And "Voyage of the Piquant" is done! Go check it out for the final epic battle scene. I had a lot of fun writing it.
Missed the update on Monday, in part because I was taking Martin Luther King day off and didn't really touch my computer, and in part because of distraction. What sort of distraction?
Well, after much searching, we have a new member of the household. He is a 14-week old black kitten with beyond the normal compliment of toes. An energetic and social young fellow, he has demonstrated extraordinary climbing abilities, as well as a knack for using his Power of Smallness to infiltrate places that the adult cats cannot penetrate.
Given the extra claw and his free-climbing and running powers, we have decided that Ezio is a good name. Or Ezio Auditore da Firenze, for completion's sake. He has already provided us with many moments of great entertainment.
I should also mention that we have the best dog in the world. While the other cats have warmed up to Ezio slowly in the traditional roundabout way that is required for cat social politics, our dog Luna has done her very best to make the kitten feel at home. A good example of her strategy is that when Ezio was first trying to sniff her, Luna turned her head away so he could do his initial investigation without being watched, which made him feel safer. She then slowly turned and got some sniffs in between them. Within hours, she was grooming his head and letting him clean her ear. A true diplomat and sweetheart is our Luna.
Okay, so last week I also had the afterburners on for writing at work, and managed to achieve high-density, quality writing for seven days straight. (For those of you who don't know where I work, I am a copy writer for Sounds True). With that week done, my work schedule looks much more sane, an I see a more open avenue for fiction writing in front of me. Back to the Rose & Jade rewrite, I think. Candi gave me a good idea for a revision of the prologue. Now how to implement it...
Showing posts with label Voyage of the Piquant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Voyage of the Piquant. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Voyage of the Piquant [Part Four]
I will make no attempt to capture the horror that we endured those next few days. Perhaps words are inadequate for the job. And if I succeeded, dear reader, if I somehow managed to properly convey some fraction the agony that comes from enduring “Achy Breaky Heart” for the 29th time, hearing a margarita-soaked golfer from New Jersey execute this hellish serenade to the ocean as I sweated and lolled on my bunk… well, I would be doing you no favors.
In my heart, I believe that this is true: if Mocha Rich didn’t exist before, we would have created him through our ill-guided enterprise. He would have coalesced from the outrage of the sea itself just to strike us down for our sins.
Four days and nights passed.
On the morning of the fifth day, with “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I’ve Got Love in My Tummy)” vibrating through the hull of the Piquant and my own sanity stretching ever closer to the breaking point, the lookout belted out her call from her high perch. “Oh my God! Thar she… um… thar she inks? Oh, whatever! It’s a big white squid! I see it!”
“Hard starboard!” Aholl roared over the speakers, his coarse voice thundering across the bridge. “Full steam ahead, damn your eyes! Beat to quarters! Battle stations, says I!”
My heart began to pound, but not from fear of Mocha Rich. “Sir, may I give the order to stop the karaoke?”
“Aye, laddie,” Aholl snarled.
Never in my life have I issued a more satisfying command.
The Piquant’s immense hull pounded through the crystal-blue waters. I craned my neck to catch my first look at the monster we’d been hunting, and felt my throat clench. The squid was a boneless colossus, over two hundred feet long, whiter than a bleached linen undershirt. It glided through the waters with alien grace, its mighty tentacles undulating behind it as it swam.
“There you are, you demon!” Aholl exulted. “From Hell’s heart, I throw an uppercut at thee! For hate’s sake, I hork a big old loogie at thee!”
“It’s real,” the captain croaked. “Great God… you fought that thing?”
“As Jacob strove with the angel,” Aholl said. “As Hercules pit himself ‘gainst Cerberus. As Ali took on Smokin’ Joe Fraiser.”
Captain Wellington hurled himself at Aholl, his voice ratcheting up into the soprano as the clutched the madman’s lapels. “You fought that thing and only lost your little finger? Why tempt fate again, you fool?”
“Fate?” Aholl roared, throwing the captain to the floor with a meaty thud. “’Tis my fate to grapple with yon devil-spawn, ye cowardly pudding! Stand not ‘tween me and my fate.”
“We weren’t standing between you and your stupid fate! You dragged us into this, you big… mean…” Wellington floundered, his face purpling as he struggled to find a powerful yet family-safe epithet, “…poop-head!”
With the speed of a popping champagne cork, Aholl lashed out and poked Wellington in the eye with his wooden pinkie. The captain let out a pained squeak as the peg struck home, then huddled into a quivering mass on the deck. “Mr. Irving,” Aholl snapped at me, “you know the battle plan.”
“Aye, sir,” I said, my voice strangely calm in m own ears.
“Then thee shall take the place of yon captain, who is no longer fit for duty,” he said. “Step lively, laddie. The demon cometh.”
Like some immense living torpedo, the mammoth squid knifed through the waters in a direct course towards the Piquant. The sea swirled in its wake Mocha Rich propelled itself forward, silently sliding its porcelain-white form through just beneath the waves. As it approached us, the squid rotated its body and a portion of its slick bulk crested the surface. One eye the size of a Volkswagen Beetle rolled towards the ship, surveying us with inhuman intelligence. Though a squid’s expressions are hard to read, I had the distinct impression that Mocha Rich was feeling grumpy.
My fingers tightened into a death grip on my clipboard. My heart thundered in my chest as the fever of battle gripped me. I saw a single vast tentacle rise out of the water and loom over the deck. Mocha Rich was in range for the first assault.
“Shuffleboarders, fire at will!” I commanded.
