by Ledger,John
Despite my obvious disappointment, I would not be deterred. I journeyed further and tried again. It was a nearly identical scenario to the first and again with the name mermaid. At least it was better than seawitch. I journeyed even further and again the same result. As I began my travels again, I decided to alter my approach.
So much knowledge had been gained from observation, I decided that I would use it to my advantage. I set myself up in an inlet that contained a popular shipping port. Due to the volume of boats in the water at any given time, it was customary that many would not dock but would anchor and send row boats ashore. Day in and day out I watched for ships that made at least weekly appearances. And when I had it narrowed down, I watched for men who were regularly aboard the row boats. Finally, when I had that narrowed down to a dozen men, I observed them closely to determine who was the kindest and bravest among them. I chose a man named, if you can believe it, Alexander.
Alexander nearly always rowed ashore with the same person. It was obvious that the man regarded him in high esteem, and if I could convince Alexander, than he would surely follow suit. I appeared beside their boat, just out of reach, slowly propelling myself forward in time with the boat. They heard me break the water and were startled. I smiled, keeping my lips together so as not to display my jagged teeth. They did nothing.
Encouraged, I opened my mouth to begin my song of explanation, but Alexander started to yell. He called me mermaid and swung his oar as if to strike me. I don’t know what came over me. I was so frustrated and angry I leapt out of the water and towards the boat. I used my tail to slap him off balance and into the sea. He came up gasping for air as I came back around. I put my hands on both his shoulders, looked him in the face, and pushed him under.
I couldn’t help but remember my fall from the world outside the sea, staring into the golden face of Anubis. Alexander WOULD understand. I screamed the words of the song of explanation at him, gnashing my teeth. If Anubis could find him worthy, he would survive. I dragged him deeper, and as one last air bubble escaped him, his head lolled to the side. I stopped and put my ear to his chest. Nothing. In frustration, I used my teeth and nails to tear him to shreds. Even underwater, the sound of nails scraping bones was jarring but somehow encouraging. I gouged and tore. All I could see was red. I had handfuls of organs and intestines that I hurled about. When I finally surfaced again I was smiling, and all who could see me were overcome with fear. Despite my beauty, I was the essence of horror and nightmare, rising out of the blood-stained and shit strewn waters. My jagged teeth were still grinding bits of Alexander’s face. Within a minute, all activity in the port had ceased and it had become a ghost town, its inhabitants huddled inside, quaking from their fear of me. Every ship in the water had pulled anchor and were rigging to sail away as quickly as possible.
I never stayed long in one place after that, and my legend grew and was spread around the world. When my loneliness and frustration grew so that I could no longer bear it, I would snatch another sailor and bring him screaming into the depths. When he failed to live (as they always did) I would release my disappointment on his carcass, gutting and shredding until my anger was sated.
It has now been hundreds of years. I would like to say that I believed that one man, after all this time, would survive and understand my plight, but once a “Keeper” always a keeper. The knowledge would prove this incorrect and my efforts futile. I could claim that despite everything I secretly hoped that one day I would be understood again and be able to pass the knowledge to the world; but it would simply be a lie…I abandoned hope and reason so long ago.
Fear is the lesson that I teach now, and I do consider myself the leading expert on the subject. I need not be asked for guidance to bestow its teachings, I just dole it out as I see fit. Where once I believed that knowledge was the universal force and belief, I know that it is fear that is truly universal. It needs not a common tongue or religious faith. I can simply convey it through a flash of my jagged teeth.
I am a Keeper of the Knowledge and a Keeper of Fear. My home is the sea and all that look upon it will fear me.
I will forever teach this lesson to those who cross my path.
