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Sparrow is just about to start on the next point when he spares me a glance.
“Commodore James, why aren´t you scribbling away?”
“Because I am not a cat, Captain Sparrow. If I try to write in this,” and I make a vague gesture to indicate the darkness that obscures the faces around me as well as the writing already on the paper, “then nobody will be able to read it in the morning – and that would rather defeat the purpose, would it not?”
“By the powers, you´re right! Oy, you lot – get some lanterns on deck, d´you hear! S´ not proper, debating in the dark, savvy?”
The soft, flickering light of lanterns soon illuminate the deck as well as can be done, obscuring the faint glimmer of distant stars. Jack moves in the dancing light, his shadow stretching and twisting until it looks like something befitting some demon or fiend, but the brief smile he sends in my direction before returning to business is almost angelic – but only almost.
As the debate progresses it grows livelier – aided, no doubt, by a surprisingly small number of bottles of rum that has begun to circulate among the crew, every man taking a healthy swig before handing it to the one next to him. Despite the rum, most stay surprisingly sober – and Sparrow, despite not turning down any bottle that comes his way, somehow still manages to stand without swaying more than a little more than usual, and he still manages to lead the debate, proposing and getting applause or at least assent for a number of articles.
I cannot help being surprised at the nature of some of those articles, although the fact that my ears hear them being agreed upon and my hand moves the pen that notes them down, point for point, must be proof that they are quite real. Still, rules strictly prohibiting the theft of the other pirates on board´s belongings as well as demanding sharing between everyone of both loot and necessities of life (food, water – rum) seems strange considering exactly how these men will be acquiring their means.
Article after article and I lose count around the time Anamaria stands up.
“Make it an article that we be only pirates – we´re not going to be doing any rum-running!”
“Why not?” someone shouts and I wonder about the same, as I look at the dark woman – she looks like some heathen priestess or voodoo witch in the light of the dancing flames. Still, her appearance does not make her demand any less odd – many pirates I have caught had a sideline in running rum between the islands and some mainland ports. A steady income when prey is sparse, as well as a way to ensure an if not warm, than at least not outright hostile welcome in at least a single port (other than Tortuga, that is). But of course, most of those ships were smaller and a lot less formidable than The Black Pearl – perhaps she thinks the Pearl too good for such common pursuits?
Well, if that is her reason, then it would appear that the rest are less than inclined to share her sentiments. Even Sparrow joins the rest: “Aye, Anamaria, tell us why not?”
“’Cause the half of the cargo that Gibbs doesn´t guzzle, you´ll have swilled afore we ever reach port or profit – Captain,” she adds after a moments pause. Rather than taking offence at this, the two men share a grin, then raise the bottles that they have somehow managed to have handy in a toast to the woman, then finish them off – to the laughter of every man aboard save one: me.
Next Jack sways over to me, to look over my shoulder – or, to be more precise, to wrap his arms around my shoulders and lean heavily against me, to place his pointed chin in the middle of my left shoulder and try to focus on the neat handwriting on the paper.
“How´s it coming, Jimmy-lad?” he slurs into my ear, and I cannot help but strongly suspect that he is somewhat more drunk than is his wont – which would explain the fact that even after I have answered “fine”, he stays where he is, pressing his chest against my back, his hot breath tickling my earlobe.
I try to get rid of the clingy pirate with a shrug, but sadly it has no effect, and so I settle for ignoring the scallywag, focus on the still ongoing debate and put down what is decided. Even that is not without certain obstacles, as I learn the first time Sparrow adds his voice to a loud “aye” to some point or other, leaving my ears ringing. Still, I manage.
At some point I realize that the discussion has turned to body parts and the lack thereof – and to sums of money. At first I think they are debating the selling of such items – a grizzly business indeed, I would say, though not one I have ever encountered or even heard of – but then I realize that the subject is actually what compensation is appropriate for each lost limb – that such compensations should be given at all and that a man no longer able to perform his old duties aboard will be given new ones rather than be put ashore seems to be taken for given.
