“Cerberus needs to see you in his office.”

Bob looked at the messenger from admin standing in the doorway of his cubicle, looking a little smug for Bob’s comfort. He heaved his way out of the uncomfortable work chair. No lumbar support at all. He knew it was supposed to be ergonomic, but when he brought it up with Cerberus, his boss always blamed the budget. After all this time there was still no money to provide basic services to the workers? Granted, most of his time wasn’t spent in the office, but now that admin was requiring more documentation for their metrics and their performance objectives and their deliverables, Bob was stuck in that damn cubicle more and more and more. Soon his time on the ferry would be gone completely and then what would happen to their precious metrics?

He plodded towards the elevator. Management on the top floor. Workers on the bottom. The way of the world, since time began. He pushed the button, when he heard Sylvia called his name.

“Hey, Bob! Did you hear about Sisyphus?”

Bob hadn’t heard. He noticed the absence, everyone did, since that whole rock-pushing business was annoying. So what if he could roll rocks uphill and had glutes of a god? He didn’t have to bring it up all the time.

“No, what happened to him?”
           
“Apparently, rock-pushing was automated, so he’s been transferred. Now he’s working in the laundry on a cruise ship now.”

The elevator door dinged and slid open. Bob waved to Sylvia and pondered the never-ending task of laundry as he was elevated.

Cerberus guarded the gates to HQ. He worked out of a large office with a large windowed conference room and smaller meeting room attached. It looked, appropriately enough, like a wire kennel you’d see at a pet store, but instead of puppies, there was one enormous three-headed beast who made coming into the office unbearable. One head would complain about Bob’s overtime request while another was barking at him for his attitude and the third was drooling over a bowl of Styx-Mix kibble which made the whole office smell like microwaved fish.

It seemed like once a week that Cerberus hauled Bob into his kennel to circle back and drill down on moving the needle because they crunched the numbers and wanted to pivot. And for what? Bob had been working at PsychoPomps forever. He knew his job. Just because one of Cerberus’ heads got an MBA doesn’t mean it knows how to manage Charons. Cerberus had never gotten his paws wet ferrying the dead across the river. He just stood around and growled at the people doing the real work. How Bob resented it when management thought they knew everything.

“Take a seat.”

Bob knew the drill. He’d taken that seat many times before and he didn’t even look before he sat down in the hard chair which was already occupied.

“Hey!” squeaked an indignant voice and Bob sprang up and looked behind him at the small winged god perched in what was Bob’s normal seat.

“I’m so sorry!” He really was. How embarrassing.

Cerberus intervened as the winged god adjusted his clothes and his dignity. “Bob, this is Ponos, your union rep.”

Ponos stood on the chair and reached his hand up to Bob. “Hi Bob, I’m Ponos, steward for the local chapter of the Association of Fluvial Laborers-Consortium of Interworldly Operators, AFL-CIO, for short.”

Bob ignored the hand and faced his boss. “You called my union rep?”

“Well, yes, and here is Eunomia from HR. Are we ready now?” Eunomia, seated to the right of the desk, and Ponos nodded while Bob looked around in confusion, unsure why he was about to be disciplined. Was this because he had been playing “King of the Road” at full volume? He thought it was aspirational. Or maybe because he was rude to that dick who had harassed a fellow passenger. Seriously, on the way to the Underworld and still trying to get with the ladies? Ugh. He was not sorry for his reaction.

But it wasn’t the music or the rudeness.

“Bob,” Cerberus turned his serious face towards the group, while the other two heads looked on attentively. “It has come to our attention that one of your passengers last week was…well, let’s say there was an administrative error.”

Ponos squeaked up, “You don’t have to say anything.”

Bob, who had found another place to sit ignored the union rep. “Do you mean the man who wasn’t dead? Yeah, that was an error. Do you remember that I told you about it on Friday when I got the manifest? And you said, ‘We don’t pay you to think.’ So I didn’t think, just brought him across the water and delivered him safely to Hades.”

Eunomia and two of Cerberus’ heads squirmed uncomfortably which was one head too few for Bob’s liking. “We must remember things differently,” admonished Head Number Three. “Eunomia, do you have a written record of this conversation?”

“I do not.”

Bob stopped himself from rolling his eyes at her. HR was a joke. So was the union. Where was this winged guy when he was reprimanded by drinking scotch on the boat? It’s not like he was going to kill anybody by drunk boating. Honestly, if the boat sank, the souls could float towards Hades on their own. It had happened before.

“Eunomia, do you have a written record regarding Bob’s prior work incidents?”

