DESTINY

 January 1st and find myself in the creature's infinite tomb of a gut. I haven't the slightest inkling of how I've based myself here. All I remember is holding the treasure in my hand and observing the testimony of existence. That starry and fiery treasure that took me under an infernal influence. I haven't come to terms with how I am documenting my narrative but I am confident it is being documented. I cannot see so even if I bear my journal it is worthless down here. My audio recorder is shot and dead, it took a scattering of bullets from my mate Lyonell. God rest his soul and rest of the poor souls of my crew. Oh how they got caught in my massacre.

  I can feel the creature displacing itself, its drab liquid coating me. How I wish it were bodily acid to snuff out this miserable existence that occupies me. I live so I must reiterate my tale. The tale of dead man's messages always seems to survive, either its a poorly scribbled message in a bottle or way of mouth by rum soaked sailors in high tales. Aye, my tale will cast a shadow over all others. I wish I could pull out my apple watch from my pocket to shine some light around but that bastard Blimey snagged it. I hadn't known before and was quite devastated by its absence but now the treasure is showing me how he snagged it from my belt. He thought it was some sort of fancy gizmo and by his mind seeing that pirates have no need of such things discarded it into the ocean. That was okay anyhow. The treasure revealed I won't need the watch ever again.

It was a rather dull day, the wind had called off for the day and the sunlight was putting in over time. Wiping a handful of sweat from my forehead that was somehow leaking through my durag I approached Lyonell,”Aye, what be the word of reaching the Sopper Island?” Lyonell, God bless him with that map he carefully crafted himself,lord if he were alive in my present then he may have been the best cartographer that ever set a pencil to a sheet of paper.

”Not looking too cheerful Captain Zeel, we are about 5 days' pace from the mass, and without the wind's mercy we are drifting as fruitless as a log. I see us being there in about 10 days' pace” I sulked away, not saying another word. 

Blimey Riggs, a man who had capability of smelling worse than the lot of us tossed in a pile of shit came near me and put his arm around me”Aye Captain, he just said it take longer not that we'd never get there” That bear arm flaked some dirt on my leather vest and onto my red velvet cloak that had seen better days. 

His stench made my eyes water and my stomach retract but I embraced him further if not out of love then out of habit.”A fire is burning my ass and only that treasure will put it out.” Blimey reeled back and released a rotten laugh. I would see those teeth again as I looked at his decapitated head and those damn green rotting teeth would barb themselves into my consciousness until I would find the treasure.

I walked past Blimey leaving that pocket of rotten garbage that always seems to envelop him to himself and to the bow. A few of the crew, a couple newbies we picked up from a deserted island, were tossing a couple of bodies off the side of the ship. It was Parsons and Lenningson. Two rich boys seeking the righteous path of the lower criminal and giving the authority what it was owed. I picked those two up from one of my many strolls into England,of course only I could go because I made sure to pack vintage clothes before coming here to find the treasure. To see them go was really a pity. They once enjoyed aged wine underneath parcels while attendants waited on them. Now they plummet into the big blue abyss of earth.

 The stench of saltwater was in the air and on this day I felt like taking in big snorts of it. I saw Todd, Lesley, and Jacobson passing around a bottle of rum that was left over from our latest plunder. Aye, it would make the men dead in 5 years time with how cheap the stuff was but their existence wouldn't have been long anyhow. I would bludgeon Todd, pierce Leslie and strangle Jacobson. 

Upon the bow I looked upon the righteous blue waves, they too were awful still today. It had seemed like life had engineered this day for me. I shouldn't be aboard a wooden ship nonetheless commanding it, and life had urged me to relax from the blistering heat and drink a bottle of rum with my crew. There would be no rest however, there would never be any rest for the likes of me! I bashed my hands upon the wooden railing and landed a handful of splinters for my blind anger.

“So be it!’ I yelled to the uncaring ocean and her ever slow waves. “The forces of nature will not stop me from the treasure I seek for me and my crew!” They all cheered for me. The poor fools thought that this treasure would enhance their lives. I couldn't help but feel bad for them.

