by Ade Grant
Through the smoke, the two seamen appraised each other. The Mariner, bathed yet always filthy, lank hair thick from sea salt and grime. Absinth, gnarled by years and sinewy from toil.
He looked at Isabel and noted remotely that the blood that covered her face clashed with her copper hair. Still, a fashion faux pax was the least of her trouble. She was dead.
“How did it happen?” he asked, curiosity in place of emotion.
The Mariner didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to hear. He stumbled across the room as if in a daze, and lowered the body beside the fire.
Poor Isabel. Still, the bitch had it coming, no doubt about it. How many had she lured to death in that room? Absinth had no idea, she’d been doing it long before he’d met her. Inevitable that one day she’d find someone too quick to cut, or too messed up to spunk ‘n’ sleep.
“You saw her go for the knife huh?”
“What?”
“I asked if she went for her knife?”
The Mariner struggled as if the memory were a wet fish. “No knife. We were making love. And..”
“Yes?” Absinth thought his own voice sounded rather too keen for his ears. Perhaps he should try to sound more sympathetic? Would be difficult though. Why should he care about a whore’s death? Lord knows another death meant little in this place.
“I killed her.” The Mariner stared at a bloody knuckle as if he’d never seen his own fists before. He repeated it again. He’d killed her.
“By accident?”
“No. I just...” the Mariner struggled to find words. “One moment everything was fine. The next... Blood everywhere. I couldn’t help it.”
A sexual nutbag, thought Absinth. Jeeesus Christ Almighty! He probably came as he did it too, bloody freak.
“Easily done,” he said, offering his cigarette to the Mariner. “I once smacked a girl in the cunt after shagging ‘er. Don’t know why, just did. I’d pulled out and was getting dressed when I saw my jizz in ‘er fanny. It was trickling out, no, gushing out, and for some reason I just lost it. Punched her right between the legs. Was like punching moss. Didn’t go as far as you though, back in those days there were consequences. Not like now.”
“What’s beaver?”
Absinth blinked, trying to keep up with this man’s insanities.
“You think we should eat them?”
Absinth finally realized what the Mariner was getting at. About his triangular chest clung a tattered tee-shirt proclaiming to the world, ‘Save Trees, Eat Beaver’, the words peppered with tiny burnt holes like machine gun fire. “It’s just a fuckin’ tee-shirt.”
“Oh.”
“So where did you get the Neptune?”
“The Neptune?”
“Yes, your ship!” Absinth cried, his excitement bubbling over.
“I didn’t know she was called the Neptune.”
Absinth couldn’t conceal his amazement. “You mean you’ve been sailing an antique, a piece of history, and you didn’t know?”
The Mariner shook his head, clearly he didn’t.
“That’s the Neptune. Took convicts to Australia. Must have been around 1780 it all happened.”
“I don’t know where those places are. Did it succeed?”
“In a way. Over a hundred and fifty convicts died on the journey. Terrible what the crew did to ‘em. Terrible. I read about it when tracing back my family-tree.” He focused the Mariner with a wily stare. “A lot of bad memories aboard that vessel, I’ll bet.”
“No, no memories.”
A blank book this one. Nothing inside that head but a desire to cum and make girls bleed. Useful.
“My name is Absinth Alcott, and like you I’m a sailor. A captain when the mood takes me. What’s yours?”
“I don’t have a name.”
“Bloody hell. Done something even worse than killing this honey here? Ok, we’ll play it your way. Your name will be...” Absinth struggled, searching his memory banks. He snapped his fingers. “Claude! Pleased to meet you, Claude.”
Between them, a fly made a daring dive for Isabel’s corpse, only to be repelled by smoke. It banked, hoping to bring itself around for a second go.
“So where to next, Claude? To which horizon will you be sailing?”
The Mariner, still in shock, tried to assess the old man. He liked him, despite his vile nicotine stained hands and teeth, despite his frank talk of previous thuggery. The Mariner couldn’t bring himself to cast judgement, hadn’t he just killed a women in cold blood? Didn’t he have demons of his own?
