He's Got A Little Captain In Him
I walked my bike up to my apartment door. Christ, I was tired. It had been another long night of my coworkers being incompetent and me bailing them out. As I was fond of telling the only guy I liked at that place, they all worked slower than coma patients on oxycontin. That had overdosed on oxycontin and died. I wasn’t entirely sure my manager didn’t go down each aisle of the grocery store where I worked and moved their rigor mortis-stiffened limbs for them. You think I’m joking, but really, I’m not. I was tragically born without a sense of humor. Seriously, if you had seen the blank stares some of them have while they lurched around aimlessly, pointedly not doing their jobs so I could do it for them later, you’d be hard-pressed to not have the coroner on speed dial, like I do, just in case.
Right, negativity. I’m trying to work on that. Even bought a coupla cheerful self-help books on meditation and having a happy outlook on life. I usually made it past the first few sentences before burning them, too. I tried to, anyway. I’m already on my third Kindle. They’re surprisingly difficult to set on fire, and burnt plastic smells really bad. And I’m also prone to distractions, so I’m getting off point.
Right. Crappy job, although I’d actually like it if my coworkers weren’t, you know, corpses. I sauntered up to my door, my trusty steed cheap-ass mountain bike at my side, like a boss. Actually, no. If I start in with the meme-talk, you have my permission to execute me with extreme prejudice. Shit gets old after a while, you know?
Distractions. Oops. Continuing on, all I wanted to do at that point was slip inside to my icebox of an apartment. Live in Arizona for a while and you- Hah, wasn’t distracted that time! Just...give me a moment.
I just wanted to get inside, make sweet, sweet love to my raging alcoholism with some cheap swill, and maybe get started on the next chapter of this story I was writing. It wasn’t that good, to be honest, but it was at least decent, and I was getting better as I went. I actually had a long list of things I had to fix with some of the earlier chapters that I was totally going to work on except I started writing out all this instead. I was-
Holy shit, side-tangents really are one of the problems I need to fix. I think it’s because I’m retarded, but if I was retarded it probably wasn’t a good idea to trust my thoughts anyway. They’d cancel each other out like double negatives which would make me magically smart enough to finally get through my apartment door after six damn paragraphs of blathering. Just gotta do it quickly, like pulling off a bandaid or learning to not suck at writing! (The latter actually takes quite a bit of time to be OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!)
Key jammed into keyhole. A click of locks. Door open, bike inside, shut door. Three strange men sitting on my couch. Immediately head to refrigerator for a beer. Stop at refrigerator. Turn back around. Three dudes in weird costumes sitting on my couch, staring at me.
One guy was dressed in Popeye duds (minus the freakish forearms), only his shirt had horizontal blue and white stripes. Even had the cane pipe and everything. He was a bit on the small side. ‘Petite’ would have been the wrong word. ‘Looked like a lithe little monkey that could have passed for a member of the female’s Chinese Olympics gymnastics team if he wasn’t Caucasian and if he possessed an unhealthy fondness for crimson one-piece bathing suits’ would have been the right word. Uh, words.
Anyway, sitting next to him was a fairly large fellow in blue overalls and a yellow hard hat. His arms were coated in a thick carpet of manly hair—look, I’m a terrible writer, he had manly arm hair, use your imagination. Every bit of exposed skin seemed grimy and soot-covered. He had on a pair of thick glasses, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was staring at me so much as through me. The glistening trail of saliva escaping his slackjawed mouth suggested he might even have been dumber than I am, but I digress.
The last guy was just some old dude with white hair and a manly beard—this is my story, I’ll reuse ‘manly’ as often as I want to avoid having to actually, erm, think about things. And also, em dashes. My em dashes will blot out the heavens, such that you will have to read in the shade. Also, I’m hoping that at least a few editors die from coronaries at some point. Just wait until I start in with the semi-colons...Okaaaay, back to the old guy, he was just dressed in a simple black suit, sports jacket left unbuttoned to reveal a plain white shirt.
