3. Tales of a Sea Hag

Tales of a Sea Hag


  • "Name?" sniffed the man, his scratchily quill spitefully filling the air with bureaucratic coils. He had one of those cod-faces. A puffy, sloppy sort of face, lips over-red, feminine smears of colour. Cod Face pushed his spectacles down his nose, peering from his scribing desk, closely fondling the port master's book.
    “You do you have a name, I take it?” Dip dip. More judgemental spider scribbles across the parchment, a mean little script. She squinted for a better look. “What’ee writin’ pen-prick?”
    “Now, listen here - ” he spluttered ink across his sleeves.

    “Mercy, Able Seawoman,” she yawned, unlimbering her arse from the stool, taking a stompy turn across the scribe’s dingy little office. A small, stoor-stained window guttered oozy light from outside. A smutty sort of illumination, mean and watery. “Do you remember your primary allocated fiscal number?” She grunted in the negative, peering into a cheap replica Calimshan pot. Empty. Apart form the dust. He tut-staccato-tutted, orgasmic pleasure twitching benignly in his crotch with the prospect a Form IV order under section 6(2). Flick fingered, he fondled the new parchment, quickly anointing section 1(7)(a)(ii) with a cross perfectly within in the confines of its box. His paper lips pouted agreeably, running a spindle-index to triple check.

    The rest of the mantelpiece was similarly decorated. Or undecorated. Worthless ugly little feckers passed off as mementos from friends, relatives. Behind him, on the grey-green walls, Cod Face’s portrait hung, surrounded by similarly fish faced family. Mackerel brats and their suety lard-cake of a mother who looked that glum that Mercy conceived of the poor cow spending her days darning and looking for an excuse to die from an early bout of pleurisy. The whole dive smelled of law. That dry, sweet-sherry sort of taste. Mercy wrinkled her nose, casually flicking a stumpy statue of Helm on his arse for spite. “Don’t touch anything.” twitched Spider Tom in his hard backed chair, scurrying back to pleasure himself with his quill. Scratchity scratch. She felt her eye twitch.

    “That us yet, eh ken, ya cunt, argh?” He gave her a dreich look, like a wet weekend. “Argh.” she answered herself, with a teen-puff from her billows, giving up the marginal pleasure of wryly appropriating Cod Face’s meaningless trifles peppering the fireplace. Boot-thump, another, and like a tin-plated sponge, she slapped herself glumly onto the uncomfy stood, polishing the bloody thing into comfort with her arse. It was Cap’n feckin’ Sam “Sheepworryin’” Shrimshaw Macgraw who had her in this honest-man midden.

    Not that Cod Face was honest of course. He gave a good impression. Formed in all his legals prettier than a long-ear lights a candle, it was true enough, but he knew on which side his collar was starched. Dirty money flowed through Cod Face’s fish trap smoother than a randy beaver in Calimshan, for all his airs and graces. Umberlee rot the bastard’s belly, thought Mercy, the air punctuated by the crisp slap-down of another parchment to be notarised and the prod prod as she stabbed as her calloused thumb with her dagger. He’d get the Giddy Aunt through the web of statutes and crap. As usual. The whoreson.

    “Ye finished yet ye grubber-scub-lubber? I has work to do, wi’ a wanion, argh!”
    “Almost done Miss Mercy,” - a right Peltie-poofter this. Bet he gets sucked off for sixpence a’hind the Cockle’s End. Mercy had spotted a couple o’ nancy-looking urchin boys, faces painted slitty like, trying to pass themselves off as elves. Daft wee bilge rats. Had their like on the Gibbet’s Mate an’ all. Always a ready hand for a sailor’s tiller in need. She chortled to herself, spitting a gobbet of phlegm onto Cod Face’s floor with a pissy-grin on her pier front.

    Mercy dumped a bored, leering eye on the stuffed shark head pinned to the wall. Even that was rotting in spite of the pickle. Prod prod. She twitched again, resting her ham-hoch paw on the heel of her cutlass. “Are ye nearly finished pen-prick? Some o’ us has -legitimate- business to be at - savvy ye rum cod roe’ee says I?”

    “Do you think Mister MacGraw would take kindly to a meaningless little servant such as yourself assaulting a trusted and valued business associate. Do you think? So, Hmm? Hmm?” Every bloody time. She’d been to visit Cod Face twice now, but for official purposes, the arsewipe always falsified his thoughts, said he’d ne’er set eyes on any salt, and certainly no dwarf salt. Arse bound up tighter than a reef knot. Looked jury rigged from her perch.

    “Aye aye aye, I be sure yer enjoyin’ yersel’ kipper-cull, wi’ a curse.” She grumbled, he allowing himself a spasm of notarised pleasure. “Now… there we are,” stamped, “Your papers are in order my lady. You may take yourself to the door. I trust you recall the way.” He pushed the papers into a leather bag, gently pressing this across the battered looking table before arachnid fingers flickered a-hold of a weeny long-eared wine glass, a drizzle-small amount in its belly.