“Right leg?”
“500 pieces of eight!”
“Left leg?”
“400 pieces of eight!”
“Right arm?”
“600 pieces of eight – and a hook!”
“An eye?”
“100 pieces of eight!”
“A tongue?”
“Arrgh, pretty bird!” the only avian aboard proposes, only to be answered with a mixture of laughter and “ayes” loud enough to make the animal take wing and seek the safety of a lofty yardarm – and then they move on to the next body part – “Finger?” – as if the matter has been settled, although I am left uncertain of what exactly the decision was.
“Parrot, Jimmy-lad, a mute gets himself a pretty, talking birdbrain, savvy?” Jack slurs, having apparently noted my confusion through his intoxication.
I keep on writing the list of parts and sums, mechanically, feeling how very tired I am. I wonder what time it is? There are no glasses aboard this ship by which to tell the time, and the moon is absent from the dark sky tonight, so I cannot attempt to learn the time from it. Still, my body tells me that it is late and that it desires rest – considering that I slept half the afternoon away I suspect it might well be very late – or possibly even very early.
The body parts mentioned grow more and more obscure – how exactly do they expect anybody to lose his liver and live to tell the tale? – and the compensations more and more outlandish. When someone brings up the matter of a man´s private parts and Anamaria immediately proposes that a penny sounds like a suitable compensation to her (and if not for the fact that her glower scares every man who might dare to object into silence, I would have expected the ship to fall apart from the sheer force of the objections to such a meagre sum), I put down the pen, deciding that if they want me to take notes about their decisions, then the very least they can do is remain no more than a little drunk whilst making them.
For a little while I sit, tired but not quite able to gather the energy necessary to get to my feet and head for bed. Then Sparrow´s warm, moist breath (which has been tickling my ear for all this time) is replaced with something hot and wet and firm, snaking around my earlobe and tracing along the curve of the ear – in my weary state it takes a bit to realize that it is Sparrow´s tongue I am feeling.
Surprise – or rather shock – gives me the push necessary to get to my feet, hoping to dislodge the lunatic pirate in the process, or at the very least to make him stop what he is doing. Alas, it succeeds at neither.
“Stop it! You´re drunk!” I hiss, and he does, his impudent tongue immediately replaced by a low chuckle – or rather a giggle, except that men do not giggle, not even an odd man like Jack Sparrow. Unfortunately he seems less inclined to actually let go of me – quite the contrary, I realize, as he lifts his legs and wraps them around my waist.
I stand for a moment, Sparrow clinging monkey-like to my back, before deciding that since I am now on my feet I might as well take advantage of it and go to bed.
It takes no more than a single step before I realize that my walk is less than completely steady. The second step is no better and the third is nearly as swaying as Sparrow at his best (or should I say his worst?). Part of it is no doubt his fault, for he is quite heavy and making absolutely no attempt whatsoever to be an easy burden to bear, and part of it is probably due to my simply being tired, but still, this seems somehow insufficient when it comes to explaining this unsteadiness. Might it possible have anything to do with the fact that Sparrow´s head has been resting on my shoulder for quite a bit, his every rum-soaked exhalation gliding past my nose and mouth, enveloping my head? Have I somehow gotten inebriated by proxy, so to speak?
In the end I manage a grand total of six steps before tripping over my own two feet and tumbling ungraciously to the deck.
At least my landing is softer than last time – a human body, firm, but not nearly as unyielding as the deck, is, after all, behind my back. The “oomph” from Jack would seem to indicate that the air has been knocked out of his lungs, but he offers no objections or recriminations. Instead he simply lies beneath me, his arms and legs releasing their death grips, his breath tickling the nape of my neck.
When the disorientation due to the fall has faded somewhat it strikes me that it is not at all proper for a Commodore to be lying on top of a pirate – and besides, I was headed for bed, was I not? So I try to get to my feet again, preferably without Sparrow this time, but said individual grabs hold of one of the legs of my breeches and sends me tumbling once more. In the end I find myself sitting – or should I say sprawling? – in a large coil of rope.
