Crazy In Love | Buggy

t w e l v e

Once again, the hoard of clowns erupted into thunderous laughter. Some of them even fell to the ground for the second time. I should have felt humiliated, but I was far too confused to feel anything else.

My eyes were transfixed on the man standing in front of me. It was as if I was staring at a ghost, at an apparition rather than a real person.

My first thought was that this was all some sort of horrible prank, that one of his clowns had dressed up like Buggy as a way to toy with me. I was so delirious that them doing that would have likely worked in that moment.

But the longer and harder that I stared at him, the more I became convinced that that couldn't have been the case. It really was him. There was no costume that could appear that convincing. It was him. It was Buggy, I was sure of that much. I just couldn't wrap my mind around how.

In particular, my eyes were tightly locked onto his neck. I searched for some sort of cut, some sort of indent... any sort of mark of what I had done to him last night. There was nothing. I could see his neck clearly. It hadn't been cut.

My perception of reality felt like it had slipped from my grasp. I had to have imagined last night, or mis-seen my cutting his head off. That had to be it. My brain searched desperately for any other excuse for what I was seeing, but nothing that I could think of accounted for everything. This situation was an impossibility.

Had I been drugged? I wondered. That seemed the most likely to me. These clowns could have spiked me as I slept. Then one of them dressed up as Buggy could look this hyper realistic.

However, I didn't feel drugged or high. In fact, I felt far too sober right now.

My brain even went to more ridiculous ideas to explain what I was seeing: perhaps Buggy had an identical twin that he simply had never mentioned. That thought almost made me laugh, that's how silly it was.

"Alright, calm down, everyone," Buggy shouted to his crew, through a wide smile.

It did little to dull their laughs. In fact, their laughter seemed to only grow.

Hearing his voice again made the situation worse. He had a very particular voice, one which I couldn't imagine anyone being able to mimic. Or maybe it was just that I liked his voice so much that I could always recognise it.

From the tone of his voice, I could tell that he was proud of himself, and of this little joke he had pulled on me.

"You... died. You're dead," I mumbled out in a low voice, the words almost slurring as I spoke.

He tilted his head at me, his blue pigtails flopping to the sides as he did. "I'm a lot of things, darling, but dead isn't one of them."

He was right. He wasn't dead. I couldn't wrap my head around how.

My confusion quickly turned into pure anger. I clenched my fists tightly by my side. If I wasn't tied up, I might have just attacked him. Something in me seemed to snap and, without even meaning to, I screamed, "But I killed you!"

"Did you really think that you were capable of killing Captain Buggy, the greatest pirate of all time, future Pirate King?"

No, I hadn't thought I'd be capable of it, which is why I was so shocked when I did do it last night.

That image of his head rolling off his body was cemented in my mind. I had closed my eyes as quickly as I could yet I still saw part of it. It was so vivid. I couldn't have mis-seen it. I just couldn't have.

I tried to reason with him. "I cut your head off." My eyes welled with tears. "I saw it. I'm sure... I was sure."

"I don't see any cut marks. Do you?" He asked, tilting his head back and tracing his fingers along his neck as if he was actually searching for cut marks.