fiction - brigits_flame - lure

[hwango]

Cole did not like being a wrecker. It was the deception that made him uncomfortable – using trickery to lure ships to their doom. He thought about how it must feel in those last moments, to realize how one had been duped and how it had led to such ruin, and it just made his insides twist into knots.

The fact that Cole killed people to make his living bothered him not at all. He reasoned that sailors accepted the possibility of death simply by being sailors, what with the constant perils of pirates, privateers, sea monsters, storms, and any number of other misfortunes that could befall a ship at sea.

He wouldn’t have any misgivings about his work if all he and his compatriots did was take salvage from ships that had hit the reefs through simple accident or ignorance. That was all most wreckers did, after all. Despite legends and rumors to the contrary, normally it was impossible to false-light a ship into rocks or reefs, because ships didn’t head for unknown lights even if they could see them from out on the ocean, which of course usually they couldn’t.

But Cole’s boss Maro was as clever as his soul was black, and he had worked out some system with lamps and mirrors and small boats and tiny outcroppings of rock…well, Cole couldn’t begin to fathom how Maro had figured it all out, he just knew that it worked. Ships saw the lights, turned to avoid what they thought was land, and that’s when they hit the reef. Then Maro and Cole and the rest of the vultures would swarm on in with their little boats, finish off any survivors, and make off with their spoils.

Cole was a good shot, even in the dark. He always started shooting long before anyone else in their band, picking off panicking men sometimes while they still thought there was hope of saving their ship. He preferred killing at that distance. This was not because Cole was squeamish, but he had once shot a man who was swimming towards his boat with a look of enormous relief on his face, thinking Cole meant to rescue him. That had made Cole feel that same sense of dishonesty, even though of course he had never claimed he was there to help. But it was better to kill invisibly and anonymously from the darkness than risk inspiring that false hope, Cole thought.

Cole had tried to explain his feelings to Maro once. Maro had laughed, then gotten angry, and then nearly broken Cole’s nose with the handle of his pistol. He’d called Cole a simpleton and a fool and told him to quit complaining and just do his job. Cole had thought about trying to explain that he wasn’t actually complaining, but it didn’t seem worth it. He also thought about snapping Maro’s neck. It wouldn’t be hard. Cole was half again Maro’s size and had muscles like an ox. But both of them knew that Maro was the brains of the outfit, and that they all needed him. .

They were working tonight, having gotten word that a ship would be passing through their territory sometime in the next few days. Everyone hoped it would be tonight. Not only would that mean no wasted days waiting, but there was a low, dense fog tonight that would give them extra cover and make their job easier. But everyone knew it was slim hope, for the ship would have to be making perfect time to reach them so early.

And so everyone could hardly believe their luck when the outermost scout flashed them the signal. They scrambled to their boats and made ready, and waited for their prey to arrive.

Cole and his partner Rask were barely in position when he first saw the lights and the vague outline of the sails in the fog. Something about them seemed odd, but Cole attributed it to the fog. He waited patiently while the lamp men did their work, and watched as the blurry shape turned just the way they wished. Their target tonight must have a fine crew indeed, judging by how smoothly it shifted course.

A short wait later, and their prey reached the reef. Lights swayed crazily in the fog as the ship crashed into the rock and coral, though tonight there was no attending sound of splintering wood. Cole once again attributed this oddity to the muffling fog.

Rask rowed their tiny boat closer to the wreck as Cole peered into the fog, looking for the shapes of men on deck. There was motion to be sure, but Cole could pick out no distinct outline of any individual. And still, the eerie silence persisted. Where were the cries of despair, the shouted orders, of even the creak of straining wood?

Something was wrong. Cole was sure of it. Could the ship have been abandoned, or its crew felled by plague? No, they had all seen it change course. Someone must be aboard.

At last Cole did hear someone cry out, but it was not from the ship. It was one of their own, aboard one of the tiny boats. The scream cut off suddenly, and the light from the boat’s lamp vanished at the same moment. Then that pattern began to repeat – cries of horror and alarm, and lights winking out all around. Cole looked back at the ship in time to catch a better look at it through a gap in the fog.

What he had thought to be sails were in truth enormous fins. What he had mistaken for oil lamps were luminescent bulbs dangling from spindly antenna-like growths, like the lights of anglerfish. That was what had seemed wrong, Cole realized at last. The color. The lights had an oddly bluish tint.

As Cole watched, the huge fins dropped back into the water, the bioluminescent lights dimmed, and the illusion of a ship was utterly destroyed. In its place remained only a dark, seething mass of tentacles and fins. The masquerade was over, it seemed.

All around him Cole saw boats being overturned or simply sucked beneath the waves. The creature was making short work of them. He thought he heard Maro cursing for a moment before he too must have vanished into the water. Cole fired a few shots at the beast to no apparent effect. The thing was simply too big.

Cole’s own boat rocked suddenly as Rask was snatched away. He could see the water around him churning from the tentacles whipping back and forth just below the surface. As he watched the writhing shapes to either side of him twist and squirm, another tentacle burst from the water behind him and snatched him off the boat.

Cole felt vindicated. This felt every bit as awful as he’d imagined.

Comments

[bluegerl.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, Conscience can make the stuff of nightmares and superstition come true. And in Cole's case, it did. And the last line is perfect... his last thought!

Loved the way you led us from Cole the wrecker to Cole the human with a conscience, and then to the aaarrghh.

Not your usual twisted funny but ....eeeeeeekkk a twist of a gross tentacle.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I do still seem to be out of my groove, don't I? I think I need a break, but I wanted to support the new leadership's first month, and it was my 4 year anniversary of joining the Flame too. Just bad timing.

[gunthersdncemix.livejournal.com]

Yay, tentacles! :)

[bluegerl.livejournal.com]

Take a vacation... but keep writing!!!! We might get prompts that will lift us all as well. I'm finding things 'heavy' right now too. Odd isn't it!

Congratulations on your anniversary... four years!

Hope I get that far, and then some more.... Am so enjoying the challenges weekly - keeps the brain chuntering merrily. And you keep going too... PLEASE!!! can't not have me Hwango treats!!!

Loves yer, Blue.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

August is going to be too busy, but I'll hope to be back in September. See you then. = )

[writingmoments.livejournal.com]

Sometimes we get what we deserve, I guess.

You write well. You made me feel sorry for Cole when I wouldn't normally like a killer. Great job!

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yes, poor Cole. He wasn't all bad.