Coffin Island

by Will Berkeley

That’s what you get for tangling with a mythological creature, I thought. They taunt you underwater.

  “I like you,” she said when we popped back up. “You’re funny. I can read your thoughts.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  The mermaid tried to push me back under but I pushed her away from me.

  “You’re a hideous creature,” I said.

  “I’m sorry that I have to drown you last,” she pouted.

  “You’re sorry that you have to drown me last,” I practically shouted.

  “You’re the Captain of the ship,” she said. “You have to go down with it.”

  “Doctor Fast is my ship?” I asked.

  “You’re the Headmaster, silly,” she laughed. “Doctor Fast is your ship. You’re a Doctor of Fast.”

  “I’m a doctor of what?” I gasped.

  The mermaid grabbed my arm like she aimed to tear it off. I tried to fend her off but it was hopeless. The mermaid was horrifically strong. She pulled me towards Doctor Fast. She dragged me across the surface of the emerald ocean like a metal fishing lure. She swam incredibly fast. My head was reeled past all the witches in the sea including Professor Coffin.

  The Mermaids were apparently fishing for pirates. This inversion seemed perfectly plausible to me. The mermaids were in the skiffs whereas the pirates were in the water. Why not mix thing up a bit on Coffin Island? I was having so many crazy thoughts what’s a couple of mermaids fishing for pirates? I could easily chalk it off like a corpse on the sidewalk.

  The mermaids had the pirates surrounded which I was viewing favorably. Those costumed fools had gotten us into this mess. Hadn’t they? And they were always up to no good. There was no denying that. Frankly they had it coming. Let’s speak clearly here, gentleman, because I figured these were my last thoughts. Why not put them out there boldly before I go off to my coffin or wherever it is that I am off to. The whole situation with the corpses in the water looks ominous. Perhaps the whole coffin part of this story isn’t true. Or it simply does not apply on the emerald ocean. Something is seriously wrong here. I’ve been captured by a fish for all purposes.

  I was in the clutches of a mermaid on my way to my own drowning. However I was trying to hang on to optimism as Madison had suggested. I was thrilled that the perpetrators of my murder were being brutally executed. It was great to see the pirate go with heinous violence. It was a cause for celebration that some creature was finally taking them to task with abject malevolence. I would have done it myself, those of you that might think me lazy and hypocritical, but I was on my way to my own brutal execution. I couldn’t seem to avoid that. That previous engagement, my execution, that the pirates had scheduled for me was keeping me from extracting my own revenge. You see what a pickle I was in? However let’s see how my proxies, the mermaids, do, shall we? Perhaps we’ll even savor it a bit because the pirates deserve to suffer horribly.

  The mermaids were hitting them on the head with oars. They were throwing harpoons at them. They were gaffing them. Mermaids were pulling pirates on to the skiffs like blubber fish. They were gutting them alive which was wonderful. Pirates were screaming in agony while their livers were ripped out of them like tuna fish. The whole mess was then dumped into the ocean. Let witchcraft sort it out. It was killing for the sheer pleasure of it. It was a beautiful thing to witness. The gore was fabulous. Shocking, breathtaking and delicious, it made me question everything like good art should. My whole existence was in the pendulum so I suppose it was a heightened state. It was like something out of The Museum of Modern Art. There was no denying that we were down in the gory wing with the butcher paintings. I was thrilled that I had been granted admission even if I was part of the deadly subject matter. Why not hack the head off that bull even if the bull is you?

  The pirates that were still alive in the ocean, sadly, were defending themselves with cutlasses. They were swimming under the skiffs and trying to board them. The remaining pirates were determined fighters. Begrudgingly, I had to grant them that much status. Very begrudgingly, I might add. They were somehow human. Their viciousness hinted at it.

  The remaining pirates were decidedly difficult to kill. I always admire those hard targets. I can’t help myself seeing as I am one myself. You have to admire those savage holdouts. There just aren’t that many of them left.

  The weak had been quickly slaughtered as they should be. From time immoral this is how brutal war should be waged. Brutal savages must paint the earth in blood with brooms. Then the meat grinder comes out hungry to eat. That voracious machine must have its meat. However there was something jamming up the grinder. How did that old chicken bone get in there? He was choking off the dog of war.

