The days were bright and hot as they were long on that tiny pebble of an island, a speck adrift in an endless sea. A maddening laugh emanated from the pale sands of the beach from a haggard figure in tattered clothing, next to a makeshift fire. Blue eyes widened around the sallow sockets of the man's bearded face. His haunting cackle rose and fell at strange times and seemed to last forever.
Pirate Captain Patchington Patchingtons III had been exiled long ago, forced to walk the plank by his own mutinous crew. The old captain couldn't remember much within the shadows of his mind, save for the disappointment in his crew, the cold plunge into the seawater, and the fact that he had washed ashore on this isolated island a while later.
Surviving was the first priority after he awoke on the shore, so he built himself a fire and found himself some meager food and a container to catch rainwater. Afterwards he began to scour the beach for washed up items. The sands here were riddled with many assorted, interesting objects. So for a great while he spent his time gathering food and also assembling a great pile of curious things next to his fire.
Dreary months passed under the sweltering sun and distant calls of gulls, and the man dwelt inside his own memories, for that was the only thing he could do to whittle away the long, forlorn days. One day, while humming and going through his great collection of washed up items; an idea came to his brain. Why not give some of these items a name?
He set up five items around his fire, a hollowed out pineapple, a halved coconut, a small, tribal statue of a man's face, a broken lobster trap, and a tree branch. He picked out six other objects, a dried up sea sponge, a sea star, a dead squid, a dead crab and something resembling a dead mouse or chipmunk. The sponge he named Robert or Bob, after his naïve and spunky son that had passed away to polio. He placed it near the Pineapple. The sea star he named Patrick for a good childhood friend he once knew, a dullard, but well meaning. He placed that near the halved coconut shell. The Squid he named Edward for an old, art-loving and jaded rival that he had never made amends with. He placed it near the head-statue. He named the crab named Eugene, for his father, a penny-pinching, greedy old man. He placed it in the lobster trap. Finally he named the dead chipmunk after his dear, deceased wife Sandra, a smart woman who enjoyed science and learning, who had died in childbirth. He placed that near the tree branch.
So to while away the dreadful, isolated days on the island, he would play out little conversations and adventures between these characters. Each day was a new adventure for the group that the Captain had thought up. Each object began to take on a personality of its own, even.
" Robert, you are on my lawn again!"
" Hahaha, Edward can you play with me and Patrick?"
" No!"
And for a great while, the lone captain was amused, huddled around the fire, a tiny lighted speck on the sea.
A few years passed on and no one came by the island. The abandoned pirate's mind, even after his efforts, began to slip away from his grasp. A parrot would sometimes flutter down onto his little camp and make snide, mocking remarks to him. Furious, he would try to swipe or throw things at the bird, who would just fly off laughing. Each day, his mind slipped more and more away, reality became disconnected from the realms of dreams. A bizarre mixture of his memories and the objects sprang up around him. He would laugh for no reason, lying out on the burning sand, imagining that the clouds were field of flowers and that his little world was real. Robert really did live in that Pineapple, and his best friend was Patrick! Sandra really did perform experiments and Eugene was cheap!
One afternoon at sunset, the old pirate, loony as a lark and dressed in his tattered rags set off into the surf with a fishnet bag of all the objects he had collected and named. Laughing like a daft hyena, he proclaimed as the surf bubbled around his neck:
" Are ye ready kids!" And he took a few steps forward.
"Everyone in the world shall know who lives in the pineapple, under the sea! Ev-"And with that his head disappeared under the foamy, dusk colored sea.
The very next day, of all luck, a ship happened to pass by the tiny island and the crew wandered about for a bit, finding nothing of use there. One sailor saw a body washed onto the beach, dressed in tattered clothes, someone who recently had died of drowning.
At the bottom of the bay nearby, lie the spilled contents of the Patchington's bag of assorted things, which had scattered in a strangely neat formation. Glittering in the undulating, soft, ocean light from above, a pineapple, a halved coconut, and a small statue rested near a piece of sea sponge, a sea star and a squid. And from somewhere in the ethers, an odd clamoring of laughter rang out.