A flash of red. A siren. A scream.

Blaine walks up to the dock, already crowded with people, dressed in what his mom would have called their Sunday clothes – suits and dresses and hats, the women with white gloves. A sort of strange way to be attired at the beach, but then again, so is he – dressed in his favorite mustard colored suit - so he’s really in no position to criticize. They’re all waiting for something. He’s waiting for it, too, even if, for the moment, he’s confused as to what it actually is. But the people on the dock are staring in the same general direction, so he looks that way, off the end of the short dock and over the water.

A small boat, only about the size of a row boat in length but much narrower, cuts swiftly across the water, the man standing at the bow pushing it along with a long, flat paddle. Blaine can’t see the man’s face from this distance, but he’s dressed to impress, too, in a designer blazer and slacks. That ensemble, Blaine recognizes. It’s turquoise and textured, and in a weird way, it matches Blaine’s own – not in color or style, but in sentiment. Blaine shakes his head.

That doesn’t make any sense.

These people on the shore, waiting to go across (a little more anxious now that the boat has actually appeared), Blaine can understand their state of dress. His mother used to dress him and his brother up whenever they went out on day trips. She said that if you’re going someplace special, you should dress special. Obviously, these people feel the same. But the man in the boat – who would wear a Tom Ford blazer to row a boat? That just seems … unusual, though nothing he can see is normal. It hasn’t been from the moment he got there.

And why is he here again, on the shore of what looks like a tremendous lake, or a river, with no clear view of the opposite side? And when did he get here? Last thing he remembers, he was in a car driving across the Queensboro Bridge, on his way to …

A flash of red. A siren. A scream.

It takes almost no time for the boat to go from halfway across the lake to a foot away from the dock. Did Blaine blink? He’s not quite sure. But now that he can see the man in the boat better, he’s glad he came all this way from … wherever. Bushwick, he supposes. Or Ohio?

Whatever the distance, it was worth it because Blaine has never seen such a man.

Wait. No. He has. Back when he was in high school. God. A beautiful man, with exceptional style and grace and elegance. He moved like a dancer, spoke like a prince, and his eyes – they were so blue, they were electric. They filled Blaine with lightning every time he looked into them. They burned him with their fire, branded him with the man’s name across his heart.

But then … why can’t he remember it?

The boat pulls up to the dock and stops – just stops. It doesn’t bob, it doesn’t sway. It simply sits on the water. Blaine hasn’t been on a lot of boats in his life, not small ones like this, but he’s sure that boats don’t do that, don’t sit like parked cars waiting to be loaded.

“Okay,” the man in the Tom Ford blazer calls to the men and women on the dock. “Who’s next?”

The crowd of people clamor to the end of the dock, frantic to get aboard, but Blaine decides to hang back and wait his turn. They’ve been here longer than he has. They start sort of a panic, shoving and pushing, talking over each other, fighting with one another for a seat on board.

“You’ve got to take me!” one lady says, waving an arm to get the boatman’s attention. She’s been crying since the boatman arrived, black streaks of mascara staining an otherwise perfectly made-up face. “I’ve been here forever!”

The boatman laughs. It appalls and fascinates Blaine. The man’s laughter at the stress of this woman is cruel, but the sound is remarkable. He can’t think of any way to describe it other than it sounds like music. A familiar song - a comforting one.

“Forever?” he says. “Maybe to you. But believe me, not nearly long enough.”

“Take me! Take me!” an elderly man says. “I’ve been here much longer than her! Longer than anyone here!”

“Yes,” the boatman says, speaking to the man, who looks older than God himself, with a startling lack of compassion, “but alas, you have nothing for me.”

“Here!” another man says, lifting up a child. “Take my daughter! Please! She doesn’t deserve to waste away here because of me.”

“No, papa!” the little girl screams. “No! I don’t want to go across without you!”

The boatman shakes his head, not acknowledging the man’s request. He looks saddened by it, but it also seems to exhaust him to say no to these people. It shows, despite the sarcasm he uses to hide it. The man peers through the bodies, in some cases physically moving people aside with the flat of his oar so he can see past them, and spots Blaine, patiently waiting at the back. Blaine is a part of the crowd here, obviously waiting for a ride, but he’s not yelling, he’s not pushing. The boatman catches Blaine’s eye and smiles. It’s an honest smile on a not-entirely-honest face.

“You,” the boatman calls, raising an arm and pointing to Blaine. Blaine looks left and right at the people around him hopping up and down, pleading for a ride. He points to himself and mouths a questioning me? The boatman chuckles. “Yes, you, handsome. Come up front.”

