Art:AADM/Second round/Dead in the Water
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The Short
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Dammit, the cabin boy was right. | 
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Dead in the Water (Bulwer-Lyttony) | ||
The Entry
Dammit, the cabin boy was right. The youngster’s words buzzed around my skull like a nest of angry hornets as I paced up and down the beach, treading and re-treading my footprints deeper into the sand. Perhaps I should have been more lenient. How the boy screamed as the crew set about him with their hooks and bludgeons at my behest. I allowed myself a momentary smirk at this cheering thought before the cloud of my current circumstance descended once more upon my tortured brain.
How long I trod I do not recall. Suffice to say that the soles of my boots had worn completely through as I paced out my rage and frustration, mentally revisiting the tortures upon the boy again and again. I hate to be wrong, and worse yet… to be proven wrong by a mere sapling, a soft-cheeked babe, a cabin boy! Bah!
I stopped my pacing as sudden clarity infused my mind. What point in re-treading old ground? Sunk they are the lot of them, and none to know of my shame. The sole survivor. This thought was a catalyst to my greater emotions, before long my pirate’s lusts and pride were returned in full and I regained my wits enough to consider my current predicament. This is when the strangeness of my surroundings struck me for the first time. The sand felt coarse and peculiar beneath my feet. In my rage I failed to notice that my soles were being cut to ribbons by jagged bones jutting savagely from the strange and horrible white sands. The bones had long been picked clean by carrion feeding birds of which, thankfully there was no longer a trace. I stooped to examine the gruesome shoreline more closely and plucked out a sizeable bone form the detritus. There was no doubting that the bones were human now, I was holding the bigger half of a jaw bone that still clutched desperately to a golden tooth. The metal gleamed dully in the dim half-light thrown off by a weak sun that seemed strangled by wisps of red cloud.
Looking further in-land I could see that the bone gave way to hard rock interrupted here and there by sprouts and tufts of coarse and dead looking weeds. Clutching my prize to my chest I stumbled toward the rocks, occasionally cursing when particularly sharp shards pierced what was left of my boot soles. I found a large rock on which to sit and withdrew my knife from my belt. Setting the jaw bone on my lap I dug the point of the blade between the yellowed bone and the soft metal and began to slowly prize it free. After a brief struggle the tooth popped clear of the bone and bounced and skittered across the rock and into a pile of white sand.
“Blast!” I exclaimed, leaping to my feet and then throwing myself to my hands and knees to search for my small treasure. As I crouched scrabbling in the grim sands a soft, dry, flapping sound behind me caused me to stop my frenzied search abruptly. The sound intensified briefly and then stopped altogether followed by a clicking and creaking as of dry joints popping back into hollow sockets. My ears pricked up and my flesh crawled, I knew I was being observed, but by what or whom I did not dare to discover. My hand flew back to my knife and wrestled it free from my belt.
“Rawk! Poor cabin boy, rawwwrrrkkk!” The words grated on my ears like someone dragging chalk across slate. The voice was all too familiar yet at the same time oddly different from the last time I had heard it aboard my ship the Velvet Dark.
“Impossible,” I muttered. I know what I expected to see as I turned to face my old familiar but any visual similarity to the ships parrot ‘Pieces’ and the freakish abomination that perched before me had long since disintegrated. The beak and claws were as I remembered, a small chip in his beak toward his left nostril confirmed to me that this was Pieces as assuredly as I know the handle of my blade by feel. These features apart, Pieces had undergone a dramatic and gruesome transformation; gone was the flesh, sloughed from the bone like a mildewed corpse. Where once his plumage had been gaudy and plentiful, a smattering of tattered feathers clung defiantly to the bare bones along the length of his wings and exposed ribcage. The detail that disturbed me the most by far was his eyes, or should I say lack of them. Black clouds that swirled in each socket, like twin water spouts on black seas that regarded me with evil intent and a dark intelligence.
There I stood regarding my old pet with a mixture of fear and fascination,
“Pieces?” I enquired with disbelief as I gingerly stepped towards him, “is that… can it really be you?”
“Pieces, rawwwwrkk, Pieces, the cabin boy’s in Pieces, rarwwwkk.” The bird’s breath was foul, even to my hardened nostrils.
“Dumb bird what the hell has happened to you?” I swung my fist at him as if to shoo him away but the bird remained motionless, his gaze unwavering.
“Shoo! Go on with ye.” Nothing. I showed him the blade of my knife.
“This what ye want bird brain?” The bird glanced at the knife then returned his gaze to me. He began to unfurl his skeletal wings from his side and as he did he began to laugh, not the laughter that he had learned aboard my ship by mere mimicry but real, guttural, malignant guffaws. In a second he was airborne and in the next was upon me clawing and scratching with his beak and all the while his laughter rang in my ears. The assault was short lived however, the bird had been trying to find purchase upon my shoulder and before long had managed that task with ease. I tried to swat him from his perch and regretted it instantly; the bird clenched his claws and sank his talons into the muscles around my clavicle, the nerves there jangled and the pain brought me to my knees. Whatever otherworldly strength this bird now possessed was beyond my own strength to fight, that was certain, and I knew then that I was under his control like some life-sized marionette to a crazed and bizarre puppet master. The laughter continued for a while as I regained my feet and then it stopped abruptly. I felt Pieces’ beak at my ear and listened intently as he began to whisper,
“How be yer feet Captain Brake? Do they still bleed? Let’s see shall we? Remove what remains of ye boots.”
