The song is Kill Me Quickly by…guess who…THRICE!!! Yay. I read The Shining by Stephen King and if you need a good scare I highly recommend it. It's a little thick but totally excellent.
~*~
Chapter Ten
Prey
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I'm sick of the stabbing
I'm sick of the breaking
I'm sick of the bleeding until we fall down
Sick of this circle of death that we dance through
Again and again, just lay me in the ground
Let's fall asleep together
Hold me darling 'cause I'm scared
And I can't do this alone
But I need
Your heartbeat
To haunt me
Your cold lips to breathe
A promise that, tomorrowWe'll wake up somewhere new
~*~
Tortuga by night was far worse than Tortuga by day. The wisps of smoke issuing from the chimneys of the buildings blotted out the stars. The heavy smoke formed a cloud over the city, a watchful, acrid cloud over the city. A drunken laugh rang out over the streets, which had emptied slightly, giving Tortuga a horrible feeling of repressed loneliness. The prostitutes had retreated back into the shadows and caught their prey from the darkness. However, Jack seemed unaffected by the eerie change in the mood and strode confidently through the streets. Will hurried to keep up with him, even though the crowd was not the roiling mass that it had been before. Green haze hovered around the lit torches that lined the sides of the buildings and cast domes of light onto the streets. Dust still rose from footfalls before, and Will felt suffocated by the smog. A carriage rode by, and even the carriage seemed drunk, as it teetered dangerously as it ripped around corners and the wheels on the right side rose two feel off the ground. It kicked up dust into Will's face and made him cough, but still he followed Jack.
"Where are we even going?" Will choked out.
"To see Zoë," said Jack nonchalantly. "Zoë knows all," he added with a wink.
Soon they came to- surprise, surprise- a brothel. Will entered it carefully, as if a ten headed monster would grab him from behind as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the door. A bottle of rum for each of its heads.
The air inside the foyer of the building was cleaner than the air outside, even though it smelled of alcohol and incense and perfume. Will stood carefully next to the door as Jack strode across the small room as if to inspect it, and then returned. As they waited- Will wasn't sure what for- he glanced through an open door at the head of the room. Several women were inside, smoking and drinking and gossiping just as any normal twenty-year-old woman might. However, these girls wore the heavy makeup and ridiculous dress of their kind. They were obviously prostitutes in their off time. Will averted his glance and turned instead to Jack, who was nonchalantly humming the only line of the Pirate Song that he knew, over and over again. They waited for a quarter of an hour before a woman entered the room, ignoring them at first but then coming over to them.
"Whaddaya want?" she asked, one hand on her hip and the other holding a cigarette. She glanced towards Will, the pile of fake yellow curls on top of her head teetering dangerously with the motion. Acknowledging the rather frightened look on his face, she grinned. "First time?"
Stunned by her inappropriate question, Will gaped at her. He looked rather like a fish out of water, as Jack would tell him later.
"We want to see Zoë," said Jack.
The woman glared at him. "She's indisposed," she told Jack, not pronouncing it quite correctly.
Jack asked her name, and she said it was Sandra, and then Jack told her that when Zoë was "un-indisposed" to tell her that Sparrow wanted to see her. Sandra rolled her eyes and pranced out of the room, coming dangerously close to lighting the taffeta of her skirt on fire with the lit end of her cigarette. Jack gave Will a knowing look and then they waited.
Zoë wasn't that long coming. She was of rather average height, slightly pudgy, and had a mountain of black hair atop her head. Red lipstick smothered her mouth and her eyes were also lined in black, and overall she looked a little frightening, but she appeared to know Jack very well and embraced him before inquiring what the hell he wanted.
"My friend has a bit of a problem," said Jack, motioning towards Will. Zoë looked at him and then quickly dismissed him as she turned back to Jack.
"What is it?"
"He's lookin' for someone," said Jack.
"Two someones," corrected Will. "She's with somebody," he told Jack.
"Who?" asked Zoë.
"Yeah, who?" asked Jack.
"A woman named Serenity. She's with a pirate from the ship the Bloody Vengeance- his name is Daniel. Have you seen them?"
"There's a lot of pirates in this town, boy," said Zoë, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag on it, "and a lot of Daniels."
Will sighed, wondering why he had ever trusted Jack to help him in the first place. He began to describe the two of them at length, and Zoë listened silently. The cigarette was at her lips again as Will finished and put his hands inside his pockets as he waited for her reaction. Zoë tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette and crushed the butt under the toe of her ratty satin slipper.
"I think I might actually be able to help you," Zoë said slowly, glancing from Jack to Will and then back again. "But you know me, Jack," she continued, "I'll want something in return."
"Anything, darling," said Jack, making a grandiose sweeping motion with his arm.
"Can I have a kiss?" she asked. "One…from each of you."
Will tried not to grimace at her proposition, but it was hard controlling his facial expressions with Zoe's eyes boring into his own. He screwed his eyes shut and gave her a quick peck on the lips, wiping his own off with the back of his sleeve after she had rolled her eyes and turned away. A faint stain of red lipstick appeared on the white cloth of his sleeve. Meanwhile, Jack gave Zoë his own kiss- rather enthusiastically, too- and then he placed his hat back on his head.
"Now, tell us all you know!" ordered Jack.
"I… saw a man in her earlier that met that description," said Zoë. "He said he wanted to have a little fun before he left tonight."
"We're too late," said Will softly.
"Sorry, my boy," said Zoë, "that's all I know."
Will nodded and thanked the woman before exiting the smoky building and finding himself once again on the streets of a strange city. "Sorry about that, mate," said Jack, catching up to him.
Will sighed. "Not your fault," he said.
"I know," Jack replied. "Wasn't blaming it on myself."
"I can't believe that we're too late," Will said, glancing out in the direction of the dark ocean. "We were so close!" an angry bite crept under his voice as he tried to keep his eyes from filling with hot tears, but he was too late to stop the tears as well. "I can't believe it," he said. Jack stood their awkwardly, his hat perched jauntily on top of his head as he watched Will pound his left fist into his right palm several times. "Too late."
~*~
Serenity grasped the wooden railing of the ship as she watched the skyline of Tortuga dissapear under the round horizon. That was one city she never wished to return to. She glanced around the deck of the ship and noticed that Rosalia and Graciela were nowhere to be found. They must have been…something must have happened to them in Tortuga. She pounded her fist on the top rail and began weeping angry tears into the salty ocean below. It was too late…too late for so many things. Her only friends were gone, her heart was damaged and she might have been so close…
But it was too late for all that now. All that mattered now was surviving another day.