George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
His ship ran aground on a small island off of the coast of South Carolina.
“Welcome to Abortion Island,” said a grizzled docksman. “Sorry about the lighthouse, been out for three days.”
He led George to the clinic, a small medical facility and dormitory.
“The ferryboat brings patients, the doctor performs the procedure, and when they’re ready, they return to the mainland.”
George stood and stared.
It took George seven days to repair his ship.
He kept to himself, sleeping in his bunk.
And he left without saying goodbye.
Author: R.
Call me George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“Maybe you should give pirating a rest?” said the captain, tallying up the damage from George’s latest mishap. “Whaling is big these days. My brother has a ship.”
George packed his bags, disembarked, and walked down the docks to his new home.
“Your first time whaling?” said a lanky greenhorn, extending his hand. “Call me Ishmael.”
“Call me George,” said George, smiling.
A year later, they found themselves bloodied and battered, adrift on the Pacific in a coffin.
“That ended badly,” said Ishmael. “So, tell me more about piracy.”
George ponders
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Some nights, he’d gaze up at the stars, wondering how he fit in to the world, or if there was some kind of hidden cosmic plan out there.
“Where are we?”
“Why am I here?”
“What is my purpose?”
“What does it all mean?”
Then he’d connect all the bright stars in his mind, making shapes and words and symbols.
One he named “George.” He was also holding a map and an astrolabe.
The captain tapped him on the shoulder, clearing his throat.
“I asked ‘Where are we, George?'”
George and the protestors
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Nobody would ever build a monument or statue to him.
No plaque, no bench.
He sat in the park and rested.
Masked protestors swarmed in, charging and screaming, armed with sledgehammers and a crane.
“Down with hate and slavery!’ they shouted. “We love!”
They pounded at the Confederate War Veterans statue, tugging and pulling it until it toppled and fell.
On top of George.
The protestors ran when they heard ambulance sirens, leaving him thrashing and struggling, shouting for help.
The medics tended to George, and carried him away.
George and the seven cities
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
George sought out El Dorado, the City of Gold.
But instead of a city literally made of Gold, it turned out to be a village ruled by some naked dude who rolled around in Gold dust every morning, and then washed it off in the lake.
George stripped naked, rolled around in Gold dust, and proclaimed himself king.
The natives bowed down to George. Except for the real king.
Over and over they did this.
After a week, El Dorado ran out of Gold dust.
And George left emptyhanded.
George passes out
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Some say he drinks too much to remember.
And others say he doesn’t drink enough to forget.
Bleary-eyed, climbing into his hammock, cabin spinning.
The rocking back and forth.
Is it the waves and the ship, or just how much he drank?
It doesn’t matter. He leans out of his hammock and throws up.
The hammock wobbles. He falls into the puddle of vomit.
Passing out.
He’ll do the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that.
“Another goddamned day of this shit,” he mumbles.
And passes out again.
Weekly Challenge #917 – Bread
The next topic is PICK TWO Brand awareness, Lot, Random, Envision, Dozen, Secretary
LIZZIE
“Bread crumbs, I need bread crumbs,” thought the restless crow. He wasn’t hungry. He just wanted bread crumbs. He read a story about dropping bread crumbs to leave a trail. He wanted to leave a trail! People would trickle out of the forest into the open field and marvel at his beauty! But he found no bread crumbs. He did consider resorting to his collection of glass eyes, but it was becoming more and more difficult to steal them from grumpy Old Maggie. So, he just sat on his scarecrow and waited. And he waited for a very long time!
RICHARD
All natural ingredients
Times have been tough since the Great War, but we survivors are tougher still.
We manage to get by on the bare essentials, and where even the bare essentials are lacking, we improvise.
Take our bread, for example: Flour is hard to come by, so we substitute sawdust instead. It makes for an interesting texture, but the flavour’s not too bad.
Mind you, if it wasn’t for the bread we’d starve.
That’s our diet: Bread and water.
Except the water is polluted, and the rain is far too acid to drink.
