short stories

The Pirates

"Why did we decide to get on this boat again?" Jeff asked. His unbuttoned floral shirt billowed in the wind, and he proudly displayed a rotund and hairy beer belly. In his several days without access to a razor, he had a black beard rapidly forming across his dirty face. He puckered his lips and brought his final cigarette to them. "I'm running out of fun things to do."

I rowed again, sweat dripping from my armpits and down my chest. "We're off to become pirates, Jeff!"

"Yeah, but..." he flicked his cigarette into the sea, watching it be drift into the Pacific Ocean for a few seconds. "Why?"

"Because the police are after us. They think our brain surgery business was immoral and illegal, and they don't think our terms of use were valid since we never got them signed by a lawmaker or anything." I panted, rowing once more. "Why don't you take over, and stop smoking your life away at the back of the boat and doing nothing for our next business venture?"

"I'm providing morale!"

"To who?"

"You!" he smiled. Jeff stood, and we switched places. It was now I who was stuck among the mess of beer bottles and the stench of tobacco. I cracked open a beer and took a gulp.

"Do we have water?"

"No."

"Great."

"Just you wait, a ship will pass by in no time, and we can raid it. We'll get water, we'll get food, we'll get beer, and we'll get so many cigarettes we'll have lung cancer by the morning after and more tar in our ribcages than what you'd ever find in all of the Autobahn." Jeff said, grinning - although, it was more of a wince, since he was barely able to row the boat and it was clearly already removing all feeling in his arms. "Then we can sail off to an undiscovered island and reign over some Polynesians. It'll be great, just fantastic."

I smiled. His optimism hurt. "Wake me when you can't row anymore."

He winked, told me he 'got it', and I slipped into the deepest slumber I'd had in the days since we escaped prison.

I awoke, in broad daylight, to a massive cargo ship passing by our dingy. Jeff was asleep on the floor, beer bottle still in hand.

"JEFF!" I yelled. He sprang up, straightened his back, and gripped the rowers. "I'm rowing. Yes, I'm rowing. I was not sleeping."

"No, that ship!"

Jeff winked at me, smiled, and put on his suction cup gloves, beginning the long scale up the wall. I did the same. We reached the top, watching a mass of sailors operating the ship.

"WE'RE PIRATES!" Jeff yelled, throwing himself over a railing and landing on top of a man scrubbing the deck. He grabbed the bleach-coated sponge and squeezed it into the man's mouth, forcing the fluid down his throat.

I landed much more elegantly, remembering the martial arts lessons I had bought with my brain surgeon money. I spin-kicked one of the ship's officers in the neck, hurtling him onto the dingy. He let out a yelp, probably due to the loud crack that had come from his spine. Another man had a gun, which I gladly took from him after concussing him on a steel railing.

With the gun in hand, it was easy pickings. I nailed the captain right between the eyes before he could call for the... sea police.

Jeff and I sailed the ship through day and night, living off the cargo - which was a variety of foods, cigarettes, alcohol and water, and there was even a shipment of fidget spinners in there. Until one day, we approached a golden beach, filled with hula girls. "We're gonna be Pirate Kings, Jeff."

"WE ARE!" he yelled. When we docked, he immediately ran off the ship and onto the beach. There, the Hula girls and the men of the island bowed before him. And then me, once I'd caught up.

"Pirate Kings." we both grinned.