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Shackles. Binding my bruise-worn wrists. Along the cuff’s lines, the chaffing showed bright violet with low tones of crimson. The colors mangled together under the paleness of my flesh, not that I could tell anyway, no, I couldn’t tell at all.
My eyes were covered in a dirty, piss-covered rag, their form of a practical joke, though its message was far from playful. I lifted my nose to the ocean air, tasting it as it blended with the bitter pungent scent from the rag. The breeze ruffled my hair for one last time as I evaluated through touch, and shaggy winces of pain, just how poorly my body had been abused.
My head tilted but an inch and the shooting pain my body had numbed yesterday, struck like an iron pickaxe into my delicate muscle. Thank God my eyes were covered, for I could feel the welling up of tears. Agony and shame mixed together and drooled from my eyes, immediately absorbed by the blindfold, rather than rolling down my cheeks. Thank God, I wasn’t seen as weak by my captors. Thank God.
Not everyone would thank God in this situation though, would they? I smirk, feeling the smile only touch half of my swollen face. The other half? Well, let’s just say it probably looked pretty ugly.
The pain was terrible, cursing me as it coursed through my veins, unendingly pouring out distress signals, begging my bound hands to somehow unravel chain and treat and soak up the blood that had oozed out of my body. However, that was not how the day’s schedule had been planned. I gulped down, trying to file away the pain into a distant cabinet in my mind, but every part of me wanted to move, to be free of these chains, to be free of my so forlorn fate. I wanted to stand, I wanted to sing, I wanted to run, oh, did I want to run as far as my wonderful body would take me.
My heart was still beating, despite the disgust it had endured, still beating, despite what was to come. This was everything I’d feared, except never living free. So, here I lay, on the ground of a wood-laden ship in the middle of God-Knows-Where Ocean, and I didn’t regret my choice, I only regretted that the world, nor my life, could handle it.
Now I paid the price, as every decision begs for cost at some point, and little do we ever kick the beggar, and so often, do we pay the fee.
“Wot are you smilin’ at fool? You know where you’ll be once the Cap’n has ‘is breakfast? That’s right, wipe it off your face, or I’ll take yer teeth out before I send you off to Davy Jone’s Locker. That’s right, you little shit. You’re nothing but another pile of shit that I have to wash off o’ the deck. Remember tha’ when you’re chokin’ on the ocean. HA! I’m the one breathin’ air, and you won’t even be havin’ a gravestone. Forgo’n, that’s what you’ll be,” the brute above me spoke.
He had a deep, craggily voice that sounded like a jagged cliff face with jagged rocks slicing your ears. I’d seen him before they put the blindfold on me, he was well above six-five, heavy-set, rugged looks, huge beard, slightly disheveled appearance, though that wasn’t uncommon for a pirate such as he, when he spent so much time at sea. The name he went by was Niller. He wasn’t special, but he had such immense girth that I was surprised the boat could hold him. He’d walked off, clunking heavy boots with the panels of the boat squeaking under his pressure. He’d strode off before I could get a reply in.
And it was just as well, my reply would’ve gotten me a kick to the lungs, and I’d already broken about three or four ribs on my right side, hard to say on my left, because there was a lot of torn skin, distracting me with the raw pain of an open wound.
I could taste my sweat on my brow, along with the irony blood in my mouth. Delightful, truly. But this is how my story would end. Say goodbye, Johnny boy, to your last.
Life was a lot of firsts and lasts, right now, I was remembering them as they screened through my mind and onto the projector that was my closed eyelids. The last time I’d seen the sky, the first time I’d tried pie, the good memories I’d had. Twenty four years would never be long enough for someone like me.
I was a wayfarer, I was someone who found things that were lost, devoted themselves to passions that could fill the soul. Yes, I was alive and well, but soon, I’d be dead. Maybe I’d reincarnate, maybe I’d just simply die. Or maybe I’d stay with my bones until I decayed, watching the fish eat my deceased flesh.
So many options, it was sick, and it was sad, but dead men were forced to think about these things before they died, the curiosity of man was often so bittersweet.
I was curious as to whether the many kicks of pain had caused my voice to fail, so I hummed a few notes, “Mm-Humm-Mm,” very quietly, so as not to attract attention and found that apart from the pain I’d felt from breathing, my voice was still well and able to hit the notes. I would miss it, this life, the jazz that was spontaneously created in moments that had no music playing at all. It was so easy to remember the way life’s pristine music of memory had made me feel. It was so hard to think that it would be over, truly over and I’d never be remembered.
Hey, God, I look up as though God is an avid reader, Will you remember me? Remember all the smiles I’ve made and the tears I’ve caused? Will you know the pain I was a catalyst of was never spawned from evil? Or are you there at all? Creator and destroyer of life, banisher to Hell and the one who opens the gates to Heaven, do you have free-will, or are you bound by the laws you created to watch every single one of your creations die, ready or not, as they are, or as you are, for them to lose their very lives?