“But… no…”
The pain’s return was immediate,
“DO IT!”
I fell to the floor and tore the tattered leather from my ankles. The job done the bird relaxed it’s hold on my shoulder a little, but held tight enough to assure me of its continued presence and as a threat against future rebellion.
“Let’s go for a little seaside stroll shall we ‘Captain’?” The bird spat the word out like it was rotten carrion stuck in his craw and from the reek of his breath it would not be hard to envisage. “Get moving.”
The gold tooth lay next to my toe but all thoughts of greed had long since evaporated. I reluctantly put one foot in front of the other aiming my footfalls for the places where the bone had been eroded to fine white sand. This approach was almost successful but from time to time the sand served only to hide sharp fragments that ripped into the soles of my tortured feet.
“Pick up the pace Brake before I make ye walk on yer hands. Now that would be fun. Rawwwwrrrkk!”
I quickened my step, which if anything made the journey easier as my full weight never bore fully on any of the hidden bone daggers.
“Stop here!” The bird crowed. “Tell me what ye see with those keen eyes of yours Captain.”
I scanned my immediate surroundings and at first noticed nothing especially remarkable. White sand, the occasional jutting jagged edge of a limb, the wide vacant glare of an eyeless socket. I raised my line of sight to scan the horizon, an eerily flat sea turned crimson by the baleful red of a setting sun.
“I did not mean for ye to be admiring the sunset ye fool, as pretty as it may be, look to the sands again.”
I dropped my eyes to my feet and turned in small circles scanning the beach. Blood was being soaked up into the white beneath where I stood, turning the floor wet and pink. As I span once more I spotted something with the corner of my eye and turned to face it.
“Yes! Hahaha, what could that be Captain?”
I stepped to the object that protruded from the sand and bent to pull it free. It was a curve of dull metal, cold and hard to the touch and pointed at its tip. I gripped it and pulled as the grim realisation hit me that I knew what the object was and not only what it was, but who it belonged to. It was a hook, notched and scratched along its length from years of defending against sword strokes. The tip had been sharpened over and over many times and had been responsible for popping many an eyeball like a ripe grape. As I pulled all the more the hook came free bringing a length of bony wrist and fractured forearm with it. The birds mocking laughter started anew as I mouthed the name of the fine pirate this hook had once belonged to.
“Yes, hahaha, Bosun Moon, your very own Warrant Officer. Look what remains of him now, hahah, why look? You’re holding it hahahaha!”
“No, no! You bedevilled bird what have you done? What have you done to him?
“Oh, oh that is good, that is so very good. Hah! What have I done? This is not my doing you melon headed fool. Oh no, perhaps it would be better to direct that question to yourself.”
“What? What do you mean? How am I responsible?”
“Ye cannot fool me Captain so do not dare try. I was aboard the Velvet as she went under remember. I know all about your foolish pride, and your inability to accept the advice of a “mere” cabin boy.”
There I stood transfixed upon the hook. The grotesque rotting bird perched upon my shoulder cackling to itself with glee.
“Sit Captain, sit while I tell you a story. Let me tell ye of the final moments aboard the Velvet before she was welcomed into the lovers embrace of the Lady of the Sea.”
I fell roughly to the sand; clutching Moon’s hook, and sat motionless as the bird began its tale.
“The boat was tossed on the waves like a child’s toy in a bath tub as the storm raged all around. Lightning struck the mast and toppled the crow’s nest smashing it through the upper deck. Pieces was lucky to have survived as the lookout was his roost and he hid there terrified and trembling, hoping to wait out the storm. He swooped among the scrabbling pirates desperate for a shoulder on which to perch and soon enough he found one albeit a low one. It’s owner was in hurried conversation with Bosun Moon, telling him of a way in which the storm may be safely avoided by seeking shelter in the lee of some jutting rocks and laying anchor there before they met with the jagged pillars of stone in a more unfriendly fashion. The Bosun nodded his agreement and rushed to pass on the message to the Captain… that being you, you numbskull. And what did you do? Well we both know what you did. You ordered the boy flogged and whipped for his insolence and then got the damned ship sunk. Not half an hour later, all the time needed to sail for cover and lay anchor, the ship was being torn apart by the cruel sea and lashing gale. The mizzenmast fell and knocked you unconscious so that would be where your part of the story ends, not so for the cabin boy, oh no. In the knowledge of the death that awaited them beneath the waves the crew searched for a vessel in which to pour their hatred. Convinced that the boy was responsible for the ships plight by the punishment meted out to him by their Captain they beat the boy to within an inch of his life. As the Velvet Dark was torn asunder the air was filled with the boy’s screams.”
