Change in the House of Flies

::Change in the House of Flies::


*~Chapter Three~*


“Yer the guvnor’s boy, aren’t ye?” Blackened and yellowed teeth gleaming with saliva. A noise behind but too late to turn.

Crack!

Pain.

Gritty sand. Horrible grins. Demons staring out of the eyes of men.

“I ‘ope for yer sake ‘e pays up.”

Laughter.

Darkness.

*~*~*~*
*~*~*~*

Captain Jack Sparrow decides that Will will never be a good player of bluffing games as he observes the youth’s countenance. Every emotion, every thought and idea waltz brazenly across his features. At any one moment, Jack can tell exactly what Will is contemplating.

The small room gives off the discomfiting air of a prison cell, or so the pirate feels. Four white walls, one window and minimal furnishings (cot, armoire and chair) comprise the totality of the space. At least there are no bars upon the aperture; instead there are sturdy wood-slat shutters. The lad has been living here for the past five years and yet there are no mementos or personal effects to speak of. Remove the youth from the bed and one would never suspect the room to be inhabited. Jack prefers the well-lived-in look; his attire and his own quarters on the Pearl attest to this.

“That will take at least a month, if not more,” the lad announces.

“Indeed.” Jack has just reeled off a list of necessities that require a blacksmith’s tender ministrations and with each item mentioned Will’s incredulity mounts.

“You do not need me for those. Most of them you can buy from local merchants.” The youth’s look turns disapproving. “Or appropriate them from some vessel.” Jack waves his hands as if shooing Will’s words away and smiles wide enough to show off many a gold tooth.

“I could do that, true, but”—Jack places a finger alongside his nose and winks—“My precious lady only gets the best, as do her crew and her captain.”

“No.” The line of the lad’s jaw becomes determined. The purpling bruise where Jack’s fist made acquaintance with his face heapsrimarimands upon him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have given Will such a tap; it doesn’t appear to have sweetened his mood any.

“Now, Will, don’t be like that.” The last living Turner gives Jack a dark glare and tells him in small words that he will very well be what he wants to. Will makes many motions to leave the cot, but Smith’s stern medical orders keep him there. Jack suspects that the little man simply desires the two of them to have a talk and knows that the smith is unlikely to be cooperative if ambulatory.

“I no longer work on sundry items; I craft edges solely.” For a moment justified pride fills his lean body then slowly dissipates to leave the smith a fatigued mortal. Jack had long suspected that the lad’s dream had always lain with the art of swords and not with the banal work of blacksmithing. “Besides, Doctor Smith requires my assistance most days.”

“True. True.” The pirate stretches his legs and grins slyly. “So why do you not simply start up your own forge and become your own man?”

“There are many reasons and I haven’t the patience to enlighten you. Now will you please leave? Return to your Pearl and forget.” Jack inspects his nails and tugs at the cuff of one sleeve. He crosses his loegs egs one way and then the other.

“Now, William, I can’t be doing that. See, I came here with a purpose and I have yet to fulfill it. Now, when I do, I’ll take my little ole self aways faster than a heartbeat, but until then I’m quite happy to remain.”

“What is it you want, Jack?” Will asks resignedly. Capitulation is no small feat, the pirate can read this plainly across the open book that is the youth’s expressive face. Of course then there is the matter of the question itself—such a loaded set of words when combined in such a manner and spoken from such a one as the lad. Possible replies range from the grossly blatant propositions, subtle innuendo and finally to the initial reason for the necessity of seeking out the services of a blaith.ith.

“I want to know why.” He holds up a hand to forestall the inevitable protests from the smith. “But for now I’ll settle for commission from your adroit hands.” Jack leans forward and grasps said hands before Will is able hide them. They are rough hands, tradesmen hands, and they speak far more eloquently than words the profession of their owner. Each callous attests to the diligence and determination of the youth. He meticulously inspects each finger of each hand. He finds it rather odd that, before now, he has never really touched the lad; certainly Will would not be so complacent.

Then he comes across the scarred protuberance of flesh where the smith’s ring finger on his left hand should be. His dark gaze fixes upon the amputation and his thoughts churn. He has never paid particular attention to these hands before, but he is certain that all fingers had been present and accounted for before.

Will jerks his hands free of Jack’s slack grasp and draws them protectively to his chest. The silent minutes creep by on razor paws. The young man refuses to meet the pirate’s questioning gaze.

“It was the first,” Will admits softly. His young face is harder than Jack thought it could ever look. Time and despair have wrought a strange transformation upon the strikingly naïve innocent.

