Make Sure They Never Take You Alive

Make Sure They Never Take You Alive Chapter 1

The Ocean's Mistress rocked gently.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Perfect conditions for sleeping.  In fact, the only conditions that Brandon Thomas could sleep in.  On board a ship that was probably as old as the ocean it was sailing on, bobbing up and down with the motion of the waves.  He hoped that maybe, for once in his life, he would be allowed to get more than an hour or two of sleep.  But, that was apparently not meant to be.  Already he could hear feet moving about getting ready for the day.

He rolled over out of his hammock, grumbling something along the lines of, "Does anyone on this damned ship do anything besides work and fight?"  Of course, the answer was no.  That was what it took to keep a ship running.  Someone was always having to clean, mend sails, repair holes, or some other small repair that any pirate in the world should know how to do.  But that didn't mean that every pirate had to ENJOY doing them.

Brandon fell out of the hammock, not even bothering to let himself land on his feet.  He instead allowed the feeling of his face smacking the floor to wake him up.  No one laughed at it though.  They all knew it was a miracle that he had gotten as far as he had for it to be so early in the morning. He stayed on the floor for another few seconds, but finally managed to haul himself to his feet, using the hammocks hanging around him.

He climbed lazily up the stairs to the top deck, noticing that he was the last one to do so.  It embarrassed him a bit, because he figured he was also the only one who hadn't consumed any alcohol whatsoever the night before.  But, he quickly shrugged of his embarrassment.  It didn't matter.  If they were as drunk as he supposed, they wouldn't be paying him any attention to begin with.  As it turned out, he was right.  No one spared him a second glance.  Everyone was helping themselves to bowls of rice.  Brandon sat down and quickly shoveled down the flavorless grain, into his mouth.  He didn't allow himself to think very hard about the day ahead. He just knew that it would probably consist of more pointless work, and if he were lucky, maybe a small raid for some food.

But his hopes were quickly dashed.  The first mate ran around handing out mops and brooms and rags and such.  There were buckets of water placed periodically across the deck.  More cleaning work.  They would be  cleaning the already spotless deck.  He worried that if it were cleaned too many more times, then it would just gradually disappear into nothing.  But he kept his objections in his head.  It wasn't like he would be a part of it.  The first mate didn't even hand him a cleaning utensil.  No one even batted an eye as he disappeared below deck to sit and wait.  He never went back to sleep.  That was punishable by death.  But he never worked.  No one expected him to anymore.  They knew by now that he was just along for the thrill of rebellion and the occasional fight.  He sat down on a barrel below deck, waiting.  And waiting.  It became quickly apparent that, most likely, nothing out of the ordinary was going to happen.

He tried to smooth his shaggy dark brown hair down, hoping to get it to stay where he wanted.  He gave up after about five or so minutes of uselessly fighting, and decided that he looked just fine and dandy with his hair a mess.  He was thankful that he had not yet begun to grow facial hair, because shaving seemed to him an unnecessary chore, especially in his tired state.  Instead he was able to relax, as comfortably as anyone could while wearing pants made of burlap, the only material readily available on a ship other than wood, and a tight cotton shirt that was most definitely too small.  But finally, he did get pretty comfortable, and he was back asleep in no time.

He was woken again when the ship hit a particularly large wave, and he fell from his perch of mead barrels.  He guessed he hadn't been asleep very long at all, because opening his  hazel eyes was a big chore.  He decided to just forget about sleeping and give everyone a bit of a surprise and help out with the cleaning effort.  He tromped up the stairs once more, twisting to stretch the muscles in his extremely thin torso, that could only come from being underfed.  He cracked his large knuckles, and picked up a rag that was sitting in a bucket and got to scrubbing.  He looked up when he heard loud muttering.  Assuming they were all just talking about him, he tried to ignore it for a while.  But, when he finally did look up, he saw that it wasn't him they were talking about after all.

  Another ship, with the Jolly Roger flying overhead, was fast approching them, head on.  He rubbed his hands, smiling broadly.  This may well turn out to be an interesting day after all!