The question went unanswered as the moments passed and the breeze caught on the colossal gaping tan sail. Soon it would be time. I could almost hear the bell tolling.
Footsteps approached, one of them, Niller, the other, I assumed to be their captain. They laughed, their chords sounded haughty and polluted with stupidity and ale. That was, after-all, the basis of a pirate’s life.
“Har-har-har, look at my favorite little lad. A man who’s name I’ve only barely remembered, Warren Walsh. Are you ready to die?” the captain tilted his head, causing the shade of his hat to fall upon my face, he wanted to hear me squeal, to beg at his feet for the punishment to be lifted, for my word that I’d be his slave forever, but that wasn’t who I was. So I’d die instead. “Come now, it is disrespectful to not respond to your betters when they’re speaking to you.”
I felt his grin through the blindfold, teeth full of gold, gums gross with scurvy, and his gaze piercing through the thin fabric. “Niller, remove that. I want him to see the face of the man who bested him before he dies.”
It was removed. I felt my eyes light up, though they were dampened by the bright morning sun floating high over the horizon. “I think, if you’d really bested me, you wouldn’t have had your crew do all your dirty-work.”
“Harhar, we have a sense of humor still left in your pitiful body? Well, it won’ be there soon, see, there’s power in numbers, boy, and I’ve bested you by far more than you’d ever compare in your worthless little life, so small, so futile, your mother would die of shame if she weren’t already dead. All that time and effort fer nothing, you ain’t leavin’ no legacy, me? I live how I want, and I kill who I want. Yer on my list, I don’t like to be wronged, so I’m gonna right it in the next minute. Niller, stand him up, we’ll walk him over to the plank,” the captain grinned as his command was followed through.
The shackles on my wrists were brutishly lifted, causing my face to wince in pain, meanwhile, they’d clipped a bag of lead onto the shackles that bound my ankles and wrists. There was no escaping this, my throat had gone dry as the fear riddled my bones, and set in like hardening cement.
I was gestured to walk forward while Niller held the weighted bag. When I didn’t, I was shoved, my legs caught me, staggered, and then the captain patrolled back over, and I took a step forward, closing the inches between us. My expression turned into a snarl, and hell, apparently I’d accepted my fate, I was gonna die anyway, why not take out one of his lovely, expensive gold teeth?
My fat forehead collided with his mouth in an agonizing crunch. The bone of my skull didn’t waver against the mush of his gums that were holding together his implanted teeth so delicately. I blinked once and saw a splatter of blood at our toes. Mine were barefoot, his, covered in shined and expensive black boots. They’d need another shining. I blinked again and his hat had drifted carelessly to the ground. I lifted my chin back up, to see the look on his face.
Priceless.
Savagery lit his eyes. Anger curved his lips into a snarl and flared his nostrils. His cheeks puffed up like tomatoes, rich with embarrassment. I’d soiled his ruse of power. I’d done it for the last time.
“GRUH-” he reacted slowly, from the booze, “WHY YOU LITTLE-”
He inhaled, keeping his cool while his entire crew watched, curious as to how he’d react to insurgency of a prisoner who’d been sentenced to death. Death was one of the worst things you could do to a man, how else would I be punished?
“Ahaha, you think you’re hot shit dontcha? Getting one lass’ hit in?” his tongue had caught and slurred his ‘s’ since I’d knocked out the tooth there. He smirked, the alcohol had numbed most of his pain, but now it was my turn, I could see it in his eyes. Not only had he starved me for a week, but now, he’d fix the other half of my face. The thoughts were blatantly churning behind his darkened eyes. His hand extended to my right jaw, tapped it with the flat of his hand, before he curved his hand into a fist that could’ve rivaled a cannonball and wound up his knuckles, the veins of his face spiderwebbed with effort before releasing his white fist, capturing with all his might, into my face.
SLAM!
I felt the crack of my jaw, the one bone that’d seemingly been saved from torture, now pop out of place. I couldn’t even will my maw to open to release a scream. The pain was real, and it had caused my body to collapse into the ground.
Thud. My body wouldn’t lift. It was as though my death had already come. My hands touched the splintering wood, but I couldn’t will the muscles of my arms to move my body upward.
“YEAH HIT ‘IM REAL GOOD BOSS!” Niller cheered, the other men were a chorus of praise, behind their lowly devotion, snarling dogs, waiting for their turn in line to be able to snap at their prey.
“Back off boyss, he just wanted a little jussstice before his death, I think, you’ll all find, that by killing him, we’re getting all the jussstice we need, ain’ that right?” the captain pronounced, motioned to Niller to lift me up, my ankles wobbled, but somehow the years of balancing on my feet had come in handy, if only now, to walk me off the plank.
“Let’sss go, we’ve got a day of celebratin’ to get to, HAR-HAR!” Glasses were raised from the crowd, along with an agreeing chime of yeses.
