A/N: Hey, guys! For any of you guys reading this, this story was posted a LONG time ago and was intended to be a 2-3 chapter oneshot piece. Unfortunately, I had never posted the third chapter, and final installment, of this piece so I decided that I'd finish the third chapter, touch up the first two chapters, and post it again so the story would be completed and you guys wouldn't be left hanging because I'm lazy and dumb!
I am SO sorry for the HUGE gap between the second and third chapter! For anyone who's read the first two before my repost, I'd highly suggest that you read it from the very beginning because even though not much has been changed, mostly grammar and wording, a few things HAVE been added in that you'd probably want to take a gander at! Anywho, on with the show~!
I hope you guys enjoy the story, now that the final chapter's been posted! c:
Happy reading, happy writing!
~The Konfessionist
One day brought the rain, and the rain stayed on
And the swamp water overflowed—
Mosquitoes and the fever grabbed the town like a fist.
Doctor Jackson was the first to go.
Some say the plague was brought by Hattie—
There was talk of a hang'n, too,
But the talk got shackled by the howls and the cackles
From the bowels of the black bayou.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Charon slowly cracked his filmy eyes open, desperately trying not to move at all as a dull ache laced through his spine and rang home in the back of his skull.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Something slimy… it was in his eyes, going into his nasal cavity. He turned his head to the side with some difficulty, and it dripped, cold but burning, onto his cheek and then rolled down his face. Whatever was going down his nose settled in his mouth, and he spit it out. It tasted like muddy rainwater.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He gave a throaty and miserable groan as he forced himself to roll over, the bed of mud he rested in squelching under his weight as he tried to shift over; turning from his side onto his back. He had to get up—he had to find Emmy.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
What's the last thing you remember?...
His eyes trailed upward to the hole they had fallen through; it loomed above his throbbing head and was covered over in a stratum of thick vines. The vines strangled the sunlight, and where they twisted and writhed over each other did patches of murky sky show through them; it was blacker in his memories, when Emmy ran and Charon tore through the clearing, following pursuit, to try and find her. Now the sky was a creamy grey of a rainy morning, and the rays of sunlight were dulled by thick clouds and a foggy haze typical of Point Lookout. It was no longer raining, but the remnants of the night's harsh downpour dripped down onto him from the bed of vines, pattering onto his face.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It travelled through his nasal cavity again, and rolled down his cheek—again cold, but stingingly so. He spat again and growled in annoyance as he carefully sat himself up on an elbow, out of the trajectory of the dripping water, with his eyes tracing the vines. It was undoubtedly the hole he and Emmy had fallen through, but where did the vines come from? It'd take years to grow a thatch as thick as that… and what was worse, the hole must have been at least twenty feet above his head. He didn't know how he survived a free fall like that with only a sore back and a pounding head as an injury.
The elbow he was leaning into sunk into the mud so he fell back, catching him completely off-guard with his free arm flailing outward to find something to grab onto. He sat up and yanked his limb back out, swatting the thick and slimy muck that dripped from the elbow pad of his leather armor with a grumble on his broken lips. The mud slipped away at an unhurried pace, seeming once more like fat black slugs leaving translucent trails of brown on his armor as they slunk away.
Well, it made sense now… he survived the fall, without so much as a scratch because he landed on something soft—the mud bed.
Get up you worthless sack of rotting carcass and vomit, he shook his head clear of the fog that hung in his mind and he tried to get to his feet, again, with some struggle, as any movement he made resulted in the migraine worsening. He looked around for an exit. You have to find Emmy.
She obviously wasn't with him, but he found her pack on the ground at his side, half-way sunk into the mud. Crawling over to it, he pulled it free and tore the mouth of it open, digging into it for a bottle of dirty water to ease the ache of his head. When he was finished, he got to his feet with ease and took her backpack with him. Assessing the situation, his employer was missing and possibly injured, his shotgun was also missing so he had nothing but his combat knife, and there were no weapons in Emmy's bag (other than a handful of frag grenades) that he could utilize. As he moved to walk, a sudden glint lashed out at his eyes, and looking around the small area to find it, he followed the glint up to the vine-covered hole where he found his shotgun entwined amongst the vines, stuck.
If only I could reach it. He mused as his eyes narrowed in anger and disbelief. Fucking perfect.
Charon's eyes widened in alarm when he heard humming. Rapidly turning around, mud squelching under his boot heel to go flying up in flecks, he strained his hearing to make sure that he was hearing someone humming (which he was), and to determine where the unnervingly jolly tune was coming from.
"Emmy?" He muttered quietly, and took a cautious step forward.
