AppY
06-17-2009, 01:05 AM
Hello everyone. These are just the first few chapters of a book i started writing for fun. Note that the third chapter hasn't been finished, it is as far as i have written. I describe my writing style as being very much in the style of Douglas Adams, since he is my favourite Author, or was. Please look past the obscurity of the story and enjoy the humour.
Enjoy.
Pirates, the Sea and Cookies.
There exists a sea. A sea cut off from the modern world, in the unexplored and unknown fathoms of the oceans.
On this sea sail the Cookie-Eating pirates. As you may have guessed from their names, they eat cookies, and only cookies. They draw all their sustenance from the average choc-chipped cookie baked to chewy perfection.
As with most races, the Cookie-Eating pirates have a history, a particularly rich history filled with prophecies, myths and legends. One book has been used over the many centuries of pirate existence to record such a history. This was creatively named The Pirate Book.
As well as recording the history, the book was used by the original author to jot down certain events that seemed likely to happen in history such as terrible famines, devastating storms and a catastrophic outbreak of pirates not believing in things. There have been many authors of this book charged with jotting down whatever might, to the fragile pirate mind, seem horrible and vaguely believeable, but in actual fact was a load of **** used to keep the pirate population in a paralyzing fear and therefore unable to question the Pirate Book.
There have been many different authors of the Pirate Book all of which, especially the original, seemed to feel that ordinary everyday things needed to have a long and unnecessary title so as to make them seem special and somewhat exciting. For example, the sea. Now the sea was indeed a very ordinary everyday thing, it being everywhere. So the writer, after very little real thought and creative genius, decided to call it The Eternal Sea of Feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out. For once though, there was a logical reason for this ridiculous name. It was called this because of the point of view pirates would quickly form of the sea and their demise, very soon after being thrown overboard for verbally expressing doubt about anything that the Pirate Book happened to have written within its dusty covers.
To help enforce such punishments, there were born The Pirate Doubt Justice Enforcers. These were basically the equivalent of the greasy haired snitch that had no friends simply because they felt that they didn’t need them to “win” at life.
There have been periods in this book’s life when it has been kidnapped by a more than slightly insane Pirate because they suddenly realise that this was the source of their insanity and the key to their sanity. It would always be the same. They would try to destroy it but then have the idea of writing barely legible and very poorly thought out, but what they thought were witty satirical comments, under some of the many laws and names for things dictated by the book. An example: “This book is a joke!! It’s silly, it’s ludicrous and I dislike it immensely, and those damn names, they drive me crazy!! Crazy like a balloon!! Crazy like a particularly crazy balloon that enjoys and gets a kick out of hanging around with reckless and irresponsible sharp objects. Take paper clips for example. Why on the sea consumed planet of hell are they called The Eternal Paper Clips of Paper Clipping!! Is there a point? NO! GRAHHHH!” (Something that needs mentioning. When a more than slightly insane pirate writes something, he tends to write not only what is in the smoldering wreck of a mind he has, but what is going on outside of it as well; noises, people talking etc) “And another thing, why is it that-- *knock knock knock* It’s the enforcers! We know you’re in there! Come out, doubt man! C’mon, the Eternal Sea of Feeling Cold, Miserable and Generally left-out really isn’t all that bad! ‘Oh dark chocolate-chipped cookie! (a common swear word used at the time) It’s The Pirate Doubt Justice Enforcers!! You‘ll never take me alive!!! HAHAHA.’ These writings would always be identified by the noticeably insane penmanship of the soon to be victim of the Doubt Justice Enforcers.
After this rather peculiar entry there follows an official apology written quite sanely saying: “I’m terribly sorry about the doubt ridden scrawl above this paragraph. Not to worry, the offender is now flailing about in The Eternal Sea of feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out and is, I assure you, feeling all of the above.”
Many questions have been asked as to why these comments are left in the book and not ripped out or crossed out. These questions would be met with a lynch inducing glare flung at them by the Doubt Justice Enforcers. The questioner would then fall back into line and perhaps go and eat a cookie. Such was the life of a Cookie-Eating Pirate.
We now come to the point of the very blunt life led by these pirates.
Like all good and successful races, the Cookie-Eating pirates feared a coming of an apocalypse. This is very normal and, if these Pirates had met other races, would be nothing to be ashamed of.
The Pirate Book, of course, features this very vividly in its many, many pages of tedious comings of bad times, goings of good times and comings of times of Eternal Super Extreme Cookie Famine.(none of which ever come true) One such particular entry tells of the “Eternal Coming of The Pirate-Eating Cookie!!” Some of the brave citizens of pirate society have queried whether the two exclamation marks featured in the title are really all that necessary, seeing as how it being an apocalypse is exclamatory enough. But then they would be promptly thrown overboard and forgotten about.
