"How his naked ears were tortured /
By the sirens sweetly singing."
"I hope they didn't get your mind /
Your heart is too strong, anyway."
~Milky Chance, "Stolen Dance"
A tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean.
Ancient tracks groaned under grinding wheels as the tram rumbled forward, having no choice to make; the flickering cream Lumafly light from within danced out of dusty, fractured windows, beckoning the endless shadows to come out to play; a compressed, tinny piano was playing through a cheap gramophone-like speaker, a comically sad attempt to fill the silence; ghosts seemed to crowd the hollow tram car, and Hornet felt suffocated.
Gods, why was she still shaking? The Abyss was behind her, now. Perhaps it was the thought of such a place existing at all; but it wasn't like she hadn't known about it already. Perhaps it was the heavy, haunted air; perhaps it was the bitter cold; perhaps it was the image of a sea of corpses, a bottomless pit of dead children, their millions of masks fractured and shattered and weeping the primordial darkness they were born from.
Or perhaps…
Despite the exhaustion that dampened her to her very core, Hornet didn't feel like taking a seat in the tram. She stood leaning against the back of a middle seat, brooding, clutching her needle in a deathgrip to try and still her twitches.
A shuffle. She turned, and another Abyss stillborn stared back at her.
"Leave me be… Tusk," she said, straining to add the Vessel's given name as an afterthought. The little ghost was standing on the seat in front of her, peeking over its back to stare at her with their wide, dark eyes. She couldn't tell if it was keen interest in their eyes, or apprehension.
Despite her commands, they wouldn't quit leering at her. Stretching over the edge of the seat, they reached out a tiny dark paw, grasping for Hornet's cloak.
Hornet jolted up, and Tusk writhed on the end of her needle, its small body impaled, leaking inky Void across stainless steel. It was not the first time a Vessel had perished by her blade, nor would it be the last.
She held the needle up, the Vessel suspended above the ground, its helpless thrashing going still as she tilted the blade down. Its corpse slid back across her needle, lubricated by its own primordial hemolymph, as it fell off the ledge and into the black Abyss. Just another failure to join the pile.
She had not created this pit, but she was the one still filling it today.
—slammed her back against the opposite tram wall with a thud, hard enough that for a heartstopping moment, she thought she'd derail the thing; the Lumaflies, their light tinted a smoky cream from the ancient glass, flickered with the bump. She thought she'd bend her needle in her unsteady iron grip. Tusk had retreated, shying back into their seat. The tram rumbled on.
Hornet choked on her own breath for a moment.
"...I'm loathe to repeat myself, little shadow."
Tusk's gaze fell to the floor. She leaned back again, to regain some semblance of self-control. She turned, not wanting to look at them; the only other direction to look was out the front window of the tram; no headlights, only the ambient glow from within their capsule escaped, and it did nothing to illuminate the thick, chilling darkness of these tunnels, with no certainty of what was even a foot away; Hallownest had never seemed darker.
"I'll be escorting you two up to Dirtmouth, where you can rest; Gods know you need it. Once we get there, however…"
She turned around, daring a glance at the seat in the furthest back of the tram car. Laid across it was the unconscious, shivering wraith of a human.
His skin was littered with discolored welts and scabs—once bloated pustules of Infection—and his clothes were stained with faint splatters of blood. He looked deathly pale, heavy bags hung under his eyes, and his hair was smeared and frayed; he must not have bathed in days. He was getting the first sleep he'd had in far too long, and while a part of her feared he'd awaken with that accursed tangerine returned to his eyes, she was far more anxious of whatever new disease he'd contracted in the Abyss to counteract his current one. No dream had him entranced anymore; now, he was shaking as though in the depths of a nightmare.
His eyes… What color were they, again? She'd only seen them for a second when he emerged from the Void Lake, their hue obscured by the blinding pale of the watchtower and the shadows across his face…
"...Once we get there, he is your responsibility. As much as I'd like to ensure he doesn't die in his sleep, I have other priorities to attend to."
She was lying. She just couldn't bear to be in the same room as him. How he flew in the face of the static kingdom that had been her reality for so many years, how he looked so much like her…
"This memory… should be preserved. It doesn't deserve… to die here. And neither… do we."