“The first?” The first what? Jack wants to demand. He senses—he knows—that Will wants to confide, wants to relieve himself and find absolution. The need is too pure, so raw and unadulterated that its very potency causes the pirate to want to shy away. The intensity of Will’s desire to unfold his mind can barely be restrained. However, an almost equal terror closes his lips, and so Jack cannot turn away from such desperation. He cannot pretend this to be someone else’s problem, no matter how much he wishes to. There are moments when one must flee and others when one must stand firm. He’s not sure which to be the wiser course, but then he has never considered himself to be particularly wise—just lucky.

Will wato bto be forced to confess and Jack wants to know. It’s funny how things work out this way.

“They needed to prove that they had taken me.” The young man absently runs the thumb of his right hand around the stump.

*~*~*~*
*~*~*~*

“We can’t just be makin’ claims, understand? We need proof, evidence or what have you,” the captain said affably as he examined Will’s work-roughened hands. All the struggling and gagged expletives had proved useless; the boy understood that there would be no clemency granted in this situation. He had been told quite plainly that any more attempts to fight would lead to a rather unpleasant and sticky end.

He needed to survive if he ever wanted to get back to Elizabeth. As long as he lived, there was hope. He would have to endure these blackguards vulgarity and grossness for the sake of his bride-to-be and their future together. He could do it. He would do it. Never mind that every roll of the deck nearly undid his balance; or that his vision remained blurry from the crack on the head; or the fact that he was currently in the vile clutches of pirates; or that his legs seemed to be made of grass shoots instead of bone, he had faced worse and he believed in good triumphing over evil.

His stomach was about to rebel!

“Get the carpenter. We need to make a wedding gift for the governor’s daughter,” the captain shouted. “And bring me a barof sof salt pork and some pitch.” A few members of the crew immediately scrambled off to obey. The grip upon Will’s hands increased by increments. The captain smirked engagingly from behind his dark brown beard.

A few minutes later a grubby, jaundiced sailor rolled a barrel in front of the captain and quickly disappeared into the jeering crowd. Another brought a bucket of heated pitch. For a moment the malodorous perfume of unwashed pirates was overpowered by the pungent odor of distilled coal tar. Then the wind changed course and the reek of rank bodies and various dried substances of unsavory natures filled the boy’s sensitive nostrils. He choked back a sudden upsurge of stomach bile. He refused to give these miscreants the pleasure of seeing him losing his stomach again.

He had to believe that the governor would agree to the ransom: the release of several of the captain’s trusted companions and a rather large sum (the e fig figure had not been made known to him). He continued to repeat this as one particularly large crewmember held his left hand, fingers splayed, upon the closed lid of the barrel. The carpenter emerged brandishing a wicked chisel and a large mallet. He gave Will cold glare and positioned the edged instrument just below his promise ring, the consort of which resided on fair Elizabeth’s finger.

“This might sting a bit, mate,” the carpenter told him. The low hum of cruel amusement broke out into roars of coarse laughter. Will closed his brown eyes and gritted his teeth. He could do this.

He had to.

He had to live…for Eliza—

The mallet drove the chisel through the meat of his finger, through the bone and lodged it in the barrel wood. Gagged scream. Oh God! The devil’s fire streamed up his arm and bludgeoned its way into his mind. So much red, too much. Oh God.

“Put pitch on that!” he heard the captain command as his body swayed to the erratic throb of his heart.

Vision swimming in and out of focus, he watched the captain hold aloft his severed digit. The pregnant sun caught hold of the blood-spattered ring and infused it with blinding beauty. Oh God.

As the carpenter covered the amputation with pitch, he felt a small portion of his hope wither.

Please God.

*~*~*~*
*~*~*~*

Tension rides through the air and asphyxiates Jack. He watches Will smile just this side of bitterly and abscond his maimed hand beneath the bedclothes. The pirate finds himself drawn and quartered by the emotions tumbling through his being. He is unable to attribute the proper names to said feelings, but they all lead to a stymied urge for vengeance. The news of Will’s death enraged him, and his retribution followed soon afterwards. Jack will scour the globe to reacquire that which has been taken or else take his measure of flesh to reimburse the loss. Seeing the shrunken spirit before him causes the man to wish that he had not yet killed the sadistic bastard. His vengeance was taken at too low a price. Now there is no way to remedy the discrepancy.

He failed to rescue Will; he has failed to revenge him.

“And the others?” The young man cuts him a quick glance. Stone walls rise up around his mind as Jack watches with bemusement. The lad has closed the portal revealing his still seeping lesion.