Among the next 8 days of no wind and an overbearing sun I spent most of my time in my quarters with the door sealed. I would be isolated in nothing but the suit the good lord gave me. The sticky perspiration that dripped from me made my skin cling to the wool covering on my cot. The covering felt like a serpent entrapping me when I would go into one of my ravings while laying down. I couldn't tell what exactly came over me in those moments in fact I would just black out from the sheer fit I would toss. The crew heard me. There was no matter of way they could ignore their captain screaming and hollering keeping them all up as well. 

When the time came for me to emerge from my quarters I merely waved their insistent questions with the tale of faulty rum that had my mind in its terrible grasp. They all believed it except for one. Blimey, Blimey smelled like the latrine on a hot summer's day but smell had nothing to do with a man's brains. He didn't say anything because he knew his place or was such an endearing friend to his spiraling captain. I spent the days that passed by the bow nearly foaming at the mouth and red eyed waiting for us to reach that fabled island. 

I did not learn of this treasurer by my own means but from a great explorer. Jacky Longhorn, says he came across the treasure after a sudden impulse had him direct his vessel North. He titled his book from the year he found the treasure, 1935 a long way away from the 1660s that me and my merry men now voyage. He said that he walked into the heart of the island upon the island not commanding his body but being demanded by some force. He says he can't describe it but I know now he chose not to. The things I have learned through the treasure, The things I have seen within seconds.

When he snapped out of his trance he saw the black object looking like a universe held in a single black orb on a jade pedestal. He described it like it was picking up ice when you had a third degree burn on your hands. To me it feels more like the vinegar I spilt on my scab when I was a child. He never wrote this but I can invade whatever secrets he thought he was sparing us from. I saw him pick up the orb and how his face dropped and his pupils expanded into black saucers. He was gazing at every little detail of his life and soon to be life. He saw how his wife cheated on him for ten years before dying of Whooping Cough. He saw his little girl being a harlot in 10 years time, laying on her back and making easy money. Worse of all he saw his future, he saw so many different futures that he thought his mind would swell and crack the frail skull that held it. He dropped the orb that made no sound when it plopped to the floor. The island began to stutter in its mass. 

The orb was evil,and another force one that pleaded instead of hypnotized begged him to cast the orb into the purifying magma of the volcano. He tore off his shirt and after fumbling with it wrapped the orb in it. He rushed up the island, his heart accelerating in the pit of his body. Something wet plopped onto the island, The water that clung to it from the ocean formed puddles beneath its scaly claws. Trees snapped and fell to the earth behind him, rocks shattered behind the creatures' chase. A primal essence that reserves itself for matters far beyond death and into a new realm of anguish must have pulsed through him because just as the creature's eye leered behind the plummeting green leaves of a falling tree he dashed forward with inhuman-like speed. He fell but the orb also fell from his hand right into the bright red magma down below. Only it wasn't destroyed , it just moved. It moved to right now, it wasn't always on this island and I know that now. This damn orb was waiting for me.

I read of this treasure and the sparse details he left of its power with my mouth drooling. I fancied it possessed power that was only beheld when dull rocks witnessed the earth being born.There in my living room with the local news saying how some kid lost his head while skateboarding, I conjured up the feeling that I alone had the right blood and the right fire in my heart to tame such power! When I acquire the power I will wrong every one who has wronged me.

I could see the island ahead and my blood felt like it was ready to burst from my veins. It felt like I had taken an exotic drug from the caribbean and I could not stop shaking. My crew looking back on it now(Quite literally) looked at me as if I were a mad man dragging them all down to hell and oh how right they were. Blimey approached me” Aye, Captain, we finally reached her, don't blow a vessel and have us bury you here.”

“Don't tell me what to fucking do, dude!” I retracted from him and looked down and around and drew my English accent back”My bad Blimey, seems weather has boiled my brains out. Pray forgive me.” Blimey didn't say anything after that just left me. I took the only dingy our ship had out to the island,helping row it because Blimey ,Lyonell, Todd,Lesley and Jacobson didn't row fast enough. We left the rest of my crew to my ship. The creature was the one that did them in and how dreadful it is to see those ravenous pale teeth break those men in half as if they were just pencils. It was more than dread; it was melancholy. 