How he looked like a corpse, and how despite that, she somehow knew everything was only just starting.
"I don't know… if it'll ever be over."
"JER- URK!"
Hornet startled as a suffocated choke escaped from the human's throat. His eyes were still closed as his arms flailed above him erratically, and he rolled off of the tram seat and hit the metal floor with a thud. Like a sleepwalker, or a man possessed, he crawled across the dirty and chilled floor of the tram, fingers digging into every crevice as though it were a cliff face and gravity was pulling him sideways to fall to his death.
"J-Jehrm…ey…" he groaned. His eyes were shut still, as though the Void had robbed him of his sight. A nightmare puppeted him. "J-Jeremy… I-I'm sorry…"
Hornet stepped closer to examine him. Before she could, Tusk leapt out in front of her, nail drawn, startling her twofold. They stood between her and the convulsing human, staring her down with that same unyielding gaze.
–Something plopped into the ash before her feet. She paused; Still bleeding from their side, nail drawn, Tusk was crying before her. They struggled to hold their nail up high in a defensive guard, pawing at her hemo-soaked dress in desperation.
Like a child begging for attention.
Or for mercy.
Hornet gazed down at Tusk; their little arms were spread as wide as they could go, shielding the human.
From her, she realized.
The human had collapsed on his side now, tears seeping through his shut eyes and running down his face and to the cold floor. She couldn't make out the emotion in his face, only that it was distorted by an intolerable misery, tormenting him from his nightmare.
A being of Void, and an outsider touched by that same emptiness. A deranged thought struck her; that he had not cured his Infection, but had become patient zero for a new, black strain of it.
"J–" He hiccuped as he mourned. "Jay… I'm sorry… I-I'm coming to f-find you, Jay…"
Hornet turned away, gripping her needle for support. She thought she was going to collapse.
"...Jeremy…"
Her gut seemed to cave in as she hunched over her needle. Even with her back turned, she could still see him in the reflection of the glass windshield. A reflection; corpse-like; unsure of his own name and calling out to ghosts.
Her eyes lingered on "Chance" for a moment too long, fearing if she looked away that he—already barely there—would vanish completely and forever.
"Go back to sleep."
His feet pounded against the dark sand, caving in and making him stagger with every step, his front covered in sand and specs of blood. Chilling, moonless night had swallowed the world whole. The ocean waters lapping at his shoes seemed so dark as to appear black like ink.
His breaths were haggard. His muscles were screaming. Sand dug under his fingernails as he tripped, clawing his way back to his feet to keep running.
The beach stretched out endlessly away from him. Trapped between land and sea.
"Go back to sleep."
Beds lined the shore.
Thousands of single-sized beds, the sand and waves chafing the feet of their metal frames, ran up and down the coastline. They wavered like a river. They stretched beyond the horizon, cheap pastel towel sheets seeming dull and bleak in the suffocating dark.
Chance was sprinting upstream, dodging the beds as he stumbled past them. How long had he been running here? When would he get to rest? He was so tired.
Up ahead, the sun was walking away from him.
"Go back to sleep."
She was the only light in this nighttime abyss, a golden glow surrounding Her and forcing Chance to squint his eyes as he ran towards Her. Gleaming, polished silver leggings, like armor from the thigh down, seemed to float on the sand, not leaving footprints behind. A three-pronged tiara stood proud from Her golden hair, flowing behind her; a picture of elegance and natural grace. Long moth-wings, soft like dove's feathers, grew from Her back, their unblinking eye patterns seeming to stare Chance down from behind Her in judgment, or perhaps cruel amusement. Beyond that, She was almost completely nude, barring a long, fur-soft boa that snaked across Her shoulders and down Her figure, obscuring Her; it appeared to be made not of animal fur or any other weavable material, but of milky sea foam, bubbling and caressing Her blinding, porcelain form.
She was only walking, a casual stroll across the midnight beach; the Sun itself on its leisurely journey to stretch across the black horizon. Despite that, no matter how hard Chance's feet pounded against the murky sand, she never seemed to get any closer.
Beds rushed past them both as he fought upstream their river. Chance's vision was starting to blur. He couldn't get a frame of reference for where he was running. Was it three beds between himself and Her, or five…? Ten…?
"Go back to sleep."
