George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He volunteered for night watch duty because he wasn’t very good at things which happened during the day.
He was also an amateur astronomer, and he’d use his telescope to look up at the stars.
Out on the ocean, with no light pollution, the night sky was amazing, and he was on the lookout for the other plants, comets, and the many wonders of the cosmos.
He wasn’t on the lookout for other rocks, other ships, and storms.
He shouted “HARD TO PORT” and “HARD TO STARBOARD” a lot.
George the drunk
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He drank a lot, and the Coast Guard constantly cited him for BUI.
“But I’m not in a boat,” said George. “I’m just walking the pier.”
“But you’re walking to your boat,” said the Coast Guard.
“Where I plan to sleep this off,” said George. “The boat’s securely moored, it’s going nowhere.”
The Coast Guard accompanied George to the spot where his boat was moored…
Well, had been moored.
“Okay, so I’m not so good with knots,” said George. “So, can you help me file a missing boat report?”
George generated by AI
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate. He often forgot where he docked his ship, where he buried his treasure, and even his own name. He fell overboard during fights and got lost on deserted islands. He had no sense of direction, strategy, or even map reading skills. Despite all this, he always made his crew laugh. One day, while on the verge of being captured by the Navy, George saved the day by accidentally finding the secret passage to the treasure they were seeking. From then on, he became known as the luckiest pirate alive.
Weekly Challenge #891 – Frozen In Time
The topic of the next weekly challenge is PICK TWO: Recovery, Falling, Rotten egg, Some guy/girl I met online, Hopeless, Fog a mirror
RICHARD
Frozen
For the thousandth time since landing the job, I was questioning my sanity.
You were suffering from a special sort of madness to want to teach seven year olds, but to imagine they could be taught music put me in a whole different class of crazy.
Every day, I’d return home with an aching head, and in a foul temper: The distorted wail and crash of tortured instruments haunting my mind.
But, if the playing was bad, the singing was far worse.
Today, we attempted ‘Let it go’
Just try getting thirty, seven year olds to sing ‘Frozen’, in time!
LIZZIE
Is this what we’re supposed to see?
Is this the real face of…
Now is the time to be honest.
However, no one wants to tell the truth.
Everyone is hiding behind fake compliments.
Is this what we’re supposed to do?
Is this the real…
And that flower was so fragile. As fragile as they were, staring at it, wondering.
The two of them. Alone.
They were real. Yes, they were, together in that frozen pain of what was not, together as they had always been, mourning what could’ve happened but never did.
The two of them. Together. Always together.
LISA
An Ordinary House in an Ordinary Street
Do you want to see inside? It’s a silly question really; we won’t stop long.
Strange huh? Like an old lady house frozen in time. These are all his Mum’s things even though she died a decade ago.
Is that smell getting to you? Sorry should’ve warned you – that antiseptic does catch your throat a bit.
Let me just show you the cellar… Can you feel it? Like a chill that clasps you? It’s like a normal place but your body knows some bad shit has happened here. We’d better go: I think I heard his car pull up.
SERENDIPIDY
For hundreds of thousands of years, I was trapped beneath the icy permafrost of the Tundra: Frozen in time, a forgotten relic of the ancient past.
The earth warmed -climate change, so they say- and slowly, but surely, my icy prison released me from its bonds.
I broke free from its cruel grip and fought my way towards light, and freedom, reaching for the touch of sunlight, denied to me for millennia.
And now, I am free.
Unknown to science, immune to your modern medicines, no natural enemies, no modern remedies.
I’m back!
It’s time to take back my world!
TURA
Frozen in time
———
Since Einstein, we’ve known that the past is not gone, only frozen. The future too, though we cannot see it.
Everything that happens has always been going to, and always will have. Not one particle of all the suffering in the world will ever be extinguished, but exists for all eternity. The happiness too, but surely happiness is but a single grain of sand in a vast desert.
Each brief candle is forever being blown out.
You start by thinking about the speed of light and end up here. But you always were going to, and you always will have.