“Who’s Will?” they responded as one.
“The squid, you morons!” I cried.
“I thought its name was Rich,” they said in perfect unison.
“Then fire at Rich! Just fire!”
The tentacle descended towards us, seawater sluicing off its slick mass in cascading sheets. Three dozen shuffleboard sticks moved in perfect unison, cracking against the plastic surfaces of game pucks that had been sharpened and weighted for battle. The discs whizzed across the deck, up the launch ramps, and pelted into the pale skin of the great boneless appendage.
The tentacle wavered.
I didn’t give the enemy a chance to recover. “Tae-Bo squadron, forward!”
Our aerobics instructor glared at her adversary though tinted contacts. The rage of a thousand prom queens burned in her blood. She slammed down the play button on her boom box, and suddenly the battlefield was alive with up-tempo world grooves. The ex-cheerleader let loose a high-pitched shriek of command, then charged like a spandex-clad Amazon to lead her unit into battle. They danced forward to the beat, raining down bouncy punches and kicks upon the flailing tentacle of the leviathan.
“Two, four, six, eight, go hit that invertebrate!” the instructor exhorted her legion.
“Sir!” cried one of the lookouts. “A second tentacle to the aft!”
I whirled to attend this new challenged. “Bartenders, get ready! Set blenders on frappe and fire!”
The battalion of bartenders oriented their turbo-charged blenders towards the second tentacle and engaged the rotors. In daring defiance of all safety procedures, they lifted off the lids of their mixers. Crystalline shards of ice streaked through the air at fantastic velocities, glittering like diamonds in the autumn sunlight. The squid’s tentacle writhed under their assault.
“Five degrees starboard!” Aholl commanded. “We have him now, the hellspawn!”
The Piquant shifted her ponderous bulk, orienting her bow towards the main body of the giant squid. I commanded the racquetball unit to deal with another tentacle and looked on, blood pounding in my ears. The bullet-shaped mass of the monster’s main body protruded from the sea. Mocha Rich was almost in the firing arc of our main weapon.
“Sandwich crew!” I shouted through my megaphone. “Prepare to release!”
This was our ultimate weapon, the greatest creation in the illustrious career of ship’s cook Quisiene. Baked over the course of days in the Piquant’s mighty ovens, the sandwich was 35-feet of sourdough with a payload of the deadliest toppings. It had a core of glazed Damascus ham to give it weight, fiery peppers to add a lethal sting, a cement-like horseradish sauce to bind it together—and one end filed down to a keen point, revealing a spearhead of cheddar sharp enough to split oak. Through the mysterious alchemy of Quisiene’s baking and glazing, the sandwich had been hardened again and again, until it could repel even the cook’s most vigorous attempts to penetrate its crust with a cleaver.
This was a weapons-grade sandwich. Even Mocha Rich must fall before such a confectionary harpoon.
Fifty pairs of middle-aged hands took hold of the draw rope to the great sandwich, sunscreen-slathered backs heaving in unison. Quisiene’s deadly creation had been mounted like some giant crossbow bolt straddling the bow, set to a giant elastic string crossing the Aloha Deck. Every swimsuit on the ship had sacrificed its waistband to make this mighty weapon, each industrial-strength length of elastic woven together into a single unbreakable cord.
“Steady...” My voice rang strong and confident. “Steady...”
The band creaked as it drew tighter. The guardrails to which it had been attached groaned in protest, metal threatening to buckle under the stress. The bow of the ship swung slowly around, orienting closer and closer to the dead center mark on the body of the beast.
“Steady... release!”
The hands let go. The elastic thrummed like a chord played on King Kong’s banjo. The sandwich rocketed towards the squid, flakes of shredded iceberg lettuce trailing like a comet tail in its wake, hurtling directly towards its mark between Mocha Rich’s two monstrous eyes.
A tentacle shot out of the water like a bolt of slippery white lightning, whipping around the sandwich in mid-flight. The great invertebrate caught the deadly missile, killing its momentum moments before it would have punctured its pale carapace.
The moisture drained completely out of my mouth. “Oops.”
From his position in the corner of the bridge, Captain Wellington let out a tinkling giggle. “Quite the reflexes on that squid, wouldn’t you say?”
Aholl gnashed his teeth fitfully.
The monstrosity held the vast submarine sandwich in its tentacle, seeming to consider it for a long moment, then plunged the end of the weapon into its gaping beak. The hellish maw of the monster closed. A sound like a falling sequoia thundered across the waves as Mocha Rich devoured our mighty weapon, right down to the last crumb.
When Mocha Rich was done, its unspeakable eye focused on us once again. I could tell that this squid wasn’t merely grumpy anymore. We’d really managed to piss it off.
“Damn your rubbery hide! I’ll end thee myself!” Aholl bellowed, and took off like a cannonball. He hurtled down stairs and across the deck, disregarded the “no-running” safety signs with a madman’s obsession, brandishing his harpoon gun as he bolted towards his hated nemesis.
I wondered if his hand-held weapon could possibly kill such a vast creature, even if he shot it in some vital spot, but I never got the chance to find out. Mocha Rich’s body dropped below the waves before Aholl reached the guard rail, disappearing into the brine with an eerie smoothness that barely disturbed the waves.
“Now what?” muttered the captain. “Is it gone?”
“No,” I said.
“Maybe it’s full now and wants to go have a nap,” Wellington suggested. “How do you know it’s still here?”
“Because we’re still here.”