Now cookies were a vital resource for the pirates and it is quite clear to see why the sad old pirate that wrote these prophecies would choose the cookie to be the ultimate un-doer of the pirate race, even though choosing the Doe Fish (the common fish found in the sea from which the excrement is extracted and used to bake the cookies) would seem slightly more scary than a chocolate chipped cookie, even a dark-chocolate chipped one.
This huge monstrous, fierce, ravenous chocolate chipped cookie was said to have been baked by the souls of all the cookies that had ever fallen victim to the gold toothed and cavity riddled mouths of the Cookie-Eating Pirates over the ages. Baked for one purpose, revenge.
A speculation as to the time of this apocalypse has arisen over centuries and it has been very much agreed that its coming would be at a time of great doubt in the world of Cookie Eating Pirates.
Many were doubtful of this.
A Hero?
Pete the pirate was thought by many to be the most honourable pirate you could find. A strapping 6 foot tall stereotypical pirate, black scraggy hair covered with a red ripped and weather-beaten bandana. Pete could ‘Yarr’ the loudest and with the best pronunciation, he was an expert at climbing ropes, tying knots and swashbuckling his way out of tight situations with The Doubt Justice Enforcers. He didn’t fear the Doubt Justice Enforcers, he only feared what they could do to him. In short, Pete was a slightly better than the average Pirate. This slightly better than average characteristic gave him just the edge one needed to excel through a terrible event of peril and death and to come out of it a marked man, marked to be the one to save the world from its destruction. But, what event is this?
It’s terrible, it reeks of death but damn is it life changing.
It was an eternal sunny day, not an eternal cloud in the eternal sky. Pete the pirate was just starting his eternal shift up in the eternal crow’s nest. The-- (I think it would be better to write normally so as not to drive you completely insane and send you into a downward spiral to the point of deciding not to read the book.)The absolutely pointless point of searching the horizon was not to watch for enemies, friends or large sea monsters, but for the ever incessant search for land. This was a very infuriatingly futile task and Pete knew it. But, today after a late night session with a bottle of rum, he bit his tongue and carried out his duties. (Pirates have not yet been able to find any land whatsoever. How do they acquire their ships you ask? There have been rumors that there is a secret island known only to the Doubt Justice Enforcers where the wood is collected and the ships produced and mysteriously presented to the pirate people. Then again, there have also been rumors that the ships grow on the bottom of the Eternal sea of feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out and when grown to full size float to the surface and then Pirates somehow find them and inhabit them. This is of course ridiculous. Baseless rumors in the Pirate world should never be believed.) So Pete sat there with his one eyed binoculars scanning the horizon. Pete was five minutes into this when his slightly better than the average Pirate nature kicked in and he had had enough. He slapped down the eye piece and sat on the splintery floor of the crows nest, awaiting the end of his shift.
However, soon after he had done this he heard a horrible roar, a roar much like the opening of a hot, hot oven. Pete nervously poked his head over the side of the crows nest and searched for the source of this disheartening sound. Pete didn’t like this at all. He pulled out his cutlass in a feeble attempt at reassuring himself. As he did this, the Captain startled him, forcing him to drop the cutlass. ‘Hey, Pete!’ The captain called from the deck, ‘What do ya see, yarr?’
Pete snatched up his one-eyed binoculars and again scanned the horizon. ‘Nothing to see Captain, yarr!’
‘Right, just keep looking young Pete, yarr!’
‘Aye-aye Captain, yarr!’ So Pete remained there, searching the vast expanse of sea.
Suddenly, the ship began to lurch, to sway, to jerk, to…..rise? It was rising slowly and unsteadily. This quite understandably alarmed Pete, a lot. Ships usually only do two things, he thought, float and sink. He leapt at the edge of the crow’s nest and frantically searched for an explanation. He couldn’t believe his eyes, ‘They must be lying.’ he told himself. There was no deceit; the ship was actually rising on a very large hand, a hand with black spots on it. Pete, being a true pirate immediately recognized the patterns as being those of a cookie. The ship continued to rise, higher and higher. With it, out of the water rose a large body, thick with spots as brown as chocolate, but browner, almost the colour of…… dark chocolate!? Pete’s eyes widened even more if it were possible at this point, and the very thought of the dark chocolate filled him with dread.
As Pete stood there, transfixed with horror, he stared up at the now looming face of the massive chocolate chipped beast, the big evil beady eyes and the insane genocidal smirk of murderous intent that one would find on the face of a dictator (not the kind that says things while someone else takes notes, though vaguely similar.)
Pete noticed something. It was worth the attention because it really was terribly important. The ship, on which Pete and his crew mates stood in horror, was moving toward the gaping chasm that was the monster’s mouth.
Pete was frozen there, his body not responding, his legs glued to the floor as he stared helplessly up at his death. ‘C’mon!’ he screamed to himself. ‘Why can’t I move?’
