Chapter Eleven: The Daylight Dead
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If you’ve ever been drunk, you know what then next few hours were like for Ace, who had never had a sip of alcohol in their life, simply not having come into contact with it. Of course, they’d seen people be drunk, and from an outsider’s perspective it had seemed like a miserable time. They’d seen grown men cry, widdle themselves, fall into a ditch, giggle, fart and then cry some more, often but not always in that order. Alcohol, it seemed, wasn’t worth it, making people take leave of their senses and, if used continuously, completely ruining lives. 

 

Of course, if you’ve used alcohol, you know that this is all utterly and completely true. Alcohol is a terrible substance that reduces your ability perceive reality and act accordingly, it makes you completely incapable of judging what is real and what isn’t, and it turns you into an utter and total buffoon, and for all of these reasons it was and still is one of the most popular narcotic substance on the planet. 

 

Now, it has to be said that there’s drunk, there’s drunk and there’s, you know, drunk. The varying kinds of inebriation are partly, but not entirely, based on the quantity and quality of alcohol consumed, and of the person consuming it. There’s a big difference between a mom who’s wine-drunk, eagerly making herself and two friends spaghetti at three am and being just a little overzealous with the parmesan, and two grown men kicking the snot out of each other in an alley because one of them forgot which way to aim while relieving himself, despite the respective levels of alcohol in their system being similar. 

 

Which is why Ace was lucky not to have drank beer. Beer, to someone who has never drank beer before, tastes a bit like battery acid that’s gone bad, mixed with orange juice. Or possibly old dishwater with a hint of lemon. Most people’s relationship with beer might as well be a form of advanced Stockholm Syndrome, where it’s only through repeat exposure that the victim develops an affinity for the poisonous drink. This excepting certain regions of Europe, where the beer brewed is basically fermented soup, with more flavour than you can shake a stick at and enough alcohol content to kill a small farm animal. 

 

Instead, they had Rum, which tastes a lot more like alcohol. That is to say that it tastes like something you put on a wound, or possibly use to poison a monarch. Smelling it is enough to singe the hairs in your nostrils. Of course, it being so highly flammable and toxic is where the term “proof” came from, as it was invented by pirates and then made its way onto mercantile ships (or vice versa, in these things its best not to be too specific, especially when talking to a pirate). Pirates would soak gunpowder in rum, and if it still burned, that meant the rum was considered to be high quality. 

 

This highly flammable, extremely toxic substance, is what Ace had just drank. As an introduction to alcohol, it’s a lot like hitting someone in the head with a hammer to introduce them to the concept of unconsciousness. Technically the desired effect is achieved, but you’ve now got one knocked-out person with brain damage who will wake up cross and with a headache. 

 

But Ace wasn’t unconscious yet, though the next few hours went by in a daze as they consumed several bottles of rum. At some point, they had stumbled out of the cabin in their drunken revelry, Ace being dragged along by a happily singing Tom. More time slipped between Ace’s fingers in a blur. As they leaned on the edge of the ship, trying to decide if they were going to throw up, pass out, or both, they tried to remember what was going on, which is a lot like squinting to try and see through a solid steel door. 

 

Another primer for those of you who have been lucky enough never to have enjoyed alcohol. Once a certain quantity is consumed, things get fuzzy. Your thoughts become a kind of sometimes-funny-sometimes-sad pea soup that takes minutes to navigate where you spend most of your time on a kind of autopilot, where you can see out of your eyes and hear out of your ears and you can tell that you’re talking and clearly having fun but you’re also fairly certain that you’re not, because you’re in here and you’re just observing. And then suddenly you’re in a bathroom and you’re looking at yourself making faces. Time, space, talking, thinking, they all sort of begin to slip together and you can’t be sure if you already said something or didn’t, and then suddenly you’re home and you don’t know how you got there, but there’s a bed so you might as well.

This is where Ace was at. Nothing was real and everything seemed to be happening in both present and past tense and the whole thing was making them nauseous, but not quite nauseous enough to do something about it. Behind them, most of the ship’s crew was celebrating. Only the captain and Tall Tom knew what, but “if you’re really worried about what you’re celebrating you haven’t had enough to drink” seemed to be the general consensus among the pirates. There was happiness and revelries and Ace was absolutely, positively certain they’d enjoyed a whole bunch of all of that just minutes ago, so why were they getting all sad and introspective now? Their hands felt weird, and they touched their face and now their face felt weird. The deck shifted and Ace hoped it was the sea. Not that it mattered really, the wooden floor conked them in the forehead whether it had come up to greet them or they’d gone down like an old dead tree. 

 

They barely felt it, because when alcohol advertises to numb your feelings, it does seem to mean all feelings, which is why drunk people smash things over their heads so often, which is something you don’t see calm, sober people do nearly as often. For a brief moment, Ace considered staying right there, the wood seemed perfectly comfortable and they were suddenly feeling awfully sleepy now that they’d rediscovered the joys of being horizontal. 