  Professor Coffin managed to board a skiff. He couldn’t even die properly. I wanted to watch him die in the most undignified manner possible. Sitting on the toilet with his head cut off. Throw it into his lap as his last bowel movement exited him. What the hell was he doing saving himself?

  Professor Coffin refused to do anyone’s bidding. Not even a mermaid could convince him of anything. He had snuck up behind one that was gutting a pirate. I thought those stupid fish were mind readers. The mermaids just couldn’t fathom his thoughts.

  Were his thoughts just too garbled? Were they just too destroyed by rum? Or were there just too many of them that ran in constant opposition to each other? It was like trying to understand the mysteries of the universe. It was easy for that old black hole to catch a Mermaid off guard.

  Professor Coffin grabbed her golden hair. The last expression on her face was one of abject shock. Professor Coffin had pulled it off. To send his point home he pulled the long golden hair taut. Then he decapitated the mermaid in one swift hack. Violence was one of his unrecognized areas of excellence. I hadn’t seen that coming. Bravo, costumed fool, bravo.

  Professor Coffin was a butcher of the first order. I was finding it necessary to rethink my position on him. He wasn’t just a janitor. He could make fine messes too. Blood was spurting everywhere. Who knew that a mermaid could hold so much blood? Then again the emerald ocean was brutally cold.

  Professor Coffin raised the mermaid’s head above his head. Crimson blood poured out all over Professor Coffin’s own head. He drank in the blood like a savage of the first order. Was he drinking in the magical power of his kill? Perhaps he was just thirsty from rum dehydration. He then let out a battle cry. It was horrific. The whole world shook. Professor Coffin possessed massive power. Even I shuddered. He could call down the universe on odd occasions apparently. What a mop jockey!

  The remaining pirates in the emerald ocean boarded the skiffs en masse. The mermaids could presumably read the thoughts of that savage rabble. It must have been horrific to be in their minds. They tried to flee into the emerald ocean but the pirates speared them with harpoons in the skiffs. They stabbed harpoons right through them.

  The mermaids were tasked with reading the thoughts of their assassins? You have to think what your killer is thinking right before you died? All that hate is coursing through your mind as you are savagely murdered?

  I found myself rooting a bit for the pirates now. Why not mix it up a bit with witchcraft? Take the unexpected view. There was also the fact that I was currently under the captivity of a mermaid. The tides seemed to be turning a bit too. It was time to rethink my original position in this battle.

  The pirates were still a pretty bad bet though. They were definitely killing all the mermaids. The problem was that they were spearing their own skiffs. They were killing the mermaids with such ferocity that they had no sense of self-preservation. The pirates were overcome with rage. They were stabbing the mermaids with the harpoons with barbaric force. They weren’t just driving their point home. They were driving it right through the hulls of the wooden skiffs. The skiffs started sinking.

  No one had ever accused the pirates of being delicate even in their victory. They were winning the battle and sinking their skiffs at the same time. Something told me that this was no
t the first time. Victory and defeat were mixed states for the faculty. However the outrageous rage was fully understandable. I was trying to plot the death of my own mermaid in a pocket of my own mind that she couldn’t reach. I looked off to the horizon and tried to have hundreds of thoughts that were in opposition to each other so that I might hatch an effective plan to kill my captor.

  Hunting is nothing more than that. You study your prey deeply. Then you kill it with brutal force. Don’t forget to drink the blood afterwards. If you’re going to be a brutal savage then go all in. Why stop short of eating the beating heart?

  The stitches that had fallen off the sails were being devoured by enormous sharks in the near distance. Even the stitches were getting killed? Ignorance seemed like it should be some sort of protection in this world. What to make of this slight against ignorance? Was this world devoid of a shred of rationality?

  Ration just got rationed out to you like so many crumbs periodically so you wouldn’t go completely mad? There was going to be some hell to pay if I could figure out who was truly in-charge of this world. I wasn’t buying that whole witchcraft excuse. It was certainly out-of-control. There was no question about that. However I had reason to believe that someone was manipulating the chaos.