The mob becomes outraged, their screams rising to a fever pitch, the shoving more violent until a few people fall off the dock and into the water. Blaine peeks over the edge, waiting to see them bob up and climb out, but it’s like they’ve disappeared beneath the surface, dropping out of existence, not a hair of them left. Hands from the crowd reach out to him, grabbing for him, begging him to take them with him, and Blaine begins to fear he’ll end up in the water as well. There’s something not right about the water. Blaine sees it shimmer and shift, a current causing shallow waves to ebb back and forth, but the boat, sitting on it, doesn’t move.

“Enough!” the boatman yells, slamming the end of the oar into the dock, the cracking noise it makes echoing around them for miles. “If you don’t let him by, not a single one of you will be seeing the inside of this boat until the next century! Do you understand?”

It sounds to Blaine like an empty threat, a dramatic overreaction, but it seems to work with astounding success. The mob quiets down. They start to back away, heads bowed, retreating on to the shore, not even daring to look at Blaine as he passes, as if he now possesses some kind of power here.

“Uh … thanks,” Blaine says when he finally reaches the boat.

“Not a problem,” the boatman says, and Blaine realizes he knows that voice. He has a name for it, one that floats through every heart beat and rings in his ears when he looks at this man.

“Kur … Kurt?” Blaine asks, feeling foolish but relieved. He’s been so lonely waiting on the dock for this boat to come. How long as he been there? An hour? A day? He doesn’t know. The sun hasn’t moved, and as far as he knows, he doesn’t have his phone, and his watch has stopped. He looks down at it to check, pulling up his sleeve.

No. His watch hasn’t stopped. The face is shattered.

A flash of red. A siren. A scream.

He looks up at the boatman to ask him the time, but it’s not him. It’s not even a man. It’s a pale-white specter in a black hood. A skeleton with hollow, empty eyes.

“Kurt?” the man says in a raspy, inhuman voice. “Hmm. I can be Kurt for a little while.”

Blaine wants to scream to match the scream echoing in his head. But he blinks and he’s back, stepping into the boat as if he was stepping in it from the beginning.

“This is a lovely boat,” Blaine says, the moment past, the urge to scream gone, as if it had never been. “I don’t think I’ve ever ridden in a gondola before.”

The boatman glances down the length of his boat with a fond smile, blue eyes looking over the scrolled wood and the intricate carvings. He nods, pushing off the empty dock.

“I guess it does look like a gondola, doesn’t it?” he says with a peculiar grin. “I don’t think anyone has ever described it that way before.” The man chuckles, giving the dock one last, hard push with the oar, setting the boat floating across the water. He turns back to Blaine and raises a brow. “So, do you have a coin for me?”

“Uh, yes,” Blaine says. “Yes, I do.” He’s confident he has what the boatman wants, but he’s confused by his request. He didn’t think anyone spoke like that anymore. A coin? He must mean a ticket. Did Blaine buy one? He doesn’t remember buying one. Well, maybe a twenty will cover it. It doesn’t look like they’re traveling that far. A ticket to ride the Cross Sound Ferry costs about fifteen bucks, and that has to be farther than this.

Blaine doesn’t know. Peeking past the boatman, he still can’t see the other side.

Blaine pats down his pockets, checking inside his jacket, even smoothing down his shirt, which has no pockets at all. “I … I can’t find my wallet. I had it a second ago. I know I did. I take it with me everywhere.”

Blaine starts to get anxious. Will the boatman turn the boat around and take him back? Or will he shove him into the water with his oar? After what he’d seen at the dock, Blaine wouldn’t put it past him. The water frightens Blaine more than anything, more than not finding his phone, more than his watch being broken.

More than the screaming in his head.

“That’s okay,” the boatman says, taking an easy step over to him – impressive in a moving boat. “Do you want to see a magic trick?”

Blaine stops searching his body and stares, terrified that this is the moment when the man throws him overboard.

“Um … okay,” Blaine says anyway when he should be pleading for his life. “Sure. Why not?”

The boatman shows Blaine both of his hands, front and back, with nothing in them. He inches closer, putting his right hand up to Blaine’s face, which makes Blaine want to lean back to get away. The man’s hand closes into a fist in front of Blaine’s mouth. He looks in Blaine’s eyes and counts. “One … two … three.” He pulls his fist away and opens it. He holds his hand out flat and there, sitting in his palm, is a gold coin.

