Free The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics by Gideon Defoe

bit too quick.
    ‘I thought,’ said Mary, looking at the cover, ‘that you said your books were about emotions? Lyrical landscapes? Waves crashing on a rocky shore?’
    She held up the copy of Barnacles Never Sleep (Despite Appearances) , and pointed at the lurid cover illustration, which showed a fulsome lady in a bikini being ravished by some fascist barnacles. The Captain hefted his biggest sigh of the adventure so far.
    ‘Oh, look, there’s not much point pretending any more – Mary, I’ve got a confession to make.’ He stared unhappily at his shiny boots. ‘The fact is, my published output isn’t particularly literary at all. Apart from the biography that I wrote to spite Napoleon, the philosophical masterwork that I wrote after a bet with Karl Marx, and the steamy potboiler that I wrote to attract a great white whale, all the rest are pretty much lowest common denominator penny-dreadful schlock. I only really took it up as a hobby because I’d been incorrectly informed that authors are the best-paid people in the world. One reviewer described my work as “both borderline incomprehensible and unceasingly vacuous”.’ He pointed at the quote on the back of Barnacles Never Sleep . ‘Also, whilst I’m confessing things, I might as well admit that I don’t actually understand a single word of those sonnets I’ve been regaling you with.’
    Mary bit her lip. ‘It did sort of seem like you were reading them out phonetically.’
    They both fell silent. For a while the only sound they could hear was the noise of books resting on shelves, which wasn’t really enough of a sound to distract them from the awkwardness of the moment.
    ‘Captain,’ said Mary, gravely. ‘I’ve got a secret too.’
    ‘Oh hellfire, you’re not Black Bellamy in a wig, are you?’
    ‘No, Pirate Captain, I’m not. But the truth is . . . I don’t really care for all that poetic stuff either.’
    ‘You don’t?’
    ‘No. I mean, I try . And Percy is a genius, he really is. But I just can’t help myself. I long for books where things happen . You know . . . thrilling chases. Gothic mansions, and above all . . .’ Her eyes lit up like candles – that being one of the only things that eyes could light up like before Edison – and she almost whispered the word, ‘Monsters!’
    ‘Monsters?’
    ‘Oh! I know! It’s ridiculous! I’m so ashamed.’ Mary buried her face in her hands, suddenly dejected. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The worst thing is, I’ve even taken to writing one myself. A novel, I mean. Please don’t tell the others. Percy would think I’d lost my mind.’
    The Captain looked confused, and then his pleasantly weathered face broke into a big grin. ‘But – I feel exactly the same way! Almost all my books have monsters in them. Look . . .’ He pulled a second book from the shelf. ‘This one is about a diabolical space cactus.’ He pulled another down. ‘This one is about a nameless blob that eats children.’ And another. ‘And this one has a terrible fungus in it. The good thing about a terrible fungus is that you don’t really have to worry about its motivation.’
    ‘These look fantastic!’ exclaimed Mary.
    ‘Most of the time I tend to go for either the fungus or a giant sentient clam. What sort of monsters do you like?’
    ‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘I was thinking a hideous half-man, half-seaweed mutant might be the way to go.’
    ‘Good choice. Can’t go wrong with mutants. Saves you the bother of an origin story if you just say “it’s a mutant”. ’
    Mary’s whole face shone. ‘Oh, Captain, you don’t know what a relief it is to be able to talk to somebody about all this!’
     
     
    Soon they’d both forgotten the entire point of being in the library in the first place. As Mary pored over the colour illustrations in The Sponge that Stood Still and My First Mate was a Zombuloid , a strand of loose hair fell across her cheek. The Pirate Captain reached out to brush it