Piracy Teaser

For your delectation, the first few hundred words of the opening story from Piracy.

Becalmed
Den Patrick
‘We’ll live like kings,’ the captain said. ‘We’ll not want for anything. Even death will turn his face from us.’
That’s what the captain said.

No one has seen him in three days now. He retired to his quarters and locked the door. The first day was all crying. The second day there were voices tangled in dispute, then a scream. We’ve not heard anything since. No one wants to go in there.

We’re becalmed. The sea is as flat as any mirror, reflecting the dull grey of the sky. The sun is a smudge of white light behind indistinct clouds that stretch to the horizon in every direction. Rotting fish float in the water, unholy flotsam, and I know in the marrow of my bones we’ve brought this on ourselves.

The Absent Friend isn’t like most ships, certainly not most pirate ships. Not that I’m an expert. This is my
first time signed on under that shady profession. Still, how many ships willingly let women aboard? Much
less three of them. And the none-too-small issue of them being witches. The captain calls them theurges,
and I dare say there are prettier names, but we all know they’re witches. They were part of the captain’s great
plan.

‘We’ll go ashore at night,’ he said, ‘only small towns mind.’ He was a hearty man in his fifties with a tangle of dun brown hair and a beard touched with grey. He wore a patch, but only to cover his cock eye and protect his vanity. His parrot had shed most of its feathers, always sick and withdrawn. ‘The theurges will scale the rooftops and position themselves by the chimneys,’ he looked around, daring us to speak out. ‘Your job will be to carry the dreams back to the ship.’

We all laughed at that. The parrot flapped its stunted wings and shat, jetting foul grey liquid across
the captain’s frock coat. ‘Dreams? What use have we for dreams?’ snarled Horgan. He was as sour as they came; his crimes didn’t stop at pillaging. They said he had cruel tastes to match his temper. ‘You’re all here because you lost something,’ replied the captain with one hand on the hilt of his cutlass. ‘Some of you have a name for the thing you lost, and some of you don’t.’ He eyed Horgan and there was an uncomfortable pause. ‘Some of you might even deny your loss, but no man becomes a pirate unless he’s missing something. Maybe you never lost it,’ his eyes settled on me, ‘perhaps you lacked it from birth.’

International Talk Like a Pirate Day winning stories.

Here are the winning flash fiction stories, I hope you enjoy them as much as we did and once again, the quality of all the entries was very high. They are all uploaded as pdf’s so you can read them on your screen or download to enjoy on your kindle later. The stories all came in at just under 1,000.

These authors are all being invited to take part in the upcoming Bushy Tales anthologies so I hope to be bringing you more of their work early in 2013.

 

 

Geronimo

By T F Grant

 I’m writing this on the back of an old telephone bill, yellowed with age; the only paper I can find. I’m writing this with the stub of an old pencil, which I found behind a sofa in my parents’ house. I kept it as a keepsake of the old world we made over, but it will do to write my last testament. I write this the old way, with no digital files for you to steal from me.

This is mine.

Geronimo – Click to view the whole story

 

LEAVE THE PISTOL BEHIND

by Chloe Yates 

            Anne the Bone was no fool.

            Red Johnny Bootleg might be hung like a well-fed donkey, but he was a good for nothing bully of a blaggard and she was done with him. She’d been thinking with her cunny for too long, acting like a sex-starved old salt. Talented in the bedchamber he might be, but Red Johnny was the most incompetent captain she’d ever sailed with. No sooner had they stepped on that fucking island than they were in all kinds of hellish bother. No treasure was worth the kinds of shit they’d seen that day. Now, the black spot was upon him and there would be no running this time. He may have come within a breath of dancing with old Jack Ketch a hundred times – if you believed his tall tales – but Red Johnny’s voyage was near its end, the devil take him.

 Leave the Pistol Behind – Click to view the whole story

NORA

by Margrét Helgadóttir

Nora stood on deck waiting for the other ship to come closer. The sails flapped over her head, eager to let the wind take hold. The air was thick with ocean mist and drizzling wet snow. She held her ship steady, standing upright, never letting the other ship out of her sight.

It was an old wooden sail ship, heavy in the sea. It glided towards her, majestic and elegant despite the high waves. The wind strained the massive sails to their limits. People ran to and fro on the deck, adjusting the sails. She counted five. All men. She shivered and huddled deeper into her fur coat.

Pirate Flash_Nora – Click to view the whole story