My bare, calloused toes, resisted most of the sharpened splinters that welcomed me the moment they’d met with the plank. “Don’ forg’t to hold yer breath,” Niller said with a gargoyle’s giggle. But it was the captain’s job to do the honors.
“Today, we send off a criminal, a thief, and a man who has been nothing but a plague to our very exissstence. Praise Neptune, for this will the his last moment alive.” The captain now faced me, proud of the spectacle he’d made to his men, the example I’d become. “Ready to feed the fishes?”
He grinned. I couldn’t help but to grin back, as I looked as his lost tooth as though contemplating taking another. His smile turned downward, in dissatisfaction, “Any last words, Warren?”
A punch slammed into my gut, and my diaphragm was forced into my lungs. I didn’t get any last words, he’d read them off my face. And now, my body was thrown from the plank’s edge as though it were nothing but a pile of bones. Off I went, into my watery grave.
And I landed with a splash.
Chills of water encompassed my skin, spearing my wounds with saline swords as they stung with cleansing poison. I hadn’t braced for the fall and my offset jaw was releasing bubbles of air as my wrists and ankles were slowly tugged to the darkening bottoms of the ocean. My eyes followed the bubbles, carrying away my last breaths to the top of the sea once more. The pirates aboard their ship were likely cheering with joy, funny, I was sinking down to death on the other side of the coin.
While I couldn’t much move my jaw, I did manage to close my throat, saving just ounces left of the air my sore lungs could’ve stored. My hair swished above me, dark and awash with water. My eyes had stung initially, but I had promised myself if I were going to die, it would be with my eyes open.
My body floated upward, as though by instinct, deciding to live, while my shackles tugged me down, to the cold, fated bottom which I would end. The last moments of my life slowed, I felt around the shackles of my wrists sure that if I could free those, I would be able to somehow swim upward, but the metal was cold and unyielding even when I’d tried to break my wrists in order to get free. My hands were large and likely swollen from all the hits I’d taken and given.
This would be my end.
Why couldn’t I accept it?
The air in my lungs was vacuumed out, going through my heart and delivering to the other parts of my body that wanted to live. But wanting wasn’t enough, it seemed, as the stagnant air began to ache sickly, fighting the supression of my closed throat and using the buoyancy and pressure of its lightness to tire my muscles out.
First they would fail, and then, I’d get woozy after I’d swallow my first sip, my lungs would give me a swift cough, and I’d release all of it, belching out water and air only to inhale it in. And then I’d be nowhere, no one, no longer. My body would slowly soften, shackled to the death, flesh decaying on bones until I’d forget the reason I was alive in the first place.
Yes, it was close to over now, however, I could still think, I guess there was a little air left in my bloodstream. It was painful, eternal agony, to die almost as helpless as I’d lived. Shame heated my chilling cheeks, my fingers, still controlled by me, attempted to slip off the shackles from my wrists once more, my ankles tried to wiggle free, while I attempted with my last moments, to lift myself from the edges of death.
However the darkness continued to set in, my mind grew slow and weary, and my jaw lay open, tongue wading in the water that I so wished would turn into air, yet, it was in these desperate moments, you realized that wishes never came true.
…
.
.
.
Ocean waves crashed around me, a great Wooooosh! of an incoming tide slapped white froth against my face. My body, as dead and as heavy as cement. My muscles, won’t move an inch. My lungs are the only thing functioning, and I guess, my beating heart too.
I will my eyes open, and find them to be filled with kernels of salt and sand around corners. I bat away the pain with eyelashes mixed with tears and shake my head the best I can to clear my sight. I’m looking up at the sky. There’s a fucking cloud. A motherfucking cloud!
God, am I so happy to see that fucking cloud, it was beautiful, I lay my head back, and just look up. I knew I wasn’t in heaven, because I knew my body was only tricking me and numbing the pain with a distinct drowsy, heaviness. I’ve known this feeling before. Apparently life hadn’t been done with me yet.
I opened my mouth, and immediately my body swung over to my front and cackled out an overpouring of blood mixed with water. My forearms had braced myself in the sand, so that my face wouldn’t fall into the disgusting mess, and my haunches heaved, hacking and swaying as first it was my lungs, then, my stomach. Yellow bile spilled out from my cracked and bloodied lips. Every place it touched, inside and out, it burned like acid that was destroying me from the inside out.
My body was fatigued, weakened, and nearly-dead. The next wave hit me, cold and gaining on the shoreline, sweeping my bloodied bile-mess away with the sea.
I sniffled at the irony, and hacked up the last drops. The ocean had filled me inside and out, like a second-baptism. Perhaps it had even saved my life. Only thing was, I couldn’t remember anything after I’d blacked out. And these shores didn’t look familiar at all. They were filled with unorthodox colors and a mysterious, mystical hue.
If only I could ask God where I was, though his answer wouldn’t mean much to me now. My answer, would be the Omniverse of course, the Vasty Deep, summoned by a peculiar girl with lavender eyes also on death’s door, but would I find that out any time soon?
No, no I would not.
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