So. Two guys in weird costumes, one old guy in regular clothes. On my couch, staring at me. I know I’m recounting all this fairly calmly now, but at the time I was scared shitless. My hand tremored as I reached for my workplace boxcutters and backed towards the door. I wasn’t even thinking straight enough to reach for the cellphone in my back pocket. If this were a horror movie, I’d be the eponymous black dude that died first. I probably should have at least tried to get make-up and a perm to fake the role, but I’m a terrible actor, and my clammy hands were too busy fumbling for my boxcutters to Google which level of Hell I’d be put in for using blackface acting just to die. Seriously, that’s just racist, and my best friend is black. Probably.
My brave tactical reversal was halted by a feeling on my back that was decidedly not-my-apartment-door-leading-to-the-freedom-of-not-being-murdered. (Those hyphens killed at least three prereaders, I promise.) I turned to see a big red jacket with golden buttons. I looked up and my vision was consumed by a pair of maniacal eyes and a leering grin. Thankfully, said grin did not literally consume my vision, as I’ve grown attached to my eyes. I backed away slowly, trying as best as I could to take in the guy who had suddenly slipped in behind me. He was huge. Now, I’m 6’1”—just shy of a coupla meters for everyone that doesn’t live in a surveillance state built upon freedom and civil liberties and the ability to ignore freedom and civil liberties when the government decides it’s convenient to do so. I’m pretty sure the top of my head didn’t even reach the bottom of this guy’s chin. He must’ve had at least a third degree black belt in ominous looming, this guy.
I backed away from the crimson giant with threatening, sanguine grace, like a jungle cat dangerously circling its prey and praying to whatever Gods that would listen that it didn’t void its bowels and collapse into the fetal position as it wretched and sobbed like a prepubescent girl. Which I totally didn’t do. Mostly because I was too shocked by the guy in front of me.
“Holy shit, I’m being mugged by Captain Fucking Hook!” I shouted.
“No, you didn’t,” he responded, his voice possessing a smoky, threatening timbre. He kept up the homicidal Cheshire grin. I don’t actually think I’ve seen him without it, not once. “You mostly just babbled, and mewled like a bag of kittens being keelhauled.” He’s such a nice guy. I didn’t have the heart to tell him you couldn’t hear kittens that were underwater. “You can if you put enough of them into the sack. Also, what is a ‘threatening timbre’? Do you even read the crap you vomit onto the screen?”
Just ignore him, he does that sometimes. I’d get him to stop, but you try telling some seven foot freak with a sword that he’s not allowed to break the fourth wall.
Right, summary. Four weirdos in my apartment. Sailor, metal worker, old dude in a cheap suit, and Satan big red pirate guy. Big red pirate guy pushed me back into my living room. I’m now being stared at by four men that I could only assume were a generic brand Village People cover group. Except for that old guy with the white beard in a suit. I swear he looked familiar.
“I’m Captain Morgan,” the pirate said. “And this is an intervention.” Oh, well that’s a relief. I figured it was a rape-train in the making. Unless they were intervening between my ass and its virginity. That’d be bad.
“Y-you’re not gonna rape me?” I said with cocksure bravery, my voice built off the foundation of molten steel, courage, and other manly things that did man. Like beards. I flicked my eyes towards the old dude before I went back to being completely fucking terrified.
“If you want a little captain in you, you’ve got the wrong captain, boy,” the nice Mr. Morgan growled. Yep, I was definitely gonna be raped. I think I started to cry a little at this point, but my memory is pretty hazy so I’m just going to say I was defiant and angry and didn’t put up with their bullshit. I did the exact opposite of what my new foes expected of me; I plopped down on my bed and stared blankly at my wall, hoping that last semi-colon killed at least one critic before I met my end.
“Just do whatever,” I said blankly. “Please just make it quick.” I still hadn’t remembered my cell phone. I am not an intelligent man.
“Mate, what we’ve got to do won’t be quick.” A small squeak escaped the back of my throat. I barely even realized it was Midget Popeye on the couch that had spoken. Weird Australian accent, too. “We’re your muses.”
