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Patron Among the Hijacked

Assistant first mate Sand loved to sleep. Expansive, uninterrupted rest coaxed his fondest experiences aboard his crew’s latest hijacked vessel, the Carthage. He always could hibernate his thick arms afresh in his vest after a plunderous eon.
He used to lucid dream in a dark cot for twelve hours, usually fantasizing, wrapping his stubby mitts hardly around the short, new swabbie Licra. Her voluptuous embrace soothed him during his half-days of dozing, squeezing his handkerchief-wrapped mind’s eye beneath his bushy eyebrows. It sufficed for the cold passes between himself and her hair-tied-back-muffin-top-denim that ultimately ended too soon.
Sand’s frustrations doubled when buckle-coated Captain Keara demanded he personally seize the Ithaka’s cargo. His back hurt and he gained a cough after carrying black beard to dust a bloody heavy relief that the Captain wanted. He frowned at a graphite traveling trio: a cloaked baroness, a shorter cloaked strumpet, and a naked iron-masked ding-dong. Keara you bitch, blamed Sand for his convalescence.
Then, his dreams changed. He lucid dreamt not the plump swabbie Licra who acquiesced to him but a mysterious, long-legged Calypso who towered naked over his slug-belly height gaze upward. Her black hair flowed like space down to her heels. Her eyes glittered like dying stars. He spontaneously crawled to her splendid feet, and he awakened before he could worship her entire beauty.

***********

On one particular evening at dock he awakened both to another unfulfilled fantasy and pain. Captain Keara rebuked him for complaining aboard her hijacked Carthage. Sand wanted to crunch her throat in his surly jaws.
“An’ quitcher coughin’ abaard my ship,” snapped Captain Keara at Sand, gunning by her youthful red hair, arguing by artifact navigator’s cap, “it’s bad enoof I hear yer voice. Now I got to endure yer goddam snorin’ maw. Report back to Jolly or to hell witcha.”
Sand distractedly hailed at the first mate’s extra-wide red-linen travel cabin,
“Reporting in, Jolly.”
“What’d Cap’n say?” snorted the bulbous nose beneath Jolly’s incredulous stare and crew cut.
“She said ‘stop coughing, quit complaining, something or other,’” yawned Sand, coaxing a shoulder slap by his boss’s paw.
“Wake oop and move those bloody statues like I fookin’ told ya,” commanded Jolly the striped cannonball, “shoulda been doon yesterday! Ya spend half yer life asleep an’ yer fookin’ useless when yer awake.”
“That bloody rock broke my back,” retorted Sand, gingerly touching his ache.
“Right, and ya can’t walk,” sarcastically struck the second in command, “fookin’ put ice on it, open yer mouth, and get help next time!”
Sand opened his mouth later on, garbling out to Rat the gangly chef’s jacket who pilfered enough canned dehydrated meal substitutes to habitually lift from the knees. Rat kicked away a blood-stained dining chair, and they both set down the Captain’s “prized onyx shit” by the table. Each coughed while catching breath. A musty smell surrounded them while the white, bloodstained table cloth caught coal crumbles.
“They don’t look half bad, do they?” laughed Rat.
“No,” agreed Sand “no, they don’t at all.”
Sand widened his eyes. The woman knowingly gazed at him whose hair flowed system-long. He had importuned her dream siren eyes. Her graphite eyes locked upon whatever it was she stared at while the sculptor captured her.
At toilsome evening’s end, Sand hosted the long-haired Venus in his dreams. She paused the dissipating space vessel where he slept, and she nodded with all of warm smile, holocaust eyes and fingertips on her chin, drawing her knuckles beneath her jaw. Sand dumbly waited for her to speak:
“What do you want to do to me this time? Plunge between my legs? Lap up the soles of my feet? Human opportunism fascinates me. Like galaxies apart we joined by chance orbit. Now you resist my gravity. I know you’ve been coughing. You inhaled no plain, old stardust when you carried me aboard the Carthage. That came from me. No doctor can cure you. No friend can comfort you. No rest can soothe you. I may dispose of you at my pleasure.
“You may lie here in your dreams as long as you like. I like them, too. You can convince yourself that I make no sense. All of a sudden, you put me to the sword or have your way with me. You even could do both. Here memory fails beyond the moment. At any time, I can gaze down at you like a toy between my feet. Then you placate me, forget the past, and repose. I suppose this entire conversation is futile by extension. I don’t care about that. I wanted someone to talk to.
“And you like listening to the sound of my voice don’t you? I’m real. What could you possibly know about me that makes me trustworthy? Unreasonable humans! How I missed you all!”
Sand watched her lift her planet-sized foot into the cosmos above his perspective head. Her long toenails glowed by the radiance. He knew not whether she would simply kick whatever he stood on or gently descend upon him. The goddess ruled the outcome.

