A Pirate's Life for Mei

Swab the Deck

Mei was given heavy leg irons in addition to the manacles on her wrists. It made it very tiring to move about, even with her high fitness level.

Percival had chortled while putting the black cast iron on her. "If you get any foolish ideas abou' goin' fer a swim, you'll sink right tuh the bo'om. Then respawn here after ye drown yerself."

English folk. Did they just sometimes forget that the alphabet included the letter T?

She'd then been handed a bucket and mop and told to spend the rest of the day swabbing the decks. Until now, the meaning of the words 'swab the deck' had always been a mysterious nautical term, something that evoked romantic notions of the high seas and historical settings. How disheartening it was to learn that it just meant to mop the floor on each level of the ship.

Barefoot as she worked, she discovered that her thin uniform left little to the imagination. She had on neither underwear nor bra, which left her larger-than-average girls swinging in time with her mopping and all eyes were on her as she scrubbed the deck. To make matters worse, whenever the ship drove through rollers and the waves sent cold, salty spray across the deck, it soaked her clothes and they clung to her body, eliciting a chorus of cheerful catcalls from the crew on deck and up in the rigging. Only the more dignified captain seemed to refrain, his only emotion in her direction being apparent boredom.

She spent hours grinding the mop into the wood of the deck, working it free of salt buildup and moss and tiny critters trying to build a life in the cracks. The hot sea breeze dried her clothes out quickly. Her hands ached from the strain of the work. Her long, straight black hair, without anything to tie it up with, flowed loose in the breeze. A solitary seagull soared overhead, the only break in the clear, blue sky. The sun beat down uninterrupted, and she could feel it pounding into her head, yet she was given no breaks and no water.

Earlier, when she'd first arrived, she'd been angry and defiant. Her fighting spirit had taken hold of her.

That rebellious feeling quickly evaporated in the unforgiving Caribbean sun and she soon returned to the deep sullenness that had filled her since being falsely convicted and sentenced. She had no hope of getting off this ship let alone becoming a pirate and buying her way out of here. She gave a sour laugh in her mind at the idea. What a stupid dream that would be.

The ship was surrounded by empty ocean. There was nowhere to run. Even on land, what would be the point? She'd learned her lesson: you couldn't beat the system. It was too big. There were too many corrupt people with far more power than she had. If they could grab someone off the streets in broad daylight and throw them in prison for any made-up reason they wanted, abusing the very legal system and government that should have been there to protect her, then what hope was there for change?

She was going to waste twenty years of her life in prison and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.

Bitter and frustrated, she slapped the wet mop down and pushed like she would wear a hole in the vessel and sink them all.

Looking back, she felt like a silly idiot, spending so much of her time playing at being an activist and a journalist when, in reality, what good had she ever really done? None. She'd eventually embarrassed the wrong government official with accusations of sexual harassment and bribery—that she had real evidence to back up. That was all that it had taken for her whole life to be taken from her. Because he had plenty of cronies willing to back him up and protect their corrupt way of life.

She'd been delusional for a long time, thinking that change was possible out in the real world. Well, nothing she did could possibly change anything in a prison. So why bother fighting it? The smart thing to do was to keep her head down and just try to survive. Maybe the next two decades would pass quietly. She sure as hell didn't want to do anything that would keep her in here any longer than necessary.