I won’t tell you what we substitute for water!
SERENDIPIDY
Smells can be so evocative.
Some may enthuse about the aroma of freshly baked bread, the fragrance of newly mown grass or the perfume of night scented stock on a warm spring evening.
Homely, comforting smells.
Not for me though. My tastes are very different.
In fact, those smells make me want to vomit.
Give me instead, the honest, ferrous tang of freshly spilled blood, the sweet smells of death and decay. Better than any bouquet of flowers or the most expensive of perfumes.
And above all, the dank, earthy aroma of the grave.
The smell of home, sweet home.
LISA
A Despondent Incident Room
Another day and another late afternoon briefing; there’s another three photos up on the board. It looks like our man’s working a lot harder than we are. He’s giving us nothing, and we’re working right round the clock.
I’ve not had a meal at home for weeks now. Mum’s doing me double sandwiches.
I used to eat at my desk but I can’t eat with them watching. It doesn’t feel right. They’re all around my age: I think all the women feel the same: it could be me up there. The bread from the uneaten sandwich hardens on my desk.
TOM
Pore more Sugar on It
Going Meta-Meta tonight. My personal rule for writing is: the first thing that lands in my head it the central theme of the story. It can produce some pretty weird stuff. Take tonight’s topic: bread. Before I could take a stroll down memory lane of my years working in a Bakery. I was the guy who choose how many loafs of vegetable herb we were delivering to San Fransisco. But No, what popped in my brain pan was Bread the band. And I use that term generously. If you took rock and roll and dipped in sugar Bread would come out.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliumanda continued to ignore her father’s requests to get into the car until he was clearly ready to blow his top. Red faced, he got out of the car and stomped his size fourteen wingtips toward her.
Just then, a rusty, late 50’s, Chevrolet Biscayne, huffed and rumbled to a stop next to them. A gray-haired woman in a bright orange mumu under a olive rain poncho climbed out, carrying a small brown loaf of bread.
Mr. Withybottom’s jaw dropped. “Buhmilda. What are you doing here?”
The woman smiled at Mr. Withybottom. “I could as you the same, Cousin Charlie.”
PLANET Z
Tonya went to school and opened a bakery.
Hired a few of her neighbors and friends, worked long hours.
Everybody got paid well and got great benefits.
She even covered child care, which for single mothers, is everything.
Then the riots came.
Her bakery was broken into and burned to the ground.
The security company kept the video off-site, so she watched as one of those friends used her keys to open the security grate to get inside.
And set the fire that consumed her business.
All her hard work. All she did for others.
Years of sacrifice.
For nothing.
George and The Kingdom of Green, Part 2
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Instead of looting and pillaging, he liked to go exploring.
“And then loot and pillage?” asked his mateys.
“No,” said George. “I write articles for a travel magazine.”
His favorite place to visit had been the Kingdom of Green.
It was land of endless fields and forests, and the castle on the hill shone in the sun.
“It’s gone, George,” said a messenger from the magazine. “The king died, and the queen soon after. It’s all in ruin.”
George folded his map, put it in a drawer, and wept.
George and The Kingdom of Green, Part 1
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Give him a ship, and he’ll give you back a shipwreck.
One time, he wrecked on the rocks of an island where everyone wore green.
“Come with me,” said a villager. “The king and queen are waiting.”
The royal couple offered to fix George’s ship, but he had to promise never to loot or pillage the land.
George kept his word, and he changed the maps to read “Dangerous rocks and monsters.”
That way, pirates would forever avoid that land.
George assumed that they lived happily ever after.
George builds
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Once, when George wasn’t careful about some pirate secrets, a fellow pirate shushed him and said “The walls have ears.”
Ever since then, George had been nervous about talking near walls.
He’d only talk to people outdoors where there weren’t any walls.
Or in gazebos. Because they’re kind of like buildings, but don’t have any walls.
Railings, maybe. But those are more like lattices or fences.
The captain watched George trying to construct a gazebo on the main deck.
“I should have been a farmer,” he muttered to himself.