From the Deeps

It’s raining.

 

Thunder rumbles in the distance, the promise of a violent storm on its way, and you should be checking the lines and getting ready to batten down the hatches. You should be waking a few more crew to furl the sails and tie them down quickly, but you can’t, because she’s just climbed up the side of the ship and is staring you down.

 

She clutches a knife, arm extended, the tip pointing at your face, and you’re paralysed. You can’t move from the sheer terror running through you.

 

The thunder is getting closer. You need to wake the crew.

 

You recognised her as soon as her hands pulled the rest of her over the rails, heaving herself like she suddenly weighed three times what her size would suggest, heaving herself like she hasn’t worked out how to use her arms and hands and limbs yet, but she will, oh she will.

 

Lightning is flashing on the horizon and thunder is following and you need to wake the crew.

You took down a ship earlier, the chase intense, the shots flying true, the crew fighting with an urgency you’d never seen in pirates before. She had been one of the ones fighting in the midst of everything, swinging her cutlass with a brutal efficiency you almost admired until you remembered she was the enemy and fired.

 

The seconds are counting down between the flashes and the rumbles and you need to wake the whole crew now.

 

The whole ship had gone down, sinking in a magnificent barrel of flame as you all half-heartedly combed the water for survivors, but the sharks were already there. No sense looking for survivors when the carrion crows of the sea were already cleaning up.

 

The rain is stinging your skin as a searing flash and booming rumble join together and you need to wake everyone.

 

But you can’t. Because she’s here.

 

The knife looks to be made of some kind of bone, like the whalebone tip to the harpoon the captain keeps in his quarters, and brings out to show off every so often.

 

Her skin is almost as white as the blade, milky and pallid, all life sucked away from it. You can see the hole your shot made nestled between her breasts and you decide you don’t want to see what the exit wound looks like.

 

Her mouth falls open, and the whispering starts. Her lips don’t move and the words pour out of her, so incessant and insistent that you fancy you can almost see them falling out of her mouth as they form, spreading across the deck beneath your feet to climb your legs, choke your mouth,, and burrow into your ears.

 

You don’t know the words. The language is alien, the voices deep, overlapping, demanding. The thunder overhead roils and swirls and lightning sears the eyes you can’t shut and the whispering keeps time with it all. You need to wake the crew.

 

You need to wake the crew

 

You need to wake the

 

You need to wake

 

You need

 

 

You don’t.