Writing Prompt: Coming Full Circle

 This month's writing prompt is pretty simple. A short story that comes full circle. Word count is 2000-3000. Here's what I wrote for it! Want to write your own? Go to our Writing Prompts page

I was sitting in a corner of the ship kitchen my parents worked on. Watching them make beautiful dishes for the people on the cruise only made me want to follow in their footsteps.

A deep breath entered my lungs, filling them with the spices from the hollandaise sauce on the burner closest to me. My ears rang with the head chef’s shouts and spatulas against pots. Things would never be this good again.

Tapping started on the window. I let my eyes dart there for an instant and ignored the fingers that seemed to be making the sound.

I told myself it was just the ocean. I tried to keep my attention on the potatoes I was supposed to be peeling. To focus on my mother tasting the shrimp sauce and my father checking the temper on the chocolate cake decorations.

The tapping started again, sharper. Louder. A crack started at the center of the round underwater window. It spread with every tap. I thought if I ignored it nothing bad would happen.

Tap.

Tap.

Crack.

A hand flew in and ripped the frame from the wall. It made a hole big enough for his body to follow. He was a shark man, with eyes black as coal and a grin showing his serrated teeth. Followed by a stingray man, and some other kinds of fishmen.

The closest person to them was Father.

Before I could scream, warn him, the shark man twisted his head full around and Father fell. The shark said something. I couldn’t hear it over the feedback in my head.

He pulled a sword from his belt. Mother recovered before I did, throwing cutlery at him and getting a couple to bury themselves into his flesh. The hollandaise was thrown.

Mother did her best, but when the shark took the pan she’d thrown and used it as a shield there was nothing more she could do. He slammed it against her head. Pulled out his sword and sliced her throat for good measure. Then his eyes darted to mine.

All I could do was sit and stare as it happened. I tried to move as he stepped towards me but couldn’t. Until he touched me.

I swung out at him, trying to get the chopping knife in his shoulder and give it a new home. Unfortunately I’d never been a great fighter. He was able to get me pinned against his chest quickly. I’d expected him to kill me as he’d killed my parents but he didn’t.

“Girl, come on if you don’t want to die!” I ran to keep up as he found a closet and threw me in. “I’ll come back when it’s safe. Be. Silent.”

Then the door closed and I was locked in.

I heard screams and tried to shut it out. Pulling the sheets off the shelves around me I tried to block the sounds and only succeeded at making a mess. At least they were soft and absorbent. They made it easy to keep my tears from soaking my face.

It seemed like an eternity before anything happened. The screams faded as the fishmen made their way up from the working levels.

Even though I knew the closets could be unlocked from the inside for safety, my fingers refused to reach for the door. I knew I could probably get to the staff escape dinghies without getting caught. Yet I sat in a jumble of fitted sheets and cried until I could cry no more.

When the door eventually ripped open it made me jump, but didn’t scare me. I already knew it would be the shark man. He pulled me against him and half carry me to the lower fishing deck.

I knew the water could wash over this deck in a storm, but never so high. Especially since the sky was clear and seas were calm.

No. The only way the water could be up to my ankles would be a sinking ship. There were escape boats, with holes smashed through the bottom of all of them. Voices could be heard from the higher decks talking about taking chests to the pirate ship.

“Fuck, shit, fuck,” The sharkman muttered. He paced a moment, then looked over at me. I just watched him watching me. His black eyes seemed to see something the mirror didn’t show me.

He strode inside and returned shortly carrying a wooden door. Likely torn from a guest room. The thing was put on the sea side of the banister. “Come here.” He held his hand out, fingers stretching towards me but not grabbing on.

It was the easiest thing in the world, considering. The sharkman was offering me a way to live and all I had to do was take it. I reached for him.

Then the pirate ship pulled into view. A massive thing that rivalled even the luxury cruise ship we were on. A black flag was raised above it, with a fish skeleton and sword crossed. A captain’s hat topped the cross. It was an image I knew I’d never forget. A symbol of how my parents died.

I reached again for the sharkman’s hand to find it impossible to reach. The water was now to my knees, making it hard to get closer. It seemed I was getting farther away.

I woke up with a gasp and floating images of the memories that filled my dreams. Before I even eyes opened I knew what I’d see in real life.

My husband would be in the kitchen finishing the dishes. There would be coffee and a beautiful arrangement of fruit and pancakes on the table. Next to this I’d see a fresh bundle of wildflowers in the only vase we had.

Rolling over so I could look at the beautiful man I’d been lucky enough to have gotten to love me as much as I loved him, I ventured a little peek. It was everything I’d anticipated.

