The First Story of the Year by Ariana Larson

AUTHOR’S NOTE:
THIS IS NOT IN ANY WAY COMPLETELY FACTUAL.
BELIEFS ON GHOSTS ARE UP TO EVERY INDIVIDUAL'S BELIEF
OSSEINTEGRATION IS A REAL THING, TERMS ARE USED TO THE BEST OF THIS EIGHT GRADER’S KNOWLEDGE AND USE OF GOOGLE AND FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ORTHOPEDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

“Captain! They’re gaining on us!” the cabin boy shouted. The small boy, unlike Captain Hale, struggled to keep his footing on the precariously rocking deck. The boy nearly fell over the railing but Captain Hale caught him in time by the scruff of his coat to pull him back to the deck. It seemed that all of fate was against the Royal’s Downfall.

“I’ll be damned if those land-lubbers would ever even get a board of this ship!” Captain Hale bellowed to the crew, lightly tossing the boy back to the deck.

Usually the sea in all her glory was with Captain Hale and his pirate crew, directing the currents for the fast voyages the ship was known for. Despite being heavily ladened with metal adornments that would weigh down any other ship, it was one of the many secrets of Captain Hale’s success and mystery. This storm was already turbulent, probably one of the biggest that even old Pete had seen, but Captain Hale knew his crew would push through. Or so they thought, until the flag of the Crown’s Navy was spotted from the crow’s nest.

Any of the governments on land hand at least a handful of bounties for each of the crewmembers and even the whole crew together. So it didn’t really matter to the Captain that one of the best naval ships of the British empire was chasing him down through the rocky Jamaican passage.

The ship rocked again, scattering the crew from their positions, and even throwing the cabin boy into one of the life boats on the side of the boat. Captain Hale had to hand onto the mast to steady himself, as he scanned the coastline for a place to land.

The British ship was closing in on the Royal’s Downfall even faster, as the lights from Port Royal were in sight. The storm had thrown them off course, right where the officers had wanted them. If they were to pull anywhere near the bay, even Captain Hale would have to admit they were done for.

“In the life or death of the Royal’s Downfall, no man will ever disturb this ship or its contents without invoking the wrath of I, Captain Hale of the Southern Isles!” Captain Hale proclaimed. This rejuvenated the spirits of the crew momentarily, before the wave a mountain tall swallowed the ship whole.

~400 Years Later~

Two searchlights pierced through the murky water of Caribbean waters off the coast of Jamaica. The scientific submarine had one job; to find the sunken remains of ships. They had found many old ships from all eras, though mostly from the 1650s.

Usually only ships of interest were mostly composed of just the steel needed, from ships sunken before. But all those ships had been all picked clean. But as the blinding column of lights and invisible radar waves flooded out of the demersal, a strange sight greeted the people on board.

What seemed to be a 15th century ship, stuck out of the depths like a mutated  urchin. With the adornments akin to the spikes and piercing of a rock star, it would’ve been a small miracle if the ship didn’t sink in the harbor. The archaeologist on board was astounded that the vessel seemed to be used a lot before its inevitable demise.

In the weeks that followed, archeologists and miners alike flocked to the Jamaican bay to strip the barnacle-invested hull of any of the steel and other precious metals. All the drills and hum of motors disturbed both the marine life, and dead.

Captain Hale had been resting peacefully (or as peaceful as a brooding and vengeful pirate could) for the centuries his ship had been submersed. But with all the modern technology and people invading, it made him wish he could plunder and ransack all the insolent fools just like old times.

***
Thomas slowly woke up in the hospital bed. The bright sterile room nearly blinded him as began to open his eyes. He looked around the hospitable room, decorated warmly with cards along the lines of  “Get Well Soon” and "Congratulations" in bright playful colors. Until his eyes finally fell on his leg.
Thomas couldn’t remember much about the car accident, but looking at his now missing limb brought everything back. The bright lights. The pain coursed through him from the base of his left leg. And now the heavy weight of a lot of limbs. Replaced by a hunk of metal.

The days afterward, of him going home and recovering were a blur. But something lingered in the back of his mind, or the front of his vision. A haggard old man dressed in an abundance of mismatched clothing and trinkets seemed to be following him everywhere he went. The doctors said the hallucinations might be an effect of the drugs used to keep the pain at bay but the visions kept lingering.

So, great. Not only had he lost a leg, he had also lost his mind, was the half asleep thought he had while glancing at the man glaring at him from across the room.