  My chief suspect was Professor Coffin. That was one of my diversionary thoughts. I tried to play that one out to distract the mermaid. The funny thing is that it was true too. I aimed to kill Professor Coffin. I wanted to chow on his heart. I figured it was fake so what harm in that?

  The stitches were letting out blood curdling cries as we swam past them. Sharks were devouring the stitches piecemeal. The dreaded fins were beginning to close in on the sinking skiffs that contained the remaining living pirates and all the mermaid parts. It was a fine day on the emerald ocean for the shark. The other occupants were too busy butchering each other to bother with the corpse collector. It helped explain the enormous size of the beasts. They were the last mouth on the emerald ocean. They ended all arguments with a snap.

  The emerald ocean looked like it had been chummed with tankers of blood. It was an oil spill of plasma. There were also hearty hunks of pirate and mermaid flesh. It looked like a fine soup for the primordial. A heel of bread was all that was lacking for the steaming bowl of red chowder. How about a Bloody Mary on the side? Might as well make it extra spicy seeing as chances are your stomach is coming out.

  There weren’t any coffins on the emerald ocean apparently. Someone had forgotten to draft that. Bobbing around like soup crackers for the squeamish. The emerald ocean looked like a sewer of death. It was a cesspit in that cheery little burg, the hamlet of Hades. Was there anything to be concerned about here? Welcome to aquatic hell. Who needs Flemish Hell as Professor Coffin suggested when we can do the Caribbean version of it?

  Chapter

  Fortunately a primordial shark of apocalyptic proportions attacked my mermaid as we reached Doctor Fast. I hadn’t come up with much of an alternative plan of attack. I was merely going to try to pluck her eyes out. I was thrilled that the shark had bailed me out. Now I just needed to get out of its primordial way. It was like trying to duck a mechanical street sweeper after the contraption has sucked up your vehicle. Sorry about that miss. I didn’t mean to devour your automobile. Stop complaining about that. You went through the windshield.

  The shark looked like a dinosaur that had somehow had the pluck to survive the last ice age. It had been swimming around for millennia under the ice eating all the frozen corpses that dated back to the dawn of creation. I immediately liked the beast. I wasn’t put off by the fact that it had been consuming my web fingered predecessors since the dawn of dawn. Why let Darwin trouble your mind at a moment like this? Who cares if fish can walk?

  Ribbons of blood floated out of my mermaid’s skull as it was separated bodily from torso. There was that appalling horror to quiet the mind. A splash of hot blood in the mouth settled my nerves.

  I pushed her lifeless corpse towards the barnacle covered apocalypse. It was not a pleasure to meet you, shark from the beginning of time. And I don’t want to ever see you again. Stay out of my nightmares too. I’m just going to close my eyes, scream in my sleep and pretend that you don’t exist. I have never seen a shark of the apocalypse. I don’t know what you’re talking about. That mind of yours is quite clever though. I will grant you that. Dangerous and clever, that’s how I like my mind. We should nip out for a cup of hot blood some time and chitchat art and whatnot.

  There was a rope with some knots hanging into the ocean. It was one of those little helpers that were in such sparse abundance in this world that I immediately seized it. I quickly climbed up the rope as the shark devoured the mermaids. The mermaid would surely just whet the appetite of that appalling beast. I didn’t want to watch it satiate that primordial appetite. The thought of me in the belly of that beast was just too horrible to contemplate. Apparently there is a nanosecond of consciousness when you get your last thought before you’re own your way to whatever afterlife that you believe in. I aimed to forestall that final moment for a bit. What’s the hurry?

  I hauled myself on to the deck of Doctor Fast with a shudder. I was wondering how a pirate could get reassembled in a coffin after a shark attack of such magnitude. I could only imagine what sort of primitive digestive track with rows of retractable teeth was lurking within that horrible beast. The colon surely had teeth. You must come to in your coffin as a buffalo chip. Fortunately I was one of the chosen few who were moving on to better things in this world than a predawn gastrointestinal track with incisors all the way down the track. I thanked my lucky stars for that as I watched the final mermaid bits go down the hatch. You had to admire the thoroughness. Only a werewolf attorney wouldn’t applaud that.

