Damned

Cap'n's Quar'ers

The First Mate and the Quartermaster exchanged another glance. One anxious, the other nervous, both were visibly afraid. It was nothing to be ashamed of nor would anyone have found them at fault for it. The Captain had that effect on the initiated.

Bad enough was the effect the Captain had when in a good mood. Worse was that the very reason they had come now, was, of course, to deliver news that wasn't the sort to keep him in a good mood.

"Well?" the Captain demanded, his voice the thunderous boom of a foghorn within uncomfortable proximity. They cringed.

The First Mate looked over at this crewman. His eyes carried the message for him.

"You do it."

The Quartermaster narrowed his own eyes.

"You brung this on yourself, brudda,"

"I haven't got all day, lads!" the Captain bellowed, "What be the problem, arr?"

The First Mate threw caution to the winds and cut safety's anchor.

"Look, Cap'n," he began, mentally composing his own epitaph, "It ain't something we feel personally, begging yer pardon and all, but the crew... and we had to.... y'know, Cap'n, voice o' the crew and... um..."

His voice rapidly hemorrhaging decibels with every syllable, the First Mate turned to his Quartermaster for aid. Though as reluctant as the next man, the Quartermaster nevertheless did what any crewmate would do for his brother: he leaped to his aid. The fact that he did it with more of a slow trudge than an actual leap, or that it was with the bearing of a man dropping face first into shark inhabited waters painted in blood and clad in nothing but underpants had no say on the nobility of his sacrifice. There were better ways to go, and this wasn't going to be quick, nor painless.

"Statistically speakin', Cappon," he said, "Thah crew... well..."

He swallowed.

"It would appeah thut tha men have got their... their reservations, Suh, to put it thut way... reservations, as I said, mostly abaht who... with all due respect, Suh, oh rathuh what... should be in charge."

He finished, closed his mouth, and swallowed. The water was cold, he noticed. Oh, how cold, it was.

The Captain was silent. He was silent for a quite a while, and the crew, gathered in one physical mass beyond the closed doors with ears pressed as close to the cabin walls as proximity would allow, whiled away that time in wondering if their mates had just tendered their resignations on life.

The First Mate and the Quartermaster waited. The rest of the crew on the outside waited.

"Is that right?" the Captain murmured, as if stirring from a daydream.

The tone of that voice urged one and all within vicinity to swallow and shrivel into their clothes, and the First Mate obliged without a second thought.

The Captain turned to face them, and they shrank back. The unholy red halo, the ever present second skin around his blasphemous form, pulsed and throbbed in time to what might have been a heartbeat, or even his breath.

"Now," the Captain murmured, "Why ever could that be?"

Both First Mate and Quartermaster took one unrehearsed yet perfectly synchronized footstep backwards, and then another as the Captain advanced on them.

"Reservations about my Captaincy, is it?" he demanded, with enough malice and hate in his words to spread on a sandwich, "Have they not witnessed my power countless times, Quartermaster Anthony?"