Deep down in Pete, in a place as deserted as a tourist attraction in Iraq, a light started to flicker. It brightened and it shone. Others around it flickered, brightened and shone. This set off a chain reaction in this now lively place, lights flicked on everywhere shining and twinkling, shining a blinding light.
They all formed one bright, shining, glorious word. Hero.
Pete snapped out of it. His body started to move. He reacted, ‘Abandon ship! Abandon ship!’ he screamed as he flung himself down the ropes to the deck.
No one moved, no one blinked, no one even made an amusing sounding fart. All the while, the ship was almost at the lips of the beast, about to be swallowed whole.
Pete frantically ran around attempting to shake the crewmates to snap them out of it but they weren’t going anywhere. He slapped them and he hit them, particularly the doubt justice enforcers because it felt good and relieved his stress, but it was having no effect.
Pete had no choice but to abandon ship, alone.
He looked back up at the mouth, half of the ship was already inside the mouth and shrouded in shadow as he leapt to the side of the ship. He looked down and his stomach lurched, somersaulted, twirled and won the gold medal for gymnastics as he saw the good 40m drop below him. Taking one last look at the hopeless scene behind him, he stood up onto the railing. ‘Well, here goes.’ whispered Pete as he took the step out into the air which, Pete noticed, didn’t really support his weight.
As Pete rocketed down, he remembered to stay rigid as a board, to keep his arms close by his sides. ‘Tight as a board.’ he said over and over. There was one thing Pete was forgetting. ‘Tight as a board, tight as a boa-- Oh! Toes pointed to the water!’
He hit the water with a tremendous splash, and unfortunately with his toes not pointed to the water. His ankles broke instantly and an unpleasant numbing warmth not unlike pain shot up his legs as he entered the water.
Pete stayed submerged for a time stopping second before he started making his way to the surface using is arms as his legs were useless. He broke the water, spluttering and gasping for breath and moaning with pain. Pete floated on his back and watched with dismay at the events above him. The huge Pirate-Eating Cookie, hideously framed by the rays of the sun behind its head, pushed the whole ship into its mouth, biting down on it as it entered, splintering and smashing the wood of the ship.
The ship, by now had been hungrily devoured, crew and all. Bits of wood were hurling down at Pete, landing all around him.
This, he decided, was not good, as a particularly large section of the ship crashed into the water not 7 metres from him.
He did his best to get to the wooden wreck with a sort of a mixture between a doggy paddle and the enthusiastic movements an early morning power walker makes with their arms while holding little weights in them.
With a lot of effort Pete managed to pull himself onto the unconventional lifeboat. As soon as he collapsed onto its reassuring hardness he felt something heavy and with quite some velocity hit him on the back of the head.
‘OWW!’ screamed Pete, before falling into unconsciousness.
Nightmares, Awakenings and Paths
Mist. Swirling mist. The type that makes you unsure of what you’re seeing. It reveals things for an instant before they vanish without giving you the chance to recognise their meaning and even what they are, only leaving you with the mental image, imprinted on your retina. Even that slips away from your grasp in an instant, like the mist that obscures it.
A face! Who was that? Think, think! Too late, it’s gone.
It’s frustrating, nothing is in your control. What is this? Why is this happening? Am I dead? Is this hell? Where do I get a drink?
All of these questions jump around in your thoughts, presenting their questions, pushing each other out of the way. They fight to be answered, they want the facts and will stop at nothing to get them.
They scream and yell, jumping over each other to get to you, to plead for an answer. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ you scream. The noise just steps over the line of unbearable when, it stops.
Suddenly, they’re gone and so is the mist. Just as suddenly you find that you’re swimming blindly in the sea, flailing about, thrashing. Something is holding you back, holding you down, keeping you under, stopping your attempts at freedom on the surface of the water. You open your eyes to see what it is. It stings your eyes and you need to close them, but you can’t, you must know what’s holding you. A clammy rotten hand on your shoulder, another on your arms and legs. You attempt, in vain, to free yourself from the festering hands shackling you. An eerie scratchy ringing sound vibrates through the water around you, making your spine tingle.
A rotten and bloated corpse floats by, wearing a ripped bandana, an eye patch and an ear ring, disregarding your presence, drifting by on it’s way to no where. You notice others, drifting in the water, but you can’t see the ones holding you back. Suddenly, as if they have all just noticed you, they jerk awkwardly around to face you. Hundreds of green rotten corpses, all facing you. All noise stops, and so does your struggling. Their eyes suddenly open, revealing the hollows within, hollows inhabited with an eerie undead glow. The eerie screeching starts again, ten times as scratchy. Your eyes widen in horror while still struggling against the bonds, as they all raise their hands to point at you, as if to blame you for their demise.
In unison, they shriek: ‘Seek you, in times of death, the book that has all the rest!’
Darkness engulfs you.