    “What’s that - what‘s that’ee say cully wart? Cap’n MacGraw be a big arse-bandit wi’ a small bell end? Ye nary ’spect the man, does’ee, ye paper-man? Argh, well that be a right pity.” she paused manfully, a bead of red popping, uncorked by the knifepoint at her thumb. “Fer’ee…”

    Cod Face chuckled, but the laugh curdled in his throat, never reaching his weasel-lensed eyes. Mercy cracked a grin as his spindles tightened about the mock-crystal glass, hastily draining the tragically small alcoholic squirt. She breathed on him. “Savvy?”

    Grey beating a hasty retreat into white on his rubbery face. “Listen woman. I have no idea what on earth you’r -” Crack. A horny-hand connecting with an academic nose. Conclusion: gouty red stuff. Most colour that ever came out of Cod Face in his life. “Aaaaaaieeeeeee!” Mercy kicked the table. Ox-hoof, thump, clatter-crash as it tumbled paper-ink rain over Cod Face’s prone body, blood gouting over the paper. “Oh, nay nay, stop Cod F- er… I mean - What’s tha’? - “Cap’n can go an’ feck his mammy, wi’ a wanion?” “No! No! Please!” A frothy reply, red bubbles. “Only, I is mos’ fond o’ yon aul’ hoor ye is mockin’ ye mockit girlin’ twirlin’ ginny burlin’ excuse fer a cove, says I, an’ I nay think Cappie’d like’ee fondlin’s mammy wi’ yer dusty tongue would’ee argh?” Mercy hopped over a strewn chair. Cod Face - henceforth - Red Mullet face, was cowering like an anorexic hedgehog, pressing a wee girlie kerchief to his snotterbox, trying to stop the blood from wrecking his notice of title for some uptight, weskit wearing notable. Sobbing like a wet Wednesday, she leaned in, rattling her fish skeleton in his ear with a hoot.

    “I may no be a lady, ye rum lubber, but I ha’ more balls than’ee ’ere will, says I. See, it turns out ye nary be such a trusted associate as’ee pretend, dick-face. Cappie foun’ out, accidental like as’ee’r sellin’ oor whereabouts to lawfuls, savvy?” He gibbered denials. Groin thrust. Gibbered for personal reasons.

    “An’ as’ee might ha’ guessed, Cappie ain’t o’er fond o’ lawfuls kennin’ where Giddy Aunt be goin’ see? An’ so ye an’ I, we has a problem, don’t we.”

    “I don’t have a problem. Take anything. I don’t want to die! Wait. I won’t tell. Don’t tell. Please. Please!” A warm, wet-yellow puddle anointed the floor. “Tsk tsk tsk. Yer mammy no got’ee trained yet, arsewipe? Well. Let ol’ aunty Mercy help’ee out, argh? I is good hearted, I is. Fair playin’, wi’ a wanion.” She smacked her lips, fingering her cutlass thoughtfully. Daft fecker. Not even a whisper of a heavy at the door. Thought being in with the mob, he was safe. Diddy merchant. Spat a gobbet of phlegm at his lumpy wife in the portrait, raising the shiney chopper in salute. “I be doin’ee a favour, miss, truly I is. I hope’ee get some young flesh-pipe as can fiddle dee dee better’n this limp dick!” A whimper. Very low now. Dirty. Drippy.

    “After all. Cannae ha’ the lawfuls kennin’ we is off tae Peltie now can we Cod Face?” Everything in life needs some recognition. Cod Face wasn’t useless. She’d give him that. A sausage tap on the hardy calfskin satchel. She imagined what lay coiled within. Law. Warm and dry. Justifying law. She smacked her lips. “An’ thank’ee fer these, cully. I be sure the work be o’ gran’ quality. As usual. Notarised prettier than a penny-tottin’ slattern.” Silence. Pool slowly fizzling ammonia. “Oi!” a crunchy kick in the ribs. “I is tryin’ to say thank’ee, argh?” Silence. Cod Face had crawled into a ball, long crow’s swoop wings of black crinkled with dust from the floor, studded with slowly crisping beads of blood. Silence.

    “Umberlee’s icy tits. There be no pleasin’ some bastards.”

    Chop.


  • yess…


  • //Bumped in anticipation of an attempt at a further tale of Mercy. And of course, for those of you who didn't get to savour her haddocky whiff the first time around!


  • Dances Two pirate journals! Juuuuubilations! (bg2) Even if we are cluttering it with kudos now. Great work ArUlric, get back IG!

  • S

    chuckle Nice work Ar 🙂


  • :lol: 👏 :lol: More, more!! I miss Mercy all over again now!