Suddenly, the waters around the ship burst into churning froth. What followed was a sound that I cannot begin to describe, a boggling series of rapid-fire, gooey thumps as thick mollusk flesh collided with steel. Mocha Rich fastened its unthinkable tentacles onto the hull of the Piquant, bonding itself to our vessel with countless jacuzzi-sized suction cups.
The captain began to emit a noise like a trapped mouse. The ordered ranks of the passengers who had been pressed into squid-hunting combat service began to dissolve as panic spread its tendrils through the crew.
“What’s it doing?” whimpered Wellington. “Does it mean to drag us down?”
I didn’t think it was possible, even for the monster squid. The Piquant still outweighed Mocha Rich by thousands of tons. I thought perhaps the beast intended to peel the hull off like the skin of a banana, yet in that guess I was mistaken as the captain.
A second sound arose in the ship, a noise even stranger than Mocha Rich affixing itself to our hull. It was a slimy, rushing noise, quiet at first, growing louder with each second, seeming to come from every direction.
“Aholl!” I cried through my megaphone. “What’s happening?”
Old Aholl needed nothing but his own hate to amplify his voice. He called back to me across the stretch of the Piquant’s deck, his harpoon gun raised in his maimed hand. I could see the whites of his bulging eyes from fifty yards away as he bellowed the last words I would ever hear him speak.
“Revenge, my lad! I told you that your kind’s outrages against the sea would bring down the wrath of yon devil, did I not? Now see the foul color of Mocha Rich’s vengeance, good Mr. Irving!”
Metal screeched behind me, and I whirled. One of the pipes had split at the seam, emitting a jet of the most disgusting liquid I have ever seen. Part seawater, part human waste, and part black cephalopod ink, it gushed out under fantastic pressure and spattered polished planks of the deck.
“Oh my God,” I choked, pressing my handkerchief against my face against the reek. Horrible comprehension dawned as I realized what Mocha Rich was doing.
The squid had somehow sensed the location of the disposal valve on the underside of the Piquant. It is from this port that a cruise ship expels her waste into the sea—grey water from all the ship’s showers, the used cleaning fluid of a battalion of maids, and most of all, the excretions of thousands of over-eating vacationers. Our holding tanks were almost full right now; we were overdue for a dump, too occupied with our preparations for battle to attend to that key element of the normal routine.
A squid propels itself through the water with living hydraulic jets. Now Mocha Rich was using those jets to pump thousands of gallons of seawater and its own inky emissions up through the disposal valve and into the ship’s plumbing.
Across every deck, I heard the toilets exploding. I knew the Piquant was doomed.
“Abandon ship!” I commanded over the PA. “All hands to the lifeboats! Abandon ship!”
All semblance of order disintegrated. I can barely remember the minutes that followed, the mayhem as the passengers stampeded towards the lifeboats while Mocha Rich continued its devastating liquid siege upon the Piquant. I remember the planks of the deck warping as swirling dark puddles spread from between the decks. I remember ducking as rivets blew off the pipes and whirred through the air like demented hummingbirds. The great cruise ship heaved and groaned as unspeakable fluids filled her living quarters, her massage parlors, her engine room, the weight dragging her down into the merciless embrace of the waves.
The last thing I recall on the ship was the screech of tearing metal to one side, then a massive column of the loathsome ink-and-sewage seawater colliding with my body like a battering ram, carrying me over the safety rail. As my body plunged into the chilling waters of the north Pacific, darkness began to claim me.
Moments before consciousness left me entirely, I felt my arm brush against something warm and savory.
It was Quisiene’s funeral cake, of course. As buoyant as it was delectable, the great confection bore my unconscious body on the ocean, its oven-fresh goodness warming me against the life-sapping cold of the sea. When the Coast Guard pulled me out, much of the cake had been nibbled away by gulls and fish. Nobody had any complaints of Quisiene’s final dessert, least of all me.
I remember none of that, however. I awoke in the hospital with what passengers and crew of the ill-fated Piquant made it to the lifeboats ahead of Mocha Rich’s terrible vengeance. I found myself caught up in a maelstrom of doctors, reporters, and scientists, all asking questions that nobody could hope to answer.
Captain Wellington took most of the blame for the incident, though the cruise company and the designers of the Piquant found themselves deluged with subpoenas and summons in the months to come. Politicians and Archbishops took the opportunity to denounce all sorts of things which they had already been denouncing for years. Engineers and scientists offered explanations of how the cruise ship’s internal plumbing could have gone out of control. But nobody credited the story of Mocha Rich.
In spite of all the cameras which had been aboard the Piquant, not a single clear image of the squid survived the devastation. The salvagers managed to recover a few blurry pictures here and there, generally with somebody’s thumb obscuring half the view, but there was nothing that showed enough to convince the skeptics. It made me wonder if Mocha Rich wasn’t more than just a bloody huge invertebrate, but if he was some unimaginably powerful and camera-shy embodiment of nature’s wrath.
The only man who might have been able to answer that question had disappeared. Aholl wasn’t found amongst the survivors. Some part of me believes that he survived, and that he still roams the seas seeking retribution for his lost pinkie, locked in a never-ending mortal struggle with the unfathomable creature that he called Mocha Rich.
As for me... I’m moving to Montana. I’ve had my fill of the sea.
In my heart, I believe that this is true: if Mocha Rich didn’t exist before, we would have created him through our ill-guided enterprise. He would have coalesced from the outrage of the sea itself just to strike us down for our sins.
Four days and nights passed.