RED
Charie D. La Marr
He was always able to see colors vividly before. The indigo blue sky littered with white stars and a pale yellow moon hanging low. The yellow taxis that prowled the late night streets. The wads of black gum stuck to the gray sidewalks along with the white cigarette butts with pink and orange lipstick rings on them. The purple and white sign that advertised hourly rates. The hideous green shirt on the man with the gold earring who stood watch at the door. The dark blue counter where he paid his cash and was handed the key for a room. The fake green plants in what passed for a lobby with the black and white tile floor. But after, when he closed his eyes, he saw nothing but red. He’d never see black again. There would be no peace for him. No darkness would ever again put him to sleep at night. Only the color of the blood from inside his eyelids that would never go away. Red was all that he remembered after that.
Her beautiful long red hair that fell in waves over her shoulders—which was what had drawn him to her in the first place. The red fuck me heels she kicked across the room, laughing. “No, leave them on, baby. I like them,” he had said. The red sign flashing, HOTEL in the window again and again even with the shades down. The red makeup case in her purse where he found her works. She said she was clean. She swore it or he would never have taken her up there. The red mark on her face from the slap that sent her flying across the room. The slash of bright red lipstick across her mouth and the blood dripping from her broken nose. Her long red nails that clawed deep raw gashes diagonally across his face as she tried to get away. The torn red lampshade from the ancient lamp beside the bed. The dusty red plastic roses on the dresser in the glass vase that she threw at him. Her red dress lying on the floor as she tried desperately to get out of his grip and grab it. Then the flash of red as he took the knife from his boot and slashed it once across her throat. The spray of arterial blood that covered his naked body. The deep claret color of the blood from her jugular vein as it pooled on the floor around her body, matting her hair and turning into a gelatinous puddle until she bled out. His bloody handprint he wiped off the bathroom light switch.
The swirls of red as he took a shower, watching her life slip down the drain. The bloody urine when he peed. She’d hit him hard in the back with that ugly lamp hard. There was a large red bruise over his kidney. The red bedspread he wrapped her body in. Then the red matchbook from the bar where he met her and the red orange flames as he set the body on fire and fled down the fire escape into the red neon night. The spinning red lights from fire trucks as he disappeared down the alley and headed back to his apartment and into his first deep red sleep. He broke out in deep red hives by the morning and had to call in sick at work for three days. He just stayed in his bed sweating and dreading the red sleep.
He knew the there would be no dreams anymore, only that deep shade of red that filled his eyes whenever he closed them. But the guy with the red shirt at the cheap hotel desk remembered what he looked like when he brought her in that night, and he remembered the noises that came from the room. Then there was the single red footprint on the fire escape the next day when the fire department investigated. And one night several months later, while drinking his umpteenth bottle of cheap red wine, the red lights of the police cars appeared in his window and they came and took him away. The jumpsuit they dressed him in in prison was orange, but to his tainted eyes, he saw only red. He tried to keep a low profile in jail, going through his days as quietly as he could before falling back into his red sleep.
But there were big guys in prison—the Nuestra Familia with their red bandanas—Chicanos who dealt in drugs and protected working girls. Soon he became a target and there was no one inside to protect him. He could feel the red bull’s eye on his back. Then one day while taking a shower, he felt a hand go around his throat
, and the struggle for air as his face turned red while a blade slipped across his throat. “That’s for Rachel,” a voice said as they lowered him to the tile floor and left him there to die. And the last thing he saw was red swirling down the drain once again.
HELL ON THE HIGH SEAS
Brian Barr
Water. Blood. Alcohol. Scallywag Sam knew the three liquids, from their most salty to their most vile and venomous, from their strongest waves to the most lulling oceans. He worshiped them together, all intoxicating, luring. They were interconnected like the devastating sisters, the three goddesses that made one, black and dreadful in the underworld.
Water had been his first love as a boy. A son of a pirate turned buccaneer that worked under the crown, scavenging for rubies and gold to take back home to the great king. Never did Samuel Tadwell think, in his wildest dreams as a boy, that he would live his father’s opposite lifepath. Where his father had been taint purified, Sam had become cleanliness corrupted. Once an apprentice of his father on the old S.S. Tadwell, Samuel served as a buccaneer when he matured, inheriting the ship upon his father’s death. No one would have suspected that Samuel Tadwell would give it all up to be a lawless pirate.