“I don’t think I’ll be inspired by anything but antidepressants and therapy for the rest of my life after tonight,” I replied with a defeated croak.
“I do not always speak up,” the old man said, “but when I do, it is because you have the wrong idea.”
“You’re an idiot,” Captain Morgan said.
“Glurb!” the steelworker added cheerfully.
The mini-sailor just sighed. “No, look, kid, we’re literally your muses. The things that prod you to write. Well, we’re not all here. The firebird didn’t think it was a good idea to show up, given the presence of so many flammable spirits.”
“Oh, I’m going to be raped by ghosts,” I said, my voice distant. “That’s nice.” There was a terribly interesting piece of lint on my carpet that I was trying very hard to stare at. I really should vacuum, you know, after the rape-train barrels through the tunnel of-
Right, not gonna finish that sentence. Everyone likes to think that, under dire circumstances, they’ve somehow been able to conceal a badass beneath the drudgery of their daily lives. We’re all just normal people, until you push us too hard and we snap, becoming invincible superheroes that can overcome all odds in a sudden berserker rage.
Complete bullshit. My inner berserker was too busy pleading with that piece of lint on the ground to save me. Maybe I could flick it into the Cap’n’s eye, distracting him long enough for me to bolt for the door. One thing that’s very true about fear is that it impedes one’s rational judgment. In my haste to weaponize lint, I had still yet to remember my cell phone and had completely forgotten about my boxcutters. Hell, I have a gaudy Luna keychain that doubles as a bottle opener that I got for purchasing one too many My Little Pony t-shirts. Even that would’ve worked better. But something broke in me. I was resigned to my fate. And my fate rested in a small ball of lint on the floor of my sloppy apartment.
The little bastard didn’t even deign to stare back at me. Or to inform me that I had just gone on another side tangent. Fucking inconsiderate bastard.
“Not ghosts, you dolt,” the jolly red sociopath said, “spirits as in alcohol. I’m Captain Morgan, that’s Sailor Jerry, that’s Steel Reserve-”
“-Steel Reserve is a malt liquor,” I interrupted. “A very nasty, very cheap malt liquor that I only turn to when I’m broke.”
“Which is always.” Sailor Jerry snorted derisively.
“Glurb!” Steel Reserve nodded enthusiastically.
“Even still, I’d rather not have it known that I actually drink the shit. It’s embarrassing as fuck.”
“Glurb...” Steely said sadly.
It occurs to me now that I didn’t actually have to write that last bit out. Later revisions of this story will replace Steely with Sam Adams. Only I don’t actually know anything about Sam Adams, and it takes a lot of effort to type ‘wikipedia.com’ and search for historical information, so instead I’d just make him say, “The Red Coats are coming!” a lot. Fuck Paul Revere for not making my life easier and having his own brewery.
“What about that guy?” I asked, pointing at the old-timer.
“I do not always introduce myself, but when I do, I am...Antonio Banderas.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I do not always lie, but when I do, it is to avoid telling people I am Dos Equis.”
“That’s annoying as Hell. Stop it. And I don’t even drink Dos Equis. I’ve never even had one in my life.”
“I do not always get invited to interventions, but when I don’t, I show up anyway.”
By this point, I was pretty sure I had just completely lost it, or one of my coworkers thought it might be funny to slip me bath salts or something. I had just pleaded with a piece of lint to save my life, so at the time, it made perfect sense. None of this was real. And Dos Equis was annoying as fuck.
“Not fucking around. Stop that shit.”
“I don’t always fuck around, but when I do, I use Rohypn-”
I screamed violently and grabbed the old fucker by his shoulders. He was surprisingly easy to lift, and the glass on my windows was surprisingly easy to break into a thousand pieces as Dos Equis learned with surprising ease how to fly for a couple seconds before falling 3 stories and thudding to the ground.