On the morning of the fifth day, with “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I’ve Got Love in My Tummy)” vibrating through the hull of the Piquant and my own sanity stretching ever closer to the breaking point, the lookout belted out her call from her high perch. “Oh my God! Thar she… um… thar she inks? Oh, whatever! It’s a big white squid! I see it!”
“Hard starboard!” Aholl roared over the speakers, his coarse voice thundering across the bridge. “Full steam ahead, damn your eyes! Beat to quarters! Battle stations, says I!”
My heart began to pound, but not from fear of Mocha Rich. “Sir, may I give the order to stop the karaoke?”
“Aye, laddie,” Aholl snarled.
Never in my life have I issued a more satisfying command.
The Piquant’s immense hull pounded through the crystal-blue waters. I craned my neck to catch my first look at the monster we’d been hunting, and felt my throat clench. The squid was a boneless colossus, over two hundred feet long, whiter than a bleached linen undershirt. It glided through the waters with alien grace, its mighty tentacles undulating behind it as it swam.
“There you are, you demon!” Aholl exulted. “From Hell’s heart, I throw an uppercut at thee! For hate’s sake, I hork a big old loogie at thee!”
“It’s real,” the captain croaked. “Great God… you fought that thing?”
“As Jacob strove with the angel,” Aholl said. “As Hercules pit himself ‘gainst Cerberus. As Ali took on Smokin’ Joe Fraiser.”
Captain Wellington hurled himself at Aholl, his voice ratcheting up into the soprano as the clutched the madman’s lapels. “You fought that thing and only lost your little finger? Why tempt fate again, you fool?”
“Fate?” Aholl roared, throwing the captain to the floor with a meaty thud. “’Tis my fate to grapple with yon devil-spawn, ye cowardly pudding! Stand not ‘tween me and my fate.”
“We weren’t standing between you and your stupid fate! You dragged us into this, you big… mean…” Wellington floundered, his face purpling as he struggled to find a powerful yet family-safe epithet, “…poop-head!”
With the speed of a popping champagne cork, Aholl lashed out and poked Wellington in the eye with his wooden pinkie. The captain let out a pained squeak as the peg struck home, then huddled into a quivering mass on the deck. “Mr. Irving,” Aholl snapped at me, “you know the battle plan.”
“Aye, sir,” I said, my voice strangely calm in m own ears.
“Then thee shall take the place of yon captain, who is no longer fit for duty,” he said. “Step lively, laddie. The demon cometh.”
Like some immense living torpedo, the mammoth squid knifed through the waters in a direct course towards the Piquant. The sea swirled in its wake Mocha Rich propelled itself forward, silently sliding its porcelain-white form through just beneath the waves. As it approached us, the squid rotated its body and a portion of its slick bulk crested the surface. One eye the size of a Volkswagen Beetle rolled towards the ship, surveying us with inhuman intelligence. Though a squid’s expressions are hard to read, I had the distinct impression that Mocha Rich was feeling grumpy.
My fingers tightened into a death grip on my clipboard. My heart thundered in my chest as the fever of battle gripped me. I saw a single vast tentacle rise out of the water and loom over the deck. Mocha Rich was in range for the first assault.
“Shuffleboarders, fire at will!” I commanded.
“Who’s Will?” they responded as one.
“The squid, you morons!” I cried.
“I thought its name was Rich,” they said in perfect unison.
“Then fire at Rich! Just fire!”
The tentacle descended towards us, seawater sluicing off its slick mass in cascading sheets. Three dozen shuffleboard sticks moved in perfect unison, cracking against the plastic surfaces of game pucks that had been sharpened and weighted for battle. The discs whizzed across the deck, up the launch ramps, and pelted into the pale skin of the great boneless appendage.
The tentacle wavered.
I didn’t give the enemy a chance to recover. “Tae-Bo squadron, forward!”
Our aerobics instructor glared at her adversary though tinted contacts. The rage of a thousand prom queens burned in her blood. She slammed down the play button on her boom box, and suddenly the battlefield was alive with up-tempo world grooves. The ex-cheerleader let loose a high-pitched shriek of command, then charged like a spandex-clad Amazon to lead her unit into battle. They danced forward to the beat, raining down bouncy punches and kicks upon the flailing tentacle of the leviathan.
“Two, four, six, eight, go hit that invertebrate!” the instructor exhorted her legion.
“Sir!” cried one of the lookouts. “A second tentacle to the aft!”
I whirled to attend this new challenged. “Bartenders, get ready! Set blenders on frappe and fire!”
The battalion of bartenders oriented their turbo-charged blenders towards the second tentacle and engaged the rotors. In daring defiance of all safety procedures, they lifted off the lids of their mixers. Crystalline shards of ice streaked through the air at fantastic velocities, glittering like diamonds in the autumn sunlight. The squid’s tentacle writhed under their assault.
“Five degrees starboard!” Aholl commanded. “We have him now, the hellspawn!”
The Piquant shifted her ponderous bulk, orienting her bow towards the main body of the giant squid. I commanded the racquetball unit to deal with another tentacle and looked on, blood pounding in my ears. The bullet-shaped mass of the monster’s main body protruded from the sea. Mocha Rich was almost in the firing arc of our main weapon.
“Sandwich crew!” I shouted through my megaphone. “Prepare to release!”