‘Soft,’ said Pete, ‘warm. Soft and warm. Dark.’ said Pete. He opened his eyes. ‘Bright.’ said Pete, and he closed them again. Pete was in a stage of recovery where adjectives were simply all he could manage. As Pete regained his consciousness, as it started to resume its role of keeping him awake, Pete wondered where he was. He opened his eyes and once again said ‘Bright,’ but he kept them open, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light, forming shapes, lines and colours. The room, which is what Pete only assumed it was, formed around him. ‘Nice,’ said Pete. He noticed he was in a bed, this is what was warm and soft, concluded Pete with an air of achievement.
He noticed a figure slumped in a chair beside him, head slightly back and snoring softly. It was quite a nice figure, a nice female figure, a nice female blonde beautiful figure. ‘Beautiful.’ described Pete.
The nice female figure stirred with the electric jolt of being woken with a start.
She was wearing a thin white robe which hugged her body. It tried it’s best to obscure her beauty, failing miserably of course, and in fact adding to the beauty. Actually, it didn’t make her more beautiful but it made those who looked at her wonder what it would be like with no robe on at all, after which their jaw would promptly fall open, as did Pete’s.
She opened her eyes, adjusting to the room and noticing an awake Pete, staring open mouthed at her. Pete couldn’t believe the colour of her eyes, they were the richest and the bluest blue he had ever seen, to put it simply, they were bluer than the bluest blue ever seen, even bluer than that, they were the bluest, bluest, blue that ever… well it cant really be put simply, so lets just say that they were blue. He just couldn’t keep his simple brown eyes off them.
‘Oh, you’re awake!’ spoke the girl while attempting to compose herself and averting her eyes with a flush of red to her face.
These words brought Pete to the next stage of his recovery, the stage of adjectives and small talk. ‘Yeah.’ breathed Pete, breathlessly, so in fact nothing at all came out. Even though nothing at all came out, the girl still understood. Pete noticed a tightness and a dull throbbing in both his ankles and wondered briefly what it was but then a more important question rudely pushed to the front of Pete’s increasingly long queue of questions.
‘Where am I?’ he asked, but it wasn’t the yet unnamed girl who answered.
‘You’re on the ship commanded by the finest sea Captain the Pirate world has ever seen! The ship of Captain Slack Barrow, yarr!’ came a rather boisterous and indulgent voice from across the room. The man whom Pete assumed would be the Captain had been standing at the door to the room, leaning against its frame at an alarmingly extravagant angle. He swaggered into the room with an expression of supreme self-importance.
‘Ahh Pete the Pirate, how great it is to finally meet you, me lad!’ spoke the Captain, in an unnecessarily loud volume, as if he were speaking to a foreigner. In fact, everything about the Captain, apart from wearing clothes and living and breathing, seemed quite unnecessary (although the last two can be disputed, depending on how easily irritated one can get) However the Captain seemed like a nice enough pirate to Pete who took a hesitant liking to him. The Captain strode the 5 metres from where he was standing to Pete with his hand held aloft. This seemed very unnecessary seeing as how he could have waited to hold his hand out until he had gotten to Pete….but that was just the way this particular Pirate Ship Captain was, and Pete just accepted it, irritating as it was.
‘Err thanks Captain.’ Said Pete receiving an excessively vigorous hand shake from the Captain. ‘What… happened, why am I here?’ asked Pete, after eventually disengaging his hand.
‘You- you mean, you don’t remember anything? Why we found you in the Eternal Sea of feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out, floating on a large piece of a ship, all alone on it, by yourself, all by your lonesome, no one around, just you, not a soul around you, just--’
‘We get it Captain!!’ screamed the girl suddenly.
After an awkward and long pause in which the girl seemed shocked at what she‘d done but never the less satisfied, the Captain spoke up ’Well that was a bit unnecessary Jane.’ At this, Jane, the now named pretty pirate girl let out a frustrated grunt/groan accompanied by a shaking of the fists, and left the room, taking with her the dark woman-annoyance-aura she had generated throughout the Captain’s presence. The room lightened considerably. The captain sighed and shrugged in a nonchalant way whilst grinning at Pete. “Happens all the time.” said the captain.
“As I was saying Pete,” he said, grabbing a stool from the corner of the room, “you don’t remember anything?”
“Not really no, I mean..” the captain sat on the stool in front of Pete, legs spread unnecessarily far apart, revealing more than Pete would have liked to have seen at this stage, or at any. “Err..” said Pete uncomfortably, establishing his gaze slightly above the captains hat, “no no I don’t really remember…” trailed off Pete.
“Well me lad, how’d you come to break your ankles?”
“Ah, I was wondering why they hurt.” said Pete, lifting up the blankets to see them.
“Yeah Pete. Ankles that broken are a tell-tale sign of falling into the sea from a great height.” This triggered something in Pete’s memory. He remembered his crew mates, frozen in their steps on his ship, all staring up at their doom. As Pete, in his memory, followed their gazes, he saw it. The monster responsible for the death of his crew and the destruction of his ship. The evil beady eyes, the insane smile, the dark brown spots, the evil aroma of cookies. There was no doubt, this was The Pirate Eating Cookie!
