The Ballads of The Skeleton Crew

Prologue

I dedicate this book to the amazing Stephen Dunstone, for his eponymous harp piece fed my dreams and fantasy, permitting this story to spring forth

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Scrapes of shards, remnants of memories sharp and minuscule fleeting awaited on the mysterious other side poets and bards, troubadours and actors all conspicuously sang, wrote and rhymed about in lyrical, epic manner to beguile spectators and listeners in the grandest arenas, impress aptly in throne rooms on any court and market squares, filling at ease all those people whose outcome was fated and out of anyone's might. The tales were heroic, crafted to embellish massacre and demise, freeing them of the burden of certainty, for they were here, they were now and what was beyond all of this didn't matter.

Some believed, hoped heaven and paradise to be filled with light, joy, warmth and hell, the opposite pole, the extremity, to be hot, stinging, evil souls burning with their sins in never ending agony, alit with the fluid tips of lit flames to shed a never-ceasing source of brutal exhibition.

He found it was rather just pitch-dark and ice-cold, blanketing all  other sensations apart. 

It was just that. An unending vessel of void nothingness, so freezingly cold and still he couldn't shiver, the limbs he must have once possessed as if filled with stiff lead and nailed to wooden boards resembling faintly a coffin. Scrapes of past knowledge and naïve resolution returned hither and thither, never for long lest he caught a glimpse with which he could heave himself out of this miserable situation.

Glimpses in long tales speaking about what once was, who he once was and what he is now.

Something viscous pooled coolly at the periphery of his perception, where once the edge of his still body had lodged, right when a burning veil spread right inwards his property, reminding him he was weak and terribly hurt. Coldness and pain gripped him really like an iron fist that knew not the word mercy, and yet it did not cause discomfort or was worth wasting the acknowledgement, if he was cold or wondering where he now was.

It no longer mattered.

He didn't wake up consciously, when he rose from this tomb of darkness as if guided by strings of higher powers, forcing him to return from the borders of beyond involuntarily at once.

The boy was still on his ship aimlessly going nowhere, all around the dark ocean lying smooth, laid a black mirror as if in mourning, wafting motionless with waves crumbling to faltering veils regarding the sorrow this world would soon begin to know.

A tower of heavy skirts and a corpulent body lay next to him, all bled-out empty with skin now like parchment paper someone forgot to fetch from its drying rack posed in the unforgiving sun, now turned white as snow imbued with light purple blemishes. In fact, he was drenched, bathed in her bleak blood, his clothes soaked, hanging limply. Reborn in a pool of blood and betrayal.

Night bloomed around much a reminder where he just came from, only the existence of stars giving in to the reality of this figment, that in fact he had returned from an even darker, stranger place.

He sat there in the cold blood abandoned, completely still, not panicking nor worrying in regards to the site of an unspeakable crime he was a part of. 

It was as if the poison his mother had used to kill him succeeded in ridding him of all sentiment, for he was not fazed, nor angry nor sad nor anything really but void, freed by the mortal burden of caring.

The full moon placed carelessly on the black canvas above could light only so much and so less of the tragedy, yet he knew somehow where they were, the path the quickest and easiest to the shore, he felt innocent humans dreaming ignorantly onwards, unassuming of the threat looming. He knew what wood the ship was made of, replaying the second each tree had been chopped down. The world burned brighter than ever, the same it felt colourless and dull to him all of the sudden, as if by stepping out of this warm comfortable light cone he dealt now with unforgiving workings darker and more ruthless, that took more than they would care to give.

Moonlight spilled on his too pallid skin all life had been eradicated from and his eyes now only widened ever so a trifle of astonishment when his bones grinned back at him revealed by the silver light of absolute truth, bones he saw through transparent skin.

The letter beside lay forgotten, drenched for hours as proof of her treachery, still he found it and picked it up with his fingers too light, fueled by not breath nor a beat.  

His face might as well been cut into marble or stone as he studied the contents of the letter, void of all cause to reaction.

And when he finished reading, it was only then he screamed.