Blaine gawks at it, amazed. “How … how did you do that?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” the man says with a wink, twiddling the coin back and forth between his fingers. “But the truth is, I couldn’t have found it if you didn’t have it with you.” The man twiddles the coin from one end of his hand to the pinkie, back to his thumb, and then the coin disappears. He nonchalantly returns to his rowing and doesn’t say anything more about it. “So, is this your first time on our shores?”

“As far as I know,” Blaine replies. “Do people often return?” Something about the boatman’s question bothers him. This seems like a serene place, a haven, but there’s something ominous about it, and Blaine feels like people don’t often come back here when they leave. Or that they shouldn’t.

“Oh, yeah,” the boatman says, digging his oar deep into the water to speed them along. “Some people come back loads of times. Some people never come back.”

Blaine nods. “It sure is a beautiful day to be out on the water.”

“You think so?” the boatman asks. It sounds like the kind of thoughtless filler question people normally ask when making small talk, but the man turns and looks at Blaine, waiting for an answer.

“Yes, of course,” Blaine replies, unnerved. “I mean, the sun is shining, the birds are out, and the people are …” Blaine peeks past Kurt to look, finally getting a view of the shore across the way. It appears about as packed as the shore he came from. He squints at the beach, at the people laughing and running and playing in the sand. The sky above them is blue, and there isn’t a cloud that he can see. Except, every once in a while, he thinks he sees … no, it has to be a mistake. It’s not nighttime, it’s not raining. It’s a calm summer day.

A flash of red. A siren. A scream.

Someone on the shore looks his way and points, their finger skeletal, their face bloody, their lower jaw missing. But if there’s a period of time equal to 1/1000th of a second, then that’s all it lasts before the person is healthy and whole, racing through the sand, laughing and playing again.

“You were saying,” the man says, seated on the bench in front of him, his oar resting across his lap and the boat moving entirely on its own.

“I …” Blaine shakes his head. Something’s not right. No – nothing’s right. Not a single thing. Where is he? Why is he on this lake? He was driving into the city. That’s where he was before this. He was going into the city to see …

“Kurt?” Blaine says.

The man leans in closer, his blue eyes examining Blaine’s face, and Blaine examines his back, especially his eyes. There are moments, split seconds, when Blaine thinks they’re something else – blank, gaping holes carved into skin like white stone. But they’re just eyes – human eyes, brilliantly blue. “Are you … Kurt?”

Kurt. Yes, Kurt. Blaine was going in to the city to see Kurt. Kurt had called Blaine after six months of not seeing one another, not speaking. Kurt was marrying someone else. Blaine had never met the man, but Kurt had spoken about him – frequently. His name was Alan something? Adam, maybe? Blaine had always referred to him as that New York guy. And as much as it hurt Blaine to do it, he stepped aside, broke all ties. He didn’t want Kurt to be confused by his feelings, or feel guilty for breaking up with him. It was Blaine’s fault after all. He had cheated. He was in the wrong. He tried and tried, but he couldn’t win Kurt back, and Blaine finally let go. He thought Kurt was finally happy, and knowing that made Blaine happy. But, as it turned out, Kurt wasn’t happy. He was miserable, and Blaine never knew because he stopped being around.

He wasn’t there to help when things went sour.

But out of the blue, Kurt called, and Blaine was so over the moon about seeing him, he couldn’t wait until the next day. He borrowed a friend’s car, but it was a stick, and Blaine only drives manual. It was the middle of the night, and it started raining. He was crossing the bridge into the city when …

“I am Kurt,” the man says solemnly, “but only for a little while longer.”

“What?” Blaine asks, snapping out of his memory before the flash of red. “Why?”

“Try to remember why,” the man says, standing with his oar and going back to rowing the boat.

Blaine thinks on it, thinks long and hard, but something about the smooth movement of the boat on the water, and the sunlight reflecting back up into his eyes, is slowly zapping his memory.

Something flashed red.

A light.

The brake lights from the cars in front of him.

There was a siren.

An emergency vehicle had already stopped to help the victims of a previous accident. Other cars, speeding in the rain, skidded out trying to avoid it, crashing one after another, forming a mass, pushing it closer and closer to the edge.

A scream.

No, several screams all at once. It just sounded like one scream when the huddle of cars turned into a pile, more cars hitting it and flying over, breaking through the lines and falling off the bridge.

Off the bridge and into the water.

“Well, here you go,” the boatman says, pulling to a shore with no dock. The boat stops, seemingly on its own, and stays right where it is without listing or bobbing. Blaine looks from the shore, to the boat, to the man with the oar.

“Thank you,” Blaine says. “For the ride, I mean.”

“You got what you paid for.”