She was singing to him.
"Go back to sleep."
Chance screamed, collapsing to his knees in the sand, his hands clasping over his ears. The singing, the mantra, seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, digging into his eardrums and burrowing directly into his brain, no matter how he tried to drown it out.
"I am a chorus."
A cacophony of voices assaulted him. Forcing his eyes open, Chance could catch a glimpse of the beds surrounding him; where they were once empty, they were now full. Thin trails of orange, glowing, neon blood dribbled out of their mouths and their eyes and pores, and down their hands and down their fingers and coalescing into drops on their fingertips and silently dripping into the sand.
Lightfoot was tossing and turning in his sleep.
"Go back to sleep."
Quirrel seemed to be hypnotized.
"Go back to sleep."
Lemm looked to be on his deathbed.
"Go back to sleep."
Iselda was unconsciously scratching the chitin on her forearms in her sleep, leaving thin scars.
"Go back to sleep."
Rio looked completely at peace; still, all too still to be alive.
"Go back to sleep."
All of them beckoned him to join them, to be one with the Light as he had made them, their siren songs torturing his ears. Chance cried out as he fell forward, begging the song to stop.
A black wave rushed underneath him, staining his pants and jacket, and he'd never felt so cold in his life.
In the reflection of the tide, Chance saw a silhouette.
His entire form was blacker than space; he was a living shadow. His eyes were like headlights, pale and blindingly bright from beneath the waves.
Six orange, glowing, neon moth wings stretched behind his back, their eyes turning to stare at Chance like some biblical angel, and a pair of comb-like, feathery antennae sprouted from his head of messy hair.
"...Chance… Why did you… leave…?"
Chance raised his fist, and with a cry, he punched the water, its reflective surface shattering like a mirror. He cut his knuckles on a crimson shell buried in the sand.
"I can… see you…"
The water splashed into his face, the sea foam seeming to warp into the shape of lips, rising up to kiss him.
"My eyes… are open…"
LAYLA: Awake.
Chance snapped awake.
He was lying on his side in the dirt, cast somewhat aside into the shade, the light of a nearby Lumafly streetlamp basking the street in its pale glow. Chilled, bitter wind brushed over him, his scarf fluttering around his face.
I remember… someone, dragging me through the trams and Stagways… Is this… Dirtmouth?
The rounded, shell-shaped houses crowded together. The sky was black, but he couldn't see a moon or stars.
And his face was sticky and warm, his cheek laying in a pool of hemolymph.
LAYLA: Shake dreams from your hair, my pretty child, my sweet one.
Chance pushed himself off of the ground, groaning as he almost collapsed again; the Infection being purged from his body left him feeling fresh and alive, air flowing through his lungs and blood through his veins with such clarity that he'd almost forgotten in all those sleepless nights wandering Hallownest's depths. But that journey had sapped him of all his strength, and it was a Herculean effort to merely stand upright as he pulled himself to his feet by leaning on a lamp post.
He touched his cheek, slick with hemo. Just around the corner, he heard the clashing of metal.
–In the center of the square, Iselda was covered head to toe in hemo, holding a replacement spear weapon and standing over a pleading Elderbug, his eyes full of desperation–
Chance half-ran, half-staggered over to the clearing as fast as he could. Someone had dropped him in front of the entrance to the Stag station, and from there, he rounded a corner and saw–
Hornet shot down like a silver dart onto Iselda.
She parried the attack with a replacement spear. Iselda spun the weapon in her hands like a baton, throwing Hornet back—who just barely dodged as Iselda twisted the spear around and tried to clip her in the hip.
Tusk was hanging back, nail drawn, hovering in front of a cowering Elderbug on the ground, an injured Sly and Bretta, and Cornifer, who appeared to be unconscious. Hemolymph was leaking from his head.
Iselda turned, her eyes catching sight of Chance. Under the sunrise in her gaze, he felt his veins turn to ice.
–She placed the pink crystal on the counter, adjusting it so that the Light shined and complemented the shop's cool atmosphere–
Her eyes were blinding tangerine.
"Look who's finally awake," Layla grinned at him with Iselda's voice.
