Slosh and slop.
The man scratched at his injured flesh. The wound peeled and the blood spilled. His eyes narrowed on the crimson sea, then to the other wayward souls the surrounded him on this tattered remains of a ship.
Nothing.
No one.
No body to recognize, no one to recognize him. A name trickles down the side of his skull like sweat he wiped clean from his memory. The events just before now, the thoughts of moments soon to come, all of now behind frosted glass. His eyes tore down the abstract world around him until an old man with darkened flesh and black from the white eyes up approached him after he had tended to four others on the ship.
"What is your name?"
The man shook his head.
He had no name.
The ferryman kneeled as best he could in his old age and offered a burnt crisp of hard tack.
"This might help, but those the Netherrealm chooses to forget themselves will."
Something had done this to him?
The others?
He reached for the hard tack, the bitter stale bread of discontent barely comforted and certainly didn't nourish him, but couldn't remember if he'd thank the man or spit it out. Who was he? What kind of personality did he have before this moment? Before his last words spoken?
Had he ever spoken before?
"Thank you."
He did just now.
The ferryman scanned the group and bit at his bottom lip. He had never seen anything quite like this in such magnitude. Five men and women gathered upon his ship, four he had said were people that had helped him and he chose to help them, but who was the fifth to the ferryman?
Just meat?
Just bones?
Just another mouth to feed?
Who was he?
Slosh!
Bang!
The sea enraged bashed at the ship from the stern. The ship buckled and the ferryman grabbed the nearest stack of crates then dragged himself to the wheel.
"Hold onto something!"
The man looked back to find a great blood stained fin raise from the sea higher than the mast of the ship. He rushed to the stern as it rocked and rattled with each thrust the demonic creature crashed into it with. The force enough to nearly crumble the stern.
The man looked down to find a black mass emerge from the viscous ocean and strange eyes stared out with hunger.
Its great white maw parted the red sea between it and clamped on the old decayed wood before it.
The man held tight to the wood rail and watched as the creature plunged the stern toward sea level. The others fell and slid and the Ferryman screamed as held to the wheel as best he could before he too was forced down toward the open maw.
What had he gotten himself into?
Was it worth it to save them?
To save them from sin?
The demonic entity within the blood sea lunged and threw wide its gaping maw to devour all that slid down the tipped ship one person, one crate, one piece of rubble at a time until all they would see is black and all they would feel is the heat of blood and suction of a ship sized mouth as it swallowed them all.
Three times the size of the ferryman's ship, it swam ahead of the sunken mess of wood and linen, then dove deep into the dark, warm depths of eternal blood.