“Stay awhile, Commodore Jimmy-lad. ‘Tis but a bit of merriment, savvy?” Jack leans close to inform me. I cannot help but blink at him and I am almost about to tell him “certainly not!” and resume my attempts to reach the cabin and the bed inside it, but then I think – why not? What harm is there in staying on deck – for just a little while? It is not like I actually have to take part in whatever these amoral miscreants consider ‘merriment’. And besides, this coil of rope is quite comfortable. So I nod, somewhat reluctantly, and Jack grins and then proceeds to walk away from me.
I sit quietly, observing the men enjoying the drunken revelry that I suppose they must think of as a party. The number of bottles of rum seems to be impossible to count, handed as they are from hand to hand, yet I rarely see anyone without one, and occasionally one man will have two or more. Raucous laughter rolls over me from my right where a group has gathered around Mr. Marty, swapping bawdy stories, whilst to my left raised voices originate from a small group that has apparently yet to notice that the debate about the articles has pretty much drawn to a halt. Someone somewhere has somehow managed to lay hands on a fiddle and the music is joined by stamps and claps as drunken hornpipes, intoxicated jigs and inebriated reels bring perhaps more amusement to the onlookers than to the dancers themselves.
I do not see who hands me the bottle, but suddenly it is in my right hand, still a third full. I assume it must be Sparrow, but a quick look around tells me that he is to be found at the other end of the ship, apparently trying to get some point across to the fiddle player.
I feel eyes on me, the eyes of the men around me. I am far from certain who most of them are – I see Mr. Gibbs among them, though. But their names are beside the point – the point is that they are looking at me and the bottle in my hand.
My first instinct is simply to hand it to whoever is standing closest, but then I reconsider. After all, this bottle is the first hint of anything from this crew that is not hostility or indifference – although it might simply have been the mistake of someone too drunk to know what he was doing. But in that case, would it not simply anger them even more if I were to scorn their ‘hospitality´? Who knows what they might do if they thought I considered myself ‘too good´ for their rum – especially in their present, far from sober state. I find myself wishing wistfully that Jack had stayed by my side – I imagine he might very well simply have plucked the bottle from my grip and emptied it himself, saving me from my current dilemma.
In the end – almost physically aware of the eyes on me – I lift the bottle and take a swig. Truth be told it is little more than a sip, but unaccustomed as I am to the beverage I find myself coughing anyway. Some hand pounds my back and a bear-like man grins at me before relieving me of the bottle and turning back to his fellows.
After that there is still nobody who pays me any attention, but on the other hand, I hardly imagine it to be mere coincidence the second time – not to mention the third and fourth and fifth – a bottle is pressed into my hand. Each time I wet my mouth and little more – still, the world, already blurred by my weariness, grows more hazy with every sip.
At some point I notice that Jack has drifted back into my immediate vicinity. He appears to be trying to teach some of his crew that ridiculous pirate song Elizabeth taught him – a process made more difficult by the fact that he does not seem to know the lyrics properly himself.
“We kidnap and ravage and don´t give a hoot, / Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho.”
A drunken chorus joins him on the refrain. It sounds like there is general agreement that this is an excellent song.
“We extort, we pilfer, we filch, and sack, / Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho. / Maraud and em – em, embody? Embarrass? Embellish? Let´s see, rhymes with muzzle. Guzzle? No.” You can almost see Sparrow´s tongue trying to tie itself into knots in an attempt to remember the word – though it does not seem to do him any good.
“Embezzle, Sparrow – the word you are looking for is embezzle.” There, that will stop his ridiculous theatrics – hopefully.
I expect Sparrow to grab hold of the word and continue his less than enjoyable singing. Instead he slowly turns around to look me in the face. His eyes are slightly unfocused.
“Now where did you learn that little ditty, Com´dore Jimmy-lad?” he slurs, placing a hand on my shoulder, leaning even closer.