Something caught in Chance's throat when he looked into those eyes, listened to that voice. Gravity seemed to swell in his very core as he collapsed to his knees; it was like a new Infection was incubating in his lungs and gut all over again; he felt sick, and he couldn't stop fucking shaking.
"...You… You used me…" he managed to choke out. "Jeremy–"
"Tch, that half-breed nothing you love so much? I told you, I'm keeping him very safe right now~ …Inside your head, that is."
"I… I'm free now! So WHY–"
'Iselda' twirled her spear. "–Why are you still dreaming? Why are you still jumping at shadows, and seeing things that were never there? You aren't even aware of what you've done to your body. I confess, something most perplexing is happening in your skull, where 'Jeremy' lives… Yin and Yang rage within and without him."
…Yin and Yang?
Before Chance could say anything else, Hornet lunged back into the fray, managing to land a heavy gash on Iselda's side.
She didn't hiss or flinch; it was as though she couldn't feel pain anymore. Her hemolymph was glowing orange.
With a sweep of her spear, Iselda slammed the back of Hornet's head. Already leaning forward from her lunge, along with the disorienting blow, that extra push was enough to send Hornet to the floor.
Before she could scramble up and away, Iselda stabbed her spear into her cloak.
Chance nearly screamed, seeing the blade go straight through Hornet's form, but a second glance showed that it only impaled her cloak, and not Hornet herself. Iselda towered over her, a foot resting on her chest.
"Little bastard Wyrm-Beast, does your insolence know no bounds? But perhaps I will spare you for your crimes, should my Seraphim see fit to beg for your life– GLRK–!"
Iselda didn't notice Chance standing up, and was cut off when his hands clenched around her throat.
She tried to pull her spear from Hornet's cloak, but Chance wrangled her whole body away from it in such a way that it slipped out of her grip. She was tripping over her own feet as Chance kept forcing her backwards. His iron grip refused to let up even as she clawed at his hands and her own throat for breath, cutting up Chance's fingers, crimson blood running down her neck. He didn't even flinch through the pain.
–HOW HARD CAN YOU–
The light seemed to shimmer around her. Where Iselda was once writhing in his suffocating grip, a moth of purest-white down and golden regalia, three-pronged crown and elegantly flowing wings, was dying between his hands. Orange eyes shined back at him, his blood stained her fur, and she smiled.
–HOW HARD CAN YOU–
His teeth grit, all the blood in his body rushing red-hot through his hands; his glare was not of someone considering mercy; his unkempt hair fell over his face, and his breathing was haggard, as though he were the one being suffocated. There was nothing human left in his eyes.
–STRANGLE ME–
He slammed her back into the wall of a shell-shaped house. Even though she was taller than Chance, the curvature of the building, along with the way he was forcing her down so she couldn't even stand upright, forced her to look up at his looming silhouette, his face inches from hers.
–CAN'T STAND YOUR VOICE–
Vehement malice overflowed from his figure. He seemed a dark monolith from where Layla was, legs kicking frantically almost parallel to the dirt in a vain effort to stay upright. The light in her eyes, just for a moment, seemed to flicker and dim as Chance squeezed the life out of it.
–CAN'T STAND YOUR VOICE–
A sickening croak escaped her throat – and, with another glint of light, the moth was gone. With how her eyes were half-dead, Chance could barely see their orange glow anymore.
His heart seized up. This wasn't Layla. This wasn't Her wearing a mask, or hiding behind a different form, or throwing another illusion over his eyes.
He was trying to kill Iselda.
His expression of maddened fury had been paralyzed; his red face had turned sheet-white. His hands, still cut up and slick with scarlet, were hesitant to loosen and uncurl from Iselda's neck, the muscles tense and cramped from how tight he had them around her.
The air seemed to go still as Iselda slumped against the wall, and Chance unconsciously took a shaky step away from her body. His hands and head were shaking.
Words died on his lips.
…
"Do you hate me that much?"
The air was forced out of Chance's lungs as he was slammed backwards into an opposite wall. Iselda's claws were now hooked around his neck, and from the force of the blow, he couldn't manage to take a breath first. Against Iselda's height, his feet weren't even touching the ground.
"Jeremy!" he heard Hornet yell, still struggling to unpin herself from Iselda's spear. The name just made his skin crawl.
He was staring directly into the sun.