**********

After reawakening to the world like an eyeful of sun, Sand watched half-blind his crew mates truck across the boarding ramp the Ithaka’s food generator. This shit weighed more than his vertebrae could stand. He, Rat and Jolly, altogether set down aboard the hijacked Carthage, Keara’s bedroom, that which Sand could not set down himself.
“They’re shrinking all the time,” assured Rat.
“Not fast enough,” groaned Sand. He winced because he knew he only sprained his back, and soon he would toil on another errand. They fenced food generators more often than they replaced them for the crew’s needs.
“Don’t fence this one,” heard his ear.
“What did you say?” cried Sand.
“Don’t let’s talk about things I didn’t say,” dismissed Jolly, “and instead get the fook out o' Cap’n’s quarters.”
A chill descended Sand’s spine. Rat already expedited to start supper. He realized he naturally had heard a woman’s voice, not hearing it from the men around him.
Sand permitted the impossible voice while it resumed: “Follow Jolly. Maintain your composure. You know who I am and where we met. Our time together dissipated when you woke up. Yet, you remembered something, didn’t you? Now, listen to me carefully. I want that generator. You’re going to get it for me. You don’t have to do it right now but remember this: you are not alone anymore.”
“Whit have you got for me today, Jolly?” inquired Captain Keara, glaring at Sand, toe-tapping the deck.
“’s a white dwarf at best. Heavy as shite but it’ll do,” ayed Jolly.
“Good. No complaints?” hounded Keara.
“None whatsoever, Captain,” mumbled Sand.
“‘Cooz I already told you the next time you whine aboutcher experience abaard my ship, you can walk oot the airlock, aye? I got a starry for you lot to cogitate on while you get the other food machine we discuvvered. Blokes like you would not check the barnacles on the hull but stop at the kitchen where they just zap ‘em again. Get these fookin’ suits on and get that food net!”

*********

The Captain told by a jarring earpiece while Sand walked the food generator in zero gravity the story to which she had alluded:
“Five thousand yares ago, there was a city where people worshipped gods and lived all peaceful-like. They sang sungs in the strates and acted all gay and merreh. But they had a lot o’ enemies. The most powerful amoong them knew best how to destroy them. So woon day, that enemy came to the gates with a great wooden horse statue, sayin’ ‘oh city of happeh, godly people, please accept this, a present from yer hoomble neighbor.’ They did, and they wheeled the bloody thing inside, shut the gates again, and started singin’ in the strates and dancin’ all gay and merreh, and they drank wine ’til they tossed off their clothes, their armor. Well, that wooden horse statue they let inside the city was full o’ soldiers. They sprang oot in the night and massacred every last one o’ them. Not all o’ them ‘cooz obviously this starry wouldn’t look so bad for the soldiers if the survivors all had died instead. And for Christ sake, stop wastin’ my oxygen and fookin’ bring that shite to the dock! Anyway, the soldiers sprang oot from the bloody horse statue, and no one had any clue what was gonna happen to ‘em. By the time the city gaards knew what happened to the city, half o’ them had died. Fire spread right to the city walls. The temples o’ their gods collapsed. Their gold poured oot the broken coffers. The strates smelled o’ blood. The city burned down, and the soldiers that invaded via the great bloody horse in the first place all lived happily ever after. The end!”