"I pick and I pick at my eyes, yet I can still see! My curse… my insufferable curse! Having not only to live, but observe this insatiable world…"
The ghoul immediately stopped and unsheathed his combat knife from the holster on his thigh. That was not Emmy.
"I scratch and I scratch at my wrists, yet I can still breathe! My curse… my insufferable curse! Why must I live here where babes cry and meat sacks of people writhe and ache for a different form?"
He gripped the handle of his combat knife tightly in his hand as he took another step forward. A foul aroma clung to the air in a putrid stench—a disgusting batter of what smelled like hundreds of different putrid things (and none of them good) that attacked his senses all at once, partnered with the reeking scent of decimated corpses and other odors he wasn't familiar with. He gagged, his stomach bearing the brunt of the foul smells, and he took a far back step till the air didn't smell as foul and looked around in Emmy's bag for a cloth or something to put over his mouth and exposed nasal cavity. He dealt with the smell of super mutant compounds in the sewers (Emmy was very adventurous), a regurgitated meal from the stomach of a feral ghoul (which was human flesh, in case you were wondering), and he had to deal with the smell of his own skin rotting and peeling from his meat and muscle like a baker would peel the ripe ruby skin of an apple for cinnamon-apple pie. He certainly had found himself in situations that smelled worse than the ones he had listed, but he didn't care to remember them and this smell just rang the bell at the top of his mental list. It was practically unbearable.
"I dig and I dig at my chest, yet my heart still screams! My curse… my insufferable fucking curse! Why can't I die? Why can't I DIE here? Why can't I die? Why can't I die?..." The singing, which had turned to unceasing ranting after a while, paused for a moment, and then the woman spoke—almost in a contemplative tone of voice. "Why can't I die?..." Then she cackled strained laughter, as if she found the question she had asked herself hilarious and amusing.
Charon finally found a cloth and held it up to his nose and over his mouth, cautiously walking forward again as the scratchy voice went back to singing.
"I pick at your eyes, I scratch at your wrists, I dig at your chest… but you don't see, like me. But you don't breathe, like me. But you don't don't scream like he did… would you still hold me, if I cut off your arms? Would you still walk away, if I cut off your legs? Yes, yes, a delicious idea! Then you will never leave again!… Oh, but I'll let you keep your arms—maybe your hands, too, if you're a good babe! Maybe you'll still love me… maybe?... Maybe."
Charon spotted light coming up ahead—a crackling torch illuminated the mouth of a long passageway with a low ceiling where shoots of bark pierced downward through the ceiling; it was the roots of trees from above, so maybe they weren't too far beneath the surface. The flames of the torch wavered and flickered, sprawling gruesome shapes and creatures in a dance up the walls of the cavern, manipulating the shadow his tall stature created. Dripping water echoed to him, little things moved and wriggled, the mud squelched and acted hungry, attempting to suck him under…
"Maybe… there is beauty in pain? Oh, yes. Something divine in fingernails clawing into flesh, the blade penetrating you—all that blood... so divine, and beautiful!..."
And then he heard a low groan. His hearing perked up, finding the pained noise to be familiar to him.
"Emmy," He hissed through clenched teeth and looked back down the low-ceilinged passageway. Inevitable darkness framed the end of the tunnel— but somewhere in that darkness, was Emmy's groaning.
"Requiem of the damned…"
Someone was with Emmy, as the singing came from where he heard her groan.
"Requiem of the unholy— the tainted, and the filthy…"
It was like someone was singing to her—like some sick and manic lullaby.
Charon crouched as low as he could while being able to walk down the passage cautiously. Long sheets of fabric suddenly appeared in front of him over an open entrance, as if the darkness had cleared, and they hung lazily, like dingy curtains on a window. He looked back to see how far he had come, not really knowing what to make of the fact that it was like darkness that departed in front of him had now swallowed the path behind him. He couldn't have walked more than a few feet… why couldn't he see the way back?
He looked back to the curtains; burgundy in color with little holes, as if they had been chewed on by radroaches and other little critters. Dim light streamed through, like the rays of the sun between clouds, casting rings of light on his leather armor and the singing suddenly sounded so much closer.
"Requiem for all of humanity… but maybe humanity does not want to be saved? They certainly do not want to be. They enjoy acting like the animals and beasts that we all are deep down inside... too long have we spent confined by what is right and acceptable... flaming skies have set us all free..." There was a shift as if someone was walking in the mud—those thick squelching sounds rebounded to him—a low, raspy giggle and another low groan—it was Emmy groaning. "Oh, oh…" The raspy voice wheezed. "My poor, wounded little sparrow… come to play in my garden to only be frightened by my beautiful creations. You were out of control as you tried to fly away—where you only fell into a great, fat pit. Oh, such a shame… such a shame..."