“What do you want?” Thomas growled at the man, halfheartedly. He had woken up early, but he couldn’t go back to school. Thomas wanted to desperately see his friends again, to have some sense of normalcy again.

“You land-lubbers stole from ma’ ship.” The man surprisingly answered back.

“What do you mean ‘Your ship’? I’ve been nowhere near the ocean my entire life, and I’ve been drugged out for the past few weeks. I haven’t stolen anything,” Thomas replied bitterly. Because what else could he do? According to the neon lit clock at his bedside, his parents wouldn’t be up until another hour or so. And he wouldn’t have rehab for another six hours.

So, talking to an old hallucinogenic man was the only thing he could do.

“I’ve been in MY ship peacefully for the last hundred years and then you and your monster fish ships decide to come and steal MY treasures!” The old man explained, even if it sounded more like the groans of two wood boards rubbed against each other than human speech.

“What do you mean your treasures? I don’t have anything of any value to me!”

“Then why do you folks need to replace your leg with some of MY hard earned metal, instead of some sturdy old wood,” The man complained, hobbling over to Thomas’s bedside.

“My leg?”

“Yes your leg, you numb skull!”

“Then I definitely didn’t want you metal or whatever. I wish I didn’t have to have this hunk of junk! Who would’ve thought I wanted basically a pirate peg leg instead of the muscle and bones I was born with!” Thomas tried in vain to push off the prosthetic leg, forgetting how the doctors had melded the metal to what bone was left.

“Hey! You listen here little boy, you don’t need some fancy metal to walk around,” The pirate pulled up one of the pant legs, he floated over Thomas, revealing a stick of wound tied to the stump of his leg. “See? I got the peg leg you complained about having and I still ran a ship and beat the buttocks out of the royal navy.”

“Whatever,” Thomas groans, throwing the blanket off of him, trying to aim at the old man. As expected the old pirate man floated through the fabric as he floated alongside Thomas.

One of the many things he hated about his new “leg” is that he could feel what was left of his stump and nerves erupt in pain every time he took a step. But he couldn’t take out his leg fully because it was surgically integrated with what was left of the bone.

Surprisingly the pirate man didn’t bug him with questions about the modern world as Thomas grumpily hobbled about his morning. The pirate seemed to look at his fake metal appendage with a sense of concern and empathy.

Thomas shook off the thoughts as he wandered around, with nothing to do to distract himself from the thoughts and memories plaguing him.
He tried going with his mother to run errands, but the ways people looked at him or tried to ignore his leg at the first stores, led him to stay in the car wallowing for the next stops. And for once, he was looking forward to the rehabilitation appointment that evening.

Even if the exercises of relearning how to walk weren’t enough to ignore the bolts of pain through his nerves up from the bolts in his leg. It was too much that even when he hobbled to a bench for a break, he nearly collapsed from the pain blacking his vision.

Soon he was back in a hospital bed with what felt like a bunch of grown-ups rushing around him and fretting over his condition. From the whispers of the adults, it was that the tissue had not fully healed and accepted the protruding prosthesis.

His nerves thought the body was being attacked every time he stepped and was trying to push out the steel. The surgery meant to help him hadn't completely worked. The doctors were thoroughly puzzled and would try to accomplish a revision surgery the next day.

And Thomas would be left alone in the hospital with just him and his spirits, again. This time the pirate didn’t yell at him or even glare. He looked mellow. Like images and memories of old times, good, bad, and frustrating flashed before him. Thomas knew the look well, it was what he felt like in every silent moment.

“You remind me of someone I knew,” he said finally, breaking the silence. “You even look like him too.” he said gruffly, like he was begrudgingly admitting defeat in his eyes.

“What?” Thomas asked, confused at the demeanor of the man.

“He was a cabin boy, scrawny lad,” The pirate continued, trying to rip the band-aid off quickly. “He was scared of being a pirate, of getting hurt. I was like him once too.”

The proud pirate admitted, looking like he was trying to swallow a pickle. “But what I didn’t get to tell him, was that even though being a pirate was looked down upon in society, because of the you know, the crimes committed. But it took guts to stare down the government people and take from kings and merchants.”

“Yeah, so are you saying that stealing and hoarding your wealth was an honorable profession?”

“If that’s what you want to do. But it’s not without its consequences, you also get taken from too,” He shakes his peg leg and gestures to Thomas’s own similar leg. “Life does that to you, no matter what you do, and it's up to you if that’ll make you less of a person.”