I Was Shot

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

I Was Shot

A Parallel Story to Logbook of Danny Texas

By G. Bone

Day Fourteen
Three Grains shy of Nine Bells Night

After a spell at this dock, the ship has decided to leave. There was a drumming in the heart. I have been given leave to dart above deck. It is a great expanse. There is Lincoln Davis, Second Mate, who watches the island fade away. I’m not softwood. I’ve had relations with women. The steam cog whirl pumps to the point that the wood thumbs with a regular pulse. There is Georgic overseeing the heart beat with sweat and heat falling off his face filled with a joy that only the truly berserk would know at that point of high. I asked Davis, on what was the deal with this repetition of names. Davis simply shrugged and told me that it’ll be informed over dinner at The Door.

So we had dinner at the Door – it’s very much in the space of cargo room that was simply lopped off at the third cube measurement thing. We were eating some delicious dinner that I got sick from. It was grog and then Davis took me to some place “nice”. It ended up being near the bow, where the wind whips one’s hair about, and feels all so softwood. Davis said something to the effect that the Fleet was grand, there was something of an Empire back in the day, and that it was just plain wrong of him to do that to me.

I do not get it. Davis was going softwood on me. I told him that I was a man. Even though I didn’t have the cannon to prove it, he’s on the illusion that I am Isobel. He thinks that I’m some spark flag to the Grand Old Fleet when it’s just this one ship in Eastern Waters that don’t mean a thing when the shot’s out of the box. I had high hopes of my girl once I did a contact in the sailor’s bag that was circulating about town. Then I realized when I came back later that she had moved on; three steps away from me really gaining the success I had in the Bay.

I do not know what is wrong with Davis. He takes me up to the masts and tells me of Texas. It’s all wrong – the Empire fell – and up came the Fleet. Then he tells me of Isobel and I leave him. I don’t want to hear this. I already know the truth. I go to my bunk and I hack off the long useless black locks I have been wearing in a sailor’s tail. I am not that stupid in cutting what makes me a woman.

I only got a couple of turns of sleep. I took some medicine provided by Rang on getting rid of a headache. I ended up being awake all night. I had visions of my old life in my head. I’m thinking that I had too much grog the previous night. I am trying to get the sleep that I want on this stupid ship but I’m not getting it. I plead to the Prophet just for a guidance - maybe a magic needle to show me the way of North – but this is someplace other – and I don’t have much friends about.

There is this note underneath my door that Kansas wants to talk to me. He doesn’t do it out open because he’s a Snake Head. How ironic.

Day Fifteen
Seven Grains past Seven Bells Day

I’m writing this before my shift. I remember the songs that they used to play in the Bay. What did I do to my hair? I look like a boy in the mirror. Why am I doing this? I’m not an alter ego of myself. I hit the wall and Perky is my room-mate. What have I become? I am aware on what is on my chest. I don’t have it down there. It’s like I’m slipping into something that I do not want to be. Look at these pictures – I’ve never been Isobel but I feel like I know her. Why am I writing this way? I don’t talk this way. I put ‘ah’ in every bit of my sentences. Look at my visage and despair, the thousand bits of sand everywhere. I hit my head against the wall. They don’t have good dances here. They have something called hard house that is fast pace. They say it’s the ashes of yesterday, yesteryear, and only now they’re coming up to par, now that the Fleet has been rendered into pieces. The heart where the honeycomb is pulses with the energy of the day – Georgic comes as a little spider from his small den in the heart – crouching as a thing called a roach on the floor, his blind eyes all seeing, his maniacal smile at odd times of the day, being a little gremlin in the night.

Perky is the shade of melting night. I’m doing an experiment now. I will come later on. The ship is quite massive. What have I been doing now? I’ve got a schedule to keep. Perky is always smiles so and I can see how Rang likes her. They live next door and it’s always Rang that comes sombre. He is old and yet young. Look upon my visage and despair, there are no hope in the Long Roan, and the Empire is something folly. I fall asleep in the old logbook of Methodist Fang. There’s an engraving of the Long Roan, a ship of the line, abandoned in battle. There was a melody of sadness when it happened to me. I do not know Isobel but it seems that I’m becoming her. The Wrinkles say that I’m already adopting her traits, my Wrinkle being laced with Colonial, but just the way that she’s saying it back when the bridge exploded with cannon fire. I’m not her and I’m not her. They have a mistake in the bow that I am Isobel. I tell them, that I’m Allard, I’m Allard, I’m a man, and this is a moment of fear when the cannons rip into the other folk, their masts splintering, there is no hope left.

