Tag: taster

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.

from ‘Leave the Pistol Behind’ by Chloe Yates

 

Moiron struggled to his feet and stumbled across the rocking deck to join a team heaving on ropes. He no longer noticed the calluses that marred his pale skin. He ignored his rough, malodorous shipmates and lost himself in thought.

He yearned for the soft-swaying, green tranquillity that had once been so dull to him. The allure of the sea, with its exotic scents and dramatic blues and greys, had been killed by months of toil, mockery, grime and the salt-tinged stench of close-packed, unwashed bodies. The wood of the planks and mast was stiff and silent under his hands, like a carcass. Moiron had learned the bitter lesson, that daydreams are for enjoying, not living.

from ‘The Trouble with Daydreams’ by Catherine Hill