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

Blaine looks at the man’s face. His face – it looks so much like Kurt’s, it’s unsettling. But it’s not Kurt. Blaine knows it’s not Kurt. He can feel it, like an itch he can’t reach. Blaine steps off the boat, not paying attention to his footing, and trips. He reaches out to break his fall and grabs hold of the stern of the boat, his gaze dropping down to the water.

But it’s not completely water anymore.

“Jesus Christ!” he gasps.

Pale hands hold the boat steady, each pair greying, some waterlogged, others desiccated, in different states of decay - all but one pair, holding on tight to the rim of the boat, dripping blood into the murky water. There is something familiar about those hands - the plain silver band on the left index finger, the scar on the right wrist, the watch with the shattered face. Blaine crouches down to take a closer look. Then he holds his hands up in front of his face and compares.

“Those … those are my hands!” Blaine gasps, too afraid to get a better look. “And I …” Blaine’s eyes sweep the beach. It’s not a beach any longer, but an endless expanse of brownish-red rock. The people laughing and running and playing aren’t there anymore. They’ve been replaced by a crowd of zombie-looking creatures milling about, aimless, depressed, heads bowed, spines curved. The blue sky has gone dark - the water, a dismal reflection of it.

“Am I … am I dead?”

Blaine doesn’t want to look at the man with Kurt’s face when he asks. Kurt is all Blaine has left to hold on to. He doesn’t want that to change. If he looks up and Kurt is gone, even if it wasn’t Kurt to begin with, his mind might split in two. But he knows he has to look up. He can’t stay on the boat any longer.

He’s beginning to attract attention.

When he finally looks up at the boatman – when he looks up at Kurt - he sees not the man in the designer blazer with the electric blue eyes, but a horrible, hole-eyed creature, without an inch of skin on his face, his body and arms covered by a long, black robe, singed in places, greying and ashen like everything else around them.

“Yes,” the specter says in Kurt’s voice before that is lost completely. “Yes, you are.”

Blaine backs off the boat, on to the rock. It’s hard beneath his shoes, digging into his feet through the soles.

“Then … then why the illusion?” he asks, still walking backward. “Was that you doing that? To be cruel? Like you were to those other people on the shore?”

“No,” the specter says. “That was you. Your brain’s way of trying to protect you. But it can’t deny where you are anymore. Your brain is finally catching up with you. You’re seeing things the way they are.”

Blaine nods, though he doesn’t know why. He still doesn’t understand.

“So, am I … in hell?” Blaine gulps hard.

“No,” the boatman says. “You’re not. But you’re not in heaven, either. You’re just kind of … in between.”

Blaine keeps nodding, hoping that if he does, it will be easier to accept, but it’s not. Everything he knew, everything he was led to believe is a lie. It meant nothing – not if he ended up here in this depressing place alone. Aren’t deceased members of his family supposed to meet him after he dies? Isn’t there supposed to be a bright, comforting light that ushers him to the next stop on his journey?

Is he doomed to remain in this place forever?

Blaine had always been scared of dying, scared of disappearing, blinking out of existence forever, but he might prefer that to this.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Blaine doesn’t know what he expects as an answer. He’s not even sure what he’s asking. Can he return to earth? No. He’s dead. He died in his car beneath about thirty other cars at the bottom of the ocean. Is there anywhere else he can go but here? Not likely, if this is where the boatman took him. But the boatman said other people travel back and forth. There has to be something for him other than this. This can’t be the end.

The boatman tilts his head beneath his hood, watching Blaine curiously. He puts down his oar and steps off the boat, his feet clack-clack-clacking on the rocky shore until he’s within a foot of Blaine, and everything changes again. They’re not on the rocky shore, but in Central Park, in the fall, and it’s midday. Blaine can tell by the quality of light, and the shadows stretching across the grass. He’s looking at Kurt again, a red wool scarf that his stepmother made him for Christmas wrapped around his neck, and dressed in that black peacoat he always favored.

“Keep this,” the boatman says quickly. He pulls the gold coin from his pocket and puts it back in Blaine’s mouth. Blaine opens his mouth to object, but the boatman is swift. The second the cold metal touches his tongue, it disappears. Then the boatman kisses him. It’s not a long kiss, and it’s not warm. It’s not like Kurt at all, but it’s all Blaine will get for now. “Keep it hidden,” the boatman says, running a thumb along Blaine’s lips, sealing them shut. “You might decide that you have a need to come across my river again sometime.”

As soon as the boatman turns, the illusion of Central Park, of fall, and of Kurt melt away, and Blaine is standing on the shore, the red rock digging in to his feet, as the boat drifts away across the water.