George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Every time he came home, people spat on him and called him murderer or babykiller.
Every bone in his body, every scar on his skin ached.
George had never killed a baby.
And the only times he’d killed, he’d killed other pirates, and in self-defense, too.
He remembered every man he’d killed, looking into their eyes as life left them.
Every night, they haunted him in his dreams.
George stopped thinking of his home as home.
His home was the sea, and he never wanted to leave it again.