The poets were full of shit about death being peaceful.
Daemon hurtled through the void like a bullet fired from a gun, his hair whipping around his face as his body tumbled end over end through what felt like the universe's largest garbage disposal.
His glasses pressed against his nose, threatening to fly off into the endless dark.
They said death was supposed to be a gentle transition, a drifting away into eternal rest. Instead, Daemon felt like he was being sucked through the world's most violent storm drain, his soul screaming through a tunnel.
The darkness wasn't empty, either. Shapes moved past him, human forms twisted the same , their faces pale blurs in the dark.
Other souls, he realized.
All of them falling fast, all of them heading in the same direction.
Down.
The trajectory was unmistakable. Whatever lay at the end of this plunge, it wasn't the pearly gates his grandmother used to threaten him with during his childhood visits to her cramped Brooklyn apartment.
No, this felt like something else entirely. Something that made perfect sense when he thought about the life he'd lived, the choices he'd made, the people he'd hurt.
Yeah, he probably deserved whatever was waiting at the bottom of this fall.
The impact came without warning.
One moment he was falling, the next he was slamming face-first into what felt like wet sand mixed with broken glass.
His glasses flew off his face, skittering across the dark beach as he rolled to a stop.
Daemon groaned, spitting sand from his mouth as he pushed himself to his hands and knees.
Blood dripped from his nose onto the black sand below.
And there, planted in the sand stood a sign that looked like it had been stolen from a 1950s immigration office, it read;
WELCOME TO HELL. YOU ARE DEAD
"Well, that's about as subtle as a brick to the face," Daemon muttered, squinting through his blurred vision as he searched for his glasses among the sands.
Around him, other souls were picking themselves up from their own violent arrivals.
A woman in a blood-stained wedding dress sat in the sand, staring at her hands like she couldn't quite believe they were still attached.
An elderly man in a hospital gown wandered in circles, calling out names that echoed uselessly across the beach.
A teenager with half his head caved in stood perfectly still, looking out at the dark river with an expression of tired sadness.
The reactions varied. Some wept, others raged, a few simply sat in stunned silence. But they all shared the same look in their eyes. The look of people who had just realized that death wasn't an ending, but a transition to something far more complicated than they'd ever imagined.
A horn blasted across the water, deep and mournful as a funeral howl.
The sound cut through the air like a blade, causing every soul on the beach to turn toward the river.
In the distance, cutting through the oily surface like a knife through tar, came a ship that belonged in a museum, or a nightmare.
The vessel was black as the river itself, its hull carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly.
It moved without sails or visible propulsion, gliding across the water with predatory grace. As it drew closer, Daemon could make out a figure standing at the bow, tall and imposing against the perpetual twilight of this place.
The ship ground against the shore with a sound like grinding bones.
The gangplank dropped with a metallic clang, and the figure strode down onto the beach.
He was exactly what the casting director would have ordered for the role of Death's ferry operator,dark hair, no shirt despite the chill in the air, wearing nothing but blue cargo shorts that had seen better decades.
His muscles looked like they'd been carved from marble by an artist with serious anger management issues.
"Alright, dead people," the man announced, his voice carrying easily across the beach despite the wind.
"Name's Charon. I'm your ride across the river. You want answers? You want to know what comes next? Then you get on my boat. You want to stand around on this beach feeling sorry for yourselves until the end of time? That's your choice too."
Daemon found his glasses half-buried in the sand and slipped them back on, the world snapping back into focus.
Charon.
Of course it was Charon. Because apparently, the afterlife ran on the same tired mythology that every half-decent literature class had been rehashing for centuries.
"What if we don't want to go?" called out a man in a business suit, his tie still perfectly knotted despite having just plummeted through the cosmos.
Charon turned to look at him, and even from a distance, Daemon could see the ferry operator's smile.
It wasn't a pleasant expression.
"Like I said, you stay here," Charon said simply. "On this beach. Forever. With all the other souls too scared or too stupid to move forward. Your choice, mate."
The businessman took a step back. Around the beach, the crowd began to shift restlessly.
Fear was a powerful motivator, even, especially for the dead.