He struggled to lift his head, a trickle of blood coming from one corner of his mouth. “I do not always get defenestrated, but when I do, I glarghlb-” he finished with a wet gurgle and then died. If I managed to off him that easily...I glanced at Captain Morgan. He grinned down at me, his knuckles white as he clenched the hilt of his sheathed rapier. I decided I was the bigger man, metaphorically, and that he should be allowed to live as I immediately scurried back to a corner, away from the three remaining avatars of alcohol.
Captain Morgan propped his foot up on my ottoman and struck his infamous pose before saying, “You don’t even own an ottoman.”
Shut up, I’m setting the scene here and you’re ruining it.
Captain Morgan propped his foot up against...a thing. There’s a thing in my apartment and he propped his foot up against it to strike that pose he does.
“You,” he said finally, after staring at me with his manic smile and his mad eyes for a few moments, “are not a good writer.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was afraid he was going to tell me I had a pretty mouth. Instead he was just Captain Obvious.
“But, we here are your muses,” he said, motioning to the other two alcohol-ghost-thingies that had taken me captive. “And it reflects poorly on us when you don’t perform.”
“Look, I tried to have a stripper pole installed, but the landlord shot me down.”
Cap’n Morg shot an accusatory finger at me. “That is exactly what I’m talking about. No one talks like that. Reading your dialogue is like watching a bad buddy cop movie.”
“Why not a good buddy cop movie?” I asked.
“There is no such thing as a good buddy cop movie,” he replied disdainfully. “At least when it comes to writing.”
“I find that very difficult to believe.”
He sneered at me. “How many unnecessary adverbs have you used to describe the dialogue in this fic alone?” My mouth snapped shut and I searched desperately for my hero lint ball. He snorted. “You have...slowly...gotten better. Your dialogue isn’t a collection of monologues thrown haphazardly at one another under the vague framework of a single topic of discussion. Whereas before, an individual character might drone on and on ad nauseum, pausing only for the wooden prompt of whatever character they were speaking at-” I winced at the italics “-your characters now seem to interact much like awkward puppets, the wooden flow of their speech drunkenly banging off one another but at least recognizing they hit something before the conversation careens to the next point. You still have no idea how to handle large group conversations. But I know how to fix that. You see, your dialogue has gotten better because you’ve put more focus into characterization. You’ve actually started thinking about how characters should react in certain situations. But you haven’t gotten into your characters' heads enough for it to flow.”
“Uh, are you trying to bait me into providing the prompt for your next monologue? Because I’m pretty sure that was just a monologue, and I’m kinda writing this, so...”
The edges of Captain Morgan’s mouth curled upwards ever more slightly. “You need to know the characters to write them. When was the last time you actually watched My Little Pony?”
I thought back. It had honestly been a while. I fired up an episode maybe once a week or so, but mostly I was too busy putting off writing my next chapter because I knew the earlier ones needed work browsing the interwebs and getting drunk.
“And why are Steel Reserve and Sailor Jerry so quiet?” the Cap’n that was makin’ things happen continued. “They’re sitting right there.”
“Oh.” My eloquence could have felled entire nations with the dextrous undulations of my silver tongue. Later revisions of this story would include Steely encouragingly spouting “Glurb!” at random intervals, and Sailor Jerry being rational and speaking in an Australian accent even as his physical form shrunk further. I shot a look his way. He looked like he may as well be Tyrion Lannister dressed up like a sailor at a Halloween party. I made a mental note to write him bigger. I probably already pissed off a few African-Americans with this story, and I found it prudent that I did not also anger little people in the process.
Because I value having my kneecaps not bitten off. And they probably owned fewer guns. Maybe I could throw them at Captain Morgan’s face like attack monkeys and oh, God, I’m not helping my case for when I have to explain to St. Peter why I just wrote that.
“This...yes, this is a dire case,” Captain Morgan informed me, his hands behind his back as he paced through my living room. “You are so terrible at characterization, I’m afraid a more direct approach is in order.”
“Glurb!” Steely agreed, an angry tone in his voice. There, I included someone else.