“In case you have forgotten I served aboard the ship that conveyed both Governor Swann and his daughter from Southampton to Port Royal. For nearly two months I heard that song at least once a day – and I was not drunk a single one of them.”
“So, that means ye know it, aye?”
“Yes, Sparrow, I know it.”
“Wonderful. Then ye can sing it for us.” Sparrow smiles drunkenly.
“Absolutely not.” There is no way that I – a Commodore of His Majesty´s Royal Navy – am going to sit aboard a pirate ship surrounded by pirates and sing perhaps the most ridiculous song about pirates that has ever existed. There is simply no way.
“Come, come, Com´dore Jimmy, sing. I´m sure you´ve got a lovely voice. What are ye, anyway? A baritone?”
“Sparrow, let me make this perfectly clear to you: I am not under any circumstances going to make a fool of myself by singing that song. Is that understood?” I try to add as much weight behind my words as possible, but I think I manage to slur at least once – damn that bloody rum!
“Aye, Jimmy-laddie, ol´ Jack savvy. The lovely Lizzie-lass said much the same thing – half a bottle later she was a-singing like a nightingale – or a swan. A Swann song, eh?”
“Sparrow, I am not some young highborn lady you can get drunk on half a bottle of that vile drink!” though truth be told he just might – I am not certain how much I have already had of the beverage in question, but I fear I am already more than just a little tipsy.
“I understand ye perfectly, Jimmy-lad,” and he straightens, winking at me and tapping the side of his nose. “Oy, Gibbs – get me a -whole- bottle for the good Com´dore, savvy?” The loudness of his own shout leaves him swaying slightly.
“Sparrow, let me try again,” and I spare the bottle that has suddenly – as if by some black magic – appeared in my hand a somewhat reproachful glare, “there is no way that you are going to make me sing!”
“No way?”
“None.”
“But ye really should, Com´dore Jimmy. Come now, sing.”
“No.”
Sparrow sways a little, seemingly trying to think of a useful argument. Then he sways a lot, and suddenly he is lying on his back on the deck, his head having very conveniently landed right in my lap. Sometime during the night he has lost his bandanna and his braids are radiating out from his head like a halo, covering my lap like a fairly eccentric blanket.
Cinnamon eyes shining below an odd, upside down grin, Jack tries one more time. “Please sing?” There is something almost plaintive in his voice – no doubt he is an emotional drunk.
“No. However,” I continue as his face falls in a way reminding me of a small child that has just been informed that Christmas has been cancelled this year, “if it will make you stop pestering me, then I might be persuaded to recite the bloody song to you. Will that suffice?”
“Aye, that´ll do just fine.” With his right hand he plucks the untouched bottle from my hand, with his left he reaches out and grabs hold of mine. I look down and see my own fingers tangling with his, my other hand somehow having decided to stroke that wild mane entirely of its own volition – then I sigh and, hoping that it will be sufficient to make him stop bothering me, I begin reciting the first verse of the bloody song.
In the end I have to patiently repeat the lyrics over and over again to the more-than-usually drunk scallywag. I stop counting when I pass the first score. But eventually he gets up, gives me a somewhat unsteady hug and a sloppy kiss that leaves me with a wet spot on my cheek (as well as strongly reminded of an affectionate dog) and sways off. About five minutes later a less than melodious rendition of “A pirate´s life for me” can be heard from the aft.
The song spreads like wildfire through the ship. Soon I find myself to be the only one left who does not at the very least sing along on the refrain – and the crew squabble over the dwindling number of bottles so that they can “drink up me ‘earties, yo ho” properly. It even sounds like a couple of the more creative ones among them are attempting to make new verses – with varying degrees of success and talent. But after a while their singing changes into a number of other songs, resulting in a genuine cacophony, although nobody seems to mind. Apparently Jack has finally grown tired of the song – or so I think, until he sways past me, still humming it enthusiastically. So, apparently the crew grew tired of it first.
