By Silence Doless
And now, my adventures on a pirate ship:
I look through a spyglass and watch spindly half-trees crack and split, then fly off their craggy homes and into a writhing, foam-licked ocean. Bits of rocky debris follow, their impact on the water all but invisible. Disreputable gulls circle overhead, clinging to the unstable winds. I collapse the spyglass, shielding my face from spray off the bow.
“No sign of Rabinowitz, sir,” I tell the Captain, idly toeing a cannonball.
“Flapping frog toads, where could he be?” yells the Captain.
“Probably very far away, by this point,” I reply, glancing back at him. He is still wearing a weasel on his head.
“What are you implying,” barked the Captain, “that the little snout-sucker lied?!”
“It does seem that way.”
“But where are the palm trees, the gorgeous white sand, the bronzed, grass-skirted vixens?”
I take another look at the rock. The trees are gone, and what’s left is splattered with gull droppings.
“We must have just missed them.”
“Are you sure this is where he told us to go?”
“Positive.”
“Damn it to the deep with old uncle octopus; Betrayed!” cries the Captain while the weasel does a handstand on his head. “All hands on deck!” His voice is shrill against the wind.
“Here I am sir,” I say.
“Excellent. Now turn us about, we’re hunting down that rabbit-chewing scum!”
“Yes, sir!” I clamber up the rigging and think about my predicament. I think about trusting random pirates, the bone-piercing wind, my growling stomach, trusting ordered pirates, my wife back home, desolate rocks, broken trees, my wife at sea, cannonballs, shifty-looking gulls, my other wife back home, acrobatic head weasels and so on. About the only thing I am not thinking about is rocket-powered whiskey bottles, which is a pity as one hits me squarely in the forehead. The knotted cords I hold explode into fire-working stars that trail multi-colored glitter, and I fall backwards into the sea.
I wake up several hours later in a phase. Not a daze, mind you, but a phase. Puberty, to be exact. I stand up on wobbly legs, seawater cascading from my drenched clothing and shake my zit-splotched head. The floor bucks and trembles, then bolts for the door, but then realizes it’s in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and thousands of miles away from a door, so it crashes back, planting my face into it. I groan as I lay on the slippery planks.
“What happened?” I ask, my voice cracking.
“Hopping homo-sapiens, the ship is cursed!” screams a giant weasel with the Captain on its head. “It’s Rabinowitz, he must have laid a black magic trap for us! That rocket-powered whisky bottle must be the source of his power. Quickly, you must destroy it!”
“You’re not my mom!” I yell, “You’re just a giant weasel!” I storm off towards the cabins, then accidentally think about the grass-skirted girls and have a giant erection. “Damn puberty!” I wail.
“You have to break Rabinowitz’s whiskey bottle! I would do it myself but I don’t have opposable thumbs. Save us all!” says the weasel.
I should have suspected evil sorcery when I noticed that weasel in the first place. Realizing that I’ve been trapped in the nefarious grip of Stuart Rabinowitz for far too long, I careen towards the mast where the bottle is lodged in the rigging and trip over a cannonball. I collide with the mast and the bottle loosens, exploding on the deck.
Immediately, my face clears, the Captain stops having anything to do with the weasel, and there is a smoking hole in the middle of the deck.
“Well, that takes care of that,” puffs the Captain. “Damage report?”
“Just the giant hole,” I explain, “And all our money is gone.”
“That rotten-bottom scallop-cracker! He’ll pay if it’s the last thing I do!”
“And there will be an epic pistol duel the likes of which the world has never seen,” I say epically. “You’re time is coming Rabinowitz. You’re time is coming.”
Tune in next week for a much less of a non-sequitur episode! Also, send your questions to Rabinowitz to me, as I will actually be meeting with him in real life. However until that time, I will be providing you updates in fake pirate life. The quest continues!