Submitted to: Contest #304

Patience

Written in response to: "Write a story in which the first and last words are the same."

Adventure Fiction Funny

This story contains themes or mentions of suicide or self harm.

Patience.

That was what Pierrot desperately needed and was quickly running out of. Sitting in a dingy, damp basement that some fool dared call a tavern - the “Jewel of Viceport”, no less! - he listened to the meandering ramblings of yet another candidate who had responded to the notice he had posted earlier this week: “Crew Wanted for Voyage of Exploration on the Undaunted. Harsh Conditions, Perilous Trials, Safe Return Doubtful, Honor and Recognition on the Off-Chance of Success”. Well, that was what Pierrot believed he remembered to have posted, at least. With every new “candidate”, he began to suspect he’d actually posted “Loonies Wanted. Crazier the Better”.

Part of the fault for this debacle was his, it must be said. Pierrot’s first mate, Ninnavun, upon seeing the drafted notice, immediately predicted this exact scenario and urged him to make it more enticing, if not, strictly speaking, honest.

When the Vanguard departed south on a similar expedition just five months prior, their notice promised gold, plunder and an adventure of a lifetime straight out of naïve children’s tales, and boy-oh-boy, did the suckers swarm. So many, in fact, that, in a stunning display of absolute gall, the Vanguard’s captain decided to charge people for a spot on the ship instead of, well, paying them. The only thing more scandalous than such an offer was the amount of people who actually took him up on it. Of course, just two months after departure, the Vanguard was found adrift near the Shivering Isles, with five crazed survivors who had clearly and with much gusto consumed the rest of the crew and formed something of a religion centered around worshipping the captain’s skull.

The concerningly mundane nature of their voyage’s outcome notwithstanding, Ninnavun claimed, the Undaunted’s notice should be emulated closer to the Vanguard’s. After all, the notice to hire the expedition’s crew has no bearing on how it actually turns out.

Well, that is exactly where Pierrot disagreed with her. The notice to hire the crew is not only important but also the linchpin upon which any successful expedition beyond the Nimrod Sea (famously named so because you would actually have to be a nimrod to attempt to sail it) would hinge - provided of course one ever actually materialises: so far, forty-six ships and about one thousand nimrods have tried and spectacularly failed in increasingly gruesome disasters. Or so Pierrot’s theory went.

And when it was just a theory he nursed in his head, it made perfect sense. After all, it doesn’t matter how impressive and sturdy your ship is - and Undaunted certainly is neither impressive nor sturdy (Ninnavun liked to joke that the ship’s name came from the fact that it even stayed afloat, undaunted by all the reasons it really shouldn’t be able to) - no! What really matters is the crew’s willingness to endure abject misery and indescribable horror for an entirely undetermined length of time, with no promise of a guaranteed or even coherently formulated reward once the expedition’s inherently vague goals are realised!

And how are you going to get people like that when your recruitment notice promises nothing but sunshine and rainbows? All you are getting that way are a bunch of pathetic opportunists who would eat you at the slightest inconvenience and turn your skull into an object of religious worship, or worse, even. What one needs is a dose of ugly, naked truth to attract the people with the proverbial cojones to throw away their lives for no reason whatsoever other than the hell of it.

Alas, as most theories tend to do, Pierrot’s collapsed almost instantly under the insurmountable weight of practice and reality. As it turns out, if you do not want the opportunists, you get the complete crazies instead, and the debate which is better - or worse - for Pierrot’s enterprise could probably fill the Starry Library and give even the most out-there philosopher of the Imperial University a nervous breakdown.

Initially, Pierrot was optimistic. When he arrived at the “Jewel,” he felt quite pleased with his choice of interview venue: ghastly beyond belief, a place no sane soul would enter willingly - in short, just like the voyage they were about to undertake. His only concern was the tavern’s sole other patron: an entirely naked man whose body was covered head to toe in crude, amateurish imitations of the tribal tattoos once worn by the peoples who lived where Viceport now stands. He seemed like trouble, and Pierrot hoped he would not be a bother during the interviews.