Enjoy.
Pirates, the Sea and Cookies.
There exists a sea. A sea cut off from the modern world, in the unexplored and unknown fathoms of the oceans.
On this sea sail the Cookie-Eating pirates. As you may have guessed from their names, they eat cookies, and only cookies. They draw all their sustenance from the average choc-chipped cookie baked to chewy perfection.
As with most races, the Cookie-Eating pirates have a history, a particularly rich history filled with prophecies, myths and legends. One book has been used over the many centuries of pirate existence to record such a history. This was creatively named The Pirate Book.
As well as recording the history, the book was used by the original author to jot down certain events that seemed likely to happen in history such as terrible famines, devastating storms and a catastrophic outbreak of pirates not believing in things. There have been many authors of this book charged with jotting down whatever might, to the fragile pirate mind, seem horrible and vaguely believeable, but in actual fact was a load of **** used to keep the pirate population in a paralyzing fear and therefore unable to question the Pirate Book.
There have been many different authors of the Pirate Book all of which, especially the original, seemed to feel that ordinary everyday things needed to have a long and unnecessary title so as to make them seem special and somewhat exciting. For example, the sea. Now the sea was indeed a very ordinary everyday thing, it being everywhere. So the writer, after very little real thought and creative genius, decided to call it The Eternal Sea of Feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out. For once though, there was a logical reason for this ridiculous name. It was called this because of the point of view pirates would quickly form of the sea and their demise, very soon after being thrown overboard for verbally expressing doubt about anything that the Pirate Book happened to have written within its dusty covers.
To help enforce such punishments, there were born The Pirate Doubt Justice Enforcers. These were basically the equivalent of the greasy haired snitch that had no friends simply because they felt that they didn’t need them to “win” at life.
There have been periods in this book’s life when it has been kidnapped by a more than slightly insane Pirate because they suddenly realise that this was the source of their insanity and the key to their sanity. It would always be the same. They would try to destroy it but then have the idea of writing barely legible and very poorly thought out, but what they thought were witty satirical comments, under some of the many laws and names for things dictated by the book. An example: “This book is a joke!! It’s silly, it’s ludicrous and I dislike it immensely, and those damn names, they drive me crazy!! Crazy like a balloon!! Crazy like a particularly crazy balloon that enjoys and gets a kick out of hanging around with reckless and irresponsible sharp objects. Take paper clips for example. Why on the sea consumed planet of hell are they called The Eternal Paper Clips of Paper Clipping!! Is there a point? NO! GRAHHHH!” (Something that needs mentioning. When a more than slightly insane pirate writes something, he tends to write not only what is in the smoldering wreck of a mind he has, but what is going on outside of it as well; noises, people talking etc) “And another thing, why is it that-- *knock knock knock* It’s the enforcers! We know you’re in there! Come out, doubt man! C’mon, the Eternal Sea of Feeling Cold, Miserable and Generally left-out really isn’t all that bad! ‘Oh dark chocolate-chipped cookie! (a common swear word used at the time) It’s The Pirate Doubt Justice Enforcers!! You‘ll never take me alive!!! HAHAHA.’ These writings would always be identified by the noticeably insane penmanship of the soon to be victim of the Doubt Justice Enforcers.
After this rather peculiar entry there follows an official apology written quite sanely saying: “I’m terribly sorry about the doubt ridden scrawl above this paragraph. Not to worry, the offender is now flailing about in The Eternal Sea of feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out and is, I assure you, feeling all of the above.”
Many questions have been asked as to why these comments are left in the book and not ripped out or crossed out. These questions would be met with a lynch inducing glare flung at them by the Doubt Justice Enforcers. The questioner would then fall back into line and perhaps go and eat a cookie. Such was the life of a Cookie-Eating Pirate.
We now come to the point of the very blunt life led by these pirates.
Like all good and successful races, the Cookie-Eating pirates feared a coming of an apocalypse. This is very normal and, if these Pirates had met other races, would be nothing to be ashamed of.
The Pirate Book, of course, features this very vividly in its many, many pages of tedious comings of bad times, goings of good times and comings of times of Eternal Super Extreme Cookie Famine.(none of which ever come true) One such particular entry tells of the “Eternal Coming of The Pirate-Eating Cookie!!” Some of the brave citizens of pirate society have queried whether the two exclamation marks featured in the title are really all that necessary, seeing as how it being an apocalypse is exclamatory enough. But then they would be promptly thrown overboard and forgotten about.
Now cookies were a vital resource for the pirates and it is quite clear to see why the sad old pirate that wrote these prophecies would choose the cookie to be the ultimate un-doer of the pirate race, even though choosing the Doe Fish (the common fish found in the sea from which the excrement is extracted and used to bake the cookies) would seem slightly more scary than a chocolate chipped cookie, even a dark-chocolate chipped one.