Somehow it was more.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one paying attention to their soulmate. “When we’re done eating I have a surprise for you.” His voice, as warm and pleasant as his cooking, coaxed me out of bed.

“What’s the occasion?” Nothing was coming up in my head. Our anniversary wasn’t for another few weeks and it was months before either of our birthdays.

Coffee was pressed into my hands. “I didn’t think you’d remember,” he said, a light note of amusement in his voice.

My face scrunched as I thought harder about what today could be. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing.” He laughed and I took a sip.

“It’s the anniversary of the day we met.” His hands settled into their favorite spot around my waist, pulling me in and risking hot coffee spilling on both of us.

Oh, right. I’d survived a pirate attack, but barely. Danny had pulled me off what was left of the life boat I’d clung to when my ship had sank. He’d taken me in when everyone else thought I was cursed. How’d he remember the date?

These thoughts melted away when his dark eyes pulled my own in so deep they became my entire world. “I’d be happy spending the entire day in bed with you,” I whispered.

I lifted myself onto the very tips of my toes to give him a soft kiss. He was warm in my embrace and I was happier than I ever thought I could be.

A sound reminiscent of thunder sounded. “What was that?” I asked. A feeling rose in my gut I couldn’t explain.

“Nothing, I’m sure. Weather.” His fingers brushed against my chin. “Do you want powdered sugar on your pancakes?”

I heard the sound again and it still didn’t sound quite right. From the window I could see the sky. It was as clear as I’d ever seen it. “That’s not weather, darling.” What it could have been escaped me. I sniffed but could only smell the contents of my cup. I told myself it was just the dreams and memories.

Then there was a boom that shook the floorboards, and a cannonball ripped through the tiny apartment, catching Danny and tearing him out of my grasp.

Everything turned to a ringing in my ears. What was left of Danny had splattered against the inside wall, and I was barely aware of the screaming and continuing cannon fire exposed by the gaping hole in the outside wall.

For some reason, all I could think about was how my dream had been an omen. Then another cannonball hit the building and the floor collapsed under me.

When I landed the ringing abruptly stopped. I could hear the pounding of my heart and the rubble moving around me while I tried to dig myself out. It was time to move. Someone had murdered my husband and I was going to kill them if it killed me.

As soon as I was loose enough to start dragging myself around I finally took in my surroundings. It made the throbbing in my chest magnify exponentially.

The village was practically gone. It had been my home since I’d washed ashore on the door that sharkman had put me on all those years ago. I’d built a life and a family here that I was not willing to give up to more pirates.

Down the road I could see the tavern still standing, but with a brand new hole in the wall. It was where Danny and I would go to celebrate making it through another day together.

Hanging from the hole was a foot. It was impossible to tell whose.

The thickness of the air choked me as I continued looking around, my feet stumbling over rubble and stone.

Another boom of cannon fire was followed by the collapse of the lighthouse. All I could do was hope that old man Stan wasn’t in it.

Further away I could see trees where previously there had been houses. Homes and families and lives that were crumbling. It was only getting worse as cannons continued going off.

Screams permeated the air, mostly from that direction. It was where most of the children lived. I hoped it still would be when all this was over.

Some were from the island defense wall, but it didn’t seem to slow down our attackers. Not even a little bit. Whoever was firing them didn’t seem to be aiming at all.

Finally I looked towards the water.

A ship was visible on the other side of the peninsula, a pirate flag proudly billowing in the wind.

“No,” I growled in protest. “Not possible.” It was a pirate flag I recognized and had dreaded seeing over the horizon for years after washing up here. It was the pirates who attacked the ship I’d been on as a child.

My eyes stung as I took in the fish skeleton, crossed with a sword, and the entire thing topped with a sea cap. The kind I’d occasionally seen on captains of the marine ships that stopped here for supplies.

If only there was such a ship near today. They weren’t expected for another few days.

If only there had been marines around when these pirates terrorized me as a child. Perhaps my parents would have lived. Perhaps not.

Suddenly I was shoved into the ground from behind.

Someone stepped on my head from behind me, and I could feel the finned feet digging into my scalp. “What’s the matter, human? Is it that we took over your dingy town, or that we’re fishmen and we took over your dingy town?”

I’d always been a strong believer that actions spoke louder than words, so I grabbed the first pointed rock I noticed and jabbed it into the pirate’s foot. “That you killed my parents and husband and now I am going to kill you.”

If I couldn’t kill him, I was determined to at least draw blood. I smashed the rock into the leg attached to the foot.

He kicked me in the head and I screamed. The impact against the hard ground reverberated and echoed and made me dizzy. I tried to get him again with the rock and was met with a fist to the back of my skull.