Another low groan from Emmy, as if she were trying to reply but was unable.
"Hush now, little sparrow…" The raspy voice sang again. "Would you like for me to sing to you again? He didn't seem to like my singing… so I took his tongue if he thought he sounded better. But you like my singing, don't you, my darling little sparrow?"
Charon brushed part of the curtain away, just enough to peek past it, to examine the room that lay past it; a small, circular room where the floor was nothing but mud with makeshift wooden planks, aligned side by side, to make a decent platform so your feet wouldn't sink in. To the far wall, opposite of where he hid, was a circular table with tall legs pushed up against the wall. Chipped, dingy bottles of all shapes, colors, and sizes were scattered about on top of it while some lay broken on the floor as if they had rolled off the table and smashed there—leaking out its contents into the cracks between the wooden planks. Above the table were shelves in numerous rows of more bottles and beakers and jars. Charon could almost make out the weighty floating things in them, but not enough where he could identify what the vials held exactly. At the left wall was bedding on the floor, filthy sheets and thin pillows all nestled together as if it were a comfy, padded bird's nest. The sheets shifted, and Charon knew for certain Emmy lay in them. Skeletons hung on each wall, as if they were grotesque ornaments fit to be on display; their arms tied above their heads to the ceiling by fishing wire in awkward angles as if the shoulder joints were broken, their legs tied together and pinned to the wall and the bones were bloodied, battered and cracked with jagged tufts of rotted flesh clung to them. Their jaws were slack or completely missing, but it was the eyes—each skeleton still had their eyes.
A woman was suddenly kneeling over Emmy, brushing her pale brown hair out of her face almost affectionately and a faraway smile came to the woman's thin lips, which looked bruised and swollen and they stuck out on her ashen white skin. The woman got up from the floor, her small nose twitching at the foul air as if it were a pleasant aroma and plucked up a big jar that sat next to the nest of bedding at her side. In it floated two eyes in dark green liquid, the tails of their nerves wriggling with the movements of being picked up so it looked like they were trying to swim. She carried the jar in her hands gently, as if it were her newborn baby, and hummed to herself as she got to her filthy feet and glided to the round table, setting it back down as she went to work. She picked up bottles to pop the cork and sniff at its contents before closing it, putting it back down, picking up another, sipped its contents this time, and then dashed some of it into a chipped bowl in front of her. Her clothing was nothing but long, ragged layers of different cloths that dragged on the floor behind her, the frayed ends crusty with black mud. Her filthy feet had equally filthy bandages wrapped around them as a replacement for shoes, exposing her ingrown and haggard toenails. Her hair was smoky grey and long, almost to her knees, and resembled a rat's nest—greasy and grimy and it had a dull unwashed shine to it, looking like a tangled and dreaded mess that hung down her shoulders and back.
Charon was positive he had never seen anything like her. Or the room that she was in, with the strange jars and the strange—… the ghoul looked up at the skeletons that were hung on the high walls, and his upper lip curled in disgust. Decoration was the only word that could come to mind for him. But as he was 'admiring' the decor, all of the skulls on the skeletons suddenly twisted to the side with gnarly sounds of torn ligaments echoing through the room. Their eyes trained upon him, jaw still slack, and he heard a plethora of voices whisper in his right ear as if someone were right behind him to whisper.
"Found you."
"Hmn? What was that?" The woman cried out from her table, snapping her head over her shoulder and brushed her ratty bangs out of her face. Bandaging over her eyes seemed to act as a blindfold, completely sodden with filth that ran murky tracks that were already dried on her pale cheeks. "Who's there?"
Charon made no noise as he tensed, simply staring the woman down with his breath withheld in his lungs. His hand tightly gripped the combat knife in his possession, trying to ignore the whispering that had just tickled his ear. It was just coincidence—for when he looked back up to the skeletons, they were no longer looking at him. They were staring at the floor, like they had been the entire time, when he came across the room.
"Hmn? What was that, my dear Monica?" The woman suddenly smiled, and turned to the round table where she had been working. "A visitor, you say? Is that right, my lovely Monica?"