  Doctor Fast was a high performance sailing craft. It wasn’t some leaky scow to transport human cargo in shackles. Go fetch the rum and come back. Try not to catch scurvy or die in the doldrums. Watch out for the pirates and those hideous natives too. Don’t let the white people cheat you on the black people too. Make them pay handsomely for those humans that we have purchased. Welcome to the Caribbean. It’s not just some foolish ride in Florida. I was doing way better than that.

  Doctor Fast was an astonishing craft. Somehow I felt like a bit of a slave to it though. Perhaps it had something to do with the shackles on the deck. They had attached themselves to me. They sort of hinted at the slavery concept.

  There was something very brutal and distressing percolating below the deck of Doctor Fast as well. Something seemed to be screaming down there. I dismissed that noise as so much lunacy. I was more preoccupied with my own situation. How could I be a slave in this world? How could I be a trinket for a better person to purchase?

  My ship was a slave ship. There was no denying the concept. The shackles made it painfully clear. There was also a little footnote on the back of the ship under the name, Doctor Fast. It said slave ship under the title on the back. There was that. It really upset me. What does witchcraft think that I’m stupid? Putting a footnote on a slave ship was truly insulting. Weren’t the shackles enough? Why taunt the slaves after you’ve enslaved them? There was also the shouting below deck too. It was a bit distressing. Witchcraft was doing the usual.

  Doctor Fast was going to take me to the next school where I would sit on a block for a prospective buyer. I wondered what sort of buyer witchcraft had for me out over the horizon. Shall we take the journey to find out?

  However I was already contemplating my revolt from whatever was out over the horizon. I figured that I could strangle whatever creature had the audacity to try to purchase me. What a hideous world that we live in. You can actually buy a human even on a theoretical platform. How revolting. It helps explain why slaves are prone to revolt. They find the situation revolting. I was going to revolt with appalling violence. That was the handle on Doctor Fast.

  However Doctor Fast kind of took the wind out of the sails. The silver hull looked like a scalpel floating on the ocean. T
he mast looked like a needle piercing the sky. The sails looked like a shroud for the wind. Doctor Fast appeared like it was constructed to perform medical experiments on the wind.

  I could see why The Wind People were taking offense to this craft. It was an affront to the wind on top of its base insults to its enslaved passengers. Clearly you can’t win all the races on the emerald ocean. You’re bound to upset the wind with your total arrogance even if it’s been earned somehow. Perhaps it was just thieved as the footnote on the back of the ship suggested. How do you like your slave ship thus far? Let’s just say that I was a bit miffed all around. I tugged my shackles and cursed witchcraft.

  I was going to sail this ship in shackles though. There wasn’t a force great enough to stop me. It was just going to have to kill me. That was the chilly vibe on the deck of Dr. Fast.

  Welcome aboard mate. I’m going to sail this ship right down to hell. Or die trying. I don’t care that it’s a slave ship or that I’m a slave on it. We’re sailing the hell out of here.

  Madison had somehow wrenched the sails from The Wind People. The weather was suddenly disturbing still. What happened to the storm? Did someone just pull the plug on it again? Was this something to be concerned about? Was this just yet another lull in the storm before the typhoon?

  The sails were truly monstrous. I was doing a bit of the old boasting back there to get my courage up. However the sails were beginning to frighten me a bit because of their sheer enormity. I was going to sail on this? I don’t know if I am ready for this.

  I suppose the shackles were like a type of safety precaution. They were just a necessary caution for the safety of the passengers a bit like handcuffs. They’re just on you for your own safety and the safety of others. Although in this instance we don’t know who the others are because it isn’t going to reveal itself.

  Dr. Fast was truly horrific. There were chains everywhere. And they were moving around like snakes. There was also all that screaming below deck. Only a demon could have created it. What to make of a demon with a death wish. Aren’t you supposed to want to live, demon? Why do you want to die again? Or is it my soul that you’re after? That’s the ticket right there. We’ll just savor the thought that something thinks highly enough of your soul to want to steal it. That’s a good soul you’ve got. We aim to pluck it out.