The revelry continues with more songs, more dances – though they are no longer recognisable ones – and of course more rum. More and more often a bottle comes my way, and I feel my mind growing steadily more and more blurred every time I obey the good manners I have had ingrained in me since boyhood.
Sometimes Jack talks to me, his voice so slurred with drink that I can hardly comprehend his speech. This does not seem to bother him – he grins and laughs every time I try to answer something I think he said, though whether it is that what I say have no relation to what he said that makes him do so, or whether it is the growing slur in my own voice or simply his own drunken, crazy mind, I cannot say.
Sometimes one of the others aboard – once Gibbs, once Marty, once the peg-legged pirate who tripped me – will address me. Not often, but occasionally – but their voices are also nearly slurred beyond comprehension, though not nearly as badly as Sparrow´s.
Sounds wash over me like waves on a beach – jokes told by some and answered by the raucous laughter of others, the crash of one of the ‘dancers´ missing a step and tumbling down on some of his fellows, clanging bottles, scattered snoring, and from somewhere comes the sound of a mostly-friendly brawl.
The night is dark outside of the flickering, dancing lights of the lanterns. Dark, but not quiet. Moaning, groaning, animal sounds, grunts and cries can be heard, faint but undeniable. I look at Anamaria downing some rum and I try hard not to think of what is going on beyond my sight.
The songs continue, a plethora of tuneless tunes involving all manner of creatures of the sea – pirates and mermaids seem especially popular and quite often both will appear in the same song – and each song grows progressively less and less fit for mixed company – not that Anamaria seems to mind. In fact, she is the one that starts many of the worst.
At some point I hear an oddly familiar voice rise up to join the rough voices of the pirates. The realization that it is my own voice leaves me deeply mortified, especially since the song – a ballad involving a mermaid and a pirate (how very surprising) engaging in a number of quite explicitly described activities, some of which involve a crab (for some reason no doubt best left in the song writer´s mind) – is one of the least proper of the evening´s selection. My voice, however, does not seem to respond to my attempts to make it stop singing – rather it grows louder at every attempt, and determinedly continues to sing along with the next few songs – no doubt to show me who is in charge. When it finally stops I hear laughter and jingling somewhere close by, but cannot spot the source of it.
I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into my surprisingly comfortable coil of rope – the world is spinning slightly but that does not matter since I make no attempt to stand, to walk, to join the erratic drunken lurching that passes for dancing at this time of night. Rather I sink further, feeling on the verge of sleep.
The sight rudely jolts me awake.
On the deck in front of me, apparently paying me no attention, is a man. There is something about him that makes me feel as if he does not belong here – this man with his scarred and weather-beaten face half-hidden behind a somewhat scruffy beard. On his head sits the most flamboyant hat I have ever seen, much more flamboyant even than the ridiculous piece of headwear that Mr. Turner saw fit to wear for my abduction. Somehow he seems familiar to me, this man, as I look at him laughing at something, as if he is somebody I ought to know, and yet I am fairly certain that I have never before laid eyes on this living, breathing man.
But it is not the sight of him that affects me so.
It is the monkey.
The monkey sitting on his shoulder, long tail wrapped around his neck like a furry necklace.
The monkey I last saw in a gloomy cave on The Isle of the Dead.
I thought it was dead, that its lifeless body had been thrown into the ocean along with its dead master – obviously I was mistaken, for how could it then be here now, baring its teeth at me in a shriek, skin and flesh falling off to reveal the unnatural beast I saw in the moonlight.
I lurch to my feet, a plan involving grabbing hold of the little monster half-formed in my head. But before I can make my way close to it, it leaps, landing on some other shoulder. I stagger after it, trying to get the attention of some of the crew. Surely they cannot all of them be so drunk so as not to notice this thing? But my imploring does not make a single head turn.
The simian thing leaps and leaps and leaps – from shoulder to barrel to rigging to shoulder, once hanging precariously on to a swinging lantern, always a step ahead of me. Still I follow it in between the dancing pirates that fill the deck.