We walked through the island fully out of the view of the ship. Blimey ,Lyonell, Todd,Lesley and Jacobson all followed behind me. My hands were twitching, my limbs shivering with a nervous fever and I was completely numb to the sun's unforgiving heat. We reached the black cave. It had three white tigers sitting in the front. They were green jaded beasts that sat and watched the entrance. The sun reflected a glare from their eyes as if they were actually eying you down. 

A hand fell on my shoulder. It was Blimey.`”Captain, the way this treasure is making you. We think it's better if you don't hold it, we're afraid you might turn utterly mad and our Captain will be lost.” There weren't words, no words to describe the anguish and utter rage that filled me when these imbeciles dared opposed my right to that treasure and to be so close to it. No, I have suffered through too much and sacrificed my dear heart to be here now. I jerked his hand off and backed and turned to face the five. They drew their swords, something in my eyes must have given it away what I was about to do. 

”Captain, you don't want this, you'll be stuffed if you take on five at once.” Oh Lyonell was right too! I would have been stuffed if I hadn't brought amber. Amber had been neatly strapped along my inner thigh.

” Oh, laddies, let me show you my journal. Let me show you how I mourned over my treasure for years and to let some pirates think they were going to steal what was rightfully mine!” I pulled the gun from my hip and shot each of them in the leg. Making sure they were immobilized. They dropped their weapons but Lyonell had a better grip on pain, and the only pistol I trusted giving to a crewmate shot back at me. He dinged my hip and my audio recorder fell to the ground but that was of little consequence at the time and besides I hardly noticed it. I shot him five times in the head and when the clip ran dry I threw it to the wayside. I drew my sword and swiftly beheaded Blimey, His head sending streams of his blood into the cracks of the earth wasn't the worst thing, it was that look of utter shock from that wide open mouth full of rotten teeth. I rushed over and stabbed Lesley with the dagger in my coat pocket over and over again until my chest was painted red with his squirting blood. I slammed a stone into Todd's face until it looked like a distorted clay figure. My face and shirt were covered in blood as i strangled Jacobson. feeling his life fade underneath my grasped.I knew he died in true terror looking up at his deranged captain with chaos in his eyes and the blood of his lads smothered all over him.

Surely the crew heard the shots but we only had one dingy and by the time they could investigate I would have already gained my rightful power. I entered the cave, the jade tigers turning their heads at me as if to make sure I was the right one that was supposed to enter.  I was. I would always be the right one to enter the cave. There it was the black orb just thrown on the waves floor near a puddle of water. Upon picking it up I felt something terrible pierce my skin and tunnel its way into my brain. Numbness took over my frame as I struggled to stand. I saw my name forever sketched in the sky with dead stars and I saw my daughters and wife, the ones who gave their very soul for me to gain my power. The island shook, it seemed to sway and threatened to sink. That was when my crew and my ship met a watery end on the ocean floor. The creature took special care not to devour them.

This I don't remember but I can see it now thanks to the orb. I can see myself walking out onto the ocean where a sea serpent awaited me. Its mouth was upside down and it has no eyes, when it opened its mouth an eye where its tongue should have resided gazed out. It was the universe color as the orb but I didn't notice it. It laid down its jaw on the ground and I like a loyal rookie in a march, went right in. It never actually swallowed me. I just didn't stop walking until I came back into my right mind. 

As I sit on the creature's stomach floor I see my crew. I see all the ships we took over and all the loot we plundered. I see one night after a successful haul of rum,how the crew was cheering all around swiggin bottles of rum and signing a gay tune. There was no treasure then but just sheer rum and companionship seemed to suit me well enough then, I didn't know these men for long and we were not of the same age but they were my brothers and I can only see that now in the end.

I also see my true future not the lies that the orb told me. How one day i'll be the one to swallow me whole again and wait for myself to swallow me whole too.