He shifted to the side ever so slightly, leaning his weight more into one foot than the other to get a better view through the curtain's open slit without actually touching it when something moved in his restricted vision, right at the very corner. The jar of eyes, floating in green liquid that the woman had carried with her to the round table… moved. Or, to be more specific, one of the eyes floating in the liquid seemed to engage in a spazztic attack before writhing in the liquid, convulsing itself into a wide turn to stare right back at him. His eyes widened, and he tried to stifle a gasp of surprise—praying that it was just his imagination, like he had convinced himself with the skeletons and the whisper, when the woman suddenly cackled.
"Aha-ha!" Her laughter broke through the room, as if making a beeline for him past the curtains. "I can see you hiding there, you naughty little rabbit! Nibbling on the delicate flowers in my garden like a little fucking thief! Filthy, dirty, damned thief!" She spun around, her swollen lips pulled back in a snarl over her crooked and plaque-encrusted teeth, if but a few were missing. "Don't hide from me, little rabbit! I see you in the doorway of my gardening shed!" She started laughing again—unbridled, maniacal laughter.
Charon remained still, his eyes wide when her hand suddenly lifted up, and a gnarly finger was aimed straight for him.
"Not a little rabbit… no, no, no—not you. I know what you are, and I see you—ferryman of souls…"
The curtains suddenly pulled away with a swish in front of Charon and he stared back and forth at them, straightening up and he directed the blade of his combat knife at her. The drawn back snarl of her lips disappeared and was replaced with a side lopped grin of amusement.
"Ah, there you are, plain as day in front of me." She picked up the jar at the edge of the round table and carried it in front of her body almost lovingly, petting the lid with a gentle caress, and leisurely skulked towards him. The woman made no sudden, angry movements—as if she didn't know his combat knife was unsheathed. He decided she probably didn't due to the filthy bandages covered over her eyes, but just as the thought sprouted forth in his mind did her hand reach out to him, her long and gnarly fingers wrapping around the toothed blade till her knuckles turned white.
"Where is your pole, Charon?" The woman asked sweetly, smiling up at him with her hand still clasped around his blade and the eyes in her jar suddenly convulsed in its sickening fluid and darted upward to stare directly at him. He made no attempt to look back down at them, but instead stared back into the woman's filthy face.
"How do you know my name?" He growled at her with narrowed eyes.
"When you see everything…" She pulled her hand back from his combat knife and gestured to the jar of eyeballs in her hands, which were intently watching him, still. "You know everything… now, answer me. Where is your pole, Charon? You cannot travel in your vessel without a pole to direct it with… yet here you are, without your pole and without your vessel, no less, and you expect me to bend?" She placed her hand back on his knife blade and began stroking it, cutting her fingers on the teeth till blood saturated his weapon, but she still continued to smile. "This is your payment."
"Payment?" He enquired cautiously.
"If you wish to stay in my gardening shed, I don't want you milling about thinking that you can do as you please," She explained, and the grin on her face faltered ever so slightly. "I've seen people like you… wretched, filthy, vile little parasites that steal the life of anything and all that is pure and innocent… and you say it is your duty... you are Charon! You are not God!"
Charon opened his mouth to speak, but the woman's hand suddenly came up to her lips, revealing her palm to be shredded from how she stroked his knife—the skin dangling in long, coagulated strings of flesh dripping with red jewels and she suddenly brought it to her mouth, smearing the red amongst her already swollen red lips.
"Don't tell me differently. No one can ever tell me differently. Anyone who has tried, has failed. Anyone who has failed, failed because they tried—even after I gave them warning…" She tittered and suddenly skittered away to her round table. "I have given you payment, and I trust you will not misuse my offering or betray my kindness?"
"Kindness?"
"Indeed…" She tilted her chin to her shoulder, nose wrinkled up as if she smelled something foul and she scoffed, turning back to the table in front of her. "I suppose one in this broken world does not know kindness…" And she suddenly grinned—one of those annoying, toying, taunting grins that made Charon feel like she knew something he didn't, which he wasn't surprised by. She claimed she knew a lot of things. The woman turned her back on him once again and began bandaging her shredded hand with dirty bandages that she picked up from the corner of her table.
The ghoul looked down at his bloodied combat knife and realized that this inane woman probably meant that her blood was some sort of payment, showing him that she would not cause him any harm if he gave her the same sort of courtesy. His senses were on high alarm—this woman was obviously unstable, and he had to retrieve Emmy and leave before she got hurt. He looked around the room, finding Emmy curled up in a nest of bedding, pillows, and sheets off to the side of the room. The woman must have seen him watching Emmy (even though he didn't know how when her back was facing him) because she suddenly spoke.
"She is yours, isn't she?" The woman asked, almost melancholy in tune—like a banjo missing a few needed strings. She sounded listless and monotonous.