"But if you come with me," Charon continued, "you get answers. You get to find out what your particular brand of damnation looks like. You get to understand what comes next in your pitiful existence."
The crowd surged forward, desperation overriding caution as dozens of souls pushed and shoved to reach the gangplank.
Daemon hung back, watching the chaos with the calculating eye of someone who'd survived thirty years by reading situations before acting.
He waited until the initial rush had passed, then moved forward with practiced ease, slipping through gaps in the crowd like smoke through fingers.
He made it onto the ship just as Charon raised the gangplank.
The vessel was larger inside than it had appeared from the beach, its deck stretching out to accommodate what must have been over a hundred souls.
The hull rose around them with a grinding mechanical sound, sealing them inside like sardines in a very expensive, very ominous can.
The ship began to move again, cutting across the dark river with renewed speed.
The water below was so black that it seemed to swallow light itself, creating the illusion that they were sailing through empty space rather than across any earthly body of water.
"Alright, dead people," Charon called out, his voice echoing strangely in the enclosed space.
"Time for the fun part. Everyone needs to strip down and toss their earthly possessions into the river. Clothes, jewelry, phones, whatever piece of your old life you're still clinging to. It all goes overboard."
The protests started immediately.
"These were my grandmother's earrings!"
"My wedding ring. I can't just throw it away!"
"I'm not getting naked in front of strangers!"
This last complaint came from a middle-aged woman clutching a purse to her chest like a shield.
Daemon found himself nodding in agreement despite everything.
Death was traumatic enough without adding public nudity to the experience.
Charon laughed, the sound carrying no warmth whatsoever.
"Lady, you're dead. Modesty is the least of your concerns right now. And as for sentimental value…" He gestured broadly at the dark water surrounding them.
"Where you're going, the only thing those possessions will do is weigh you down. Literally. The river doesn't care about your grandmother's earrings or your wedding vows. It cares about dragging souls to the bottom and keeping them there."
Daemon looked down at his own clothes, jeans worn soft from years of wear, a black t-shirt with holes in strategic places, boots that had carried him through more bad decisions than he cared to count.
His fingers found the familiar weight of his wallet in his back pocket, the smooth surface of his phone in the other.
Pieces of a life that no longer existed, tethering him to a world he could never return to.
One by one, the souls around him began to comply.
Clothes hit the water with soft splashes, followed by the gentle plinking of jewelry and the heavier sounds of more substantial possessions.
The dark river swallowed everything without a trace, as if the items had never existed at all.
Daemon stripped methodically, folding his clothes with automatic precision before dropping them over the side.
His phone followed, then his wallet, then finally, reluctantly, his glasses. The world blurred around him, taking on the soft-focused quality of a half-remembered dream.
As he reached for his back pocket to make sure it was empty, his fingers encountered something unexpected.
A piece of paper, folded small and tucked deep into the denim.
He pulled it out, squinting to make out the words written in block letters across its surface:
FOLLOW THE GRAFFITI
Daemon stared at the paper, confusion cutting through the surreal horror of his situation.
He had no memory of putting this note in his pocket, no idea what it meant or who might have written it. But something about those three words sent a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with his current naked state.
He clutched the paper tightly in his fist, making sure Charon couldn't see it as the ferry operator continued his circuit of the deck, ensuring compliance with his clothing policy.
In the distance, beyond the bow of the ship, something massive began to resolve out of the perpetual twilight.
A city, sprawling and imposing, its skyline a jagged mix of architectural styles that spanned centuries.
Huge spires rose alongside old cathedrals and modern glass towers, all of it lit by a strange red glow that seemed to emanate from the buildings themselves.
But it wasn't the city that made Daemon's blood run cold.
It was the creature moving toward them across the water, closing the distance between the ship and the shore with powerful, determined strokes.
Three heads rose from the dark river like periscopes from a submarine, each one the size of a small car and sporting teeth that looked like they could bite through steel.
The central head fixed its attention on the ship, and when it opened its massive jaws, the sound that emerged was less bark than roar. A deep, primal sound that spoke of hunger and eternal vigilance.
Then without warning, it pounced.