Ade Grant - The Mariner

“I killed her.” The Mariner stared at a bloody knuckle as if he’d never seen his own fists before. He repeated it again. He’d killed her.

“By accident?”

“No. I just…” the Mariner struggled to find words. “One moment everything was fine. The next… Blood everywhere. I couldn’t help it.”

A sexual nutbag, thought Absinth. Jeeesus Christ Almighty! He probably came as he did it too, bloody freak.

“Easily done,” he said, offering his cigarette to the Mariner. “I once smacked a girl in the cunt after shagging ‘er. Don’t know why, just did. I’d pulled out and was getting dressed when I saw my jizz in ‘er fanny. It was trickling out, no, gushing out, and for some reason I just lost it. Punched her right between the legs. Was like punching moss. Didn’t go as far as you though, back in those days there were consequences. Not like now.”

“What’s beaver?”

Absinth blinked, trying to keep up with this man’s insanities.

“You think we should eat them?”

Absinth finally realized what the Mariner was getting at. About his triangular chest clung a tattered tee-shirt proclaiming to the world, ‘Save Trees, Eat Beaver’, the words peppered with tiny burnt holes like machine gun fire. “It’s just a fuckin’ tee-shirt.”

“Oh.”

“So where did you get the Neptune?”

“The Neptune?”

“Yes, your ship!” Absinth cried, his excitement bubbling over.

“I didn’t know she was called the Neptune.”

Absinth couldn’t conceal his amazement. “You mean you’ve been sailing an antique, a piece of history, and you didn’t know?”

The Mariner shook his head, clearly he didn’t.

“That’s the Neptune. Took convicts to Australia. Must have been around 1780 it all happened.”

“I don’t know where those places are. Did it succeed?”

“In a way. Over a hundred and fifty convicts died on the journey. Terrible what the crew did to ‘em. Terrible. I read about it when tracing back my family-tree.” He focused the Mariner with a wily stare. “A lot of bad memories aboard that vessel, I’ll bet.”

“No, no memories.”

A blank book this one. Nothing inside that head but a desire to cum and make girls bleed. Useful.

“My name is Absinth Alcott, and like you I’m a sailor. A captain when the mood takes me. What’s yours?”

“I don’t have a name.”

“Bloody hell. Done something even worse than killing this honey here? Ok, we’ll play it your way. Your name will be…” Absinth struggled, searching his memory banks. He snapped his fingers. “Claude! Pleased to meet you, Claude.”

Between them, a fly made a daring dive for Isabel’s corpse, only to be repelled by smoke. It banked, hoping to bring itself around for a second go.

“So where to next, Claude? To which horizon will you be sailing?”

The Mariner, still in shock, tried to assess the old man. He liked him, despite his vile nicotine stained hands and teeth, despite his frank talk of previous thuggery. The Mariner couldn’t bring himself to cast judgement, hadn’t he just killed a women in cold blood? Didn’t he have demons of his own?

He leaned forward, deciding to put his trust in Absinth. “I’m searching for an island. It’s protected, ringed by defences. Somewhere on that island is the truth. The truth to why the world’s falling apart, the secrets that we have all forgotten.”

“An Oracle?”

“I suppose it could be. I don’t know myself, I just know the answers are to be found there.”

“Contained within an island?”

“Yes, the island is ‘protected’. Whatever that means.”

The Mariner passed back the cigarette, which Absinth toked deep upon, trying to hide his racing mind and soaring excitement. “How do you know all this?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just… do.”

Absinth threw the butt into the fire and clapped his hands. His agitated guest recoiled as if struck. “Well isn’t this a turn up for the books?”

“What is?”

“Over the past year I’ve been speaking to sailors, not like yourself, these were pirates and all sorts of scum-bags. Time and again I would hear a rumour. Sometimes it got silly, the usual storyteller fluff, but ultimately the same core facts again an’ again. An island, ringed by coral, upon which a woman lives. A woman who knows everything .”

“Everything?”

“That’s what I said, yeah! Everything! An Oracle!”

All uncertainty, shock and vulnerability fell from the Mariner in that moment. So much so it scared Absinth a little.

“Where?”

“East of here,” Absinth babbled. “Somewhere east. I don’t know. You have to keep going. It’s a long voyage.”

“Then I must begin now.” The Mariner stood, gathering purpose.

“Wait! Where are your crew?”

The Mariner’s paused, confused at the suggestion. “I don’t have a crew. Well, just one, she’s outside.” Having remembered his ward, he called for her.

“Only one crew member?” Absinth was amazed. That couldn’t be true! How on earth did he sail such an enormous ship? “Then I should come with you. I’m good at putting a crew together. Several places to recruit from. You supply the ship, I’ll supply the men. How does that sound?”

“I’d be glad,” the Mariner lied, thinking to himself that he’d rather have no more crew than two. A soft pattering of feet announced their third. “I want you to meet my friend. Grace.”

The devil edged in, looking about the room for a possible trap. Her snout was doing the most work and she let out a snarl when she found the old man’s scent,

Absinth leaped to his feet with a jolt, backing away.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Isabel said she’s a tazzy devil.”

“I can see it’s a Tasmanian devil, I mean what the fuck’s it doin’ here?”

The Mariner looked from devil to the man and back again. “I told you. She’s my crew.”

Absinth shook his head. “I’m not boarding your ship with one of those things. Can’t fucking stand dogs. Leave it ‘ere.”

Grace’s brown eyes turned up as if to ask the Mariner if he were considering such an outrageous notion. Her front paws fidgeted in the gloom.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Alcott. Her place is not up for negotiation.”

Absinth’s face turned to a snarl. The change was bestial in its ferocity. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? You prick! You tellin’ me that fuckin’ rat is better than me?” Even accounting for the orange glare of the flames, the old man’s cheeks had gone bright red from humiliated rage.

“No. But she was first.”

“Get the fuck out of here, you murderer!” Absinth tensed as if ready for a fight. “You’re not welcome. Not you, not your rat, nor your fuckin’ ship neither!”

The Mariner didn’t need to be told twice, he had no stomach for a second death that night. He left, and the further they got from the wolf and widow’s house, the happier Grace became.

THE MARINER SCREAMED AND TORE at his ears, and yet still the visions remained. The ship, the ‘Neptune’, as it had been named many long years before, screamed too, though her complaints were for the ferocious winds that tore at her frame, and the staggering waves that clashed at her hull.

The day had been spent in preparation. First job had been to tend to his wound. The row of punctures created by the eel’s teeth were each individually deep, yet by a stroke of luck the creature had failed to tear out a larger piece. The Mariner found some old, damp bandages in a cupboard below deck, and rapped them as tightly as he could to stop the bleeding. Infection was his main concern. The whole region throbbed and grew increasingly maroon. What sorts of diseases did eels carry? What sort of poisons could they secrete?