If only you'd been a little watchful, you might not have slipped on that banana peel down that hole. If only you'd been a little more dangerous, maybe the fall wouldn't have put you on death's door. If only you'd been more persuasive, you could have convinced the colony of Rattus Faber to not turn your rather delicate human flesh and bone and muscle and sinew into swiss cheese via itty bitty ratty cannons.

If only you'd been... Actually... You don't think being more shadowy would have helped you sneak off with two broken legs and hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny beady eyes and tiny little rat sized rifles aimed at you.

Perhaps when you wake up from this nightmare, you'll befriend the local cats. Nevermind their secrets, if you get a good enough relationship with them, maybe they'll eat every Rattus Faber in a two mile radius.

Hm. Speaking of nightmares, you vaguely recall the pamphlet that you were given when you moved to The Neath. Something about nightmares being able to blurr into reality down here, and dreamers being consumed by mirrors and some happy fellow that appears before the insane to mess with their heads even more.

On second thought, maybe you should be hoping this is real. And very probably should go find that pamphlet again.

You blink.

The skeleton in the wide brimmed top hat sitting across from you on this empty boat does not blink back at you. Possibly due to his startling lack of eyeballs and eyelids, which are the most essential components to a good blink. Or, any blink really.

Would skeletons look more or less unsettling if they had only eyes and eyelids to go along with their lack of internal organs and whatnot?

... D____t. Now that's all you're going to be thinking about for the next few days.

"You seem to be taking your first death quite well," The Boatman says, moving the oars through the still black water, with just a hint of amusement in his gravelly voice. Is it gravelly? It could just as easily be rich, baritone and soft like velvet.

Thinking so hard about it makes your head hurt, so you focus on the lantern at The Boatman's side.

Hang on. Did The Boatman just say first death?!

You glance at his skull incredulously, but before you can question his words, you see a flicker of movement inside of The Boatman's skull.

As you try to figure out if The Boatman does in fact have eyeballs somewhere in there, a weasel squeezes its way past his empty eye socket.

You shriek. The weasel, startled by your sudden and high pitched scream of terror, falls into The Boatman'a lap and attempts to jump out of the boat, only to be caught by The Boatman's skeletal fingers.

The Boatman scratches between its eyes and lightly pinches its cheeks until it stops trembling. With a final accusatory glare at you (probably) the weasel disappears up The Boatman's sleeve.

"Lucky weasel indeed," he mutters, returning to rowing the boat. You feel a little bad for the weasel, but those thoughts disappear when you catch a glimpse of a chessboard and pair of bone die underneath The Boatman's seat.

In paintings and songs, if you beat the Reaper in a game of chess, you'd be permitted to return to the land of the living. And everyone knows that songs are always 100% accurate.

It doesn't take much convincing at all to get The Boatman to agree to playing dice. In fact, he seems overjoyed. Maybe. It's hard to tell without eyebrows.

"Everytime you win at dice, or chess, you'll get a bit closer to the land of the living. Every time you lose, you'll become a little bit more dead." He explains, pulling the dice out.

You lose the first roll, and your body is suddenly in excruciating pain, but you win the second roll, and everything seems just a little bit better.

"So, why don't you tell me how you ended up here? It's a rather slow day in terms of death, and I was beginning to wonder if I could take the day off until you dropped in." Something in those empty sockets tells you that he already knows exactly how you died.