"Incorrect. I am hers." He stated, still standing in the curtained entryway of the woman's "garden shed," as she so aptly named her little pit of a mental asylum.
"It is you who is incorrect!" She suddenly boomed, turning around with a bottle filled with thick, soupy liquid and suddenly heaved it at him from across the room. He simply tilted to the side and evaded it, listening as it smashed into the wall behind him, and its contents came oozing down—looking as if the hardened mud wall was excreting translucent puss. The woman bared her plaque-encrusted teeth again in a snarl and stepped to him, leaving her jar of eyeballs on the round table, pointing a long finger at him. "It is you who owns her, ferryman of the tormented, and those who lead and those who follow eternal damnation you own as well! It is you who owns her, for it is you who protects her! She is your possession to keep safe! No man would protect what is not his own!"
The woman suddenly smiled, cocking her head to the side as if she was amused and she turned back to her round table with her back facing him.
"I saw you up there… trampling through my garden…" She growled.
"You were the one singing," Charon stated, faintly recalling hearing a woman sing in the clearing of swampland, strung up on their poles.
"Maybe that was me… maybe that wasn't me. But I am not cruel enough to play games with you, so yes, it was me." She nodded her head and her bandaged hand shifted forward as she grabbed something and busied her hands with it. "I saw you trampling through my garden, ferryman… I saw you protecting her… I envisioned you, standing at the foot of my garden shed and you saved her to only collapse into that pit yourself… and why is that? Because she is yours, as I have said before. You fell in after her to protect her from the collapse because you will not allow her to leave you, unless you are willing to go in with her—and you are always willing for her, are you not?"
"I was shoved in," He narrowed his milky eyes at her. "…but yes. If she were to die, I would die with her."
"And why is that you follow after her, past the rivers that you yourself travel for the very last time, when you simply weeded out another possession when your previous ones shattered and died?" She tapped her long, crooked fingernails on the lid of her jar.
"...I don't know." Charon answered quietly, believing that by "previous possessions" she meant past employers of his. Whenever any of his past employers died, his eyes were dry, his heart thrummed with anger for not ending them himself (Ahzrukhal was an exception), and he quickly found a new employer. But not with Emmy… he decided a long time ago that he would die with her instead of finding someone else to hold his contract. His answer for the woman was honest, he truly didn't know how to respond to her question—it might have been because Emmy was different from his other employers. She was kind and she was generous to a certain degree, she wouldn't take your shit and would deliver heavy consequences on those who deserved it, and by "heavy consequences," Charon referred to himself, of course.
"You will soon."
"What?"
"I said; you will soon. You will know soon why you will follow her into the dark, as you refused to do for your past employers. Oh, by the way— did you enjoy my lovely creatures? My little babes… my most prized of all my possessions?" She tilted her chin to her shoulder to speak to him. Her lips were a straight line. "They are all mine, you know."
"They were… fascinating." He stated, not exactly understanding what she meant.
"You did not think that earlier…"
"What do you mean?" He asked tensely, her voice taking on a dangerous twinge of anger.
"You did not think that earlier, when you heaved poor little Monica across the clearing…"
"Monica?"
The woman plucked up a dirty, ragged doll from her round table (he realized that was probably what she was busying herself with while speaking with him) and steadily walked towards him, swaying back and forth with every step she took with the mud squelching under the shifting wooden floorboards and her movement reminded him of a pendulum. She held the doll up to him in her outstretched hands—her fingers softly curled into the torso of the doll. One of the arms was gone, causing stuffing to spill out of the stump of cloth; both of the button eyes had been yanked from its face; the mouth was torn open in a grotesque scream; the outfit was a ripped dress in purple print, the dark brown yarn for hair was curled, there was a mole on its cheek and somewhere under the thick layer of swamp mud you could see that a sort of "makeup" had been painted onto various points of the dolls face—such as around where the button eyes had been, on the lips, and rosy blossoms on the cheeks.
The only reason why Charon was able to go through such thorough detail of the doll was because he recognized it—it was Estelle. It was Estelle, the fucking doll Emmy found and he had thrown into the brush practically half-way across the fucking swamp.
How in God's name—?... He wondered with a cramp of anxiety in his stomach, but he made sure his face remained stone cold. The woman claimed she could see everything, despite not having eyes.
He remembered the jar of eyeballs she carried.
…Or so she made it appear that she couldn't see.
"Monica? My dear, sweet, sweet, sweet little Monica…" The woman cooed, softly caressing the doll's mangy and curled hair with her fingers, brushing it out gently. "Tell me. Tell me what he did to you, again."