He leaned forward, deciding to put his trust in Absinth. “I’m searching for an island. It’s protected, ringed by defences. Somewhere on that island is the truth. The truth to why the world’s falling apart, the secrets that we have all forgotten.”
“An Oracle?”
“I suppose it could be. I don’t know myself, I just know the answers are to be found there.”
“Contained within an island?”
“Yes, the island is ‘protected’. Whatever that means.”
The Mariner passed back the cigarette, which Absinth toked deep upon, trying to hide his racing mind and soaring excitement. “How do you know all this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just... do.”
Absinth threw the butt into the fire and clapped his hands. His agitated guest recoiled as if struck. “Well isn’t this a turn up for the books?”
“What is?”
“Over the past year I’ve been speaking to sailors, not like yourself, these were pirates and all sorts of scum-bags. Time and again I would hear a rumour. Sometimes it got silly, the usual storyteller fluff, but ultimately the same core facts again an’ again. An island, ringed by coral, upon which a woman lives. A woman who knows everything.”
“Everything?”
“That’s what I said, yeah! Everything! An Oracle!”
All uncertainty, shock and vulnerability fell from the Mariner in that moment. So much so it scared Absinth a little.
“Where?”
“East of here,” Absinth babbled. “Somewhere east. I don’t know. You have to keep going. It’s a long voyage.”
“Then I must begin now.” The Mariner stood, gathering purpose.
“Wait! Where are your crew?”
The Mariner’s paused, confused at the suggestion. “I don’t have a crew. Well, just one, she’s outside.” Having remembered his ward, he called for her.
“Only one crew member?” Absinth was amazed. That couldn’t be true! How on earth did he sail such an enormous ship? “Then I should come with you. I’m good at putting a crew together. Several places to recruit from. You supply the ship, I’ll supply the men. How does that sound?”
“I’d be glad,” the Mariner lied, thinking to himself that he’d rather have no more crew than two. A soft pattering of feet announced their third. “I want you to meet my friend. Grace.”
The devil edged in, looking about the room for a possible trap. Her snout was doing the most work and she let out a snarl when she found the old man’s scent,
Absinth leaped to his feet with a jolt, backing away.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Isabel said she’s a tazzy devil.”
“I can see it’s a Tasmanian devil, I mean what the fuck’s it doin’ here?”
The Mariner looked from devil to the man and back again. “I told you. She’s my crew.”
Absinth shook his head. “I’m not boarding your ship with one of those things. Can’t fucking stand dogs. Leave it ‘ere.”
Grace’s brown eyes turned up as if to ask the Mariner if he were considering such an outrageous notion. Her front paws fidgeted in the gloom.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Alcott. Her place is not up for negotiation.”
Absinth’s face turned to a snarl. The change was bestial in its ferocity. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? You prick! You tellin’ me that fuckin’ rat is better than me?” Even accounting for the orange glare of the flames, the old man’s
cheeks had gone bright red from humiliated rage.
“No. But she was first.”
“Get the fuck out of here, you murderer!” Absinth tensed as if ready for a fight. “You’re not welcome. Not you, not your rat, nor your fuckin’ ship neither!”
The Mariner didn’t need to be told twice, he had no stomach for a second death that night. He left, and the further they got from the wolf and widow’s house, the happier Grace became.
5
THE THIRD NIGHT OF OUR TALE
THE MARINER SCREAMED AND TORE at his ears, and yet still the visions remained. The ship, the ‘Neptune’, as it had been named many long years before, screamed too, though her complaints were for the ferocious winds that tore at her frame, and the staggering waves that clashed at her hull.