Unfortunately for Pierrot, the man was not there to cause trouble for the interviews; no, he was there for an interview. Suitably impressed by the notice’s in-your-face tone, the man - who asked to be addressed as “Big-Mole-on-Naked-Mountain,” a name so culturally insensitive that Pierrot blinked - declared he had at last found a worthy expedition to set off south with. After all, according to legend, it is there that the great tribes of this land sailed so long ago in search of a promised paradise, and the man meant to follow them there to bask in eternal happiness. As he recounted this bizarre tale, Pierrot kept darting nervous glances at the tavern keeper - a man whose features clearly marked him as a descendant of those same tribes, who had in fact settled in Viceport generations ago and assimilated rather nicely, and who was eyeing “Big-Mole” with steadily mounting hostility. When the man concluded that his ridiculous tattoos would mark him as suitable for supreme leadership among the tribes, the keeper lost his nerve. He spared Pierrot the unpleasant duty of politely telling the man to bugger off by throwing him out in the street.

This incident ought to have suitably forewarned Pierrot of what was to come, but it did nothing of the kind. Indeed, one must remember that he was a ship’s captain here to recruit suicidal daredevils to sail beyond the edge of the world; in short, he wasn’t exactly acquainted with the notion of quitting - or with common sense, for that matter. Besides, he really could not stomach the idea of giving Ninnavun the satisfaction of “I told you so”. He was going to make this work, no matter how long it took.

Alas, it only got worse from there. The second interviewee ordered a glass of mead and proceeded to drink it rectally, “as he is widely known to usually do”. He immediately cut the interview short by collapsing into a drunken slumber, pinning his tab on Pierrot. The third “candidate” arrived shortly after but was promptly followed in and hauled out in chains by the city guard for “crimes most vile and therefore unspeakable”. The next person to be interviewed seemed strangely familiar to Pierrot, and it was only after he lunged at him and tried to bite his scalp that Pierrot recognized him as one of the surviving cannibals of the Vanguard, somehow free to wander Viceport - a circumstance that concerned and upset Pierrot far beyond the headache of recruiting an expedition crew. Fortunately, the guards hadn’t gone far, and returned to take the wretched soul with them.

By now, Pierrot had long lost track of the candidates in the endless parade of Viceport’s most bizarre specimens he endured for gods know how long. The latest person he had to interview was a woman who was far more interested in selling him a collection of overpriced pots than actually joining the expedition. Apparently, after reading the notice, she figured whoever posted it simply had to be a gullible dupe with more coin than sense. And although it was refreshing for Pierrot to be the crazy one in the conversation for once, the experience did nothing to replenish his dwindling patience. He resolved to see one last candidate - who would, inevitably, prove utterly insane - and then cut his losses and let Ninnavun take her victory lap.

When the tavern door swung open again, it admitted someone who Pierrot least expected to see - a mild-looking cleric in charcoal robes, whose serene smile seemed wildly out of place in the “Jewel”. Viceport housed a temple for every deity, saint and abstract virtue ever conceived, and Pierrot could not immediately discern which one the cleric represented. And not that he was trying, for momentarily Pierrot simply stared - after today’s lineup of tattooed egomaniacs, rectal tipplers, cannibals and other loonies, a man who looked merely ordinary came across as the strangest of them all.

Without a word, he placed a parchment on Pierrot’s table and inclined his head in silent benediction. A single glance at the wax seal that bound the document, however, shattered any hopes Pierrot may have harboured for his last candidate - he knew of only one group of weirdos in Viceport who marked their missives with a crimson skull.

The Church of Thanatos. A cult of suicidal freaks - and quite literally so. Apparently, Pierrot’s brutally honest recruitment notice had caused quite a sensation in the city’s suicide-faith community (which apparently was a thing), inspiring a throng of zealots to enlist as crewmen on what they considered a one-way voyage to guaranteed martyrdom (which apparently was also a thing).

Only now did Pierrot discern what the strange rhythmic noise he’d been hearing for a while now was. From outside the tavern he could hear them - rows of hooded devotees chanting for their blessed voyage of certain doom. It seemed his theory had been proven all too correct.

Unfortunately.

Now, he found himself saddled with a crew willing - no, eager - to embrace harsh conditions, perilous trials and the unlikeliness of safe return with glee. The parchment trembled between his fingers; success had never felt so nauseating. Ninnavun would be mad, Pierrot thought, and shuddered - the only thing he could think of that was worse than smug Ninnavun was pissed Ninnavun.

Pierrot looked up and was confronted with the cleric’s unwavering, blissful smile. What had seemed serene now felt downright predatory. It would take a hell of a lot more than a simple no, thank you to get this lot off his back, he thought. Pierrot forced himself to return a queasy smile of his own, and reached for the one virtue he would need by the barrel - no, by the ocean-full - if he hoped to see light at the end of this bizarre tunnel.

Patience.

Posted May 29, 2025
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