"Culture shock is a bitch, isn't it, 'Chance'?" Layla's laugh belted over Iselda's tongue. "Bugkind need not breathe through their throats, dear. Our biology, so vastly different, only just… barely… compatible…"
Chance writhed against the wall, but Iselda's whole body pressed against his, pinning him completely. She pressed her claw-thumbs straight into either side of his Adam's apple, with enough force that he thought she'd punch right through. Sick, strangled noises rose in his throat, and couldn't even escape.
Flaming eyes like a car's fog lights, and he was a deer about to be run over.
"While we're on the subject of biology," Layla whispered, "I've still seen the depths of your memory, even what you think you've forgotten. You're aware that mosquitoes are the most lethal animals in your human world, yes? They're so commonly passed off as mere nuisances, but they kill over a million every year, through the diseases they spread…"
Her blood was still glowing orange.
Iselda's sharp, needle-like proboscis twitched, in a contortion resembling a smile. The thing was less than two inches from Chance's face, and he could see hunger in her eyes as he struggled harder, trying to fight his way out of her chokehold.
She couldn't send him back. Not again. Not after he'd come so far, not after he'd just fixed himself, not after he'd lost Jeremy–
"One commonality between Earthly and Hallownestian mosquitoes, it seems, is that only the females feast on blood. They need protein, you see, for reproduction. How many times have you been bitten by a mosquito in your life, Chance? How many of their larvae have you unknowingly fathered?"
The edges of Chance's vision were already starting to go dark. Iselda's gaze became twin suns in an endless black void, ready to swallow him whole into the inferno.
"How many more do you think we'll have~?"
Chance opened his mouth, desperate for air; with her claws still around her throat, Iselda pulled his head into hers, and "kissed" him, her needle-like proboscis impaling the back of his throat.
Chance's eyes widened; he was Clawing at her back now, leaving long lesions of tangerine down Iseldas back, his feet kicking against the wall, scrambling for purchase, only to slip back as he writhed and choked and fought against her. His hands cut up and bloodied from Iselda's earlier struggle, his grip was too weak to force her off; tearing at her chitin was the best he could do, and even then, the Infection seemed to render Iselda immune to pain.
Hornet lurched at the sight, equal parts disgust and panic snapping her back to her senses. She struggled against the spear impaling her dress; Chance's rage was enough to stun her for a moment, but she had finally regained her focus enough to use her silk, the razor-thin threads whipping around the spear's grip and yanking it out of the ground, freeing her.
In a fluid motion, she flew to her feet, her torn dress billowing as she tried flinging the spear at Iselda, using her silk as a catapult.
But she froze.
Chance had bitten down on Iselda's proboscis, drawing hemo. The proboscis' sheath, the labium, bulged and throbbed, some mass being drawn up through it in waves into Iselda's mouth like a straw.
Chance's eyes were wide and glazed over. Iselda had stiffened.
Hornet realized that whatever Iselda was drawing out of Chance's body, it wasn't blood.
Iselda's orange eyes flew open in panic; hastily, she withdrew her proboscis from Chance's throat and pulled out of the impaling kiss.
But it wouldn't let her escape.
Although separated, Chance's open mouth and Iselda's proboscis were connected by a floating stream of inky black Void, oozing out of Chance's throat while he writhed and forcing itself into Iselda as though through a straw. Snake-like, the liquid darkness defied gravity, floating above either of their heads, pulsing in waves, like a tentacle.
Under all the stimulation, combined with his exhaustion, Chance's mind had all but shut down. Even still, he thought he heard Layla cry out; not through Iselda's mouth, but echoing through his own mind.
"WHAT–"
She was cut off when the Void-tentacle protruding from Chance's mouth lurched, and slammed her back into the wall behind her, stunning her. Hornet watched in awe and horror as Iselda's body thrashed under the Void, pressed into a corner.
Layla couldn't get anything else out before the tangerine in Iselda's eyes was taken over by an all-pervasive black, before returning to its original, natural dark hue.
The Void-tentacle pulled away from Iselda with an uncharacteristic care; no longer sensing its ancient enemy within, and thus no longer wishing to harm her as it withdrew back into Chance's throat. Iselda coughed hard enough for her to double over and, gashes running all across her body, she collapsed into the growing pool of hemo around her, unconscious.
