Title: Nothing To Do With The Son Of Kong
Author: Zath Chauvert
Summary: After years of staying away, Captain Englehorn has finally returned to New York City. Maybe he shouldn't have bothered.
Rating: G
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Disclaimer: None of the characters, objects, or places are mine. I can only try to claim the actions, and even then it's questionable.
Nothing To Do With The Son Of Kong
By Zath Chauvert
Against his better judgment, Captain Englehorn had returned to New York City. He had not made a promise to never visit the city again or any other foolishness like that, and unlike some cities, the local law enforcement had no reason to want to detain him, but he had not been particularly eager to drop anchor in that port either. He had nothing against New York as a whole. In fact, there were a great many things that he liked about the city and even a few things that he truly loved. Unfortunately, the city had recently developed one very major fault that could not be ignored, thus leading to his avoidance of the place over the past few years.
Staying away from New York meant turning down a job or two from time to time, but never anything terribly big or important in the long run. If the crew had any objections, they kept them to themselves. There was plenty of work to be had for a ship like theirs in all the other large ports of the world, so what was one city more or less? Englehorn could afford to be choosy, at least in this one respect. It was not as if they were shunning the whole United States, just one tiny fraction of it.
However, this time, the pay had been too good to resist. A reptile collector with an estate in the Hudson Valley and more money than brains was offering an unbelievably high sum for live Komodo dragons. The beasts were fairly easy to capture, weren't picky about the freshness of their food, and left plenty of room in the ship's hold for other cargo, so Englehorn had taken the job. There was, of course, the small issue of the rather pungent scent of the lizards (Englehorn had yet to encounter a carrion eater that smelled like roses), but for the amount of money being offered, everyone on board had been willing to put up with it. Factor in the exotic birds, the lemurs, and all the other odds and ends that he had managed to pick up between Indonesia and New York, and it was looking to be a very lucrative trip for the Venture and her Captain.
Besides, Englehorn had heard that Jack Driscoll had yet another play in production, and he had promised the man quite some time ago that he would make an effort to someday see his work performed on stage. Now had seemed like as good a time as any, and to tell the truth, he was not-so-secretly interested in seeing Mr. Driscoll's wife again, too. After all, what living, breathing man could resist the opportunity to share dinner with the beautiful and charming Anne Darrow? Entertainment, good food, and good friends: if all went as planned it would be the perfect ending to an already rewarding voyage.
Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan. The only way that things could have been further from being 'according to plan' would have been if the Komodo dragons had died and ship had sunk. Thankfully, neither of those two things happened, but at the moment there was not much else for which the Captain could be thankful. In theory, only one thing actually went wrong, but as far as Englehorn was concerned, it was the single worst thing that could have possibly happened. After four years of avoidance, he once again came face to face with New York's aforementioned one major fault that could not be ignored. Carl Denham was waiting for him on the wharf.