“Row ye bastards! Row for your lives or we’re all done for,” he screamed in a wonderful rage that bordered on insanity. The boat was rocking violently and The Captain was sure he and his crew would find themselves as dinner for the fishes at any second. He only ever felt truly alive when death was a near certainty. He felt good, he felt like he could really enjoy the chaos and was glad he was The Captain and not one of the poor bastards rowing the boat, sweating, with every sinew in their bodies on the verge of snapping. There was a beauty in the prospect of imminent demise, as there was a beauty in the flashes of lightning that were cracking across the sky. The thunder roared and it excited him to his core. His eyes were wild and the driving rain soaked him to his bones. No woman could bring the excitement he was feeling right now. Thor was angry and The Captain was ready for any fury he could throw at him.
“Hey, wake up and go home, you old bolox,” said Aonghus, the barman.
“Ha, row the fucking boat and don’t be annoying me,” slurred Pat, irritated, and still half in his drunken slumber.
“Excuse me?” retorted Aonghus, bewildered, but used to the demented babblings of those such as Pat.
“Row the fucking boat or FUCK OFF!” uttered Pat, his jaw clenched and his teeth bared.
“Listen, bolox, I’m the captain of this ship and you’ll go home when you’re told or you’ll be barred!”
The Captain grumbled something unintelligible and staggered out the door and into the streets, which were teeming with young men and women, stumbling about, fashionably drunk and zombie-like. Up Shop Street he went, staggering this way and that, like he really was on a boat rocking violently in a storm.
He suddenly felt the urge to relieve his bladder. He hadn’t been aware of it and now it was screaming to be emptied of the twenty pints of beer he had been swilling over the last few hours. Modesty often escapes people when they are intoxicated and The Captain was no exception. He ambled over to the alcove of an apartment block, clumsily extracted his manhood, and proceeded to uncork himself.
At that moment, a young girl and her boyfriend were entering the apartment block and the girl uttered, “Oh my god, that man is disgusting!” To which The Captain replied, “Aarr, if I took you back to my cabin you wouldn’t waste your time with that wimp of a boyfriend you have there! Look at his scrawny arms! He couldn’t even row the fucken boat, never mind be a captain so great as me!” He leered at the girl and never even saw the bony fist that caught him in the nose and sent him whirring off balance. The last thing he heard before being engulfed in blackness was the shocked girl gasping,”Oh my God, oh my God, you killed him!”
The Captain lay, motionless, soaked in his own urine, in the alcove. No one bothered to see if he was okay. They only assumed he was one of the local bums who had had too much drink taken. None suspected he was The Captain that he deludedly believed himself to be. There was nothing but blackness for a while.
***
Seagulls squawked and cried through the ghostly beginnings of dawn where vomit, cigarette butts, smashed glasses, streams of urine, and discarded takeaways were the only signs of the hedonistic storm of debauchery that had gripped the town just 2 hours previously. After a time Pat was roused into groggy consciousness by what felt like warm rain pouring down his face. He felt a blinding pain in the side of his head and tasted blood in his mouth. He opened his gooey eyes and saw a seagull pecking at a discarded bag of chips on the street, and for a moment he thought he had awoken ship wrecked on a desert island.
Just then he realised that the warm rain he thought he had felt was actually a stream of urine from a Jack Russell that had his leg raised in the direction of his face. “Bastard,” he croaked, as he took an uncoordinated swipe at the dog that easily side stepped his hand and happily padded off down the road, his ears triumphantly erect.
The Captain raised himself on to his legs and unsteadily made his way home. He had survived another storm and would no doubt live to weather many more.
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