Yes, a pirate. Like Lucifer descending from the choirs of heaven, Samuel embraced the path of hell. Tired of what he considered an unsatisfying wage, even as the captain of his own ship, Samuel Tadwell couldn’t serve England any longer. He abandoned his crew in Jamaica, bitter with the strict life that came with serving the crown.
Befriending criminals, murderers, and thieves, Sam’s perspective on the law changed. He openly criticized the monarchy, the military, the unjust treatment of enslaved people he had seen on human cargo ships and island plantations. A hidden anarchic spirit was uncoiled from the darkness of his heart, and he was let loose like a madman from an asylum, released from a cage that he hadn’t even known to exist before. Stories of gold and treasure also enlivened his thirst for adventure. Once he gained great wealth of his own, there was no turning back. Water had led him to his destiny, to betraying the royal family and embracing a new family, crazed bastard driven only by the sea. It had been greed that led him to become a turncoat all along, pure prodigal avarice in its finest form, and rebellion that would keep him there, traitor to the end.
Blood had been there, nearly as early as water. When he had served as an apprentice under his buccaneer father, the boy had drawn his own blood only a year into his service. One of his father’s crew mates held him at gunpoint, threatening the man to offer up more of the coins and rations the ship had recently gained. Tired of watching from the sidelines, the boy had grabbed a knife and rushed to the crew mate's side, stabbing him in the neck before he could fire. Samuel could still remember the screaming, the spraying of scarlet as the poor idiot went down, the smell of failed gunsmoke in the air.
More blood would follow in the young man’s apprenticeship. Wars on the sea, battles in Caribbean bays, military chaos off the coasts of Spain and England. Done by his hand, done by others, guns, swords, cannonballs- Samuel knew violence. The harshest moment in his life, seeing his father blown to smithereens by a cannonball smashing him to bits, still stained his memory. His father had sunk with the old S.S. Tadwell, and then they had made a new one years later, adorning the son with the father’s title of captain. He was to resurrect his father’s legacy as a trusted buccaneer and leader, maintain his legacy. Little did anyone, even the younger Tadwell, knew where the future would lead.
Water had led Sam’s destiny, start to present, while blood had stained it, and alcohol blinded him from the fury of the other two liquids. Alcohol provided no tranquil escape, for those poisonous drinks of ale and rum possessed a furious grip of their own, wild and unrelenting, matching Sam’s very own spirit. Peace and tranquility were not components of Scallywag Sam’s life. Buccaneer turned pirate, his professions and lifestyles were far from the ascetic ways found in Christian monasteries and abbots. Sam was a scoundrel, and he embraced his dog nature, the same way he embraced the very name his former military allies had given him.
Scallywag Sam. The first time he heard the name was when he had won his ship back. They had renamed the new S.S. Tadwell as the Royale Mermaid. Whoever gave his bold ship such a flimsy appellation, Sam didn’t care. He was only glad to win it back into his possession with the help of his pirate family, executing and overthrowing the buccaneers on board. Traitor, many of them called him, falling to death by the blade as they kneeled on the deck in ropes or fell from planks to the sea. Scoundrel. Scallywag.
Aye. Then scallywag he would be.
Scallywag, in a family of dirtbags, schemers, and connivers. Many of his family still didn’t properly trust him, a traitor to the crown, a son of a father who traded against the criminal world. Sam came from a long line of traitors, of spies and murderers, friends that became enemies to associates, friends that became enemies. Loyalties turned like the tides of the ocean, and survival was ensured.
Sure, the pirates he associated himself with now were truly seen as his family. He loved them, and he gave his life to them. From conquests of ships throughout the Caribbean, to stealing treasure from naval vessels all over Europe’s coastline, Scallywag Sam had put in his work.
When captains around the Caribbean were talking about a pirate alliance, creating a wide ranging anarchic sea community and teaming up on attacks against naval ships, Scallywag was very interested. He was surprised when he was seen as worthy enough to meet with other captains, invited to a secret meeting in a letter sent by the famous Commodore Teach, better known as Blackbeard.