Chance had gone still some time ago. The darkness returned to lurk within him, and the black that covered his eyes receded. His head lulled; over the past few minutes, his face had run red with fury, white with terror, and now almost blue from asphyxiation; dirt and scars running across his features, hemo splattered across him.
From underneath his messy hair, just for a moment under the pale Lumafly street lamps, Hornet locked eyes with him.
Green. His eyes were green without the Infection.
Green like emerald. Green like acid. Green like foliage of Greenpath; spiraling, otherworldly, all-pervasive, tender, fragile, yet unyielding.
Alive.
Chance's eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he fell forward; Hornet snapped back into focus and rushed to him.
"Jeremy?! JEREMY!"
But by then, he had already blacked out.
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█████ - "Chance"
████ at ██:01
"Chance": you dont have to remind me
█████: █████
"Chance": "battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you"
"Chance": is that you, then?
█████: ███████ █████ ████ █████ ███ ██ █████ ████ █████ ███████
█████: ███ ██████ █████ ████ ██████ "OCEANS" ██ ██████ ██████ █████████
█████: █████
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I felt lightheaded from the ocean waves lapping our little boat, or maybe that was just 'cause I hadn't told Jeremy about the gun yet.
We were somewhere on the Pacific, just off the coast of Southern California. Watery abyss beneath us, endless black of space above us; we were just a blip of blue, suspended and sandwiched between two unfathomable voids. The summer sun blazed down from a cloudless sky. A Bluetooth speaker was playing Sleeper by Ty Segall; the album had just come out last year.
"You can take your jacket off," Jeremy had said, glancing up from his sketchbook. He was sitting upright near the boat's stern, I was lounging across the bow, taking in the warmth like an iguana in the desert. I wasn't really sure what kind of boat we were on - too small to be a sloop, but too big to be a dinghy. A white sail waved in the wind just above us like a flag of surrender.
I peeked an eye open at him, careful not to let the sun blind me. "I'm cool." My green canvas jacket was just a bit of cushion against the white-painted weathered planks of Jeremy's Gilligan, my red scarf flapping in the wind. That, and I liked it.
Just over his shoulder, I could make out the coastline, and our hometown. I shouldn't say exactly where. It's a small town, or about as small as a coastal California town near Los Angeles can be. We weren't too far out, but the shore looked like just a thin line on the horizon. But to anyone standing on that beach, we probably looked like a tiny dot too, and obviously neither a boat nor a shoreline are "tiny" so maybe the universe wasn't so meaningless after all.
Beaches aren't good anymore. They've been conquered and urbanized and colonized and trampled and toured and trashed countless times over human history, until they're all houses and hotels and endless crowds in both directions. That's civilization. But once we reach the ocean, we always stop. We can't quite tame the sea yet; the best we can do is carry ourselves over it; no ship departs into deep waters without a destination in mind. Oceans are liminal; flyover states, highways, airports and countrysides. You go there 'cause you gotta go somewhere else. But despite that, there's a reason human civilization rushes to the shores anyway, and there's something about the ocean beckoning us, or maybe challenging us. So when Jeremy and I went out until the coast seemed thin as wire on the blue horizon, being there just to be there, I felt on top of the whole world.
But sometimes I'd remember that this was Jeremy's boat, not mine; the sea felt like home, but it was his home, and he just invited me in. My thumb trailed the revolver's hammer.
In my free hand, I was skimming a copy of the Iliad that I needed to read for high school. I was on book eighteen, the part where Achilles hears about Patroclus's death, and the grief drives him insane and he returns to fight in the war against Troy that he'd been boycotting up to that point. I wondered if hatred could just be another expression of pain. Achilles could be a proud asshole, but his anger didn't seem constant or arbitrary to me. It seemed specifically like a vengeful kind of anger, the kind you can get out of a compassionate person; someone who can get hurt, deeply, and then turn that hurt directly into rage.
The wind flapped the pages of Jeremy's sketchbook around, and before he flattened them against his lap again, I caught a glimpse of red, like flowing blood over the ocean.
"Anne Bonny?"