There was silence in the small room, and she looked down at the doll with a small frown, crackling the dried blood smeared on her lips from when she licked at her injured hand.
"Now, Monica… I know you talk much more than this. Please, speak up," She suddenly grinned, and turned her head to Charon. "So our guest can hear you."
"He—" A woman's muffled voice, demented and crackled, as if coming over radio waves, echoed in the room—originating from the mass of cotton and yarn in the woman's outstretched hands.
"Yes?" She enquired, tucking her thick, dreaded hair behind her ear—revealing that the shell of it was twisted and deformed—and brought it closer to the doll, as if straining to hear her. "He what?"
The woman's voice suddenly echoed in a dark, hateful tone.
"He—threw me away…" Estelle answered as more stuffing dropped from the stump of where her arm once was. "He threw me away… into the mud, into the swamp… I was worthless to him…" She hissed angrily.
"There, there, my sweet little Monica…" The woman cooed again, tucking the doll to her chest and cradled her like a baby, smiling down at her lovingly as she walked back to her round table with that same, pendulum-like movement in her gait. "I will never throw you away… You are not worthless to me."
"I know…" Estelle answered with a taunting giggle as she was put down on the table.
Charon stared with his filmy eyes stretched wide open on his mottled face, his breathing coming in startled inhales and exhales and the cramp of his stomach grew into a hefty pit while his heart crawled up his throat and throbbed in his ear canals like a bass drum playing a quick, rhythmic tune. The woman slowly turned back to Charon and walked towards him, pinching her layers of cloth to keep them from dragging through the mud, although it did not matter much either way. Her hands were on his neck, but she put no pressure. She simply smiled, and he made no attempt to move from her. In fact, he couldn't move. It was like his muscles had contracted into stone amongst his locked up bones.
"The souls of those who roast in eternal damnation eat away at your own flesh as theirs peel away like writhing maggots, dropping off a mutilated corpse... the price you play for trying to play God." She giggled, leaning up to his face so he could smell her thick, rancid breath. "Poetry… is a wonderful thing. Words are a wonderful thing—but it all depends on how you use them. I have words for you, ferryman… would you care to hear them?"
The woman didn't wait for an answer as she moved her hands up to hover over his face—fingertips drawing over his brow muscles, sculpting the contours of his milky eyes, along the rim of his exposed nasal cavity, the creases of his dimples and the heavily cracked remains of his lips and mouth; all in feather-like touches that his exposed flesh and whatever remained of his skin could barely feel. He stared down at her, horrified—and he did not like that feeling. He did not enjoy that feeling… feeling like he knew nothing at all, feeling like he was powerless, feeling like he was weak—and controlled…
The ghoul felt like he was weighed down by strings and a crossbar as he lay in the idle hands of a woman infected with insanity and she bore her grin down upon him, threatening to break him if he didn't behave and put on a show like all the other good little puppets did.
She didn't wait for him to respond once again, and simply answered her question—which was obviously directed at him—by telling him the words she wanted to speak, anyways.
"My words spin a proposition for you, ferryman… one that will restore the skin those roasting, rancid bodies have eaten off of you for taking their tormented souls upon your vessel, across the boiling rivers of Styx and Acheron to their homeland… the proposition, I give you, is your skin…"
Charon's strings were suddenly snapped loose from its crossbar, and as he tumbled out of the woman's idle hands, her grin grew wider as he fell to the ground and suddenly became animate—his frumpy body painfully growing bones so he could skitter away from her like a radroach when the lights were turned on.
"Wha- What?..." He murmured, eyes widening as the stone of his muscles melted away and liquefied his bones. His knees almost buckled out underneath him, and her hands, reaching out to cup his strong jaw, seemed to be the only thing that kept him aloft.
"I see you are familiar with deals… with contracts… the contract that has condemned you to this life of protecting mortals that you do not care for was thrust upon you and you had no choice in the matter, didn't you? Well, I give you a choice now… give me what you cherish most in this world, and I will have your skin returned to you."
"You—" He pulled back out of her hands violently, his yellowed teeth clenched together in a snarl. "You're lying!" He exclaimed, suddenly wanting to spit in her face and he hated her—she was a crazy bitch who was playing tricks with him.
He fell down that hole and hit his head.
The swamp finally turned him insane, too.
He had eaten a bad punga fruit sprout and was hallucinating.
None of this was real.
He was either dreaming it, imagining it, or hallucinating it.
Either way—none of it was real…
It would be the only way to explain how the woman knew his name, knew about his contract and why he protected Emmy—it was because she was a figure of his imagination. She was he—that's why she knew everything about him, even though he didn't say a God-damned word!
