The Ferryman

by John E. Siers

  She laughed with a sort of cackling giggle that he found endearing. He found himself chuckling in return, but then he sobered.

  “You said you’re going to die soon…?”

  “Yup. Got a whole belly full of cancer. Docs treat me like a little kid, keep telling me I should have had it checked out years ago. That’s water under the bridge, and I wish they’d just shut up, but now they want to start ten kinds of treatment. No hope of stopping it from killing me, but they say they might be able to keep me alive for a couple of years, might even get me to 90. If I don’t, they say, I’ve got maybe three months.

  “So…they tell me I can go into the hospital now—the treatment is pretty extreme, so I can’t get it at home—and let them stick me in a bed so they can poke me, prod me, stick a poop tube up my butt, and shoot me full of drugs to the point where I don’t even remember my own name. The highlight of my day will be when they change my diaper, and at some point they’ll have to hook me up to some machine to keep me ticking. Eventually, they’ll get tired of the game, they’ll decide that I’m dead, unplug the machine, and stick me in the ground. Truth is, I’ll have been dead a long time before that, probably about two days after they put me in the hospital.

  “My other option was to go home, spend a month getting my stuff together, enjoy life while I’m doing it, then come down here and let you people give me a grand finale. Gee…tough choice, don’t you think?

  “Got no family to worry about—haven’t talked to my kids in years. Ungrateful bastards—they don’t even send me Christmas cards anymore—cut them out of my will a long time ago. The only one who still talks to me, calls me a couple of times a year, is a grandson in San Francisco. He’s queer, so I don’t expect he’ll give me any great-grandkids.”

  She paused a moment, a thoughtful look on her face. “Queer…is that one of those words you’re not supposed to say anymore? I thought it was, but then they came out with that LGBTQ stuff, and I heard the ‘Q’ stood for queer. Not going to call them ‘gay’ because when I went to school, that word meant ‘happy.’ I’ve met too many angry queers to call them that.

  “When I was a kid, we used to say, ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’ Nowadays, people get all bent out of shape if you call ‘em a name they don’t like. Me, I go with what my daddy always used to say: ‘Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.’”

  At that point, Mark could no longer contain himself. His shoulders shook as he tried to stifle his laughter.

  “Granny,” he gasped, when he could finally speak again, “you are really a delightful piece of work. You’ve given me such a refreshing look at life, the world, and everything. I could sit here and listen to you all day.”

  “Well gosh, young man, for a minute there I thought you were going to say I was a delightful piece of ass! Haven’t been called that in about 20 years…heh, heh, heh…”

  “Granny, I’m sure you were exactly that, back in the day—and I mean that in the most complimentary way. Uh…more Scotch, by the way?” He hadn’t noticed the sips she’d been taking as she told the story, but now her glass was empty.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” she said with a delightful smile. “Then we can sit down and talk about how you’re going to snuff me.”

  Mark refilled Granny’s glass, then sat back behind his desk and watched as she took another sip.

  “Thank you,” she said cheerfully. “Now…how are you going to do me? Is that how you say it—do you ‘do’ people, like a beauty treatment or maybe a tattoo? Got a couple of those, too, but they’re in places I can’t show you right now…heh, heh, heh…”

  “Actually, I do say it that way sometimes,” he admitted, “but to answer your question, I don’t know yet. Is there any particular way you want us to ‘do’ you? We try to accommodate whatever the client wants, within limits.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” She looked puzzled. “I haven’t really thought about it. Do you maybe have a menu or something, like a restaurant? That would be kind of bizarre, but interesting—especially if it had pictures.”

  Mark almost started laughing again. Yeah, a menu…with pictures. Bizarre would be an understatement.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I want it to be spectacular—you know, kind of a Big Finish. I don’t want you to ‘put Granny peacefully to sleep’ or anything like that. I’d rather be run over by a truck, or maybe you could cut me up with a chain saw, like in those old scary movies.”

