Outcast

Through the blurred haze of my dwindling consciousness, the last image I see was my ship departing. Of course, I were furious, but how could I stop it? None of my limbs seemed to work and the only tangible thing to hold onto in that final moment were the anger, which soon evaporated into total blackness.

I hadn’t wanted to come on this voyage. I told you that right from the start. But I done something so bad, see, that the only way of going on was to take the best way out on offer. The ship needed recruits – deckhands; packers; swarthy old swabs with thick arms and tree-trunks for legs, who could shovel, and row. Yes it seemed the easy way out, but I was still wondering how I’d handle it. I’d never run with the herds, see, so how could I hope to stand up alongside a team of hardy sea-faring rogues? I were signing up to die, I reckoned, but I took me chances as staying meant certain death by the noose.

I don’t know why you want me to go through it all again! I’ve told you what happened! That very day, before I’d signed me life away to sea, I’d already realised I’d signed me life away to this wench called Molly Malone. She sold sea shells on the sea shore; people came from far and wide to buy her cockles and mussels alive-alive-o. Popular she were – I never knew how popular with the menfolk until it were too late. I got caught in her net I can tell ye. She whisked me up into her arms and down the back alley by the bins, showin’ me her stocking tops til me dreams decayed, smellin’ of nothin’ but rotting mackerel and old garbage. I say I Iove yer and she never say it back, but she give me them doe eyes; like shells in sand they were.

You ask me if I were a jealous sort? Well of course I were, and she give me cause too! No sooner had I get the ring on the finger then she done me the dirty with another fella. You’d think, beings as she had to look after her mother, the poor old crippled cow, that she’d not have time for shenanigans, but by God he weren’t the only one I think.

No, I worked me hardest to provide, but she throw it back in me face and I’m away on the scrapheap as soon as look at me. She tell me she were carryin’ a child, but were it my own? I know that were another trap. So I see red to match her hair, and I smack her one. She scream and ‘er mother call out, so I smack her agin. Shis quiet after that.

What’s that word you keep saying? No, I don’t know what that word mean. It’s not in a pirate vocabulary. Magnesia? Ambrosia? Amnesia. Ah. Maybe. I don’t really remember anything about it see. I did? They tell me that I did somethin’ so bad. That I pound her face to a pulp, they say, and I cut her up and I put the bits in a bin. Well, thas the life of the pirate right there. I goes and sign me life to the sea and hope Ol’ Davey Jones don’t take me.

I knows we hit the rocks. I remember a mad, raging storm, where the wind changed from fair to foul in a matter of minutes and that storm was a crackin’ into me brain I tell ye. And I hear the screamin’ and yellin’; and I hear the shoutin, and the clangin’ and the sirens screechin’as I hit the rocks.

I don’t know how long I lay there washed up; what I know is the last thing I see is the back end of my last lifeline, me ship, departin’. And now I think of it, I don’t know why I’m here right now. Am I in Heaven? Is this Hell? Are you God?

I tell ye, I AM a pirate! I know you say I done a bad thing, But I don’t remember it. I don’t know if you’re lying’ to me. Why am I bound and held in this room? And the sea is gone, and me ship is gone, and you’re asking me questions, and you give me this medicine I don’t need.

Virginia Betts is a tutor, writer, and actor from Ipswich, UK. She has four books published, The Camera Obscure (supernatural and gothic-noir stories), Tourist to the Sun and That Little Voice (poetry). She has also had numerous poems and stories published (Acumen, Minerva Rising, Bristol Noir, Urban Pigs, The Weird and Whatnot, Pure Slush, A Thin Slice of Anxiety), performed on stage and on BBC Radio, and she has won awards for her writing. Her debut novel, Burnt Lungs and Bitter Sweets is a gritty piece of Punk ‘BritGrit’ published by Urban Pigs Press, with whom she is the newest editor. Virginia is also a member of Black and White Productions Theatre Company and her most recent role was as Patricia Highsmith. Virginia is a member of The Writer’s Guild, Equity, Suffolk Writers, The Wolsey Writers, and the Suffolk Poetry Society. She writes a monthly blog article for the Felixstowe Magazine App and Author’s Electric. 

Website: https://virginiabetts.com/
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‘Outcast’ is the fifth featured piece in the Urban Pigs Press CASTAWAYS callout, which celebrates the release of the latest Urban Pigs title Robinson Crusoe Maybe by guest editor Colin Gee. Colin is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette and author of several books.