The day had been spent in preparation. First job had been to tend to his wound. The row of punctures created by the eel’s teeth were each individually deep, yet by a stroke of luck the creature had failed to tear out a larger piece. The Mariner found some old, damp bandages in a cupboard below deck, and rapped them as tightly as he could to stop the bleeding. Infection was his main concern. The whole region throbbed and grew increasingly maroon. What sorts of diseases did eels carry? What sort of poisons could they secrete?
Once he’d stopped the bleeding he attended to the ship, preparing it for the imminent storm. He bolted hatches and reinforced sails. He put everything not nailed down below deck, and yet still he was afraid. They were a long way from land. How long had it been since he’d bid farewell to Absinth and sailed East? Countless days. Endless nights.
Finally, absolutely sure he’d done his best to prepare the Neptune, he’d sat down on the floor and masturbated. Conjuring the sights of the previous evenings, it was easy to achieve an erection, though knowing an eel was behind what he’d seen made him feel nauseous. He sat there, feeling so sick he could throw up, yet so aroused he couldn’t help but rub vigorously, replaying the previous night’s events in his head, and hating himself every moment.
Tonight the eel would return and he had to be as best prepared as he could. To resist, he had to reduce his libido.
He ejaculated. A grim grunt and a spurt and then all the shame he could handle. Despite this, and the soreness in his flaccid penis, he began again. Just to make sure.
But all the preparation had been in vain. As soon as the sun dimmed, not just one, but many arrived. A whole shoal, eager for food, eager for meat, a whole army whose powers meant that the women from the night before were not alone. Tonight there were hundreds.
On all sides, as the Neptune carved a path through the waves, gathered an enormous sexual congregation. Each meagre defence he’d erected was crushed beneath the illusion’s awesome weight. As far as the eye could see were scenes of erotic excess. On one side, three nubile women cavorted, each naked to his eye. On another, two more undressed slowly, trying to tease with every movement of fabric.
It were not just women conjured from the waves. Statuesque males, bodies toned and mighty, penises long and firm, grappled with their concubines. They did not seem threatened by the Mariner’s presence. They too refused to look his way.
All about the Mariner were offered orifices, scenes so tempting that not even the most devout holy-man could resist. Yet between the bodies and the ship, and in the brief gaps between them, the Mariner could spot hundreds of eels, all fighting amongst themselves for a close position, all determined to be the first one to taste the flesh of the deluded human. It were as if he’d already flung himself over-board, such were their frantic jostling. Yet their eyes remained glazed and cold. Glass eyes. The water churned with oily brown bodies as they slipped against each other, jaws snapping at air.
And yet he could not watch their horror for long, soon his attention would be drawn back to the sights they promised, all in exchange for the paltry price of his meat and bones.
All ages of eel must have gathered tonight as their skills varied widely. Some sprites were remarkably realistic, others were almost cartoonish in their simplicity, containing next to no detail except upon sexual organs. Some sprites, whilst realistically designed, lacked any beauty at all, and moved with a false jerking motion, utterly bereft of eroticism. It were as if each eel were competing, trying to lure him in their direction. In some regions, whole groups of sprites were controlled by the same eel, and these performed grand orgies providing the most alluring sights of all.
Yet in the distance, each eel desperate to exploit any possible sexual niche or kink their quarry might possess, extreme acts were conjured. Acts of sexual brutality, acts of sadism and humiliation. Nipples were clamped, throats choked, backs whipped and thighs burnt. Were these just for him? Would it be the same if another were aboard this ship in his place? Or would the fantasies created be utterly different?
Could these creatures see into his soul?
The Mariner strained his eyes looking into the gloom, trying to discern one body from another, leaning further out over the choppy waves.
He saw several men, roughly sharing a red-headed woman. She struggled and fought against her assailants, but their blows were the stronger. Beaten, she was forced onto her knees and took one into her mouth, whilst a second planted his hands upon her hips and entered from behind. She seemed resigned to the rough intrusion, rocking herself backwards and forwards and grasping the hilt of the penis in front for more effective manoeuvring. The third man looked on, slapping her breasts whilst he touched himself.