The men around me grow paler and paler, grow thinner and thinner – and then they are no longer men, but dancing skeletons. Not the hideous unnatural things that boarded The Dauntless on that nightmarish moonlit night, though – they had scraps of skin and rotten flesh and sinews still attached and eyeballs rolling in the sockets. These are different – sun-bleached bones, straight out of the drawing I once saw in a ship´s surgeon´s book of anatomy – hollow eye sockets, empty ribcages, not the slightest hint that there has ever been more. And their movements – the things from before, the way they moved was perhaps the worst thing about them – smoothly, as smoothly as any living man can move. If I had ever taken the time to consider how a skeleton might move (which of course I have not), I would not have expected that – rather I would have expected the jerky, vaguely insect-like movements that the bony fellows around me are dancing with, looking slightly, morbidly comical.
Under other circumstances I might have laughed to see these skulls and bones try to dance – as it is I barely spare them a glance, intent as I am on following the horrid monkey. I follow even as it leaps into the midst of the crowd, elbowing and pushing my way past the creaking and clicking dancers. At one point I almost – almost – grab hold of its tail.
Suddenly I am past the skeletons, and at that precise moment I realize that I have no hope of ever catching the little beastie, for before me is a huge number of all sorts of monkeys and apes – gorillas, marmosets, howlers, baboons yawning to display their mighty canines – and my prey plunges into this new crowd, lost to me.
I turn around, intending to go back to my coil of rope – and realize I am standing on a sandy beach, on a small island. I can see monkeys setting the sails, monkeys hoisting the anchor, a large monkey at the helm of the ship. It is sailing away, this ship – my lovely Interceptor – and I know without the smallest doubt that she will never again sail into a port, that she will be lost forever to the greedy sea.
A single, salt tear trickles down my cheek.
A flock of monkeys with tattered black wings circle above the ship, looking most of all like some hideously obscene parody of the Lord´s own angels. They screech like so many gulls. I turn from the ill-omened sight, shuddering, revolted.
Before me is, once again, a crowd, a horde, a churning sea of all manner of simians and apes. Their numbers seem to have increased considerably while my back was turned. At the moment they are ignoring me.
Eating, grooming, screaming, jumping, wrestling, playing, engaging in – uhm, conjugal activities – the animals are in constant movement. I try to keep my eyes on a single specimen – a small gold-furred simian – but soon it is lost in the living ocean.
To my right is a large group of unusually disgusting beasts. There is something disturbingly humanlike about their appearance, yet they are too large and hairy to be human in the least. Some of them are throwing offal at each other. One is making an odd noise, like some gibberish word, repeating it again and again and again, louder and louder and louder: “Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo!”
A large gorilla is watching the disturbingly manlike brutes from a respectable distance, its face immeasurably sad. Huge tears come from its eyes – I did not know that gorillas could weep.
Behind it, further away, there are more gorillas, playing and tumbling. Among them is a being that seems even more manlike than the brutes – and yet not a human, for I do not believe that any man can move in the strange gait of this mangy, unkempt creature. Besides, if this sorry sight was one of Adam´s descendants, then surely he would have felt shame at his nakedness and tried to cover it – it does not seem to have ever crossed its mind, though. It wrestles with one of the gorillas, unmindful of my perusal, making the same grunting noises as the other animals around it.
I look right and left, back and forth, even jump up and down in an attempt to see further – trying to spot something on this island that is not an animal, some sign – however small – of human presence.
Far away, on the other side of the island, what seems to be a man is standing in front of the head of an enormous monkey. It would appear that the rest of it is buried in the ground. I start to run towards him, moving faster and faster the closer I get. It seems to me to be of the greatest importance that the only two civilized men on this strange island should meet and form some form of alliance. But as I run the monkey head opens its mouth – and the man enters. The animal´s lips seal themselves behind him.
I stop so abruptly that I tumble to the ground, feeling a sudden, terrible sense of abandonment and loneliness. I am all alone, here amongst these beasts, these brutes.