The bird hopped from my shoulder and found purchase on my raised knee. He fixed my directly in the eye before continuing.
“Dawn came quietly, the sun’s rays crept across the ocean in silence and in stark contrast to the noise and fury of the night before. Occasionally the light would highlight shapes in the water, splintered wood and battered casks, bodies tangled in rope and sailcloth. The cabin boy lay strewn across the remains of the quarterdeck as it was carried by the tide. His bloodied and bruised body was a wreck in itself. Countless bones had been broken and his face was a puffy, swollen mess. Pieces the parrot was circling above the makeshift raft in a gradual descent until he gently alighted by the boy’s head. The boy spoke to him for a long while, each ragged breath that the boy breathed contained orders and instructions, fuelled by hatred the words sank into the bird’s tiny brain and, like a seed sprouts shoots when watered and sunned, the suggestions that the boy planted into the bird’s mind took hold and grew. For two days the boy gave the bird his instructions until finally his strength gave out, his desires fully imparted the bird carried out his first order and began to feast upon the cabin boy’s remains. For weeks and then months the bird lived on the remains of the crew, the salt of the ocean preserving the flesh of the dead so that it remained digestible. The one body that Pieces did not touch was yours Captain. Oh yes, I had been given strict orders about what to do with you. I say “I” because I had begun to become as you see me now. That part of my brain that was once Pieces the parrot had been usurped by a greater intelligence, the constant supply of food had fuelled my brain, I devoured the crew their flesh and their souls, aye their very souls, full of hate and lust and envy, emotions that I absorbed.”
“So you’re the cabin boy come back to haunt me from beyond the veil?” I interjected.
“Hah, no! Although a part of him lingers in me still I suppose.”
“So what then, just a parrot?”
“Of course not you imbecile! I am the Velvet Dark.”
“You’re the ship?”
“Not just the ship but everything and everyone aboard her. Complete except for one vital piece. The ship’s Captain.”
“And now you have me what will you do, kill me?”
“The thought had crossed the cabin boy’s mind I believe but no, that is not your fate, or should I say ours.”
I sat for a moment and pondered this development. Questions spun around my head but one in particular kept springing to the front of my mind. “If we had been adrift for weeks or months as you say why did I not starve.”
“Hahahaha!”
“What are you laughing at bird?”
“How do you think you survived? I fed you. The beach on which you are sat is entirely composed of your leftovers. We did a good job of picking them clean wouldn’t you say?”
This new information sank in and my stomach lurched, I vomited for what seemed like a day. The Velvet Dark hopping from foot to foot with glee throughout.
When finally I could purge no more I flopped flat out onto my back and waited for the convulsions in my stomach to cease. The Velvet Dark hopped onto my chest and leered down at me.
“And now”, he chirped “the soul of the cabin boy is appeased I think and I can carry out his final wish. As my diet has changed me over the past month or more, so too have you been changed but to a lesser degree for you ate unconsciously, unwittingly. You have not marvelled at the flavour of hatred, revelled in the juices of lust and tasted the sweet tang of reddest rage as I have. You are the final piece of the puzzle Captain Brake. You will be the vessel for the Velvet Dark’s resurgence. Your Captain’s brain contains invaluable knowledge, the power over the stars; the gift of navigation, your finesse with the blade, your keen eyesight and knowledge of ship’s battle, your cunning and guile. Not forgetting of course your finer traits, your blood lust and greed. Oh how I laughed when I saw you scurry in the sand for a golden tooth, even here with no apparent way of leaving and with no-one to barter still you coveted material wealth. You are a disgusting tyrant, a vile curse of a man and to the very core a pirate. This is why we need each other Brake and this is why we shall now be one.”
With these final words the bird sunk his claws deep into the flesh of my chest. I screamed and hollered as the claws elongated into my chest cavity and fingers of ice enveloped my heart. The blood dried in my veins and I could hear my bones creak and groan as they grew, twisted and contorted pushing through my greying flesh. I lay thrashing in the sand as my metamorphosis continued. The soft and vulnerable parts of my body were being shielded by bone; it was moulding itself around the contours of my joints and muscles so as not to impede my flexibility. New thoughts and feelings rushed into my brain along with new strength. I found myself enjoying the pain revelling in it laughing at the sheer joy of it all. And then it was done. We were one, cabin boy, ship, crew and Captain. The bird was a bird once more, and separate from me but still oddly connected. The bird had endured his own transformation and had sprouted pure black feathers that it now preened with pride. His beady black eyes peered at me as I called to him in my mind.
“Come to me Velvet, for that is your name. You are Velvet and I am Captain Dark.”
Velvet swooped to my shoulder where a ridge of bone had formed as a permanent perch. I stood and stared at the horizon and grinned.
“All we must do now is wait. Wait for a poor misguided fool to land here and donate his ship. Then the seas will be ours Velvet.”
I inhaled deeply into my lungs through my wide flaring nostrils and could smell the stench of gunpowder and battle, sweat and blood not more than a mile off shore. It smelt like heaven.
“The wait will not be long.”
