T H E E N D C O M M U N E

 When the world has ended, I shall lie down to rest... and then I can die into a peace eternal. But! I am afraid I have forgotten to bring an obol for the ferry-man. Or, forgotten... rather I am too poor. I have not an obol. And how may I solve this problem, a decisive issue: how may I cross this river without jobbery? Because I have no coin, I really have not. And I am not too good of a thief... my nerves twitch easily. I had to use my very last ones to bribe my way down here, to these cavernous lands and dead subterranean marshes. I had found a passageway through a system of catacomba purposefully hidden in the sylvan country somewhere in the land of Arcas, but to my great dismay I found that it was also controlled by bandits who conventiently charged every traveller and pilgrim zealous enough to have found the tunnels... And whatever the reason, the mission, the rationale for their departure down there, a coin was to be paid. And that was how they made a living, they said. They would never hurt you or even harass you. Either you pay and descend to the river, or you do not pay, and then you will be forcibly but respectfully ejected from the mysterious burrows, and forget that anything of it even ever happened. So, I paid. But what now? Can I talk my way with Charon, the ferryman? Will he listen?  Is it impossible for me to bypass somehow, to evade and elude, or am I doomed to the shore forever? Am I and my pennyless pockets to be rejected by even the boatkeeper of death? Is this what monstrous language money talks? It is, seemingly. Maybe I can lure behind the stones of the ragged Styx-beaches as if a lion in ambush? And painted in camouflage with the war-paints, the ochre of Dysnomian menses! Might I drown enraptured Narcissus in his own mirror cowardly, to search his purse and his cloak for any last single coinage?