It’d been years and Peter had always wondered where the ship had sailed. Years of traveling over open waters—chanting sea-shanties had all taken them to this. It was futile. The men he knew behaved as though they were gods. It seemed to Peter that they were the brawniest and the wittiest men who’d ever lived…all for this.

Peter had walked the plank hundreds of years ago. Every one of his crew mates jeering and taunting. They spat on him and sang of karma. They had all trusted him moments before. He was practically born on that ship, but they threw him off for the same reasons they kept him close.

Peter was enigmatic and knew his way around the mind. He knew how to sneak around without you noticing, or to hide, or to steal. For fun around the ship sometimes, he’d swindle men and call it a magic trick. They had good fun and all, wheezing with laughter in their drunken ecstasy. Everything was fine until the head pirate discovered his watch had been missing. His name was Timberly and the only two things each pirate knew for sure was that if you stole from Timberly, you’d be good as dead merely standing before him. His eyes were glassy, and unsettling. Succumbing to rumors of them being poisonous. So if you were to stare deep into their glassy blue, you’d be paralyzed right then and there.

Now Timberly loved his silver watch. Everyone knew their lane, and everyone knew never to touch it. But Peter had been accused of theft. He wondered why the watch was so important that he should drown. His crew mates often spoke of a certain treasure Timberly was searching for. They said it seemed like he’d been out on the ocean for centuries. “He’s traveled marvelous places with that watch.” rumored the men, “1776, 3024, 526BC.” They were drunk as usual. The men laughed and slapped each other like fools who hadn’t any control over their own bodies. Peter always had a good laugh at that.

Everyone on the ship knew of Peter’s ability to swindle. And for that same reason they kept him alive all those years ago. He remembered when the pirates captured the ship he was on. He’d been living as an orphan prior and had been given a job at thirteen to go out fishing with the men. It hadn’t yet been a week before those scrounging pirates took over the boat, capturing Peter and anything else they could find. They tied him up, and pulled a rope in his mouth. They almost shot him, but Timberly told them to “hold their fire.”

“Don’t you see the way he hid boys? This lad could be useful.” Then they’d knocked him out cold. The only thing he could remember next was awakening on their ship. Tied up with rope and shady men scowling. His lip was bloodied and his hair had been cut to the tip of his forehead. How horrendous it was. They made him look like a prisoner. They interrogated him as if he were a prisoner, and they left him in a cold room at the bottom of the ship. They fed him scraps of their fish. He remembered resenting every moment, plotting a means of escape, and was even more vexed when a pirate told him that he had been lucky. He hadn’t yet know the merciless nature of Captain Timberly.

Eventually, Peter was allowed up onto the ship where he worked as a servant boy for months. In those moments, analyzing the ways of the pirates and how they conned and fought and were fools. Whenever they overtook a ship he’d hide where he’d previously been captured. He became unkept, and his hair grew long, his eyes darker, his accent sharper, his ways smarter, his face unkind, and his soul lonelier. He wouldn’t know it himself, but he was hopeless.

And that day, in the times during his rise in status, was the last he’d ever seen of them. He knew he’d been set up, at least he’d claimed to be. The pirates didn’t believe a word he said, and Captain Timberly made him walk the plank with a sword held to his neck.

And the moment he fell into the ocean, he was met with the most memorable event of his life. He pulled the Captain’s watch out of his drenched pocket as the ship sailed away, feigning desolate screams.

(Not complete)