********

“I know you don’t like her,” massaged the moon goddess into Sand’s sleeping shoulders.
“I’ve had worse captains,” mumbled Sand, “she’s also pretty.”
“That doesn’t make her worthy.”
“No, no, no, it doesn’t.”
The long-haired graphite subject relinquished Sand and presented her carnation pedicured foot for him to kiss. Sand decided at that particular moment that a subject ought to kiss his queen’s feet, even just above her toes. The distant engine purred as though it propelled a bottle in space.
“It’s only a matter of time before your crew comes under fire,” sighed she, “you all let each other sleep and drink to excess while a trail behind you attracts your enemies.”
“People back then got caught all the time I’m sure. Captain Keara’s never been caught.”
“You don’t need her. You have me.”
She smiled. His heart melted down his gullet. Her celestial breasts dispelled all anxiety from his mind.
“Go find that swabbie Licra and work her near my statue.”
The swabbie Licra extended her warm embrace, and Sand landed at the center of the universe. The goddess paced around the two of them while they lied together, stepping barefoot along the milky way. The orgy commenced by agreement that the goddess not step any closer than where she watched it.
The following day, Sand acquired swabbie Licra’s help for no apparent reason. He walked and talked to the dining cabin, explaining why she must accompany him. His back pain preoccupied him.
“Captain says ‘make me statue shoine! Polish it noice!’ So we put our backs into it, and we polish it like Captain says.”
“I know where it is,” answered the pink swabbie Licra, “maybe instead of showing me the way-”
“Swabbie, I tell you what to do, not the other way around.”
“Anything I can polish it with?” reddened she.
“Dinner napkins,” huffed Sand, “you can sweep first and beautify second.”
“Good,” grinned the goddess’ lunar teeth, “let her accompany my statue at length.”
“Yes, I will,” said Sand aloud.
“‘Yes,’ you will what?” asked Licra.
“Yes, I will accompany you ’til we’re done,” said Sand.

*******

The dining cabin smelled musty after they acquired the statue. Electric lights dimly penetrated the dankness down to the dusty white tablecloths and yellowish wallpaper. An unusual warmth put Sand at unease while he and swabbie Licra stood in such a vacant portion of the hijacked Carthage. Sand seated himself and kicked his boots upon the table away from the statue, saying, “get to work, swabbie. Faster you work, faster we get out of here.”
Swabbie Licra heaved a sigh from her bosom and seized a white tablecloth in anger. She never liked Sand, presently glaring while he reclined at her periphery. However, an insurrection likely would spiral her cap to bootstrap out the airlock. The Captain herself had put her foot down, stamping her seal upon the chain of command.
The initial strokes threatened to tear Licra’s polishing cloth. A mere brush snagged her tablecloth along the statue heads. She swore and inhaled much of that ancient dust, coughing obtrusively until she had to drop the cloth.
“Hey, if you fall, I ain’t picking you up,” snapped Sand, “breathe, goddammit.”
“I am breathing,” retorted Licra.
Meanwhile, the walls around them seemed to pull away. She thought that vacuum fever had set in but she resisted as it pulled her down to the deck. Her boss also felt ill.
Sand descended to a brain wave state somewhere between dozing off and contemplating. His goddess sat near his chair legs, clasping her hands around her up-pointed knees, stretching her long, white pedicured toes on the carpet. The cot called Sand.
“You want me, not the callipygous swabbie for whom you can’t stay awake,” grinned the naked Juno.
“No,” denied Sand aside to she, “I want her. You’re just a dream. You’re not real.”
“Sand, you manifest my body more vividly than hers. She resembles a squeeze, a passion and a diversion, all in one, unspectacularly fucking you however you please. I am a singularity who decides for itself.”
“I can disappear you anytime I say.”
The goddess laughed, “then, why am I still here?”
“You’re not. You aren’t there at all.”
“Go on, Sand, make me leave. Command me like you command your subordinate.”
“I want her more than I want you.”
“Actually I’ll stay. We have so much to share together. You can’t even imagine.”
“I want her more than I want you!” blubbered his waking lips.
His myoclonic jerk barreled him onto his feet. First mate Sand used to rouse himself by stumbling from sleeping prone to waking stance. The present assistant to Captain Keara’s first mate impetuously drew his cysword and uppercut through his phantom’s unwelcome grin. She disappeared like a shadow before the sword connected.
Licra also drew her cysword, tossing the polishing cloth, scoffing at the somnambulist she had deemed her boss, “have you lost your mind, sailor?”
“You and me, Licra,” pointed Sand red-faced with his quavering, unarmed hand, “could be so good together as king and queen.”
“Matey, I wouldn’t lie with you if you were the last pirate in the universe. And I’m pretty sure that Captain Keara never told us to polish this piece of shit. You’re not my boss anymore.”
“Mutinous wench!” cried Sand, pointing his cysword at the swabbie who knew too much, “you won’t dishonor Sand Cillian!”
“Sleepwalker!”
Two cyswords clanged. Sparks fired when they each negated the other’s violence. Sand stepped backwards in between the tables to exhaust the furious Licra. He realized too late that her polishing cloth had snared his foot, falling to the deck, dropping the cysword.
Licra stood over his prone body, and she reversed the cysword threat, “I’m taking you to the Captain, and she’s gonna throw you off the ship once and for all.”
“She won’t believe you,” shot a grin from the incorrigible assistant, “it’s your word against mine.”
“Keara doesn’t like you. Nobody does.”
Sand’s cypistol suddenly blasted away by the holster in his jacket. The unscathed Licra fired her own cypistol at his heart. Sand gazed one last time at the whole, insufferable constellation that twinkled at him through the skylight. Then, he fell asleep for the rest of his life.
“And maybe if you slept less you’d aim more.”