This huge monstrous, fierce, ravenous chocolate chipped cookie was said to have been baked by the souls of all the cookies that had ever fallen victim to the gold toothed and cavity riddled mouths of the Cookie-Eating Pirates over the ages. Baked for one purpose, revenge.
A speculation as to the time of this apocalypse has arisen over centuries and it has been very much agreed that its coming would be at a time of great doubt in the world of Cookie Eating Pirates.
Many were doubtful of this.
A Hero?
Pete the pirate was thought by many to be the most honourable pirate you could find. A strapping 6 foot tall stereotypical pirate, black scraggy hair covered with a red ripped and weather-beaten bandana. Pete could ‘Yarr’ the loudest and with the best pronunciation, he was an expert at climbing ropes, tying knots and swashbuckling his way out of tight situations with The Doubt Justice Enforcers. He didn’t fear the Doubt Justice Enforcers, he only feared what they could do to him. In short, Pete was a slightly better than the average Pirate. This slightly better than average characteristic gave him just the edge one needed to excel through a terrible event of peril and death and to come out of it a marked man, marked to be the one to save the world from its destruction. But, what event is this?
It’s terrible, it reeks of death but damn is it life changing.
It was an eternal sunny day, not an eternal cloud in the eternal sky. Pete the pirate was just starting his eternal shift up in the eternal crow’s nest. The-- (I think it would be better to write normally so as not to drive you completely insane and send you into a downward spiral to the point of deciding not to read the book.)The absolutely pointless point of searching the horizon was not to watch for enemies, friends or large sea monsters, but for the ever incessant search for land. This was a very infuriatingly futile task and Pete knew it. But, today after a late night session with a bottle of rum, he bit his tongue and carried out his duties. (Pirates have not yet been able to find any land whatsoever. How do they acquire their ships you ask? There have been rumors that there is a secret island known only to the Doubt Justice Enforcers where the wood is collected and the ships produced and mysteriously presented to the pirate people. Then again, there have also been rumors that the ships grow on the bottom of the Eternal sea of feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out and when grown to full size float to the surface and then Pirates somehow find them and inhabit them. This is of course ridiculous. Baseless rumors in the Pirate world should never be believed.) So Pete sat there with his one eyed binoculars scanning the horizon. Pete was five minutes into this when his slightly better than the average Pirate nature kicked in and he had had enough. He slapped down the eye piece and sat on the splintery floor of the crows nest, awaiting the end of his shift.
However, soon after he had done this he heard a horrible roar, a roar much like the opening of a hot, hot oven. Pete nervously poked his head over the side of the crows nest and searched for the source of this disheartening sound. Pete didn’t like this at all. He pulled out his cutlass in a feeble attempt at reassuring himself. As he did this, the Captain startled him, forcing him to drop the cutlass. ‘Hey, Pete!’ The captain called from the deck, ‘What do ya see, yarr?’
Pete snatched up his one-eyed binoculars and again scanned the horizon. ‘Nothing to see Captain, yarr!’
‘Right, just keep looking young Pete, yarr!’
‘Aye-aye Captain, yarr!’ So Pete remained there, searching the vast expanse of sea.
Suddenly, the ship began to lurch, to sway, to jerk, to…..rise? It was rising slowly and unsteadily. This quite understandably alarmed Pete, a lot. Ships usually only do two things, he thought, float and sink. He leapt at the edge of the crow’s nest and frantically searched for an explanation. He couldn’t believe his eyes, ‘They must be lying.’ he told himself. There was no deceit; the ship was actually rising on a very large hand, a hand with black spots on it. Pete, being a true pirate immediately recognized the patterns as being those of a cookie. The ship continued to rise, higher and higher. With it, out of the water rose a large body, thick with spots as brown as chocolate, but browner, almost the colour of…… dark chocolate!? Pete’s eyes widened even more if it were possible at this point, and the very thought of the dark chocolate filled him with dread.
As Pete stood there, transfixed with horror, he stared up at the now looming face of the massive chocolate chipped beast, the big evil beady eyes and the insane genocidal smirk of murderous intent that one would find on the face of a dictator (not the kind that says things while someone else takes notes, though vaguely similar.)
Pete noticed something. It was worth the attention because it really was terribly important. The ship, on which Pete and his crew mates stood in horror, was moving toward the gaping chasm that was the monster’s mouth.
Pete was frozen there, his body not responding, his legs glued to the floor as he stared helplessly up at his death. ‘C’mon!’ he screamed to himself. ‘Why can’t I move?’
Deep down in Pete, in a place as deserted as a tourist attraction in Iraq, a light started to flicker. It brightened and it shone. Others around it flickered, brightened and shone. This set off a chain reaction in this now lively place, lights flicked on everywhere shining and twinkling, shining a blinding light.