…Or so he hoped.
"I am not cruel enough to lie to the ferryman of Hades. Nor am I that stupid." She spoke impassively, hands dropping back to her sides lazily. "I would not lie to you. I have nothing to gain from it."
"You'd get some sort of sick thrill out of it, wouldn't you? You're a God-damned bigot just like the rest of them!" He bellowed, pointing at her with a sharp, accusing finger. He was no longer afraid—he was hateful. "Fucking with ghouls for a cheap laugh… you talk about vile people—who the fuck are you to talk?"
The woman's lips pursed together, almost as if she were thinking hard and she tilted her head to the side—causing the smoky grey dreads tucked behind her deformed ear to tumble off onto her shoulder. Her hand lifted up in a scarily quick movement, her fingers arching up as if her bones had gone jagged and the way her hand molded itself reminded him of the talons of some predatory bird.
The thought was dashed away as he suddenly felt horrid pain lance up his left arm—as if the talons of said predatory bird were digging into his deceased flesh. He screamed out, clasping his tortured hand to his body and he crumpled to his knees, forehead striking the wood panel flooring with a thick thud in the air, and he barely registered the woman slowly skulking towards him over the sound of his pained howls. It felt like his fingertips were being twisted and yanked from their joints and the thin bones in them turned to sharp jutting tacks, protruding through his flesh. His entire forearm felt like it was covered in pitch and lit aflame—and whatever remained of his skin, layers of flesh, and layers of muscle were like blackened sludge slinking off his charred bones. He continued to scream on his knees, head bowed to the floor with his tormented limb curled to his gut and his eyes screwed tightly shut.
But then, the woman's hand lightly came upon his head. The pain suddenly stopped, and the ghoul—terrified to open his eyes—opened them, anyways.
"Arise," She demanded sternly. "Become all that you have dreamed about for the last decades of your life…"
Without thinking, Charon slowly got up from his knees to trembling feet. She grabbed at his hand, the one that had experienced the excruciating and agonizing pain and he flinched back, expecting it to go back into a frenzy of fire upon pitch and jutting tacks pushing up through his skin. She managed to grab his hand anyway, catching him by the wrist, and he felt no pain… all he felt was a wave of shock roll from his hand to his gut upon feeling her fingers. A soft underlay of skin with bumps of hardened callouses and miniscule slivers of cuts, and what caused the electrifying shock of her touch was the fact that he could feel it with such an intense sensation. When his skin peeled and flaked off, he could still feel when something touched whatever remained of his skin, but the sensation would always feel dull, and almost non-existent—like a phantom of a caress that frustrated and teased him to no end. Whatever skin remained had dead nerves that barely registered being touched.
But this?... his skin could feel!
Charon did a double take on the thought.
His—… skin?
The ghoul looked down at his arm, jaw dropping and milky eyes widening (in shock or disbelief, he didn't know, even though it was probably both) at the sight before him. His entire arm, from fingertips to elbow, was covered in skin. Real, warm, supple skin pulled taut over flexing muscles and tendons and joints underneath. The skin, his skin, was a healthy peach color and covered in a thin layer of dark hair that threaded down to his thick knuckles and fingers. He flexed his fingers, gazing in awe at the broad fingernails that cupped his plump fingertips. He rolled his fingers into his hand and dug his nails into the butt of his palm, feeling the pain wedge into his skin to make sure that they were real. He opened up his palm and traced all of the little creases and hills with his eyes over and over before the woman spoke up, interrupting his silent—but internally unbridled—joy.
"Ferryman," The woman spoke, "Do you believe me now?"
He fell down that hole and hit his head.
The swamp finally turned him insane, too.
He had eaten a bad punga fruit sprout and was hallucinating.
None of this was real.
He was either dreaming it, imagining it, or hallucinating it.
Either way—none of it was real…
It would be the only way to explain how the woman knew his name, knew about his contract and why he protected Emmy—it was because she was a figure of his imagination. She was he—that's why she knew everything about him, even though he didn't say a God-damned word!
…He wasn't hoping that anymore. He was hoping that all of it was real.
Charon finally nodded, trying not to let the giant grin go to his face but he couldn't help but release it.
"Yes… yes! I believe you! I believe you!"
"Then will you accept my proposition?" She asked keenly, tilting her head to the side and removed her hand from his head.
"…What happens if I don't?" He asked quietly, and the grin disappeared from his face.
"This proposition allows you option, but what do you expect if you were to refuse? There would be no disappointment for me, but there will be disappointment for you. Your skin will return to those who have eaten it in the first place."