This was our ultimate weapon, the greatest creation in the illustrious career of ship’s cook Quisiene. Baked over the course of days in the Piquant’s mighty ovens, the sandwich was 35-feet of sourdough with a payload of the deadliest toppings. It had a core of glazed Damascus ham to give it weight, fiery peppers to add a lethal sting, a cement-like horseradish sauce to bind it together—and one end filed down to a keen point, revealing a spearhead of cheddar sharp enough to split oak. Through the mysterious alchemy of Quisiene’s baking and glazing, the sandwich had been hardened again and again, until it could repel even the cook’s most vigorous attempts to penetrate its crust with a cleaver.
This was a weapons-grade sandwich. Even Mocha Rich must fall before such a confectionary harpoon.
Fifty pairs of middle-aged hands took hold of the draw rope to the great sandwich, sunscreen-slathered backs heaving in unison. Quisiene’s deadly creation had been mounted like some giant crossbow bolt straddling the bow, set to a giant elastic string crossing the Aloha Deck. Every swimsuit on the ship had sacrificed its waistband to make this mighty weapon, each industrial-strength length of elastic woven together into a single unbreakable cord.
“Steady...” My voice rang strong and confident. “Steady...”
The band creaked as it drew tighter. The guardrails to which it had been attached groaned in protest, metal threatening to buckle under the stress. The bow of the ship swung slowly around, orienting closer and closer to the dead center mark on the body of the beast.
“Steady... release!”
The hands let go. The elastic thrummed like a chord played on King Kong’s banjo. The sandwich rocketed towards the squid, flakes of shredded iceberg lettuce trailing like a comet tail in its wake, hurtling directly towards its mark between Mocha Rich’s two monstrous eyes.
A tentacle shot out of the water like a bolt of slippery white lightning, whipping around the sandwich in mid-flight. The great invertebrate caught the deadly missile, killing its momentum moments before it would have punctured its pale carapace.
The moisture drained completely out of my mouth. “Oops.”
From his position in the corner of the bridge, Captain Wellington let out a tinkling giggle. “Quite the reflexes on that squid, wouldn’t you say?”
Aholl gnashed his teeth fitfully.
The monstrosity held the vast submarine sandwich in its tentacle, seeming to consider it for a long moment, then plunged the end of the weapon into its gaping beak. The hellish maw of the monster closed. A sound like a falling sequoia thundered across the waves as Mocha Rich devoured our mighty weapon, right down to the last crumb.
When Mocha Rich was done, its unspeakable eye focused on us once again. I could tell that this squid wasn’t merely grumpy anymore. We’d really managed to piss it off.
“Damn your rubbery hide! I’ll end thee myself!” Aholl bellowed, and took off like a cannonball. He hurtled down stairs and across the deck, disregarded the “no-running” safety signs with a madman’s obsession, brandishing his harpoon gun as he bolted towards his hated nemesis.
I wondered if his hand-held weapon could possibly kill such a vast creature, even if he shot it in some vital spot, but I never got the chance to find out. Mocha Rich’s body dropped below the waves before Aholl reached the guard rail, disappearing into the brine with an eerie smoothness that barely disturbed the waves.
“Now what?” muttered the captain. “Is it gone?”
“No,” I said.
“Maybe it’s full now and wants to go have a nap,” Wellington suggested. “How do you know it’s still here?”
“Because we’re still here.”
Suddenly, the waters around the ship burst into churning froth. What followed was a sound that I cannot begin to describe, a boggling series of rapid-fire, gooey thumps as thick mollusk flesh collided with steel. Mocha Rich fastened its unthinkable tentacles onto the hull of the Piquant, bonding itself to our vessel with countless jacuzzi-sized suction cups.
The captain began to emit a noise like a trapped mouse. The ordered ranks of the passengers who had been pressed into squid-hunting combat service began to dissolve as panic spread its tendrils through the crew.
“What’s it doing?” whimpered Wellington. “Does it mean to drag us down?”
I didn’t think it was possible, even for the monster squid. The Piquant still outweighed Mocha Rich by thousands of tons. I thought perhaps the beast intended to peel the hull off like the skin of a banana, yet in that guess I was mistaken as the captain.
A second sound arose in the ship, a noise even stranger than Mocha Rich affixing itself to our hull. It was a slimy, rushing noise, quiet at first, growing louder with each second, seeming to come from every direction.
“Aholl!” I cried through my megaphone. “What’s happening?”
Old Aholl needed nothing but his own hate to amplify his voice. He called back to me across the stretch of the Piquant’s deck, his harpoon gun raised in his maimed hand. I could see the whites of his bulging eyes from fifty yards away as he bellowed the last words I would ever hear him speak.
“Revenge, my lad! I told you that your kind’s outrages against the sea would bring down the wrath of yon devil, did I not? Now see the foul color of Mocha Rich’s vengeance, good Mr. Irving!”
Metal screeched behind me, and I whirled. One of the pipes had split at the seam, emitting a jet of the most disgusting liquid I have ever seen. Part seawater, part human waste, and part black cephalopod ink, it gushed out under fantastic pressure and spattered polished planks of the deck.
“Oh my God,” I choked, pressing my handkerchief against my face against the reek. Horrible comprehension dawned as I realized what Mocha Rich was doing.
The squid had somehow sensed the location of the disposal valve on the underside of the Piquant. It is from this port that a cruise ship expels her waste into the sea—grey water from all the ship’s showers, the used cleaning fluid of a battalion of maids, and most of all, the excretions of thousands of over-eating vacationers. Our holding tanks were almost full right now; we were overdue for a dump, too occupied with our preparations for battle to attend to that key element of the normal routine.
A squid propels itself through the water with living hydraulic jets. Now Mocha Rich was using those jets to pump thousands of gallons of seawater and its own inky emissions up through the disposal valve and into the ship’s plumbing.
