Shards of Moonlight || A Short-story Collection

Down Below - F

The wind, howling in pain and endless wrath, landed yet another flogging blow at my stomach. What crime in the whole, wide world could ever justify this divine punishment?

I planned on screaming: 'Stop this nonsense'. Yet, only gags left my mouth as another load flew downwards to meet the churning waves, possibly seething due to their break-up with Poseidon. My knuckles had already turned chalk-white, clutching the rusty railing as the ship bopped up and down at the mercy of the Deep Blue. Do not even attempt to call me seasick, sick of the sea could not even come close.

"Hey, you yonder!", a sandpaper-rough voice made me cringe, gulping the acid sourness and saliva of vomit, "make yourself useful, landlubber. All hands." Maybe finding peace being pummeled by the boxes below deck, would not have been as bad as I thought. A man, dressed in worn-out, whale-blue overalls, stared at me inquiringly. One, yay someone finally blew my cover which meant I could either stand at the railing, barfing without interruption or soon meet the side beyond the deck. Two, seriously, did he want me to barf all over him? Three, could someone fetch me a translator for Sea speak?

Despite my obviously discolored face and begging looks, the sailor grabbed me by my rain-drenched collar and dragged me over the swaying deck, waves frequently sprayed over. If my stomach had not already been empty, I certainly would not have been able to contain myself. One second, we watched a couple of young seafarers use all their strength to roll up the great sail that had gotten stuck somewhere. The next one, while thunder and lightning sung their frightening song of destruction above, the sailor nudged me and I half-heartedly grabbed hold of the rope. After hiding out on this ship, the seemed like the second biggest regret of my life, whose span seemed to shorten with every icy load of seawater threatening to pull the legs out from under my body. "Heave-ho!", the evident predominant sailor in front of me hollered over the whooshing of the gusts and Zeus wrath above. Leaning back with all my slim shape and nonexistent muscles, I groaned. "Once more!", another scream sounded, my hands shook and legs staggered. With a final jolt and a disturbing snap, the sail shot down and covered us with a layer of linen. I weaved the fabric away and broke free only to come face to face with a gigantic hole. The ship took on a rapid speed rushing in circles while someone suck us down the drain. "Holy Mackerel, what a proud Bitter End," someone whispered to my left while someone wailed in panic: "Davy Jones Locker!!"

Everything flashed before my eyes like a photo album stuffed to the rim with bitter-sweet emotions.

A lullaby filled my ears. My mother tousled my hair lovingly, right before I drifted off to sleep.

The endless cries of Katelyn when father decided to marry me off and that fateful day I took my big sisters hand, begging her to leave with me. "No, I cannot leave father, William. He is still in there, I know it!" But she knew as well as I did that the day our mother passed away, a part of our father died. She took his love with her.

Finally, that other life-changing day replayed. I crouched under the food-stand waiting for the opportunity to come. In the few seconds, it took the saleswoman to pack up a customer's groceries, I sprinted down the lane and grabbed a heap of apples, sending fruits rolling all over the puddle-stained, autumn ground. "Thief, catch him!", she called after me when I sprinted out the docs and onto a ship setting sails. I cast a look back to see mouths open wide and the mainland slipping away from my grasp.

*****

I opened my eyes to a candlelit dinner.

It took me some seconds to realize that the whole crew had snapped to attention at the same time, yet remained wide-eyed at the change of scenery. Silver plates had been laid out in front of us and three pairs of eyes curiously followed our every move. At a wrist flick of the man sitting in a throne towering over the table and evidently owning a sparkling, golden trident leaning beside him, food in all shapes and forms appeared. The woman with a fishtail sitting beside her man, winked at us cheekily. I startled as the words "Find the one food, you can eat" sounded in my head with the force of a megaphone. The sailor opposite of me had stuffed lilac-colored, wavy meatballs down his throat and collapsed with foam spilling out of his mouth. "Hold on!", I yelled over the silence, my stomach rumbled and the crew stiffened with food already in their hands. The whole time a teenage boy with ultramarine hair and glowing green eyes had been alternating between staring at me and the plates. I stuffed my face with a crunchy bite of the plates and the mermaid-man with flowing silvery hair on the throne smiled approvingly.

The room blurred in front of my eyes and at the blink of an eye, I floated in the middle of the whale-blue sea without feeling anything. "I am Casper," the young teenager grinned at me, "you passed dad's test, which means you have to go."

„Wait! What about my crew?"

Casper winked at me playfully, before the current whisked me away like a leaf in the autumn breeze.

"You will see."

*****

I wheezed quietly when I regained consciousness. A soft song tuned the wind to a joyful melody The sea, playing around my feet and gluing cloth to my skin, seemed to carry my senses away whereas my ears seemed to adjust to the strange laughter surrounding me.

"What a fine one."

"May I keep him?"

"Only if he isn't damaged goods. Anyway, the others will do just fine for dinner."