TOM
The Great ReDo
Benny felt the moment slide just out of reach. If she had been four steps closer. If the child to his right had been farther right. Then there was the sudden gunning of an engine. The light reflecting off the store front window. A single arrent piece of paper flowing across the street. One thing, a thousand. Spin the stack, put back, push forward, pause and move. Who can say it would turn out any different? It remains frozen in time. Outside the reach of the fates, furies, and fay. It remains frozen in space. Blink and it is gone.
NORVAL JOE
Billbert stared at the bottle cap and its inscription as if frozen in time. What did this mean? Then it hit him and he snapped out of his stasis. “Linoliamanda. Give me all the bottle caps.”
Once he had them in his hands, he shouted to Sabrina. “I’m throwing you some bottle caps. Spread them out away from the well.”
When the metal caps left the well, he felt his superpower return.
“Take my hand, we’re getting out of here,” he said to Linoliamanda.
She blinked. “Are you going to leave that poor old man down here?”
Billbert scoffed. “Yes.”
PLANET Z
Winterhaven doesn’t appear on any maps, but if you go looking for it, you’ll find it.
Cobblestone streets, wooden buildings.
Shops and houses around a central square with a fountain and a church.
The clock tower says five after two, it always does.
Every minute, a train rolls by the Winterhaven station.
It never stops, just rolls right on by.
Bobby uses a magnifying glass and tweezers to arrange moss and tiny trees around the church.
Little adjustments every day, something goes here, move another thing there.
When the catalog arrives, he reads through it, imagining what next to add.
George and the pizza
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“Do you smell pizza?” George asked, as he walked around the ship, sniffing the air.
“There’s no pizza, George,” said the captain. “Now swab the deck, or I’ll make you walk the plank.”
George swabbed the deck, but every few minutes, he’d stop and sniff the air with a curious look on his face.
“Okay, fine,” said the captain. “I’ll order some pizza.”
The captain sent a landing party ashore with the order, and it took them three days to return.
By then, they’d eaten all of the pizza.
George’s sense of adventure
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was always trying to get out of work.
He’d say things like “I think I’ll take a personal day today.” or “It’s a holiday for my people.”
Or he’d claim to be sick, and hand the captain a note from his doctor.
The same doctor who said that George shouldn’t lift anything heavy or stay out in the sun too long.
“Why exactly are you a pirate, George?” asked the captain.
“For adventure!” said George, laying in his bunk.
The captain introduced George to the adventure of keel-hauling.
George discourteous
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He also wasn’t very courteous to his fellow shipmates.
He’d shave in the morning, and leave the stubble in the sink.
He’d pee with the seat down and splash all over it, and then he wouldn’t wipe it off.
Instead of tossing his used toilet paper in the toilet to flush, he’d toss it in the wastebin.
He’d drink a flagon of grog, and then put his unclean flagon back on the shelf.
George didn’t get invited to a lot of birthday parties.
That’s okay. He didn’t like cake.
George gets abducted
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He spent a lot of time up in the crow’s nest, alone on night watch.
So, when the space aliens abducted him, nobody noticed he was gone.
“Greetings, Earthling,” said the aliens. “You will be your species’ ambassador to our world.”
“I dunno,” said George. “Do ambassadors loot and pillage and plunder?”
“Not really,” said the aliens. “That’s a politician and businessman thing.”
“I’d rather stay a pirate,” said George.
“Fine,” said the aliens, and they released George. Into the water.
The captain assumed that George fell overboard again.
George and the saint
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Every night, George prayed to Saint Nicholas, patron saint of sailors, to make him a better pirate.
And every morning, George woke to the painful truth that he still wasn’t a very good pirate.
When the ship sailed into Neva Bay, George traveled to The Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Saint Petersburg.
“Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and reformed thieves,” said the bishop. “Not unrepentant pirates still committing piracy.”
George bonked him on the head and took the collection box.
“I’ll reform and repent later,” said George.
George and the Pirate Union
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was sloppy and forgetful.
He even let his membership in the Pirate Union expire.
“I thought the ship handled that stuff for employees,” said George.
“No,” said the captain. “You’re more like an independent contractor, You know, like cab drivers.”
George had to retake all of the piracy exams, and he did poorly.
Until he passed the exams, he could only call himself a brigand, buccaneer, or sailor.
Eventually, George got fed up, and held the examiners for ransom.
“Pass,” they said, and George was a pirate again.