of pain."

The ferryman's boat nudges the shore of this desolate landscape as his lantern glow now shares the electric orange air with the glow of the beacon lantern here on land. He summons us forward with three very slow forward motions of his hand. My legs cannot resist a sloppy and muddy march to his empty boat. Silently. Obediently. I come. We come. A march towards calibrated chaos. As I pass by the merged glow of lantern light, I see all eyes are now beyond wide open, all desperate for hope. As I further approach against my will to step into the boat, I now can see into the ink black void of the ferryman's hood. An ancient porcelain white head of a skeleton moves ever so slightly to meet my gaze. As we depart, the vultures follow the now full vessel, the crow again perched high, as it embarks for a long journey on the river Styx.