Threshing Floor

What Thresh Hell is This?

     The azure mists that surrounded Will Nonce swirled and flowed in complete chaos, at least when he was lucky. When he was not lucky, they coalesced into nightmare visions of his future. When he was extremely unlucky, the visions were not of his future but of his past. He saw them so clearly, as if he was back in the moment, but they were always twisted in some sadistic way. Events played out so nearly true that his heart ached to witness them and then some small change crept in that threatened to rip that same heart out of his nonexistent body. Always at the center of those corrupted memories was his former captain, Sarah Fortune.

     She had dominated his daily life ever since she had exploded, figuratively, onto the scene in Bilgewater Bay. For the first year, every captain who berthed in and around the Bay walked a fine line between angering the pure bloody chaos that called himself Gangplank and the calculating, relentless force of nature carrying the twin pistols.

     Will didn't know who first coined the names, Shock and Awe, but the labels had always struck him as too crude to have been invented by the mistress buccaneer herself. The monikers had stuck however, and whatever Miss Sarah thought of the names, pirates tended to be a crude bunch. The mere mention of Shock and Awe sent shivers through her enemies and a shot of courage to the hearts of her crew.

     In that moment, the memory of their first meeting flashed into existence around him. The reaver captain had been on one of his notorious rampages that tore through enemy and ally alike and Will had unthinkingly stepped directly into his path to shield a fresh new recruit that was likely seconds away from death. He supposed he had been lucky to escape the same fate himself but instead landed in the brig with a broken nose, chained to the bulkhead and waist deep in the stagnant seawater that was always seeping into the ship. He had lain there for three days until he had been awoken by explosions that rocked the ship and the shouts and screams of men fighting and dying. The door of his cell shook and buckled, then slammed open to admit a winded young lady surrounded by a tempest of blood red locks.

     "Where is that murderous dog?" she snarled, as she quickly surveyed the barren holding cell. At that moment, so subtly that Will almost missed it, a ripple passed through the whole scene, and suddenly the beautiful but disheveled Fortune was transformed. The sheer animal attraction that radiated from her hit him like a cannon shot to the gut.

     "NO! It wasn't like this!" he thought.

     Then her eyes met his and a sly smile crept over her face. "What do we have here? Someone that Gangplank dislikes enough to put in this hellhole can definitely be a friend of mine," the smile broadened.

      "No, God, no"

     "Who knows? Maybe even more than friends," she crooned as she skillfully shot the locks off his chains. "Help my crew rid the seas of this scourge, and we'll decide that later, hmm?"

     His emotions twisted into a tight knot as the scene started to fade. Before it winked out altogether, he could hear a sound that started out as her laughter change into a cruel, maniacal cackle before he could whimper "Why?" and he slipped into merciful unconsciousness.