Across every deck, I heard the toilets exploding. I knew the Piquant was doomed.
“Abandon ship!” I commanded over the PA. “All hands to the lifeboats! Abandon ship!”
All semblance of order disintegrated. I can barely remember the minutes that followed, the mayhem as the passengers stampeded towards the lifeboats while Mocha Rich continued its devastating liquid siege upon the Piquant. I remember the planks of the deck warping as swirling dark puddles spread from between the decks. I remember ducking as rivets blew off the pipes and whirred through the air like demented hummingbirds. The great cruise ship heaved and groaned as unspeakable fluids filled her living quarters, her massage parlors, her engine room, the weight dragging her down into the merciless embrace of the waves.
The last thing I recall on the ship was the screech of tearing metal to one side, then a massive column of the loathsome ink-and-sewage seawater colliding with my body like a battering ram, carrying me over the safety rail. As my body plunged into the chilling waters of the north Pacific, darkness began to claim me.
Moments before consciousness left me entirely, I felt my arm brush against something warm and savory.
It was Quisiene’s funeral cake, of course. As buoyant as it was delectable, the great confection bore my unconscious body on the ocean, its oven-fresh goodness warming me against the life-sapping cold of the sea. When the Coast Guard pulled me out, much of the cake had been nibbled away by gulls and fish. Nobody had any complaints of Quisiene’s final dessert, least of all me.
I remember none of that, however. I awoke in the hospital with what passengers and crew of the ill-fated Piquant made it to the lifeboats ahead of Mocha Rich’s terrible vengeance. I found myself caught up in a maelstrom of doctors, reporters, and scientists, all asking questions that nobody could hope to answer.
Captain Wellington took most of the blame for the incident, though the cruise company and the designers of the Piquant found themselves deluged with subpoenas and summons in the months to come. Politicians and Archbishops took the opportunity to denounce all sorts of things which they had already been denouncing for years. Engineers and scientists offered explanations of how the cruise ship’s internal plumbing could have gone out of control. But nobody credited the story of Mocha Rich.
In spite of all the cameras which had been aboard the Piquant, not a single clear image of the squid survived the devastation. The salvagers managed to recover a few blurry pictures here and there, generally with somebody’s thumb obscuring half the view, but there was nothing that showed enough to convince the skeptics. It made me wonder if Mocha Rich wasn’t more than just a bloody huge invertebrate, but if he was some unimaginably powerful and camera-shy embodiment of nature’s wrath.
The only man who might have been able to answer that question had disappeared. Aholl wasn’t found amongst the survivors. Some part of me believes that he survived, and that he still roams the seas seeking retribution for his lost pinkie, locked in a never-ending mortal struggle with the unfathomable creature that he called Mocha Rich.
As for me... I’m moving to Montana. I’ve had my fill of the sea.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Progress Report: 1/11/2010
Like I said, the first week back from vacation is all about playing catch-up. Fortunately, I feel I've played a pretty good game of catch-up this week, so I think I will have more time for writing.
I did make some headway on "Voyage of the Piquant" this week, and I expect to have the last segment up soon, perhaps even later this week.
We're hosting a friend now who needed a place to crash for a while. In discussions with him, an idea arose that could be the pivotal element of a third novel in "The Awakening of Dragons" (the trilogy that begins with Rose & Jade.) I already had an idea for the shape of the story, and this new element not only fits right in, it gives the whole thing a lot more drama and tension. So, that's good. I can't be more specific without going all spoiler-ific on you.
So in summary, a lot of job-based work this week and not a lot of time for writing, but good stuff has emerged nonetheless.
Oh, we also saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Which I loved.
I did make some headway on "Voyage of the Piquant" this week, and I expect to have the last segment up soon, perhaps even later this week.
We're hosting a friend now who needed a place to crash for a while. In discussions with him, an idea arose that could be the pivotal element of a third novel in "The Awakening of Dragons" (the trilogy that begins with Rose & Jade.) I already had an idea for the shape of the story, and this new element not only fits right in, it gives the whole thing a lot more drama and tension. So, that's good. I can't be more specific without going all spoiler-ific on you.
So in summary, a lot of job-based work this week and not a lot of time for writing, but good stuff has emerged nonetheless.
Oh, we also saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Which I loved.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Progress Report: 11/23/09
The novel version of Thunderstruck is underway.
It's funny how one shift can suddenly change your whole perspective and open many doors. What I wanted to do to make this story work as a novel is get the larger, overarching plot with Vigil, Bella, etc. into the mix earlier. These elements may not be visible to Sharon and Gail at first, but I did want the reader to get an idea that there's something going on.
My solution is to start with Psyche. So the book will open with her introductory scene as a kind of prologue. Psyche then watches the sisters from a distance for most of the first novel as events unfold and they start to discover the magic around them. Through Psyche's perspective, we start to get the hint about all the other forces swirling around the lives of Sharon & Gail.
Anyway, we're off to the races. Trying out another critique group as well this week. I'll get around to finishing "Voyage of the Piquant" eventually--it was always just a fun side project, so I'm not worried about deadlines or anything like that. Is anybody reading it?
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
It's funny how one shift can suddenly change your whole perspective and open many doors. What I wanted to do to make this story work as a novel is get the larger, overarching plot with Vigil, Bella, etc. into the mix earlier. These elements may not be visible to Sharon and Gail at first, but I did want the reader to get an idea that there's something going on.