******

Swabbie Licra tapped her brown boot toe against Sand’s buttocks, prodding what became a corpse indeed. She caught her breath, and still she felt faint. The swashbuckler’s spins hooked her down against the dining cabin wall. Funny, thought she, how pirates don’t draw attention to themselves, not even from each other.
Her lonesome breathing space produced a phlegmatic cough. She recognized this cough from all of when Sand coughed; when she passed by the bustling, ill-taken Rat; and even when Jolly ayed to the Captain. The young Licra seized a breath as though to vaguely escape a drowning.
“Breathe,” intimated a voice to her, “relax, and sit upright, silly girl.”
Licra darted her eyes up at the source of that feminine voice. Just me and the late assistant, sighed she. A shudder reminded her that empty rooms never called her a “silly girl.”
“I know what you did, Licra,” echoed that same voice, “calm down. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Who are you?” coughed Licra.
Then, she gasped. A human arm reached upwards from the bloody deck to the air: shoulder to fingertips. It consisted of blood. The cabin light failed. Licra’s dampened vision summoned her cypistol, shuddering at all of the head, bodice, legs, feet, and succubus grin that emerged from Sand’s blood. The cypistol died in her hand.
“Hush, my love,” shushed the blood-composed one, letting drip her upturned palm to Licra’s face, “My name is ______, envoy of that trio you all unearthed from limited animation. Did our statues thrill you while you polished them, Licra? They seemed like if given a jig we’d start dancing. They were lifelike. We should know. We used to live in them.”
“You can have them back,” emphasized Licra’s cysword at the dodging, smirking creature, “and we’re sorry we robbed your mass grave from merchants. Leave now or I’ll cut you!”
“A true ruffian’s sorry,” inflicted ______ upon the armed one a debilitating cough, disarming her cysword, enjoying Licra’s warm breath at her toes, “‘accept my apology or I’ll murder you.’ You killed Sand in cold blood. Oh, don’t worry. I won’t turn you in. Your secret descended to my possession. I dispose of it as I please. So far I like it. You have to do what I say. Right now you must remain at my feet and listen to me.
“I need Keara’s food generator. That machine promises me freedom. Delay me, you run your mouth to the Captain, and she kills you. If I were you, I would rather surrender than die helpless. You might even learn I’m benign enough to like. I look after my own crew in a way.
“If it assuages your zeal for life, then consider yourself a hostage in my crow’s nest. My sword, cysword, whatever the hell it is, yes, that blade sits on your neck. We rather you would step down and join my crew. Captain Keara loses a swabbie and I gain one. She wouldn’t miss you. She doesn’t even know you’re down here with me. No one’s coming to salvage you, not from warming my feet at the bottom of the sea. Give my invitation some thought, and take care of that corpse you left over there. I like my secrets well kept.”