The Mariner could join them, abuse her in any way he want, if only he stepped off the boat.
He saw a group of women, powerful and united, strolling amongst the scenes as a shark would glide through shoals. As if by random they’d select victims, hauling them away from their current activities, and drag them back to the group. There they’d set upon them. Currently they had a man tied face down, arms and legs spread wide with ropes. His struggles were of no use. They laughed and taunted as one of their number donned a large strap-on phallus. He screamed with pain and humiliation-infused pleasure, as she thrust deep into his behind.
The Mariner could join them, give himself up to their sensual strength, if only he climb down the ladder.
He looked upon the two he’d seen the previous night. As if committed lovers they were once again entwined, the lesser detailed brunette on her back, the raven lying between her legs performing cunnilingus for their ignored voyeur. A man emerged from the water and mounted his original temptress, pushing his cock inside her from behind, his crotch slapping against her rump, juddering with every thrust. She did not remove her mouth, but proceeded to moan against her lover’s sex.
The Mariner could join them, live out any wet dream, be it juvenile, kinky or sinister, if only he put a foot into the water.
“No more!” he screamed and threw himself away from the view, stumbling onto his back, prone upon the decking. His groin throbbed. The earlier administrations performed upon his penis had done little good, the soreness only made him feel even more desperate for release.
The Mariner pulled his trousers down to his knees, expecting to find blood, his cock was so engorged. About him drops of rain began to fall, blown in sideways into his eyes. “No more,” he repeated to himself, shutting his eyes tight and clamping hands over his ears.
But they did not abate. The eels were hungry. Very little came through these waters, food was scarce, and competition fierce. The scenes about the Neptune continued, growing ever more extravagant, ever more extreme, whilst their prey wailed and cried.
The empty bottle of his last store of wine rolled about the deck. He’d drank it quickly in huge gulps, trying at once to abate his addiction and dull the arousal he felt. It had done no good, all it had achieved was to weaken his mind further, dissolving any resolve he could muster.
Desperate not to be lured to his death, the Mariner staggered to his feet. His movement was hampered by his trousers gathered around his ankles and rather than struggle with them over his erection, he kicked t
hem off. Freezing cold and dangerously aroused he made his way to the door that lead below.
He knew that there was no point hiding. Their gasps and moans could not be ignored. No. He would use the door for something else.
The scenes outside were reaching fever pitch. He watched them, one hand steadying himself against the door, the other one rubbing furiously at his genitalia. Vomit surged up his throat, the wine rejected by self-loathing. And yet, as it seeped down his chin and splattered on his hands and feet, he still masturbated. Still he watched.
“No more.”
In the distance, the three men, eager to use the red-head in any way they wished, grew more violent, punching and kicking her, before once more inserting their cocks into whatever hole they chose. The Mariner wanted to stop them, to free the woman, to protect and preserve her dignity. But more so, he wanted to join them in defiling her, wanted to become a beast like them, a member of the pack falling upon their prey. He hated them, but was he not worse? For watching and enjoying?
The Mariner unsecured and pulled open the enormous slab of oak. It swayed heavily in his hand, its momentum uncertain with every wave the Neptune passed over. Overhead, lightning flashed, lighting up the orgy, searing images into his brain.
The woman using the strap-on upon her slave laughed at his attempts to pull free and slapped and pulled at his head for the enjoyment of the mocking audience. As if to prove the effectiveness of the torture, she reached beneath him, presenting for all the evidence of his arousal. The Mariner watched, wanting to feel pity, but instead drunk with envy.
“NO-”
The man who’d intruded upon the lesbian couple, turning it into a ‘ménage à trois’, put his hands around his lover’s neck, and tightened his grip.
“-MORE!”
The Mariner gripped the door in one hand, and positioned his genitals between it and the frame with the other, still unable to look away, still sick with his own urges.
Somewhere, amongst all the moans, screams and gasps, he heard the sound of Isabel, choking on blood and broken teeth.