My solution is to start with Psyche. So the book will open with her introductory scene as a kind of prologue. Psyche then watches the sisters from a distance for most of the first novel as events unfold and they start to discover the magic around them. Through Psyche's perspective, we start to get the hint about all the other forces swirling around the lives of Sharon & Gail.
Anyway, we're off to the races. Trying out another critique group as well this week. I'll get around to finishing "Voyage of the Piquant" eventually--it was always just a fun side project, so I'm not worried about deadlines or anything like that. Is anybody reading it?
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Monday, November 16, 2009
Progress Report: 11/16/09
This week, I began sampling critique groups, and attended one Wednesday evening. I liked the people, but the attendant costs and driving time are not ideal. I'm going to see what I can find closer to home, and then make my decision from there.
I am also working on the outline for a novelization of Thunderstruck. The biggest challenge is trying to create cohesive novel-length installments. The structure is very different from the ongoing serialized form that works in a webcomic. For instance, assuming the first novel starts at the same place as the comic does, where then does it end? I would like the novel to be a self-contained story, setting up to be part of a series. I think it ends after the "Heritage" chapter, when Sharon & Gail set off for New Orleans, but it feels like that would be a fairly short book. Maybe it ends when they reach New Orleans, or maybe I lengthen the story in some way before they set out... there are options. Just have to figure out which ones are best.
I'm also writing a book review, which is something I plan to do from time to time. I finished listening to And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer, who has picked up the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series where Douglas Adams left off. I'll post that this week sometime, and let you know how well I think he managed that admittedly daunting task.
No "Voyage of the Piquant" this week. Still working on that last installment.
I am also working on the outline for a novelization of Thunderstruck. The biggest challenge is trying to create cohesive novel-length installments. The structure is very different from the ongoing serialized form that works in a webcomic. For instance, assuming the first novel starts at the same place as the comic does, where then does it end? I would like the novel to be a self-contained story, setting up to be part of a series. I think it ends after the "Heritage" chapter, when Sharon & Gail set off for New Orleans, but it feels like that would be a fairly short book. Maybe it ends when they reach New Orleans, or maybe I lengthen the story in some way before they set out... there are options. Just have to figure out which ones are best.
I'm also writing a book review, which is something I plan to do from time to time. I finished listening to And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer, who has picked up the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series where Douglas Adams left off. I'll post that this week sometime, and let you know how well I think he managed that admittedly daunting task.
No "Voyage of the Piquant" this week. Still working on that last installment.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Progress Report: 11/9/09
I realize these Progress Reports are not the most thrilling reads. It's not their job to be exciting. It's their job to give me a weekly benchmark for how my writing is progressing. Oft times, those steps aren't too interesting to read about, but that's the way it goes. When there's electrifying news to report, nobody will be happier than me. Meanwhile...
I rewrote the first chapter of Rose & Jade, and started another editing pass. This pass isn't so much about rewrites as it is about trimming excess language.
The third segment of "Voyage of the Piquant" is ready to roll. After this: the shocking conclusion.
Inspired by poetry I've been reading, I've started a metaphor journal as a place to record colorful language and turns of phrase. Naturally, the moment I sat down to record some of the ones that I had been thinking of, they all drained out of my head like... like... oh, see? There they go again. Something more interesting than "water down a plughole." This is why I need the journal. I have gotten a few, my favorite of which is: "a scimitar smile."
I rewrote the first chapter of Rose & Jade, and started another editing pass. This pass isn't so much about rewrites as it is about trimming excess language.
The third segment of "Voyage of the Piquant" is ready to roll. After this: the shocking conclusion.
Inspired by poetry I've been reading, I've started a metaphor journal as a place to record colorful language and turns of phrase. Naturally, the moment I sat down to record some of the ones that I had been thinking of, they all drained out of my head like... like... oh, see? There they go again. Something more interesting than "water down a plughole." This is why I need the journal. I have gotten a few, my favorite of which is: "a scimitar smile."
Monday, October 26, 2009
Voyage of the Piquant [Part One]
Voyage of the Piquant
Part One
Part One
Call me Irving. The tale I am about to relate is a story of obsession, madness, the power of the sea, and other heavy stuff like that.
I was serving as Chief Activity Coordinator aboard the Piquant, a six-hundred foot cruise ship operating off the Pacific Northwest. We were late in the season, perhaps our last run along the Canadian coastline, when we found ourselves drawn into a nightmare of unspeakable proportions. It began on a normal day, during the normal routine, on a cruise that seemed no different from the hundreds I had seen in my career.
A seaman is supposed to be able to sense a storm coming, and I suppose I must’ve gained some of that legendary faculty for precognition during my years on the sea. I first felt a sense of dread as I was guiding my group of passengers through their early evening routine.
“And ready... now drain!” I checked my stopwatch, ticking off the standard seventeen seconds. “Good... now shake! Two, three, four. Now retract... and zip! Group three, move out, group four into place.” The next line of men shifted their way to their assigned positions with the practiced ease of a precision drill team. “Check your number to your urinal,” I instructed, my tone crisp and professional. “Now unzip, and extend...”
And I felt it—an ominous premonition something was about to happen... something that was definitely not on the agenda.
I stared into the distance, looking past my clipboard, as if I could see through the steel hull of the Piquant and into the ominous forces gathering in the endless depths upon which our vessel we floated. The seconds ticked by on my stopwatch, unheeded, until finally I heard one of the passengers clear his throat. I glanced towards the sound and saw the men standing before their urinals, poised and waiting for my command.