“Oook.” I look up to find a large, orange-red ape regarding me. “Oook,” it repeats, then picks up the couple of books lying at its feet and disappears among the bookcases. I look after it, sad – there was something oddly profound and important about what it said to me. If only I had been able to understand it.
A strange, rhythmic, noisy music makes me look up, craning my neck to see what is causing it.
High, high above me, floating on a cloud, is – by now it hardly comes as a surprise to me – a monkey. It is wearing a golden headband and there is something strangely – stone-like? metal-like? – about its fur. In its hands is a black staff, and it whirls it, and sometimes the staff shrinks until it disappears from my sight, sometimes it grows until it is so tall that it could reach the top of the sky while standing on the bottom of the ocean.
The monkey is dancing.
Kneeling on the ground I lean as far back as I can to watch the animal as the cloud that carries it slowly moves, casting its shadow on monkey after monkey, ape after ape – and occasionally on me. The dancer grins and shouts and stamps all the time – there is something irrepressible about this particular animal that strongly reminds me of Jack.
The thought of the rascal pirate makes me smile – somewhat to my surprise.
The cloud passes over me again and it begins to rain. Large, golden drops hit the ground with such force that tiny golden fountains briefly take shape every time a drop hits. And in the middle of the golden shower, like some second Danaë, I kneel.
Amber liquid falls on me – on my hands, on my shoulders, on my closed eyelids and the tip of my nose and my lips. A single drop manages to make its way inside to touch my tongue – and I open my eyes in shock (and am immediately forced to blink repeatedly when golden raindrops hit them at that precise moment) as I realize that it is raining rum.
A moment later I open my mouth wide to catch as many drops as possible – whether it is because I wish to drown myself or simply to drown the loneliness, I cannot say. I just swallow and swallow, golden liquid running down my throat, down into my belly.
And then it is not. Something hard hits a tooth – and then my shoulder – and then an ear.
I open my eyes again and see that I am now in the middle of a golden shower in the truest sense of the word – the air is full of coins from every nation under the sun. They gleam and glitter blindingly in the bright light of day.
Perhaps I ought to lift my hands to protect my face from the falling metal. Perhaps I ought to reach out to try to grasp some of it. For some unfathomable reason I do neither.
Gold turns to green – now it is raining emeralds, each one a perfect copy of the stone hanging around my neck.
And then it is raining Jack Sparrows, each one barely the size of my smallest finger, each one perfect in every detail – gold teeth and hair trinkets, sash and boots and weapons at his side. When they hit the ground they disintegrate into hundreds and thousands of even tinier, but just as perfect Jack Sparrows.
For some reason not a single one of them ever hits me.
Suddenly they are no longer falling. Instead they are circling me, like some swarm of angry insects – round and round and round it goes, making me hopelessly dizzy. It gets hard to distinguish the individual miniature scallywags from the general blur.
The circle tightens. The tiny Jacks come closer and closer.
A feather-light touch startles me, makes me take a step backwards – straight into more touches. Then they descend on me.
In less than a moment Jack Sparrow is everywhere, touching, kicking, clawing, scratching, stroking, biting, licking, fondling, kissing – making theirs – his? – way in under my clothing, past my every defence. I lift my hands to brush him – them? – off of me, but my hands are covered in a layer of Jack Sparrow. When I look down I see that they – he? – are everywhere, clinging, suddenly naked, covering every inch of my flesh like a second skin.
It is the most horrible sensation I have ever experienced.
It is the most wonderful sensation I have ever experienced.
A sunbeam doing a hornpipe on my left eyelid wakes me up sometime after dawn, but before noon.
Upon waking I immediately take note of two things.
The first thing is that sometime during my sleep my head has been placed in Jack´s lap. It is surprisingly comfortable.
The second thing I note is that I must have had quite a lot of rum to drink last night – the hangover is quite possibly the worst I have ever experienced, complete with headache and nausea.
Oh, the nausea…
Oh well – at least Jack does not seem to be -too- upset about having to change his breeches first thing in the morning. Thank God for small favours.
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