Left Handed

16

The Mediterranean Sea stretches endlessly in all directions. I'm on a deck chair on the, get this, deck. The Blue Drop is somewhere off the coast of Spain, north of Menorca.

Frzzzbo is all charged up again and attached to my upper arm. He assured me he'd last at least a week as long as I don't blow shit up.

I feel like the whole party on the boat was pretty successful. I will get my crew together out of all that.

I figured out now what I want to do. It'll be absolutely spectacular. Just you wait and see.

All day today my thoughts drifted to Jorge. He is... I think he might be it. I don't mean that in a soppy romantic way, well, I guess a little, if I'm being honest, but more in a "I could have a chance with this one" way. Besides, we all need some romance. Sue me.

He is not like the other guys I've met in the past: they either ignored me completely or were so awkward I wanted to hit them. I'm looking at you, Alex.

Manu is kind of alright. But he is in with Cristina and Cristina is the enemy.

No, Jorge isn't like any of them. He seems like the type of guy who takes what he wants. He's a pirate, and, as I've mentioned already, I find pirates irresistible.

Huh. Hang on. There's a helicopter approaching. It looks very military: all black and green colors and sharp edges. Machine gun poking out the side is a good clue, too.

I'm going to check it out. Get Natasha to scare them off.

...

I surfed around the whirlpool of a giant slurpee machine. Gummy bears swiped tiny, adorable claws at my board. I mowed them down. The wind in my face, slurpeeboard strapped to my feet: this was freedom. So why did that grizzled old face outside the glass container bother me so much?

The face moved closer. The nose pressed against the glass and went all white. Two huge eyes, like saucers, bores into me.

I surfed on. I needed to pay attention because the whirlpool contracted. One wrong move and the gummy bears would eat my ass.

Below the eyes and the nose of the giant was a large slash of red lips. They parted and I saw sharp, yellow teeth and a tongue like a manta ray.

"Wake up you stupid, spoiled, America child," the voice screamed in Spanish.

I woke up and blinked my eyes awake. I looked around. I was in a small gunmetal room. I sat by a metal table. Both chair and table were bolted to the floor. Then the room rocked slightly. So. Still on ship.

The old face belonged to an equally old man. He wore a navy officer uniform. At least I guess it was that. It looked like a regular army uniform but with lots of stylized anchors adorning it.

"There you go," he said. "That wasn't so hard."

That's when I realized my arm, Frzzzbo, was gone. My breathing became short and ragged. Sweat broke on my forehead. Frzzzbo gone? Who are these monsters?

"Where's my arm?" I whispered, head hanging. I knew I was defeated. This must be the boss of Cuntface and Dickhead. They found me and they took Frzzzbo and they will torture me and kill me and dump my corpse in the ocean, weighed down with my regret. Yeah. I was fucked.

"I do the questions!" the old man bellowed. Spittle hit me. Disgusting.

I decided to shut down. I hid the stump with my good arm, put my chin on my chest and kept my mouth shut.

He raged on for another ten minutes. I completely zenned out. This is how you zen when you have to listen to someone you'd rather not talk to: pick a spot somewhere in the middle distance. Preferably it is in the air but that can be a bit hard to focus on so just take a bit of wall. Then you unfocus your eyes. Then you think about something really trivial and really roll it around in your brain.

I pictured myself a time traveler. I imagined stealing the Nutella recipe and going forth to Ancient Rome to build a pancake-parlor-franchise-empire. And I was off. The old guy's words plincked off my armor like so many barbaric arrows off a centurions breastplate.

The buzzing of his voice stopped. The door opened and closed. Silence. Then the door opened and closed again. The opposite chair scraped over the floor. Someone sat.

My pancake empire crumbled, both in my mind and my imagination. Apparently the Ancient Romans were into really healthy and organic food. Also, I realized I would have to discover South America for cocoa beans and pancakes just didn't taste the same with olive oil.

I refocused my eyes, blinked, and looked at the newcomer. My breath caught. Look, I'm fairly certain of about ninety percent of my heterosexuality. But every so often there will come a woman who brings out the ten percent. It doesn't have anything to do with looks either or I would fall for every half-pretty girl the way men do. I don't know.

The woman in front of me was the ten percent. She wore a uniform similar to the old guy, except she rocked her outfit while he potatoed it.

She had short, brown hair and dark eyes. A petite nose and a wry smile on her lips.

She pointed her thumb back toward the door and said, "That guy is a prick, am I right?"

I swallowed. Stockholm syndrome is not a river in Egypt.

"Yeah," I croaked. Then, a bit more firm, I asked "What am I doing here?"

She laughed. It was melodic. And carefree.

"Let me introduce myself," she said. "I am Sarah. What's your name?"

Huh? They didn't know my name?

"Esmeralda," I said. If she was first name only, I'd be fake first name only.

She smiled. "Now let's talk about your arm."