*****

The unconscious young murderess reawakened to the scene of the crime. The evidence tumbled into a hand truck; rolled to the main, overfull dumpster; gained a spacesuit; and compiled for the ultimate airlock disposal. Jolly grunted with a nod. The latest garbage load followed the rush of air pressure toward the vacuum of space. Sand’s trash-lined body sailed away into the infinite distance.
Despite her riddance of evidence, she tensed up when Captain Keara appeared in the threshold to see Jolly. She knows already, thought Licra. She realized by Keara’s raised eyebrow that she stood in the Captain’s way. The ancient seafaring cap cleared passage from Licra’s sandbars to Jolly’s port.
“Who the hell’s been tutchin’ my statues?” growled Captain Keara.
“No one, Cap’n!” fired Jolly.
“Then why they all grund up like that? The air stinks o’ doost! I can’t make oot somutha fookin’ fine details, the clothes they wore! Soombody tried to sabotage my treasure!”
“Cap’n, I swear on me moother’s dinin’ room table I didn’t knoo until you told meh!”
Suddenly, Licra coughed with that grit that suggests upper respiratory infection. Captain Keara turned her toe toward the swabbie to face her, wildly realizing how timely she arrived, smelling that same dust from the crime scene. The swabbie quickly lied, “it was Sand!”
“That sleepy soonuvabitch,” cursed Keara, “Jolly, where is ‘e now?”
“Prolly crew’s cot number six, Cap’n,” anchored Jolly.
However, the crew’s cot had shriveled lonesome like a balloon on Neptune at bottom right of center. Rat, Scilla the engineer and the bald helmsman in overalls, all shrugged their shoulders when asked where Sand had gone. Keara again turned her boot toward Licra, wondering whether or not she would stomp her.
“And whit’s your starry, little swabbie?”
“He scraped your treasure with a table cloth. I saw him do it while he went off on a tirade, complaining he hated being here. He took the cloth with him, grabbed a spacesuit, and ran off. That was all I saw.”
“Tha’s impossible,” snarled Jolly, “if he took a suit, then he mint aye-ther for the airlock or the dock. No one’s hijacked the dock, and I was at the garbage disposal right oop until you showed oop.”
“And it was my turn to take the trash out.”
“It’s always yer turn to take the trash oot!”
“Stan' doon, matey,” palmed the Captain, “if that mouse ain’t abaard the ship, then he wriggled out through the airlock, hiding in rubbish while Licra did her job. To hell with ‘im. Men ‘ew like to sleep in filth belong there. Now, Mr. Roger, show yer new assistant the ropes. I want my crew to be ready!”

****

“First of all,” floated the unbloodied, pale-nakedness named ______, settling her foot upon Licra’s recuperating shoulder, “whether you want me to be here or not, you either can carry on or acknowledge me. Second, your crew mates will become less severe than before. I’ve pacified every corner on board except the Captain’s quarters. No one storms in there except Keara who seldom visits my friends and I. Ironic how people can covet first and dispossess second! I feel insulted,” squeezing her soft toes into Licra’s shoulder, “perhaps, each of us can avenge ourselves.”
“My revenge for her being a fair captain?” yawned the new recipient of one-twelfth the plunder.
“Your revenge for losing the rest of the plunder.”
“Landlubber, I’ve had captains so greedy that I abandoned ship and watched myself sink them.”
“I promise you get to watch her destruction,” eased the soothing dream to wincing Licra.
“I’d rather have a third of the plunder and her protection.”
“My dear,” drifted ______’s foot toward Licra’s bosom, “why not prefer immortal protection?”
“‘Cuz it doesn’t exist.”
“I do.”
“I don’t know what you are.”
“You will.”
Suddenly, the snugness transported Licra from her cot to a damp, dark cave. She grasped an astro-turf like earth beneath her. Then, her eyes made berth at the colossal human-looking toes that trained toward her. The light eclipsed. Toes encumbered each of Licra’s arms and groaning head while the ball of the foot trampled her legs. She identified both mango lotion and the beach, anticipating that the boot-wearer was going to step forward.
“C-captain?” cried she.
Keara’s frown periscoped into view after the proverbial rip tide sucked away both the boot and Licra inside it. The latter thought she nearly drowned at the former’s toes. The flowing-haired demon ultimately stopped all other events until her illumination flooded the boot, grinning downwards at Licra.
“And what shall I consider you, little one? Here you are a bug under Keara’s foot. There you are a liar who ought to lick her boots for mercy. I want to call you my pet, not hers. Well, whose are you?”
Licra dashed for the boot heel, protesting upward, “I am no one’s pet!”
______’s tsunami challenged Licra’s assertion. Licra washed away backwards into the boot and coughed profusely into the plushy foot that settled in. It smelled like vanilla through the darkness.
“The expression reads,” smiled the muffled demoness, “‘If the boot fits, then you wear it.’ How much I love Keara’s taste in footwear! It’s a complete fit,” briefly squeezing Licra, “don’t you think? Now I know you’re more my size than hers.”
“I am not a pet,” held the fearful Licra.
“Then, leave. Get out from underfoot, escape the dream, jump ship, and go solo,” feeling Licra shake her head, “no? Would you risk finding yourself beneath someone else’s feet like the gens d’armes, a rogue, a monster, or another Captain?”
“I can’t just leave the ship.”
“Just like how you can’t wriggle out of Keara’s boot,” petted ______ with her sole. “You’re comfortable here, aren’t you?”
“Y-you keep squeezing me,” softened Licra, melting beneath ______’s scrunching toes, “and your feet are really soft.”
“Yes, I’ve been told that my feet cushion the weary.”