 

Of course, it was at this time that that lookout had to ruin the entire party and things suddenly got very frantic and very hectic indeed. Pirates began running back and forth over the deck, mostly into each other, sometimes leaning over the edge of the ship for a quick retch, if only to try and clear their head as quickly as possible. Weapons were being handed out to the sailors and belowdecks cannons were being prepared. After all, what the lookout had shouted had been unexpected for most of them, and Maria and Tom hadn’t realized just how close they’d been.

 

“Spaniards!” the man in the crow’s nest shouted. “Spanish Galleon straight ahead!”

 

Ace tried to focus their vision. They’d been leaning off the edge of the ship, but in the darkness the sea had just been an infinitely flat black plane vaguely reflecting stars. Ace rolled over and looked up. So far they hadn’t been stepped on yet. The stars spun and yet somehow stayed in the same space, or the ship was, or Ace was the one spinning. Everything was simultaneously spinning. Ace sat up. That didn’t help, but they knew that lying down now would be worse, somehow. They tried to get to their feet and only needed three tries. Someone ran past and shoved a sword in their hands, which seemed like a terrible idea considering their mental faculties. 

 

On the other hand, the sailor seemed to be holding several swords and running, so perhaps questioning his judgement was probably an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, Ace thought to try anyway, after about fifteen seconds of processing what had happened.

 

“Hey.” They said. The sailor was already long gone, veering dangerously to one side as they handed out weapons. 

 

It was the hope that the Galleon hadn’t seen them yet. The Siren Song was a fast ship, nimble, and while it had some cannons, it wasn’t made for protracted naval battles. Captain Maria relied on boarding as much as possible, both to reduce loss of life -- many of the crew was proficient in swordfighting -- and the destruction of cargo. After all, piracy wasn’t about sinking ships, but about securing them. Ace briefly saw the captain’s overly large hat bobbing amongst the commotion, and they tried to make their way over there without stabbing themself or someone else. 

 

After a few seconds of dodging or completely failing to dodge people, being jostled around and running face-first into the mast, they finally managed to find Captain Abbott. He stood unsteadily at the bow, trying to look imposing for his crew, one foot on a small crate, but Ace saw his knuckles white on the railing. Either he was trying to hold on for dear life to keep from falling over, or he was really angry about something. Slowly, Ace’s brain decided to try and look at the captain’s face, which was a process because Ace’s eyes kept drifting this way and that, largely doing their own thing. 

 

When they finally managed to see, properly perceive the captain’s eyes, they realized that the Captain was far from drunk. Something inside him had sobered him up in a way that made Ace wish they could too, although going by Maria’s expression, it wasn’t a very pleasant method. Ace didn’t understand, of course. Hours earlier, Maria had seemed so happy to find out they were close on the heels of the Spanish but now the captain seemed… angry wasn’t the word. 

 

Now, Ace was not exactly present. In fact, most of Ace’s cognitive abilities seemed to be floating around in their general vicinity and it took more than a little bit of effort for them to grab one and pull it close, during which time another had drifted off again, like their ability to think, speak, listen or look at things. So they just saw Captain Maria Abbott and saw someone who was a little angry. If they’d been more awake, they’d probably still be worried about the whole mermaids thing, or they’d be worrying about the fight that was about to take place. But Ace was all over the place and so instead they looked at the captain’s hand and wondered why humans had five fingers and if maybe they could ask the cook for some bread. 

 

A sober observer would notice that Captain Maria was not mad, in the same way that the inside of an active volcano is not technically speaking ‘on fire’. It was too hot to be on fire. Everything that could burn had burned, and now it was just unreasonably hot and all-consuming. Captain Maria was not mad because anger is what came first. But after you’re angry for a very long time, for valid reasons or otherwise, that anger starts to dissipate, and what you do then can start to define you as a person. 

 

Some people choose to process that past anger and move on, trying to become better, more whole people because of it. It’s considered to be a very zen thing to do, to process previous anger in such a way that future grievances slide off you like water. It’s also a little pretentious and not always healthy, sometimes you just gotta be mad.

Others get tired, and this is especially common with young people who have been mad for a long time, at their parents, governments, institutions and just injustice in general. These young people then become something much like adults, still angry but whether it’s their parents, governments, institutions or the injustices of the world in general, something grinds them down until their anger is no longer sustainable and in its place is a kind of empty apathy. It’s not a fun place to be, but it’s a good place to recharge, so they can be angry again next week.

 

The last way, of course, is to not let go of your anger. After a while all the reasons to yell and scream and shout and punch run out, but the reason to want to do those things, the underlying cause, that might not go away. And when it does, what’s left is a word that is best used very sparingly because it carries with it the implication that someone has been so angry for so long that they’ve carved out a piece of their soul to look exactly like the thing they were angry about and they now carry that with them wherever they go. Of course, what they do in this case, is Hate. Not lower-case hate, which is the thing you feel when you walk through the kitchen in socks and step on something wet and squishy. 

 

No, what Captain Maria Abbott felt, in that moment, was capitalized, full-frontal, unabridged Hatred, and it was the most sobering thing in the world. It was so hot and red in his chest it felt like it would burn a hole through his clothing. 

Captain Abbott didn’t hate Spaniards, not per sé, not on their own. But these Spaniards, on this day, in this little otherwise unremarkable square nautical mile of ocean, these Spaniards were about to witness the full wrath of the Siren Song and its captain.

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