“What special commission concerns you?” Will asks. The Pirate accepts the diverging topic without blinking. Nonchalantly he unbuckles his sword belt and tosses the whole contraption onto Will’s lap. The lad withdraws the weapon and issues a pained sounding hiss of breath.

“What did you do to it, Jack?” The smith’s gaze is reproachful.

“It weren’t my fault, honestly.” The pirate shrugs and holds out his hands in a gesture of innocence.

“So you want a new one?”

“That was the original purpose behind my venturing here. Well, not here-here precisely.” He gives the sparsely furnished room a little smirk. “But this settlement here-here. For a blacksmith. Obviously need a new one. Can’t be a respectable pirate without one.” Will does not rise to the bait, and Jack finds himself disappointed that his use of the word ‘honestly’ juxtaposed with ‘pirate’ warrants no reaction. Once upon a time the youth would have made some comment or noise or even raised his brows. What has happened to the earnest young man who would have come up with issues concerning the incongruity of the combination of the two words?

The young smith has changed.

“I want to see the payment first,” the lad announces coolly. Jack takes a moment to regard his transformed companion with a little frown of surprise.

“You don’t trust me word?”

“Besides the fact that I have not received your word, I do not trust pirates in general and you in specific. I will be no one’s dupe.”

The urge to grasp the young man’s broad shoulders and shake him while demanding to know what he has done with the real Will Turner is strong within Jack. Something infinitely precious and innocent has been cruelly torn from the lad. The man can almost visualize the colorless void where the smith’s trust in humanity once dwelled.

The finger was the first…what else was taken from him? What happened to so thoroughly destroy him?

“And how can I trust you to do good work?” Pride and anger spark in those opaque brown eyes. Will pulls his back straight and levels an affronted glare at Jack.

“I would never give only a portion of myself to my work. Never.”

“I know.” The unaffected gravity of the pirate’s tone baffles the young man and his momentary disconcertion is clearly illustrated on his face. A quirky grin re-establishes Will’s equilibrium.

“So what do you want?”

Jack adores and loathes that question. On one hand it offers innumerable opportunities to sharpen his wit, but on the other it has a tendency to get him slapped when his answer proves unsatisfactory to the other party. For the second time that day he decides to treat the inquiry with a marked lack of levity and an unusual amount of forthrightness.

Using his hands as visual aids, he describes in, perhaps unnecessary, detail the weapon he desires, its consort and his new found interest in throwing weapons. The latter three prove to be merely an artifice to extend the completion date, but young Will does not need to be in the know with regards to that.

Determination and tenacity rule Jack’s otherwise capricious life and he is quite resolute in coercing the entirety of Turner’s recent history into the light.

They haggle on the price for the commission, and for a moment Jack think he can see a remnant of the youth’s old energy flaring up. They eventually agree upon a price—Jack would have bargained with more zeal, but he has a strange compulsion not to under value the lad’s work and has found the élan of their intercourse to be quite stimulating. With the conclusion of their negotiations the splinter of his familiar Will drowns in the rising tide of this other Will. If he could dive in and drag the lad to the surface, he would. Yet there are some oceans that even Captain Jack Sparrow cannot swim.

“I will do this for you, Jack. But this will be the only and last time. When I am finished, you will leave and not search me out again.”

“Unless you want me to.”

“Unless I—and why would I do that?” The pirate shrugs carely. ly.

“You never know. You might find living all uptight and cloistered away to be no fun.” He winks. “Pirate blood and all that.”

“I am no pirate and I never will be, blood or no.”

“Maybe then you’ll simply be wanting to stop running away.”

“‘Running away’?” Will sputters indignantly.

“Well, lad, I’d best be going now. Don’t want to get you all riled.” Jack rolls to his feet and gives Will a small, almost mocking bow as he moves to the door. “I might drop by to check on your progress.”

“I will not be making progress until I’m paid.”

“Then I shall have to bring it,” Jack quips.

“See that you do. I will be waiting.” The pirate doffs his battered hat and exits with all the dramatics he has had years to perfect.

*~*~*~*

“Why did you lead him here?” Doctor Smith raises inquiring brows as he sips his coffee. Will Turner regards him stoically from the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor. The little man makes no mention of the youth being out of bed despite his strict orders.

“Why did you lead the pirate here?” Will clarifies, though he suspects the balding man requires no clarification and is simply being difficult.