"And if I accept?"
She smiled at this. "If you give me what you cherish most in this world, than I will cover your body in the skin that you once knew, and return to you what other else you have lost." Her eyeballs—which Charon had assumed by now that they were hers, and nothing was behind her blindfold but empty eye sockets—moved in their grimy, green liquid-filled jar. One stared at his missing nose, while the other convulsed and turned up to stare at his missing ears.
A grueling thought that rattled him into a petrified state rocked through his very core.
"But what if I—" He began, not quite sure as how to end his question. "But what if I have nothing to give?"
"Every man holds something that they cherish—something that they hold close to their hearts and adore in all the whole wide world. So do you accept?"
"…I do." Charon grinned again, even though he honestly didn't know what he possibly had to give her.
"Then I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do…" She giggled, turning away to gesture towards Emmy with an outstretched palm. "Take her and go. You have the power to tell her what you have seen in my garden shed, I will not stop you, as you have evidence to prove it to her, but should you attempt to return to me before your end of the proposition has been fulfilled, well… your search will fail. I will only appear to you when you have what I ask for."
"Understood." He nodded his head, still flexing his newly-skinned hand at his side absentmindedly, trying to return to the familiarity of skin. He didn't care if his entire body had to deal with that excruciating pain once more—it was damn well worth every inch of skin, hair, and cartilage that would be returned to him.
"Then leave," She waved him off as she warily returned to her round table of jars, beakers, and bottles of grotesque things floating in thick liquids. She came back with his combat shotgun in her hands and handed it to him, and with wide eyes, he took it and strapped it to his back where it belonged. Charon then turned to Emmy and plucked her up from her nestled bedding, his mottled hand wrapped under her shoulders with his gifted hand wrapped under the crook of her legs—causing the skin upon skin friction to well up familiarity and longing of a woman's one-and-only touch in his gut. He ignored it and turned to the only exit of the room, stopping when sunlight filtered through it. He looked back at the woman in question, and she simply smiled at him.
"Be careful, ferryman of Hades… things get sucked into the bog, you know… you never know what's down there. And watch where you step—as I am everywhere—and I've got my eye on you. I've got a thousand eyes on you…"
Charon suddenly remembered the dolls in the clearing; the horde of little red markers that appeared all around them on Emmy's Pip-Boy map like a swarm of angry bees and he cringed, having also remembered what the woman said.
"Oh, by the way— did you enjoy my lovely creatures? My little babes… my most prized of all my possessions? They are all mine, you know."
He forced himself out into the sunlight, ignoring the glaring button eyes of the dolls that surrounded him as they watched him walk away from the woman's domain—a mouth of a cave, that seemed to be molded from the stubborn muck at the very bottom of the swamp bogs, jut out above the clearing of muck in the middle of a field of dolls strung up on poles in clusters, swinging lazily in the breeze. The warmth of the sun on his skinned arm, for the first time in a very long time, was a welcomed sensation that made him forget that the dolls were watching him.
"I've got a thousand eyes on you…"
Charon ran from the clearing with Emmy in his arms, her backpack bouncing on his backside and his arm absorbing the sunlight greedily as the woman's cackling laughter chased him from the swamp, and the wind and fog carried her singing to him even when he was far, far away from her "garden shed" and he had returned down to the abandoned motel where he and Emmy stayed by the carnival grounds. It was almost like she was in his head.
But, again, he did not mind—for he barely noticed the woman's singing at all as he continued to enjoy the skin of his forearm.
"Go to sleep you little baby... go to sleep you little baby... your momma's gone away, and your daddy's gonna stay—didn't leave nobody but the baby… Go to sleep you little baby... go to sleep you little baby... everybody's gone in the cotton and the corn—didn't leave nobody but the baby… you're a sweet little baby... you're a sweet little baby... honey and the rock and the sugar don't stop—gonna bring that bottle to the baby… don't you weep pretty baby... don't you weep pretty baby... she's long gone with her red shoes on—gonna need another lovin' baby… go to sleep you little baby... go to sleep you little baby... you and me and the devil makes three—don't need no other lovin' baby... go to sleep you little baby... go to sleep you little baby... come and lay your bones, on the alabaster stones—and be my ever lovin' ba—... by…"
Early one morn, 'tween dark and dawn
When shadows filled the sky—
There came an unseen caller
On a town where hope run dry.
In the square there was found, a big black round
vat full of gurgling brew.
Whispering sounds, as the folk gathered 'round,
"It came from the Black Bayou…"