I shook off the strange feeling, remembering my duty. “Sorry, men. All right, on my mark… now, drain!”
I dismissed the eerie premonition as nothing more than a lapse of consciousness, perhaps brought on by an ill-advised second helping of Muenster-spinach quiche with truffle garnish at breakfast. Yet within thirty-eight minutes, I received the first sign that there was more to my feeling than a case of gastronomic excess.
As my group shuffled onto the Riviera Deck, the intercom crackled to life. “This is your captain,” came the voice of Captain Wellington. “This ship will be making an unexpected stop. There is no cause for alarm. Please continue with your scheduled activities.”
The passengers milled nervously, low chatter humming to life from the group. Aboard a cruise ship, that kind of uncertainty can lead to unthinkable chaos. “To your positions!” I snapped, my voice cutting through the babble. “We are not deviating from the schedule! Stand on your color-coded squares... very good.. Mr. Armstead, please turn your head towards the viewing marker. Now breathe deep, and... appreciate the sunset!”
My timely actions may have saved us that evening, but nothing could have prepared me for the horror that was to come.
I guided my charges through the remainder of their routine without further incident. Three minutes and twenty-two seconds after I had sealed the cabin doors behind the passengers for the night, I spoke to the captain about the disturbance. “What happened back there?” I asked.
Captain Wellington twirled his fingers along the length of his waxed moustache. “We picked up a castaway,” he informed me.
“Sir?”
“He was lost at sea, in a rubber life raft,” the captain said. “By maritime law, we were obliged to pick him up. Even if it meant sacrificing our position for optimum viewing of the sunset. Damn, but the sea can be a cruel mistress.”
“Where is the castaway now?” I asked.
“Sickbay,” the captain said, then both of us stopped. A sound came to our ears from along the corridor leading to the bridge. We heard footsteps and the familiar swish of a hand sliding along the polished brass surface of the safety rail. Yet there was something different about that sound, something alien that sent a chill straight down my spine.
The man who entered stared at us with black eyes that contained nothing of human sanity. His coarse beard seemed to be made of bristling wire, similar to the copper scrub brushes they use to clean the grills in the kitchen when they get really nasty. He had skin as rough and leathery as an old loafer, creased into a permanent scowl of rage. And we saw the horrible truth behind that discordant sound on the handrail—on the grizzled madman’s right hand, where his pinkie should have been, there was only a wooden peg.
“What the devil are you doing here?” the captain demanded.
“The devil?” the stranger rasped. “What do you know about the devil, you softgut? The devil lurks out beneath the waves, white and slick and hungry. He tasks me, and I mean to have him! I’ll chase him around the Cape of Good Hope, past that boot-shaped bit of Italy, and through the Perdition’s flames before I give him up!”
“Pardon me, but what are you talking about?” I asked.
“My name is Aholl,” he growled. “I’m taking command of this ship.”
“You most certainly are not!” Captain Wellington said..
Aholl drew a harpoon gun from the folds of his battered black coat. “Say again now, you bowl of pudding?”
“Eh... heh,” the captain chuckled weakly as the tip of the harpoon pointed between his eyes. “Now... I’m sure we can discuss this like reasonable men.”
He brandished his peg-pinkie, the veins on his neck standing out like jump ropes. “Reasonable? You see this, milk boy? You think a man like me is capable of being reasonable?”
“It’s only your pinkie!” the captain squeaked.
“Only?” Aholl roared. “Try touch-typing with a thing like this, flounder-breath! I used to be able to hit eight-five words per minute. Damn it all to Hell!”
“How did it happen?” I asked, hoping to draw his attention away from the captain.
He whirled to face me, flinty eyes shimmering. “Bitten off, lad. Bitten off by the fiercest hunter in the seven seas. My little finger rests in the gullet of the great...” He paused.
I leaned forward.
“...white...”
I held my breath.
“...squid.”
“Squid?” I repeated. “A squid bit off your finger?”
“They have very powerful beaks,” the captain said, keen to placate the lunatic with the harpoon gun. “Can be quite nasty.”
“This ain’t no ordinary squid,” Aholl told us in his gravelly voice. “’Tis a beast what squirmed straight out of the poop-chute of Lucifer himself.”
“Oh gross,” I moaned.
“He roams the sea, laying waste to everything that dares cross his path. White as bone, and twice as vicious. I call him Mocha Rich.”
“We serve that at the coffee bar,” I said.
“Shut up,” Aholl snarled. “That devil took down my last boat, destroyed my entire crew, yet somehow I survived. My last ship, she was too small for the job. But this tub of bolts,” he looked around at the bridge assessingly. “Aye. This might just be enough.”
“But surely you can’t mean to use this ship to hunt a squid!” the captain protested.
“He tasks me!” Aholl bellowed. “He tasks me!”
“Right, yes, you already mentioned that,” Wellington said. “But we have a schedule to keep, don’t you know. The passengers...”
“Shall be my crew! Fear not, they’ll be well rewarded when we take the beast. I am a man of some means.”
“But it is not in the itinerary!” cried the captain.
“You can shove your foul itinerary into Mammon’s blubbery armpit!” Aholl thundered, waving his harpoon gun wildly about mere inches from the captain’s face. “Do as I say or I’ll skewer you like a sautéed prawn!”
Wellington clapped his hands together, smiling through the sheen of sweat which covered his face. “Right! Well, then I suppose we shall be making a new schedule for tomorrow. Mr. Irving? Let’s report to the copy room. And for the love of God, I hope we have enough toner.”
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