  “No…” she thought about that for a moment, “that’s probably not a good idea—might take too long and hurt too much. I don’t care how messy it is, and I don’t mind if it hurts, but I guess I’d rather have it be quick. I still want it to be spectacular, though.”

  “I promise we won’t ‘put you peacefully to sleep,’” he assured her. “We don’t generally do that sort of thing unless that’s what a client wants. We’ll figure something out, but first we need to go over a few things, make sure you know what you’re getting into.

  “First off, we need to get a contract put together—can’t do it without one, because that’s our only proof that you gave us permission to do it. That’s what makes it legal. Also, if you sign the contract, we have to wait three days before we can actually complete it—’do you,’ if that’s how you like me to say it.”

  “Yeah…I know about the three days,” she said. “Not too happy about it. Not enough time to go home and come back, but I really don’t want to delay it any longer, so I’ll just stay in the hotel. I’m at the Chateau Royale just up the street—why do they give these hotels such pretentious names? Mind you, it’s a nice hotel—should be, for the money I’m paying—but it’s so boring.

  “Thought I might want to have a little private party, you know, one more time before I go, but even if I knew where to find somebody to party with, the hotel’s got really strict security. Nobody but registered guests allowed on the guest room floors, and they check everybody at the elevators. Bunch of Fun Police, I tell you. I’m surprised they even serve alcohol in the lobby bar.”

  “Unfortunately,” he told her, “you’ll have to be there for three more days, but we won’t keep you waiting any longer than that. Anyway, there’s still a few things I need to go over before we get down to talking about how you want us to do it.”

  “Well, OK…” she said, “but let’s get on with it—I want to talk about the important stuff, not a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo.”

  “We just want you to know what you’re agreeing to,” he assured her. “First off, you can’t have anybody with you when we do it. Nobody sees what happens inside Charon’s Ferry, so whatever anyone told you is probably just social-media bullshit. The only person who’ll be with you when we ‘do’ you will be your designated Charon’s Ferry contact—and that would be me.”

  “Damn!” she exclaimed. “You mean you’re actually the one who’s going to snuff me out? That sounds…exciting. I’m actually sitting here talking to the guy who’s going to kill me!”

  “So you’re OK with that?”

  “Oh, hell, yes. What’s next?”

  “We don’t send out any public notices, announcements, or obituaries. We collect your UID, and we notify California DHS that you are deceased. Whoever’s handling your estate will have to apply to DHS for a Death Certificate.”

  “No problem.” She nodded. “I’ve got an attorney up north with a bunch of stuff in his files, just waiting on my OK to release it and go to work. I’ll give him a call before I come in here to be snuffed. Among other things, he can mail out a letter to that grandson in San Francisco to let him know he’s just become a millionaire about twenty times over. Hopefully, he and his boyfriend can quit playing with each other long enough to drink a toast to dear, departed Granny…heh, heh…”

  “You know, Granny, I love it when you giggle like that. You know that young lady out front—Lisa—the one who brought you in here? She giggles, too, and I love to hear it. I imagine she’s going to sound just like you about fift
y years from now. Anyway, on to the next thing.

  “After we ‘do’ you, your body, and any personal property you’ve brought with you—clothing, jewelry, whatever—becomes the property of Charon’s Ferry, to be disposed of as we see fit. In other words, we don’t send you home to be buried, cremated, or whatever. You come in here, nothing comes out—at least nothing identified or connected with you in any way.”

  “What?” She looked at him in surprise. “I mean, clothing and jewelry, no problem, and nobody’s planning a funeral. The lawyer’s already got instructions for a stone marker they’re gonna put up in the vineyard, but that’s about it. I never thought about what you’re gonna do with this old bag of bones…figured you’d just stuff me into an incinerator or something.”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re not gonna sell my body parts to those damned doctors, are you? I didn’t want them picking at me when I’m alive, and I sure as hell don’t want them showing me off to a bunch of medical students who just want to see what an 88-year-old naked woman looks like.”