***

“Why’s the crew actin’ so queer lately?” scratched Captain Keara beneath her frayed heirloom cap.
“‘Queer,’ Cap’n?” raised Jolly’s lengthy eyebrow.
Keara glanced at him away from the helmsman’s piloting and the glass partitioning, “The hoont’s in a few hours and noobody’s priming for it. Oy,” darting back to the helmsman, “you fly like old people fook! Forwaard ahead! We’re cloosing in on the Romulus,” back to Jolly, “we’re aboot to plunder life and licorice. Meanwhile, Rat doesn’t feed us, Licra moans like a twenty year old manatee, and Scilla endlessly scrolls throo her phone!”
“We’ve ‘ad it very good, Cap’n. These lads - everybody, realleh, even you - never ‘ad it this good before.”
“Realleh? ‘Cooz this sucks. I’m hoongry. Go tell Rat to make breakfast. An’ while yer at it, get Scilla to raise gear and loower wattage. You there, wheels for brains! You don’t have to floor it but do press the fookin’ gas! As for yer Captain, Mr. Roger, I’m goin’ to have a word witcher new assistant.”
Down the cove-lit hall her boots commanded a path toward the dorm. Then, a musty scent halted her in place, peculiarly having traversed the hijacked Carthage end to end. Small, sooty footprints suspiciously led to the cots.
You dirty, little urchin, frowned Captain Keara, I’ll teach you to clean properly. Kuh-thunk, kuh-thunk, and kuh-thunk stopped she upon reaching the promoted swabbie. Keara both seized and illuminated by torch the guilty, dirty feet that besmirched her deck.
“Get oop. Now,” tumbling Licra down from her cot to beneath her trampling boot, “don’t think that just ‘cooz I promoted you means yer bitch cleans oop after you! Walk barefoot through charcoal abaard my ship again, and you float space-booted for eternity! Aye?”
“Aye, Captain!” cried the wakened Licra.
“I think you like bein’ under soomone’s boot,” softened the suborning voice, “I never cared for it much myself. Don’t you know how dirty it is down there? Spit oot that tongue o’ yers.”
Licra stuck out her tongue while she lied underfoot. Keara’s belly groaned for diversion. Fear glistened in Licra’s eyes. I want her, thought Keara, to not cross me ever again, especially not when I’m this hoongry!
“I thought each of us wanted breakfast,” sneered Keara, slipping off her stomping boot, stepping down her warm, naked foot on Licra’s tongue, “lucky you, gettin’ first bite. Now, you get to enjoy my boot lint. An’ do clean yer plate. I hate seein’ food wasted.”
Licra pleasantly surprised her, stroking along her sole. The hidden goddess smiled, guiding along the toil for pleasure’s sake. “Once-over-spit-shine Licra” shall mark my tombstone, thought she, if I get one after all.
“Just do as she commands,” suggested ______ as an aside to Licra, “and I promise you won’t die.”
Keara had enjoyed sinking her feet into the summer tide, growing up on a balmy shore. Sandy cove eels used to ensconce her bather’s legs just as they used to divert her ancestors. Likewise Licra immersed Keara’s toes in passionate waters.
“Everyone learns their own way, aye?” reflected Keara, glowing, smiling, “Tha’s why I never made Sand lick my feet. Daft bastard wouldn’t know a good wumman’s leg if it orbited him.”
“Good woman’s leg won’t ever orbit him again,” replied Licra.
“Oh? How do you know that?”
Licra’s eyes smirked upward, insolently answering, “because he’s dead.”

