(short) pt II

Follow up to an earlier passage.

(unfinished) 

The musket butt bounces from his shoulder as his vision is suddenly engulfed in soot. His ears ring as sibling rounds leave long wooden barrels. Each crack is muted by the heartbeat throbbing within his temples. He feels his eyes water and yet they cannot be shut.

“COME ON MAN, LOAD!”

He blinks, and tears mix with falling rain as he sees what looks like a long, feathered tree branch impale his leftenant.

“Nobody knows what that they’re shooting at sir.” He calls out to the corpse disappearing beneath the waves.  

He hears more cracks, and with shaking hands drops a cartridge before pulling the rod from the rifle’s snout. All around him men are falling over idle oars - stones and spears, rain and God’s wrath itself, is spitting from that beach. 

He looks to Joseph, 

“Nobody knows what they’re shooting at Joe.”

His friend sputters a smile as crimson hides within the red of his navy coat.

Seven months, seven months they had spent together - catching loose rope and sharing laughter over rationed salt-meat and dry bread. Seven months of rocking themselves to sleep, dreaming of home and the gratification of their navy salaries. The man had four children -  sixteen, thirteen, seven and two... his wife lived off his labors, his last expedition had paid the balance for their bellies.

Peter could only stare as whistles were swallowed by the rolling green beneath their skiff. He feels a sharp tug and is quickly pulled back beneath the boat’s lip, beneath hell and away from Joseph’s dying smile, away from his children’s faces and away from that bubbling red bursting from an air deprived grin.

“We go back now.”

Peter’s eyes meet with a pair of unfamiliar, cold, black disks.

“Yuh. We no stay.”

He’s looking into the frightened face of one of their local guides, and he realizes... there’s no going back.

“The Captain said we were to land ashore.”

“He said the day was ours.”

The guide didn’t understand, the East London accent alone was a gulf most Hawaiians could barely cross. The Man didn’t wait - as he dove from the skiff’s deck, the stained, second hand cotton of his sailor’s fatigues flapped like the wings of some sea bird. 

Peter sat open mouthed - he looked like an albatross... like an angel.

Peter took one last tear filled look at Joseph, at his now near empty boat, at the porcupine quills that stood from the backs of his crew mates... from Joseph’s neck, from the red stained benches, and seemingly, from the sky itself.

He closed his eyes, placed a hand over the top and as whistles kept wailing, as the deluge dropped and as thunder left it’s footprint... 

Peter jumped.       

...

The world suddenly grew very dark, sound was a thing separate from itself - it was hollow, he could hear the booms of cannon fire echoing from the leagues hanging over his head. He opened his eyes, and saw bubbles - he saw murk and the occasional flash of red cloth, he saw rising wooden shafts and in the dull near distance, he saw gray fins. 

He was drifting and those bubbles caught his attention, they billowed and climbed - curling and reaching towards the nightmare, towards Joseph and his crew mates.

He blinked, and suddenly was in the lower East end. He was with Sabrina, and the snow was falling in thick white patterns - light and heavy, opaque and insubstantial. He turned his eyes towards Sabrina’s chin; that sharp point carried his glance by the hand towards delicate, pale and otherworldly cheeks. Flakes landed there, soft white snow caught by her siren song and dancing across the gray blue of her irises - those mirrors, holding his awestruck portrait in the eternity of their grace. He remembered the feeling; he saw his mouth hanging open in their reflection - his embarrassing, boyish and wide eyed gape. 

He saw her smile, and her eyelids flutter as a blush caught the bridge of her nose - the snow melted on that face, and the rose bush of her freckles was a constellation among the tight, tilted buildings of the sepia street they were standing on. The lamplight paled as he remembered that feeling and before the sensation could freeze, could solidify as he drifted between here nor there...

He was caught by the collar and resuscitated into reality for the second time. 

(TBC)