  Mark had planned to do just that, but now he made a note to comply with Granny’s wishes. She wasn’t the first client to raise the issue, and the Ferry’s policy was to honor such requests.

  “Granny, I promise you we won’t sell or otherwise distribute your body parts—I’m putting that into the contract. Other than that, it’s our discretion, and we don’t tell anybody what we do with client remains. Sorry…we have to keep our secrets to keep the social-media ghouls at bay.”

  “OK. I guess that makes sense. Take me out in the ocean and feed me to the fish, if that’s what you want. Ol’ Granny won’t mind, won’t care much about anything by then. Do whatever you want to do.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Anne Boleyn

  “OK,” he said. “So much for the standard contract stuff. I guess we’re ready to talk about ‘means and methods’—in other words, how you want us to ‘do’ you. First of all, we don’t do poison, drugs, or anything involving contact with animals, fire, or toxic chemicals.

  “Most of our ways of killing people involve some kind of trauma to the body. You’ve already said you want it to be quick, but I still have to ask whether you prefer painful or painless.”

  “Pain’s OK, if it isn’t gonna last too long. What do you call ‘quick’?”

  “Loss of consciousness in five seconds or less, clinical death within less than a minute.”

  “Five seconds…I can take pain for that long, I guess. I just want it to be spectacular—even if you’re the only one there to see it—Granny on display, blood and guts all over the place. Life in the fast lane with a sudden stop at the end, like a bug splattered on a windshield…heh, heh, heh…I like that analogy, a bug on a windshield.”

  Mark blinked. “I don’t think we’ve ever done anything quite that spectacular,” he told her. “I’m not even sure we could, but that ‘sudden stop’ and ‘Granny on display’ gives me an idea. How about we hang you—I mean a proper hanging, a sudden drop and stop, a broken neck—and you’d certainly be on display, hanging there on the end of the rope.”

  “Heh, heh…yes, that would be a display all right. Little Ol’ Granny, dancing on the end of a rope, but hanging’s not spectacular enough. Too neat, too clean. How about you chop my head off? Now that would be spectacular. Heh, heh, heh…Whack! Granny’s head goes rolling across the floor. I imagine there’d be blood spurting all over the place, too. Can you do it?”

  “We have done it—once,” he admitted, reluctantly. “And yes, it’s messy, with lots of blood. We built a guillotine for that one, and I think we still have it in storage…have to check.”

  “Oh, hell no!” she exclaimed. “That’s a damned machine. If I want a machine to take me out, I can just let ‘em put me in the hospital. I want you to do it the old-fashioned way—put my head on a block and whack it off with an axe. I want to go out like Anne Boleyn, when Henry the Eighth decided he needed a new queen.”

  “Granny…I don’t think we can do it that way…” Mark found himself wishing he’d never mentioned the guillotine.

  “What’s the matter?” She looked at him sharply, hearing the distress in his voice. “Too gory for you? Are you a push-button killer who’s afraid to get a little blood on his hands? When you said you were going to snuff me yourself, I thought you meant hands-on, up close and personal.

  “I hope you’re not like those doctors,” she said, “all sterile and clean while you watch somebody die. Then you call in the crew with masks and rubber gloves to clean up the mess. Is that the way you do it here?”

  “Granny, stop right there!” His firm tone of voice brought her to a halt, but she continued to stare at him with a look of defiance.

  “You don’t have a clue what goes on here. You have no idea what I’ve had to do to satisfy clients. Young, healthy adults don’t go for suicide unless they’re already screwed up in the head, and some of them have some really bizarre notions of how they want it done—stuff that makes your Anne Boleyn scenario look like a quiet, peaceful death.

  “Sometimes they want it slow and painful—guess they figure their sins will be forgiven if they suffer enough before they die. Had one woman who wanted to be stabbed to death—not quick, with a knife to the heart—stabbed many times, again and again, and she wanted me to keep her alive and conscious as long as possible.”