Jeremy's eyes darted up, and for a second, met mine. Like the ocean and the sky, they were blue. Pale. Endless, ebbing and flowing, inviting and terrifying, unknowable and irresistible, as below, so above. Unspeakably there. Pale blue dot.
He looked between myself and his pages. "You know me too well," he laughed. He held it up for me to see; it wasn't complete yet, and he wasn't drawing any kind of ship or island for the legendary pirate to stand on; it was as though her half-corporeal ghost was superimposed over the sea.
"Keeping up the family tradition, huh?"
I wasn't sure what to make of his expression; he half-cringed, half-smiled. "You know, I'm not so sure I'm related to her anymore," he mumbled, and I thought my gun had accidentally gone off and shot straight through my heart at those words. "But my mom must've told me all those stories for a reason, right?"
Jeremy had spent his whole life trying to convince me he was the descendant of Anne Bonny, the legendary pirate. This was despite the fact that she operated on the opposite coast from us, and that there's no historical consensus on what her fate was, and that Jermey himself was lacking the iconic red hair. You'd think blue was his favorite color, but it had always been red, like the scarf around my neck.
I'd brought this up to him a few times. He insisted that his dad had the red hair, and that was proof enough. It occurred to me to ask why Jeremy's mom would be telling him pirate stories if the blood was on his father's side, but I kept that question to myself. I mean, the guy jumped in a river as a kid to "better understand the water"; we first met when I pulled him out 'cause I thought he was drowning, but he had the whole thing under control and wasn't about to die or anything.
Or so I'm told.
He was convinced because his mother said so. She scared me in a way I could never fully explain; anyone who'd hear me say that would take one look at her, one look at me, and think, really?
Judith always insisted I call her by her first name. She lived in a small uphill house on the outskirts of our town with her husband and son, Jeremy; you could see for miles out of their dirty second-story window. She was the one who got Jeremy into sailing, even though she refused to set foot on a boat herself. She was a devout Catholic who prayed every day away, even though she never took Jeremy with her to church. She never smoked or drank, but she had an overstuffed and unlocked medicine cabinet in her closet. Their house had almost no framed photos, but a dozen mirrors.
There was a small ant colony growing in the sandy dirt near their side lawn, a trail of tiny black ants marching in unison like soldiers, all just doing their part to support their society. Years ago, not long after I first met Jeremy, I went over to his house to visit. Outside, I saw Judith teaching him about magnifying glasses.
There wasn't any real reason why she singled one out. But even watching from the shadows on the opposite side of the street, I watched as one of the ants smoked and crumpled under the sun's rays, turning into a smoldering black mark in the dirt just for the crime of being there. Jeremy had laughed in awe at the science and the fire. Judith's eyes, and her smile, seemed just a little too wide.
"Maybe she told you those stories just to distract you. Remember Vegas?"
Jeremy paused for a minute, then gave an awkward smile. "I see you remember. You're still wearing my scarf."
He was deflecting again, but I went with it. "It's comfy. And you never asked for it back."
"You complained about it being cold one time! At night, at the top of that giant ferris wheel!"
My family had gone on a vacation to Las Vegas a few months back, and I'd asked if Jeremy could come along. Surprisingly, my parents needed more convincing than Jeremy's; they seemed all too happy to get him out of the house for a while. That was the point I'd brought up Vegas for, but the subject had already changed.
Us two alone on that freezing-ass ferris wheel, he'd thrown that crimson scarf, and his arms, around my shoulders. I've cherished it, and him, ever since. Just me and him in that little box above the sea of Vegas lights.
"Maybe with the scarf, I got all your pirate-ness, too. I mean, I gotta get all my movies and music somehow."
Jeremy snorted. "You need a boat to be a pirate." He ran a hand through his hair, not red; as the eyes were the oceans, his locks were the sandy shore.
I paused. The waves rocked under us. "You know what else a pirate needs?"
He froze when I pulled the revolver out of my jacket. His smile fell, his mouth gaping for words but finding none, except:
"You… That's…"
Nobody else for miles; just me, him, and God, and anything that happened out here would stay between us three. And I wasn't so sure God was paying attention.
"Relax, it's unloaded," I lied.
"Why did you bring that?" he hissed, putting his sketchbook away, both wanting to lean forward and retreat.
