The Hookwife (cw: violence, forced marriage)
Had this dream in the wee hours of this morning, while suffering from the stomach flu. It seemed to be a myth that I was watching in the third person.
In the myth, the afterlife exists across a vast ocean that the dead must cross with the help of a skeletal boatman—basically Charon. Those who die under normal circumstances go to him of their own accord, but those who were condemned to death for their crimes while alive must first be guarded by a separate figure—an old wretch who lives in a shack on the beach. He would guard them for a night at his shack and then deliver them to the boatman himself.
One day, a group of such condemned people are brought to the wretch, and one of them is a beautiful woman. The wretch is lonely in his little shack on the beach, so he decides that he's not going to give this woman to the boatman, even though he should. Instead, he puts an enchanted fish hook through her lower lip that prevents her from leaving the shack and forces her to act as his wife. The next morning, he brings the others to the unsuspecting boatman, but not her.
For some time, she is forced to live as his wife in this way. but, as she is technically dead, her body eventually begins to rot away. After a long time, only her head remains. The wretch, disgusted and fearful that his crime will be discovered, mounts her head on the wall and covers it under a blanket so it can't be seen.
Eventually, a new group of condemned is brought to the shack. One of them, a young man, sees the blanket covering something. He wants to escape the wretch and thinks it might be a weapon, so when the wretch's attention is elsewhere, he sneaks towards the wall and tears the blanket off. Once he does, he is shocked to see a woman's rotting head with the fish hook through her lip.
Now that she can see, the Hookwife regains power as some kind of revenant, regrowing a sort of spiritual body. With this, she attacks the wretch and tears him to pieces, before throwing said pieces into the ocean between life and death, so that he can never be fully alive nor fully dead.
And now, I suppose, according to the myth, the Hookwife forever haunts that beach on the edge of life.
Pretty cool. I already have weird dreams, but being sick makes them even weirder.