They all formed one bright, shining, glorious word. Hero.
Pete snapped out of it. His body started to move. He reacted, ‘Abandon ship! Abandon ship!’ he screamed as he flung himself down the ropes to the deck.
No one moved, no one blinked, no one even made an amusing sounding fart. All the while, the ship was almost at the lips of the beast, about to be swallowed whole.
Pete frantically ran around attempting to shake the crewmates to snap them out of it but they weren’t going anywhere. He slapped them and he hit them, particularly the doubt justice enforcers because it felt good and relieved his stress, but it was having no effect.
Pete had no choice but to abandon ship, alone.
He looked back up at the mouth, half of the ship was already inside the mouth and shrouded in shadow as he leapt to the side of the ship. He looked down and his stomach lurched, somersaulted, twirled and won the gold medal for gymnastics as he saw the good 40m drop below him. Taking one last look at the hopeless scene behind him, he stood up onto the railing. ‘Well, here goes.’ whispered Pete as he took the step out into the air which, Pete noticed, didn’t really support his weight.
As Pete rocketed down, he remembered to stay rigid as a board, to keep his arms close by his sides. ‘Tight as a board.’ he said over and over. There was one thing Pete was forgetting. ‘Tight as a board, tight as a boa-- Oh! Toes pointed to the water!’
He hit the water with a tremendous splash, and unfortunately with his toes not pointed to the water. His ankles broke instantly and an unpleasant numbing warmth not unlike pain shot up his legs as he entered the water.
Pete stayed submerged for a time stopping second before he started making his way to the surface using is arms as his legs were useless. He broke the water, spluttering and gasping for breath and moaning with pain. Pete floated on his back and watched with dismay at the events above him. The huge Pirate-Eating Cookie, hideously framed by the rays of the sun behind its head, pushed the whole ship into its mouth, biting down on it as it entered, splintering and smashing the wood of the ship.
The ship, by now had been hungrily devoured, crew and all. Bits of wood were hurling down at Pete, landing all around him.
This, he decided, was not good, as a particularly large section of the ship crashed into the water not 7 metres from him.
He did his best to get to the wooden wreck with a sort of a mixture between a doggy paddle and the enthusiastic movements an early morning power walker makes with their arms while holding little weights in them.
With a lot of effort Pete managed to pull himself onto the unconventional lifeboat. As soon as he collapsed onto its reassuring hardness he felt something heavy and with quite some velocity hit him on the back of the head.
‘OWW!’ screamed Pete, before falling into unconsciousness.
Nightmares, Awakenings and Paths
Mist. Swirling mist. The type that makes you unsure of what you’re seeing. It reveals things for an instant before they vanish without giving you the chance to recognise their meaning and even what they are, only leaving you with the mental image, imprinted on your retina. Even that slips away from your grasp in an instant, like the mist that obscures it.
A face! Who was that? Think, think! Too late, it’s gone.
It’s frustrating, nothing is in your control. What is this? Why is this happening? Am I dead? Is this hell? Where do I get a drink?
All of these questions jump around in your thoughts, presenting their questions, pushing each other out of the way. They fight to be answered, they want the facts and will stop at nothing to get them.
They scream and yell, jumping over each other to get to you, to plead for an answer. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ you scream. The noise just steps over the line of unbearable when, it stops.
Suddenly, they’re gone and so is the mist. Just as suddenly you find that you’re swimming blindly in the sea, flailing about, thrashing. Something is holding you back, holding you down, keeping you under, stopping your attempts at freedom on the surface of the water. You open your eyes to see what it is. It stings your eyes and you need to close them, but you can’t, you must know what’s holding you. A clammy rotten hand on your shoulder, another on your arms and legs. You attempt, in vain, to free yourself from the festering hands shackling you. An eerie scratchy ringing sound vibrates through the water around you, making your spine tingle.
A rotten and bloated corpse floats by, wearing a ripped bandana, an eye patch and an ear ring, disregarding your presence, drifting by on it’s way to no where. You notice others, drifting in the water, but you can’t see the ones holding you back. Suddenly, as if they have all just noticed you, they jerk awkwardly around to face you. Hundreds of green rotten corpses, all facing you. All noise stops, and so does your struggling. Their eyes suddenly open, revealing the hollows within, hollows inhabited with an eerie undead glow. The eerie screeching starts again, ten times as scratchy. Your eyes widen in horror while still struggling against the bonds, as they all raise their hands to point at you, as if to blame you for their demise.
In unison, they shriek: ‘Seek you, in times of death, the book that has all the rest!’
Darkness engulfs you.
‘Soft,’ said Pete, ‘warm. Soft and warm. Dark.’ said Pete. He opened his eyes. ‘Bright.’ said Pete, and he closed them again. Pete was in a stage of recovery where adjectives were simply all he could manage. As Pete regained his consciousness, as it started to resume its role of keeping him awake, Pete wondered where he was. He opened his eyes and once again said ‘Bright,’ but he kept them open, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light, forming shapes, lines and colours. The room, which is what Pete only assumed it was, formed around him. ‘Nice,’ said Pete. He noticed he was in a bed, this is what was warm and soft, concluded Pete with an air of achievement.