Scallywag Sam couldn’t imagine how his Royale Mermaid could be granted the honor of sailing and fighting alongside Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Blackbeard was famous for the hell he raised off the coast of Jamaica and the waters of Charleston. His blockades and raids were second to no other pirate, and his past training as a buccaneer made his understanding of naval ships and how they operated second to none. Perhaps, along with his reputation as a pirate, his familiarity with the buccaneer lifestyle was the main reason Sam respected, and identified with, Blackbeard. Blackbeard also gave him hope that a person with his past connections to the military could gain utmost respect from fellow pirates, no longer seen as a traitor that could potentially switch sides on his criminal comrades.
Sam trusted Blackbeard’s ideas for an alliance. The experienced sea captain had brought pirates together for many a task, only this time he wanted a permanent connection between the pirates of the Atlantic. As one organization, they would pose a greater threat to the kingdoms of Europe and the colonies of the Americas, their lawmakers and militaries. The only problem with Blackbeard’s planned meeting for a new pirate alliance was that he wanted the meeting to take place on the seas, or at least it seemed that way. The coordinates Blackbeard gave for the meeting on his map didn’t indicate an island, and it certainly didn’t seem like an area Sam was familiar with. On the map, all he saw for the latitude and longitude given was blue, south and far from the coasts of the Americas, Europe, or Africa. Part of Sam didn’t want to trust, though he would understand Blackbeard’s need for privacy, as also demanded in the letter. Blackbeard and many of the pirates that would be meeting were enemies and foes in the Americas and abroad, dead men sailing, food for the gallows on any patch of dry land under human law. Perhaps this was why Blackbeard wished for an alliance on the high seas.
But it made no logical sense, none of it. Where would they dock? How could they anchor in the middle of nowhere? Did Blackbeard expect captains to momentarily leave their ships and climb aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge, describing their plans? Blackbeard expected nearly 50 captains to show up, captains with connections to other pirates, other ships.
Madness, Sam suggested in thoughts he wouldn’t dare share with anyone, even his closest crew mates. At times, he doubted the letter had even come from Blackbeard. This was a trap of some sort, it had to be. Sam confronted other captains he found when he docked o
n many a port over the next couple of weeks, checking to see if they had also received similar letters, the same meeting dates and locations. They had. Every pirate captain Sam spoke to said they had received similar letters, though most captains were absolutely clueless as to why Blackbeard would want them to meet in a seemingly asinine location.
The more Sam interviewed fellow captains, however, the more he was getting distinct answers from pirates that were less clueless. Pirates that had experienced working with Blackbeard indeed confirmed his handwriting. The meeting must have been true, and what was even stranger was that some of the pirates insisted that there was a place to dock there, a genuine checkpoint where the ships could anchor with no problems. When Sam asked if there was an island there, he merely got blank expressions, averted eyes, or smirks and smiles. No one offered any verbal answers, as if some interesting joke or revelation planted by Blackbeard would await all the captains that showed up.
“Just be there,” one of the captains said as he sipped his ale. Another tavern, another night. “Blackbeard don’t like disobedience.”
“So we don’t have a choice?” Sam asked. “It’s hard for some of us to trust coordinates that make no sense to us.”
“Trust. Aye. And you have the trustworthy reputation, don’t ya, Scallywag?”
Sam couldn’t retort very easily to that one. He shuffled in his own chair, embarrassingly spilling over some of his own whiskey.
“You come, and you’re with us. Or you’re against us. That simple, mate.” With that, another captain slumped out of his chair, leaving Scallywag Sam with the tab.
Hispaniola. Bermuda. From Spanish docks to French, and English, Sam travelled under the dark skies and the watchful eye of the moon, speaking with fellow pirates, getting either the same confirmations of cluelessness or those definite replies favoring Blackbeard’s letter. Yes, the coordinates could be trusted. Yes, everyone was expected to be there roughly around that week provided, and yes, it would possibly take three to four weeks to reach the correct location.