  “There’s a limit to the length of time we allow people to suffer, so I finally ended up cutting her throat to give her a quick finish, but not until I’d stabbed her about a dozen times—hands-on, up close and personal. Blood on my hands? I had her blood all over me by the time she died.

  “Of course, they’re not all that messy. We had one woman who wanted something quick and painless, like hanging, but like you, she wanted to die ‘hands on’—didn’t want us to just drop her through a hole in the floor and let the rope do the work. So I tied her up, got her down on her knees, and put my arms around her head. Gave her a quick jerk and broke her neck. She tried to resist at the last second, as they often do—tensed up her neck muscles—but I expected that, so I made sure I had lots of leverage and a good grip.”

  “I enjoy killing people with my bare hands, got a real thrill when I felt her spine snap. Then, of course, her body relaxed, and she emptied her bowels and bladder—like everybody does when they die. Clean up crew? Actually, I do that, too. We kind of have a rule around here that says we have to clean up our own messes.”

  Granny’s expression had changed to one of open-mouthed shock as he told the tale. He’d made his point, but he couldn’t resist one more jab before moving on to the real issue.

  “Yes, I do some clients by ‘mechanical means.’ Can’t tell you how many times I’ve grabbed a woman by the hair to keep her from flinching away when I put a gun to her head and pull the trigger. Still messy, though—scatters brains all over the place.

  “But that’s not the point,” he told her. “We do these things to them because that’s what they want. We try to give our clients the kind of finish they ask for—to carry out their final wishes, no matter how weird, violent, or messy that might be.

  “You want your head chopped off? Fine. I’d be happy to do that. And because I’m so screwed up in the head myself, I happen to think that’s a neat way for you to go out, that spectacular finish you’re looking for. I’ll probably get a real thrill out of watching it happen.

  “But you asked me to do it with an axe, and that scares the hell out of me—not because I’m afraid of chopping your head off, but because I’m afraid of screwing it up!

  “Doing it right requires a perfect stroke, even with the sharpest blade. Back in the Middle Ages, skilled executioners were hard to find and got paid well for their services. When they took off Anne Boleyn’s head, Henry brought a swordsman from France to do the job, a guy who was supposed to be the best there was. Henry wanted to get rid of her, but he didn’t want her to suffer.

  “My biggest fear is that I’ll botch the job—
mess up the stroke—and see you flopping around on the floor, screaming in pain, and maybe choking on your own blood. I want it to be as quick and painless as possible.

  “Granny, you’re a delightful person, and you brightened my day. You’re not screwed up like most of my clients—you’ve thought it through and given me good, logical reasons why I should ‘do’ you. And you’re so damned cheerful about it, like an eager little girl who just can’t wait to go off on this crazy adventure.

  “That’s why I want to do it right. I want your adventure to be perfect. I want you to go out with a smile on your face, one that’s still there when I pick your head up off the floor. With the guillotine, I can be sure of that. With an axe or a sword, I can’t, and that scares the hell out of me.”

  She was silent for a while. Her face had gone from shock to dismay, but now she wore a look of sad contrition.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “You’re a sweet boy, and you’ve been nothing but nice to me. What I said was stupid…ran my mouth with my brain switched off. Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course,” he replied, “and I’m sorry, too. My daddy taught me to respect my elders, and I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that. I think maybe I wasn’t talking to dear sweet Granny as much as to some spoiled little girl from 50 or 60 years ago who was upset because she couldn’t get what she wanted.” He grinned at her, and she saw the twinkle in his eye.

  “Yup.” She returned the grin. “She’s still in there somewhere, and every now and then, she sneaks out when Granny’s not looking.”

  “But I really want to do the Anne Boleyn thing, want you to chop my head off, and I want you to do it ‘old school’—with an axe, or maybe a sword, if that’s a better way to do it. All you need to do is maybe tie me up so I can’t flop on the floor. That way, if you miss the first stroke, you can just whack me again. Hey…you said five seconds. That ought to be enough for at least two whacks, maybe three.