**

Suddenly, alarms blared. Red lights pulsed on and off throughout the cabin. Captain Keara put her boot back on and cooled her electrified nerves. Licra had told her not that Sand’s corpse ejected but that the living coward fled. There existed only one way Licra alone knew that he had died, and Keara hated liars.
“I’m not through witchu yet,” growled Keara, “my ship comes first. Crew comes second.”
She wriggled her wet toes, pursuing that which had settled Licra’s spit onto her foot. Licra’s queer demeanor grinned as her Captain exited the dormitory. Oh, thought Keara, stomping toward the helm, she’ll lick more ‘an just my toes.
So she hoped until she observed the helmsman who ignored the ubiquitous “ship-in-motion-engine-off” alert, one massive hand on the wheel. “Get the lead oot, sailor! Alert engineerin’! Stop the goddam ship before an asteroid rails us!”
“Intercom don’t work, Cap’n,” answered the handkerchief-gripping helmsman, coughing sickly, “an’ you’re the only one I’ve seen.”
“I’m Captain Keara Mercedes! My mother was one o’ the saltiest padfoots in the galaxy! Yer helpless without me! Jus’ hang onto the wheel ’til I return. Scilla won’t answer the alarm. She’ll answer me.”
She kuh-thunked by the aproned Rat whose steaming pot suggested breakfast in the banana-colored kitchen. Hard-boiled eggs ‘ill suffice, growled her stomach. Her whole body agreed that any step toward triumph boded well.
The frustrated Captain Keara stopped surrounded by silicone-encased turbines, glimpsing her new assistant who licked face-up on the deck at the welder-masked Scilla’s skinny toes. She felt for that possessive corruption, having trespassed upon their problematic intimacy. Whit, thought she, is happenin’ to my crew?
“Scilla! Get yer boots on and reactivate the fookin’ engine! Licra! Get oot of my way or go to hell! You sabotaged the engineer from doin’ the only job she had! Go away! Run! Clean oop those footprints, dirty bitch, and stop grindin’ yer feet into my treasure,” whirling on Scilla, eyebrow-pleading, “do somethin’, matey! Anythin’!”
The blonde grease-cloth nonchalantly pressed the ignition, canceled the mayday alert, and raised her grey welder’s mask. There again a slight grin suggested that a secret eluded Keara aboard her own hijacked ship. Scilla’s dirt-cheeky coal eyes gazed into Keara’s face, and her finger-like toes wiggled liberally with pleasure.
“Licra does a good job, doesn’t she, Captain?”
“Aye,” bitterly gleamed Keara’s azure eyes, “so she’s tellin’ starries about me? She licked up ‘er share o’ grievance. I’d make you too if my engine dies ever again.”
“The engine didn’t die, Captain. Licra said I should shut it off.”
“Whit,” shuddered Keara when the ship abruptly changed course. She lost her footing while Scilla swayed atop the engine console by anchoring butt. Once a problem-solver within the hijacked Carthage’s bowels, Captain Keara leapt from stairs to helm, questioning her faculties, “who betrayed me?”
Rat stepped in. He brandished an unused carving knife center corridor. Pans scattered downwards to the quaked kitchen floor behind him.
“Move it, Rat!” shouted Keara. “Ship’s out o’ control! Let me through!”
“Jolly told me you were hungry,” chuckled he with duplicitous inflection. “I just panned the chef’s specialty. How about deviled eggs?”
“How about,” lurched the Captain forward when the ship bailed a second time. A great thud preceded both a clothed, frantic susurrus and the pink necked Jolly’s tied-up wriggling. Rat realized his slip and lunged, steeling himself at the intercepting captain.
“Stay oot o’ the way,” disarmed Keara the cutlery in Rat’s grip, emancipating her bedraggled first mate, “dead chef can’t cook.”
Both she and Jolly endured a quake onboard once again. They breached the blackout deck secrets both of then-denuded helmsman at his post and naked Licra at his knees, yelling, “hands off the wheel,” drawing Keara’s cysword on them. Then, her own first mate drew his cysword on her. Three altogether outnumbered her.
“Jolly! Licra! Helmsman! What’s the matter witcha?”
“Sorry, Cap’n,” rumbled her old friend, blindfolding her with a black flag, “I knoo I said we ‘ad it good. I minta say we wanted more.”

