The soft tinkling of water was the only sound to fill the air for the time being. I let myself focus on it, let myself forget everything else. Not that I really remember anything else anyway. But even after all these years, I never got sick of that sound.

There was the light fwip of the cards as he sorted his hand.

“Hm…you got any threes?”

I glanced at the beginning of my hand, my mind still on the River. “Nope. Go fish,” I muttered.

He sighs loudly, tossing his cards on top of the pile. “I quit. We need to think of other games to play.”

“Well, we’ve got all of eternity. Let’s make up a game.”

“Eh,” he grunted, falling onto his back, and lying on the ground.

“Cheer up, Ace,” I said quietly, wishing I knew his real name. Or my own, for that matter. But no one remembers their real name for long here.

A few moments of silence passed between us before we heard a slight crackling sound. We quickly looked around to that old and tattered, knob-less door. There was a weird warp around said door that you can never remember what it looks like after it happens. It went as quickly as it came, and then in its place, there he was. Fresh meat.

Ace and I stood up, rushing over to the new guy. “Hey, welcome to the Underworld! You got a shilling to spare, eh? You only need one to get down the ol’ River Stix, you know!”

The guy looked pretty disoriented. “Um, no…I wasn’t given a proper burial…”

Ace and I groaned before plopping back down on the floor.

“Well, tucker on down,” I said, leaning back with my hands on the ground. “And get comfy. You’re gonna be here for a while.”

That’s how it was here. Years of waiting and waiting. Waiting for that one little coin that allows us to rest in peace. See, normally they bury you with a shilling on each eye – one for yourself, one if you lost the other one, or to give to someone else. Ace and I have been here so long we can’t remember what we died from, or why we weren’t buried with shillings.

“You remember your name?” Ace asked.

“Oh…” the guy’s eyes drift to the ceiling, thinking. “No…it’s on the tip of my tongue, but…I can’t remember.”

“Well, then. Sit down with us.”

The kid sat down, closer to me than Ace. I glanced at his clothing – for someone who didn’t get properly buried, he was pretty well-dressed. I saw the letters ‘V.R.’ embroidered in fancy script across the top of the slit for a pocket in his fancy little vest.

“V.R.,” I muttered. “Ring any bells?”

“Huh?”

I pointed to the said letters. “We’ll call you V, then.”

“Ah…” he looked down at it shortly.

“I’m Jack, this is Ace,” I gestured between us. “And enjoy your stay,” I mumbled bitterly.

My eyes drifted back to the River as V chuckled a little. Here, I could no longer see the sparkling blue (blue? was it blue? the word sounds so foreign in my head) of the water. I wasn’t sure if the colorblindness here was really due to new eyes, or just the over all bleakness of this place.

However, that didn’t matter now, because I could feel Him coming.

The water ripples lightly, and the tinkling sound grew louder, grew slowly into more of a rushing. I would have braced myself then, if I hadn’t known it wouldn’t do any good.

The sound of the water got louder and louder still until I felt the immense amount of cold sweep over me. See, Ace could stab me heart-deep and I wouldn’t so much as flinch. But the cold here was so, so real, and inescapable. It’s the only thing I’d felt for the past century or so.

And then He arrived, floating down in His shabby-ass boat, surrounded in a chilling darkness. His skeletal hands were clutching onto His gnarled staff.

“Another,” He croaked, from behind the folds of His black cloak. We somehow always knew what He meant.

“I—I can’t,” V stuttered. “I don’t…don’t have the, eh…fare.”

He’s gone as quickly as He came. The feeling of nothing settled back over us.

And then the next few years continued as ever before. Bodies come and go. They all have their own single shilling, and merrily plod off to the afterlife. Few have an extra, and those that did either lost it, were unwilling to be a little generous, or were saving it for a loved one or something. We undead have some bullshit rules about being banished into an abyss of nothingness if we try to claim shillings that aren’t free game.

Anyway, V stuck with us through the years. He’s an okay guy, but our personalities fade here, and he’d already dulled down a little. I’m not sure how he could stand Ace and I – by then, we were empty shells of our former selves.

V was sitting on the edge of the River, staring into its depth. He’d been doing that for a while, but I didn’t blame him because I did that too at first. He’ll get sick of it soon.

“What’s on the other side, I wonder?” he said quietly.

“Who cares? Can’t get there, so don’t go working yourself up about it,” Ace grunted.

“Why can’t I go?”

“The River’ll kill you. Again. You’ll be left with nothingness even worse than this. Jack and I’ve seen it many a time.”

V just sighed.

The next year or so (it’s not like we’re allowed to luxury of clocks or anything here. I tried making tally marks in the dirt walls for every approximate day, but I stopped a decade or so into it), V doesn’t pull himself away from that damn River. Ace and I finally began to create our own card game, though I think we were failing miserably.

Then one day, V finally stood up. He raised his arms above his head in a long stretch before kneeling back down next to the River. He suddenly plunged his arm deep into the water before quickly flinging it back out, throwing a handful of perfectly clean and shiny shillings our way. The action caused him to over balance and fall straight into the River.

Ace and I stared blankly at the spot V had previously occupied. I slowly got up and walked over to the edge of the River, looking down at the sparkling grey water. There wasn’t a trace of V’s body, but as I stared deep into the water, I could tell now the sparkles came from hundreds of little shillings that He and others had dropped over the thousands upon thousands of years.

Looking over to Ace, I saw he was already staring back down at his cards. I bent down to pick up the strewn about shillings before I plopped back down in my usual spot, setting the coins down in a little pile next to me.

I picked back up my own hand of cards. “You got any sevens?”