I’m Blackfoot. I hear Haggard being a worn out man. He says that there is nothing here. He points at a chart and there’s where we are going. We are going to rip the Snake Heads a new one (what pray tell?) and to Onion Nine. It’s funny – I go up on the battle bridge and all of them wear something as Wehrmacht – the words laced every so often – the style that I would see in Colonial Marines, Colonial Marines, I repeat it so that I know the words. Haggard says that I’m his favorite messenger, the sudden realization that I saw Texas, right before the cannon blast.

Day Sixteen
Twenty Three Grains Eight Bells Morning

From The Logbook of Methodist Fang: the Long Roan; (page 38)

It behooves me to write about the Wehrmacht, since I have encountered a man that states he is from there.

The Wehrmacht was something from the past; I had family that was of the Fleet as it grew in its glory days. They would often state emphatically that it was the Wehrmacht that made them do it; otherwise they would have never risen up the Naval Seal in the first place. I took a tour of the Mod Gay, one of the former Colonies that We had and hold, although the actual fact of holding remains to be seen. The Wehrmacht was something ugly – Commander Blue for that is his name that I had been talking to about the said entity – the massive troops that forced the Fleet’s hand at Gettysburg West.

I do remember the time when my father came in with the fact that the Fleet had defeated the last traces of the Wehrmacht. It was a massive laughter and the last thing that we ever saw of their famed Marine Core was a general retreat to Elf territory. Although this was an urban myth of that time, the general fact was shown to be true with the infamous battle with the Elfish Fleet, just to show how we are default in the areas of Naval Infantry. It is a shame that we should be at war with each other; they are more into their history to the point that they would gladly clear up the evidence on the First Empire, the glories enthralled in that lineage therein, and those gaps within our history that simply cannot be explained through the lies of the Wehrmacht, even though that is a biased statement that was procured from my father, may peace be upon his soul.

The matter thus remains on what to do with Commander Blue. I have ensconced him in this log for future references – perhaps a reserve force if I shall ever have need for it again. He was rather direct in what I needed for the matters of the Gar Folk. The Gar Folk have been an irritant in my journeys and I must admit that using Commander Blue’s extensive …militant actions let us say…was a welcome tactic to show the force of the Fleet. Then I realized on what he had been proposing in the future, his blue stark eyes penetrating my soul, and I have realized the effect that my father bespoke of when he told me of how the Wehrmacht ruled the Wilderness with an iron fist.

It can be stated that the Fleet only has this through their cannons.

Day Seventeen
One Bell after high

There was a poem told to me long ago. The poem was rather long as I remember it. The only verses I do recall runs as this;

I welcome the rain
It ends so suddenly
I wonder if there will be thunder

It was by this Marine I think, the poet Net Newt. He was famed as a lover boy of Commandant William True. Then he got shot at Render Bay – some other battle that I lost count some years ago.

There is an undeniable truth to ships; one can get reassigned and not fired. That’s for landlubbers. Instead, they have re-assignments and jump ship. I figured I got the wrong side of the boatswain who then showed just how fast his ire (from Kansas’s vocabulary book) can get. I managed to become – what do they call – a scriber. I keep records in the “map room” and it’s pretty much my old duties but expanded. I got called by Jones who said that it was the best that Haggard could get me. He even gave me another logbook to read on helping with my grammar. It’s of the Kaliningrad – the previous ship log under Fang – with a smile on Jones’s face when I thumbed through the roster on who was commanding. The name Danny Texas came to mind. I’m not too sure why. I really have been busy just finding my way through the ship, getting away from Isobel that I can, and emphatically pointing out that I am a man.

The thing about Kansas is that he’s not softwood. Nay – he is kinder than most. He’s known as the piper. He showed me how the “Elves did it at Leningrad”, climbing up the masts, and showing how his carbine worked. I was on top of the world on the masts. For the first time I saw where we are going. We are going into nothing, nowhere, and somewhere. The waters are different shades of blue, islands everywhere that a woman could see and the trees – oh let me tell you about the trees – the pinnacles that one would see only at the East End – at the nose – and I was taken aback by the beauty. For the first time she came unbidden, the memory of helping a stout man with his own problems, attempting to sort of find a way out, and the blast that tore up the bridge. I did not want it. I asked Kansas on how he got his name, just to block out the memory, and he told me that he picked it from a book about a mighty general who won Gettysburg West, then failed with a sniper at his throat. He patted his carbine – Sharps something – with a smile.

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