He noticed a figure slumped in a chair beside him, head slightly back and snoring softly. It was quite a nice figure, a nice female figure, a nice female blonde beautiful figure. ‘Beautiful.’ described Pete.
The nice female figure stirred with the electric jolt of being woken with a start.
She was wearing a thin white robe which hugged her body. It tried it’s best to obscure her beauty, failing miserably of course, and in fact adding to the beauty. Actually, it didn’t make her more beautiful but it made those who looked at her wonder what it would be like with no robe on at all, after which their jaw would promptly fall open, as did Pete’s.
She opened her eyes, adjusting to the room and noticing an awake Pete, staring open mouthed at her. Pete couldn’t believe the colour of her eyes, they were the richest and the bluest blue he had ever seen, to put it simply, they were bluer than the bluest blue ever seen, even bluer than that, they were the bluest, bluest, blue that ever… well it cant really be put simply, so lets just say that they were blue. He just couldn’t keep his simple brown eyes off them.
‘Oh, you’re awake!’ spoke the girl while attempting to compose herself and averting her eyes with a flush of red to her face.
These words brought Pete to the next stage of his recovery, the stage of adjectives and small talk. ‘Yeah.’ breathed Pete, breathlessly, so in fact nothing at all came out. Even though nothing at all came out, the girl still understood. Pete noticed a tightness and a dull throbbing in both his ankles and wondered briefly what it was but then a more important question rudely pushed to the front of Pete’s increasingly long queue of questions.
‘Where am I?’ he asked, but it wasn’t the yet unnamed girl who answered.
‘You’re on the ship commanded by the finest sea Captain the Pirate world has ever seen! The ship of Captain Slack Barrow, yarr!’ came a rather boisterous and indulgent voice from across the room. The man whom Pete assumed would be the Captain had been standing at the door to the room, leaning against its frame at an alarmingly extravagant angle. He swaggered into the room with an expression of supreme self-importance.
‘Ahh Pete the Pirate, how great it is to finally meet you, me lad!’ spoke the Captain, in an unnecessarily loud volume, as if he were speaking to a foreigner. In fact, everything about the Captain, apart from wearing clothes and living and breathing, seemed quite unnecessary (although the last two can be disputed, depending on how easily irritated one can get) However the Captain seemed like a nice enough pirate to Pete who took a hesitant liking to him. The Captain strode the 5 metres from where he was standing to Pete with his hand held aloft. This seemed very unnecessary seeing as how he could have waited to hold his hand out until he had gotten to Pete….but that was just the way this particular Pirate Ship Captain was, and Pete just accepted it, irritating as it was.
‘Err thanks Captain.’ Said Pete receiving an excessively vigorous hand shake from the Captain. ‘What… happened, why am I here?’ asked Pete, after eventually disengaging his hand.
‘You- you mean, you don’t remember anything? Why we found you in the Eternal Sea of feeling cold, miserable and generally left-out, floating on a large piece of a ship, all alone on it, by yourself, all by your lonesome, no one around, just you, not a soul around you, just--’
‘We get it Captain!!’ screamed the girl suddenly.
After an awkward and long pause in which the girl seemed shocked at what she‘d done but never the less satisfied, the Captain spoke up ’Well that was a bit unnecessary Jane.’ At this, Jane, the now named pretty pirate girl let out a frustrated grunt/groan accompanied by a shaking of the fists, and left the room, taking with her the dark woman-annoyance-aura she had generated throughout the Captain’s presence. The room lightened considerably. The captain sighed and shrugged in a nonchalant way whilst grinning at Pete. “Happens all the time.” said the captain.
“As I was saying Pete,” he said, grabbing a stool from the corner of the room, “you don’t remember anything?”
“Not really no, I mean..” the captain sat on the stool in front of Pete, legs spread unnecessarily far apart, revealing more than Pete would have liked to have seen at this stage, or at any. “Err..” said Pete uncomfortably, establishing his gaze slightly above the captains hat, “no no I don’t really remember…” trailed off Pete.
“Well me lad, how’d you come to break your ankles?”
“Ah, I was wondering why they hurt.” said Pete, lifting up the blankets to see them.
“Yeah Pete. Ankles that broken are a tell-tale sign of falling into the sea from a great height.” This triggered something in Pete’s memory. He remembered his crew mates, frozen in their steps on his ship, all staring up at their doom. As Pete, in his memory, followed their gazes, he saw it. The monster responsible for the death of his crew and the destruction of his ship. The evil beady eyes, the insane smile, the dark brown spots, the evil aroma of cookies. There was no doubt, this was The Pirate Eating Cookie!