“Um, yes,” she rummaged through the files on her lap, “they are quite extensive. What in particular do you need me to look up?”

Ponos cut in, “None of Bob’s prior incidents at work are relevant to the matter at hand, which is that there is a live man in Hades and we heard you admit he is there due to an administrative error. Your administrative error. Not Bob’s.”

“Yes, well—”

“And there is no reason to discipline an employee who did not make this error.”

“But he—”

“And as Bob states, no where in his job description is it written that he was hired to think.”

“But—” Eunomia tried repeatedly, but she wasn’t able to get a word in. Cerberus, on the other hand, was.

“BE QUIET!” All three of the heads roared in unison. And in the aftermath of the that roar, the quiet was very loud.

“Where we are now,” Cerberus continued, “is for Eunomia to explain.”

She nodded her head curtly and spoke. “Yes, our primary focus is to divert attention away from the error and place it squarely on the shoulder of the responsible party whose name is Miguel. In this way, we are freed from the task of retrieving him should Hades prove to be uncooperative, and he almost always is.”

“Wait, you want to blame the victim?” Ponos and Bob exchanged shocked expressions. They were expecting admin to fuck this up, but this was way beyond normal SNAFU.

“It’s either that or blame Bob,” Eunomia offered calmly. Damn. HR is evil.

Ponos recovered first. “Certainly Bob is not at fault here. We can all agree on that. We need some more information to determine a plan of action. How exactly did Miguel end up on this boat?”

At this, Cerberus’ far left head looked downcast, as if it were embarrassed. His middle face, however, looked directly at Ponos and explained, using the most corporate lingo he could.

“In our line of work, logistical overruns are to be expected when there is an influx of material, it happens on occasion that an administrative error occurs. Certainly there were reasons that he was deported without due process. There is no guarantee for due process anyway.”

“An error. You’re sticking with that? And no due process? That’s it? A mistake was made, by someone unnamed, but also, no mistakes were made because you didn’t owe him due process? That’s your defense?”

The HR representative squirmed a little which delighted Bob more than he’d admit out loud. Cerberus didn’t even blink.

“What’s more, he was probably mostly dead and it was only a bit premature.”

Bob spoke, “He seemed pretty lively on the boat. We chatted about things and he said he had planned on skydiving soon, though he admitted to also liking boat trips. He was very polite.”

Eunomia was quick to respond, “No, not polite. Miguel has tattoos and is a known gang member.”

“Yeah, he showed me the tattoo of his daughter’s name and her footprints when she was born. It was adorable. I don’t really understand this modern trend of tattoos, but who am I to judge? I’m only the ferry driver not, you know, the judge or executioner. That’s not my department.”

Ponos perked up, “Yeah, whose department screwed up here? It isn’t the ferry driver’s job to screen people. That’s the responsibility of the judiciary.”

Eunomia looked very uncomfortable at this, “Well, somehow that step was missed, wasn’t it?”

Cerberus brought them back to their current situation. “A step was missed. Now we have a situation. And I’m not going to lose my job over this.” Two of his heads shook slowly from side to side for emphasis. “And I’m not going to go fight Hades for his return. That’s not going to happen. If he got back here, we’d just have to kill him and return him and that is much more paperwork than I want to do. So we have to leave him there.”

“And you want me to take the fall?”

“Correct. Either you or Miguel. Take your pick. If it’s you, we have some options for what comes next.”

Ponos leaned over to Bob, “let’s go caucus in the hallway.” They stood and left the room. Cerberus and Euonomia followed them with their many eyes.

“You’ve been a PsychoPomp for a very long time, Bob. How do you like your job?”

“It’s ok. It’s pretty easy.”

“What would you do if you didn’t work here?”

“You mean retire?” Bob pondered the idea for a while. After three thousand years of work, it could be time to try something new.

“No, I mean reassignment. I think we could get a pretty good transfer to a different position, though it might not be through official channels.”

Together they returned to the conference room where the boss and HR sat waiting.

“What can you do for me?” Bob asked.

It wasn’t yet lunchtime when Bob returned to his cubicle. He was no longer a ferryman. He was now going to the purser on a cruise line, whatever that meant. He packed up his belongings in a small box and waved to Sylvia on his way out of the building, whistling “King of the Road” and thinking about the open sea.

Eileen Nittler

Eileen Nittler lives in Montana where she plays with words, rocks and her rambunctious puppy. She has been previously published in Oregon Humanities, The Write Launch, 3 Elements, and redrosethorns.