Free Rakasa by Kyle Warner

1 .
    I might have killed the
captain but the crew would agree that he had it coming.
    Six weeks lost at sea. The man with the map is responsible
and no other.
    Aye, he might’ve blamed the unseasonable weather, the lack
of stars in the sky, and the sickness in the ranks… but a man can live off of
excuses for only so long.
    I was supposed to meet up with Mary a month ago. We would
have been married by now. Our honeymoon, if I could afford a honeymoon after
this trip, would have been glorious.
    Instead of spending time with my lady, I clean the decks as
if we’re expecting company, as if we’re not lost at sea, as if…
    As if the captain wasn’t dead.
    We like to joke that the candle in his quarters is for his
ghost while he reads over the maps that he could not comprehend in life. It’s
not a joke, exactly —nobody’s laughing—but we’re all in on the imagining.
    And meanwhile, down in the cargo hold, the animals starve
and die. They smell worse every day. The doc thinks that’s what’s causing the
sickness in the crew, but I don’t know much about medicine and science.
    I’m a pirate.
    Our ship, the Night Wave, was hired to transport rare animals
to a French merchant named Boucher. The animals weren’t meant for Boucher
himself, but rather the Frenchman’s spoiled children who demanded things that
not even Kings and Queens could acquire.
    And so we loaded the ship with animals from all corners of
the globe and started our long journey across the Atlantic to deliver the
beasts and receive our gold.
    Should have known it was doomed for failure. This is just a
miserable recreation of Noah’s last trip. And we never did find out what
happened to that boat, did we?
    The rhinoceros died first. Shelly, her name was. Sad beast.
Looked half-dead when she first boarded back in port. I don’t remember the
names of the tigers and I doubt anybody bothered to name the reptiles. The
zebra is on the way out next, I suspect. Just as well. It cries a lot and it’s
been affecting my sleep.
    When I killed the captain nobody was surprised. I think they
all considered doing it themselves but were too afraid to pick up the blade and
put it to skin.
    I think they loved me for a couple days while the blood on the
knife dried out in the sun.
    Their love did not last. The crew grew uneasy once it was
clear that Jarvis Jenks, the new captain, was no better suited to directing the
ship towards land than the last man in the chair.
    Some approached me with the idea of taking over the ship.
Problem is I don’t know the way home either. I look around and all I see is the
malevolent ocean that means to kill us all.
    Adrift. Never have I spoken or even thought that word
while out at sea. It’s completely foreign to me.
    Speaking of foreigners…
    The Indonesian deckhand Ahmed has been telling ghost stories
about lost ships. I barely understand him beneath that heavy accent, but the
rest of the crew thinks he’s quite the storyteller. I don’t know. I’ve never
been much of a fan of ghost stories unless they got naked ladies in them. And Ahmed’s
stories aren’t like that.
    Ahmed told this story about a crew dying in the middle of
the night as a mist rolled over the sides of the ship. Said they got their
blood drained out of their necks. I say that sounds like a vampire, but Ahmed
shakes his head and the others shush me.
    I don’t appreciate being shushed and I tell them so, but Ahmed
says, “It wasn’t the vampire. It was a Rakasa,” as if that’s meant to make it
all better.
    One of the crew nods and says, “More original that way, I
expect.”
    Ahmed was nodding, his point proven true.
    I didn’t get it, but I liked the word.
    Rakasa .

2 .
    B illy
Damon was starving and he wanted meat so he made up his mind that he was going
to eat one of the dead tigers. I tried telling him that it was a bad idea, that
the big cats were rotting and it would only make him sick. But you can’t argue
with hunger. Hunger always wins.
    Now