So, I decided to write while doing laundry instead of reading last night. I started at 2am. Here's what I've got so far:

The City of Dis. Once again, my business brings me here, but this time I come of my own free will. The best way to enter is through the front gate; greetings composed by lewd and violent, fickle men are far better than those whispered from shadowed back ways. I know, I've been there. Behind me, black water grabs at red rocky sand, goaded by a chill and bitter wind, but waves find no purchase and slink back to the depths. Gliding above, untouched by the sullen anger of the water, is the ferryman. I paid him with a quarter I plucked from the hand of a man torn apart by wolves; he no longer needs it, for his fate is torment on the other shore for eternity. He was not wicked enough to pass through these gates.

The ferryman did not ask for payment this time either, so I tossed the quarter at his feet. I would have thought he had forgotten my previous trip save for the twinkle of laughter at my expense in his eye. That time, I know not how, I found myself on the barren shore, red rocky darkness behind me and cold wind blowing through me into the vast, dark expanse of water. The ferryman came for me, and I did not move, but I found myself suddenly in his boat, the shore receding. His expressionless face told me nothing and made no sound, and he made no motions that would have propelled the water across the waves. I forgot him as out of the darkness ahead arose a glimmer of light. The light began to define itself and become sickly at the same time. It then resolved itself into a horrifying city, and it was then that I knew where I was. It was Satan's city.

Now, the broken teeth still leer at me, dark eyes wink and a moan rises from its depths. The city is more alive than its inhabitants. The ferryman is leaving already; the shore is not where he calls home. His skeletal hand rises; there is a glint of metal in the air. The quarter falls at my feet, just out of range of the avaricious lake. He is mocking me somehow. Has someone already paid my fare, or does he know that I will be stranded one day and at his mercy, or perhaps I will help him? I do not know; I pick up and pocket the quarter.

The city is slightly different this time, no whores or hobos making cat-calls, and the mad laughter is now but a desperate whimper. Then, I was lead by shadowy intimations, and I do not know if I fled or was driven; I moved without moving, and the buildings passed silently as I moved through their crazily-shaped alleys. The only thing I felt moving was the wind blowing off the water. This time my steps are deliberate; the broken cobblestones and cement slabs that comprise the streets make it dangerous to the unwary. Several times, outcroppings of stone have leaped toward my feet with malicious intent. I pass with a seeming familiarity, but in truth I move only following a distant and uncertain memory down lanes, streets and alleys that I may have known.

Ahead the street narrows between two buildings, and while I am wary of the ground-floor windows on either side that are open but criss-crossed with bars, I feel this is my path. As I near the spot, a pale, emaciated arm sneaks out the right hand window and spears an insect on a thin blade. In a glance toward the other window I see a face pock-marked from the plague, unable to die in this place. I think the knife-wielding Scylla is preferable to that deadly Charybdis. I move forward... (to be continued)