*

A food generator rocked towards Keara as her shipmates all transported her tied-up and gagged body to her own quarters. Under the moon-glow corner lights she incredulously guessed its purpose at the moment. Would they pawn it and leave her in bondage atop her own violet bedsheets, or would they just cook up the chef’s specialty?
They split between goers and keepers. The goers Jolly, Rat and the helmsman, all clunked away to fetch Keara’s “you-know-whit.” The keepers Scilla and Licra sighed and drew squiggly fingertip lines on Keara upon her bed.
“You should join our new crew, Captain,” they said together.
This must be some kind o’ nightmare, thought Keara. Autopilot only bought her time. Malcontent circles tickled along her sides. Then, her boots came off. She never told a soul how a single touch upon her from head to toe could coax her laughter. Hardly any part of her struggling body escaped that tickle.
“I know your secret, my love,” tickled Scilla’s digits into the squirming Keara beside the tormenting Licra.
Keara reluctantly giggled, death-glaring toward that unbecoming personage. Horrible, thought she, that human bein’s still succumb to pressure scripts an’ the like. Scilla would never drag insolence across her Captain’s own hijacked ship. Licra would never tongue-tickle her feet without her permission. Someone else spat these insubordinations with their lips.
“Eureka,” smiled the devil’s pleasure, “I knew exactly the moment when you realized that I’m not Scilla, not in body anyway. My name is Patra. Marla and Ni are the dormant ones among that effigy you all had stolen. No, we care not that you massacred the Ithaka but that your bodies suffice as substitutes for our own. Thank you for releasing us.”
I got to wake oop from this dream, giggled Keara. The dream rules allowed them all: the ancient effigy, the goers who brought it, the keepers who initiated the food generation sequence, and the bound-and-gagged Captain who helplessly watched. Mutiny assailed unimpeded. Surrender presented safety. Resistance broke both by her muted voice and bound limbs.
The possessing lady continued her masquerade while the others toiled, padding steps around Keara, dipping her toes into her graphite inkwell, the effigy, “you come from Earth where bloodlines flourished,” sighing, “I used to live there. You know how ancestry emboldens people. Power flows through my veins. I wonder,” turning Keara’s head to face the food generator, removing the gag, “what flows through yours?”
“Any sense a’ tall!” erupted the volcanic Keara to Scilla who raised herself as though by heat parasail.
“Oh, I’m serious,” slipped Scilla’s corrupted toes towards Keara’s lips which hummed in refusal, “and you’re warm.”
Fear captivated Keara. The machine quietly whirred after the helmsman fed it graphite. Scilla’s cold toes spread that strange residue in pursuit to Keara’s tight-lipped escape. They wriggled the crumbs from her sole onto Keara’s nose. That dust, widened Keara’s eyes, drove the crew insane. She too had inhaled the poison, battling a cough against her alarmed nostrils.
Then, the food generator ceased whirring and beeped like a microwave oven. Tha’s not food in there, stared Keara, but a goddam waste that predicates on madness! Jolly unhinged the lid, releasing an exhale of vanilla bakery. Vision failed Keara. A refreshing warmth pervaded the bedroom around her.
A strange, pale-naked, long-legged woman emerged from the clearing steam. She let her eyes close relaxed, raised her arms to the welcome universe, and she breathed deep to break the silent ages. Light years obeyed the sway of her void-colored hair. That, presumed Keara, is the bitchu possessed my crew?
The mercury gaze unnerved her as the phenomenon descended through the awe-struck. She’s not human, sweated Keara. The living perversity approached her own ensnared, trampled person. It paused its toughened bazaar-browsing feet, touched its chin, and evaluated by hand on hip.
“We meet at last,” croaked her foreign tongue, scanning Keara knees to lips. “Vicarious life got old. I could drink you in. Now, the other entombed need me. You must understand, Keara,” smirking like so familiar a stranger to the captive youth, “I knew you would resist by the brim of your cap. You did well. Here we stand less one dead lowlife and no other bloodshed.”
Keara shivered speechless at the perceived dream’s interest toward herself. Jolly, Scilla, Rat, Licra and the helmsman, all accounted for the deckhands, gazing hungrily at her. “Forgive my impertinence, dear,” swallowed the mistress’s hair like a black hole to Keara, gratefully breathing for her immortality, exhaling against unarmored shoulder, “but I wanted to taste that dynasty of yours I heard so much about.”