The truth was that I didn't really know, I don't think. I just thought small handguns were cool; mechanically, I mean. Maybe my parents were a bad influence on me. I knew how to be responsible with firearms, at least; I wasn't stupid, nor crazy.
"Your parents are pirate-people, mine are cowboy-people, I guess," I could only shrug. What do you get when you cross a cowboy with a pirate? Just some stupid kids.
I held the gun in front of me, but I was lounging in a way that it was pointed to the side, safely away from Jeremy. I held the silver barrel, six inches of steel, close to my face.
"You do remember Vegas, right?"
I licked it.
Jeremy seized up, unable to tear his eyes away as I ran my tongue across the metal. I could feel the rifling with my tongue, my saliva running between it as I circled the end of the barrel with my tongue, practically putting it in my mouth. He squirmed as I bobbed the gun past my lips and into my mouth, groping at the revolver's cylinder, never breaking eye contact–
"Stop." Jeremy commanded, and the whole world did. Then somehow softer, "You're gonna hurt yourself."
I paused. Slowly, I pulled the gun out of my mouth, almost tasting gunpowder even though I'd cleaned this thing earlier. I threw my feet over one side of the boat and my head over the other end, lounging; I never put the gun away, letting it dangle in my hand over the ocean, fingers loose around the grip.
Ocean waves rocked our ship like a baby's cradle, salty ocean breeze in our wounds. Jeremy seemed like he wanted to say something, but he hadn't unwound himself yet, his legs pressed together and looking down. He wouldn't let me look at his face.
For a moment, I felt bad for teasing him, but not as bad as I felt when my finger slipped and I fired a lazy live round out into the Pacific.
Jeremy shot up, nearly fell off the boat, nearly fell off the other side of the boat, nearly capsized us, screamed, cursed, and this time he really did throw that pencil at me. He confiscated my gun, took out all the other bullets, and I watched as he threw them into the ocean. He almost tossed the gun overboard, too, and I almost wished he did.
He sat back down on his side of the boat, ran his hands through his hair. I pursed my lips. Ty Segall was still playing. After a minute, he stood up and sat back down in front of me, leaning his back against my chest. My arms snaked around his waist, though I don't know why he let them.
"You're awful, Roy."
"I'm sorry."
Chapter name and summary are a reference to Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream.
Other musical references in this chapter include:
Stolen Dance by Milky Chance
Gmail and the Restraining Orders by Death Grips (but im not adding this one to the playlist lmao)
Oceans by Pearl Jam
Sleeper by Ty Segall
Judith by A Perfect Circle
Roy Harper (artist)
(Times I have posted a chapter on MGS2 day: 3)
IT HASNT BEEN A YEAR IT HASNT BEEN A YEAR ETHNO 33 DROPPED ON MAY 2ND ITS APRIL 30TH ITS NOT A YEAR I HAVENT BEEN GONE A YEAR SEE ONLY 363 DAYS THATS NOT A YEAR
it's been a while, though, and its good to be back. :) I actually started writing this chapter in October of last year, but it took so long because we were also juggling the latest Midnight Rider chapters, + you'll be pleased to know that this is the second chapter of a five chapter prewrite, so there's much much more where this came from! I wanted to do a prewrite for tone reasons and because these first few chapters have an inevitable emotional fallout from the events of 30-33, so I wanted a bit of a buffer so we could get back to our regular Ethno bullshit :)
Since Ethno 33, I graduated highschool, went to an out-of-state college, hated every minute, transferred closer to home after one semester, and finished that second semester too. I actually have exams tomorrow that I need to study for so this is all of the prewrite you'll get for now, but there will be more very soon!
There's a lot of weird/symbolic/experimental stuff in this chapter, so I'm sorry if its confusing; it's kind of a byproduct of my mental and emotional state while i was stuck at that out-of-state college I mentioned. At the very least, I've had a lot of time to plan out the next Act of Ethnoentomology. There's some very exciting stuff coming up that I can't wait to share!
For everyone who's been here since last year, I hope to make it worth the wait.
It's great to be back.
Please leave a comment, and thank you so much for reading!
OUR DISCORD SERVER CODE IS PYXCv9tUPg AND ALSO GO READ THE ARCHIVEOFOUROWN VERSION OF THIS STORY ITS MUCH BETTER