Venom Chic

prologue

The ocean was calm in the moonlight, a slow moving mass gently pulsing; the boat on the horizon stained the scene, it appeared as a toy, lost in the vast expanse of sea and sky.

    The word Corsair was barely visible on the Greek trawler, the salt had slowly marked her wounds and hour by hour were devouring the iron and steel hull transformed over the years to a blistered red and a seeping rust yellow hue that groaned and creaked to the seas rising swell. The chains that lifted cargo was enclosed tight around a cogwheel and the rusty hook from the crane arm swayed in the swell, it cast a shadow against the bridge, where the wooden wheel could be seen through the cracked glass of the bridges screen, it spun slowly, rudderless, with no hands to guide the vessel. There were no crew in sight only a dull light from behind the glass indicated presence.

    `Oh the mother of God!` a cry was heard muffled and distant deep from the trawlers bowels, the boat dipped as if in sympathy to the calling and a lone bell began to toll, it`s sound drifting away into the distant darkness..

    Flames flickered across his face illuminating his features. It was not the windswept hair nor the unshaven jawline, nor the sweat pouring down his lined face that disturbed his countenance; it was his eyes; pupils wide and deep with fear, darting from one shadow to the next as he cried and whimpered to each moving shape.  He had constructed a torch from a copper pipe which had burning cloth on one end which illuminated the sparse cabin and which he waved around nervously.

   Gaps in the doorway had been filled with paper and cloth; he ran his torch down low, he yelped and leapt back, he swung around to the porthole which had been securely screwed shut. He began to twitch nervously, bouncing on his feet as if some invisible force would snap at his toes.

   A sudden movement in the shadows startled him further, he jabbed the torch into the corner succeeding only to light the paper, they burned quickly, evidence of the paraffin which he had poured beneath the doorway, the flames spread, he kicked at the cloth, a small glow ran up his trouser leg, he was soon alight, he screamed as the fire burned, he felt his clothes melt and blend with his skin which was also now melting, and soon he was engulfed in his own gruesome solitary dance inside the small steel cabin with nowhere to flee his final moments as he clawed at the lock of the door finally falling to his knees, a charred remain posed as if in mourning, his head fused to the steel cabin door.

   From a distance the scene was picturesque, slow rolling waves, dark drifting clouds and the white moon casting flickering lights along the moving swell; the screaming had long since ceased and all was calm.

   The Corsair had become the dominant feature in the darkness, a funeral ship in flames on its last rites. It would soon tip its bough, a final salute before descending into the fathoms. A new home then for the hunters of the deep, they who wait patiently disguised, before dragging their victims back into their lair to be devoured in the darkness of what once used to be the Corsair.

   And the sea will hide her secrets. The only remnants of the vessel: the empty life jackets, pieces of timber, bottles of cheap Spanish port and the odd bobbing crate afloat in the vast wilderness of the Atlantic Ocean.