“He respects his profession,” the chirurgeon answers. Will digests this with a mildly nauseated frown. “Would you have rather I allowed him to procure one of Gow’s blades?”

“No, but…”

“You know him or knew him, correct?”—nod—“Then on that ground you would not have him use a merely serviceable weapon. However, if I had brought some other pirate, then you would have preferred that I had not, true?”

“I would not furnish a pirate to kill innocents.”

“But this man is a pirate and he intends to use the blade for more than just threat, innocents or sinners aside. What is the difference?”

“Jack is a good man.” A recurrent sensation of this conversation stings the young man.

“You know this only from experience. If you had not known him and he had come, would you rather I ignored him?”

“I…You see…” Smith watches him kind patience. “What do you want me to say?” The man takes a sip of his drink and shrugs. “Are you attempting impart some moral lesson?”

“I have merely answered your question, son,” the little man replies with a serene smile.

“You just asked more questions!”

“I answered it first, and then I asked a question, to be fair.” Will thinks on this and retraces the course of their discourse.

“That was not much of an answer, sir.”

“Then perhaps you should judge the quality of your question.” The man’s tone is conversational and without censure. He has merely stated a view. The youth cannot find it in himself to become offended.

“Are you going to furnisis pis particular pirate?”

“If he pays first.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“Not when it comes to shiny bits of metal.”

“What do you trust him with?”

The young man’s response is too quiet to be heard, if in fact he has vocalized a response at all. Smith sets down the cup on its matching saucer and picks up a half-read epistle. Will touches the livid bruise on his jaw and decides to take a walk.

“Try to make it to supper,” the man calls tranquilly after him.

*~*~*~*
*~*~*~*

“You know, boy, it takes three miracles to become a saint.” Genial smile.

Pulse thundering through fragile veins. Severed finger laying pale and bloodied on a dirty palm. Oh God. Oh God.

“Three has always been my lucky number.”


*&*&*&*&*&*


I apologize for the condition of the previous chapter. I had not realized that I posted the wrong edition until last week. Thankfully, while working on this, I reread it to reference a certain description and discovered the disaster that was Chapter Two. Spelling and grammatical errors abounded, ran rampant and unchecked. I am deeply shamed.

However, I am ebullient that people managed to overlook my transgression and allowed themselves to give unto me kind words and encouragement. To show my appreciation I have made this chapter slightly longer than is normative for me (and no the following words have no affect on the story content length).

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To those who have deigned to give me praise and encouragement.

PJ, gact, violent Underscore! rabbit, FainpatheElanesse, Ally, ewanspotter, Ibonekoen, Leviathan, Nicole, Night, crevette, I am deeply grateful to all of you for taking the time out of your lives to review this story. I hope that this chapter will meet with your kind approval, and, if not, I shall endeavor with utmost dedication to rectify the situation. Thank you for your wonderful patience.


ElvenEyes, I was delightfully surprised by your humorous and entertaining review. It made me smile and laugh. Thank you so much for brightening my day!

JediGurrl, I am gladdened that I continue to garner your support. Your reviews always give me great encouragement.

Chibikat, I apologize for my over-use of obscure words. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to discern what words people find uncommon. This is what I get for becoming an English Major (the amount of reading I have to do is frightening). However, I am quite pleased to find that you have still managed to retain a positive feeling for the majority of this work. I hope that you will continue to find pleasure in this story.

Whitewitchdark, Fiestyredms, your comments were most appreciated. They give me the courage to continue. A writer is always jubilant to find people who enjoy her work and I am no exception. Thank you!

Hellborne, I am truly glad to have earned your approval. I shall ever endeavor to keep my writing entertaining, and if I fail, then I shall humbly request patience until I am able to create something worthy of approval.

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Once in a lifetime author rec. (unless I find another whose writing simply blows me away):

I do not believe I have done this before, but I cannot hold myself back. A truly talented author has published an exquisitely crafted story, yet the story has not received the attention it most assuredly deserves. In order to rectify this deplorable situation, I would like to recommend that anyone who finds my story marginally entertaining should go and read RubyIsabella’s “Between Wind and Tide.”

http://adultfan.nexcess.net/aff/story.php?no=1814 The The plot is enthralling, the writing entrancing and the sublime originality has me in raptures. I am not worthy of reading such a work.

The author has made no overtures to me to recommend her work. I have done this out of the generosity of my spirit. Please do not ask me plug your work; I am simply doing this because I truly believe in the greatness of this author’s creativity.

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For those interested in my live journal, you can find it at http://www.livejournal.com/users/sy_fanfiction/