“You really are helpless,” Sailor Jerry said with a sigh. At second glance, he was decidedly less midget-like and more involved in the conversation than before, because I’m an awesome writer.
“You’re going to Equestria, Feng,” Captain Morgan finally stated. “You’re going to interact with the ponies, and you’re going to learn how to write them.”
“I...okay, that sounds awesome?”
“And if you don’t, you're going to have a big captain in you.” He somehow managed to leer harder at me. I don’t know how, he just did. Ask him. “Ask your author to learn descriptions better, or to learn how to write so the readers can envision the scene on their own.” Alright, don’t ask him. Fuck him. Fuck him with a splintery railroad tie. “You’d best not be givin' me more ideas for when you fail, boy.” Also, he’s a pirate, right? Shouldn’t he, like- “Yaargh, matey,” he interrupted flatly.
“So, how am I getting there, anyway? Discord? An intergalactic spaceship that discovers a planet of ponies? Maybe I’ve been in cryogenic storage for a long time? Uh, err, Discord?”
“There is a mirror-”
“Fuck, no. I’m not touching Equestria Girls until I know it’s a decent movie.”
“-in your bathroom. I just thought I’d tell you.”
“Yeah, s’what I thought.”
“Have sword. Will stab annoying, incompetent writer.” Since I’m awesome, I didn’t cry like an injured rabbit about to be eaten by a bear at his words. Mostly.
“No, really, how will I get there?”
“In approximately 3.2 seconds, Twilight Sparkle will botch a spell.”
“What?! Oh, God, no, that’s so fuc-”
The world turned white.
* * * * *
The world turned less white and more small-town-park-colored as a lazy hyphen string put another critic into intensive care. I found myself sitting on a bench. In a small park that might be found in any small town in America. Minus the surveillance drones, of course. Although some of those birds did look a little iffy...
Anyway, by this point it was abundantly clear to me that I had gone off the deep end, and had either completely snapped, or had been struck by a car on my way home from work and was in a coma. While most people, on an intellectual level, are rightfully completely horrified by such circumstances, if you ever find yourself in them, it is exhilaratingly liberating. Nothing you do matters! You can do whatever you want! Nothing can truly hurt you! You might even be able to trick your brain into giving you super powers!
I gasped to myself. Super powers...If I was truly in Equestria, even if it was only in my brain, maybe I could use magic! I focused my mind on levitating a small pebble on the ground in front of me, tightening every muscle in my body as I focused on moving the tiny thing just a smidge.
I stopped several minutes later, hopefully right before I prolapsed my colon from the strain. Okay, no magic. But also, no consequences because I was in a coma or an extremely well-detailed padded room! Yay! And no homicidal Captain Mort Morgan or mostly mute side characters that I had written poorly! Double yay! And someone’s warm breath wafting across my left cheek from an uncomfortably close distance as I sit on this park bench! Crazed homeless rapist person yay!
I turned to my left and immediately jerked my head back. Huge golden irises followed my shocked retreat. The periphery of my vision was filled with a minty green color. Oh, shit.
“H-hands,” a voice urgently wheezed out, accompanied by that uncomfortable warmth of something being entirely too damn close to my face and breathing on it. Wait, how does something ‘urgently wheeze out’ words. I guess maybe they could be having an athsma attack. Or dying of emphysema. I took a break from writing the next few sentences so I could have a smoke. Mmm, delicious, delicious cigareeeeeh aaaand I’m totally not distracted. But seriously, ‘urgently wheeze’? Again with the fuckin’ adverbs, man. I’m gonna have to figure out how those other writers get by with just ‘said’ and ‘ask’. Or pretend I’m gonna try to figure it out.
Whatever, I’m nose to snout with Lyra. And her eyes are crazier than fuckin’ Captain Morgan’s right now.
“Are those...are those hands?” She said ‘hands’ like they were some forbidden term, like she had inadvertently spoken ‘Yahweh’ out loud or some shit. Whatever, I was crazy, what could possibly go wrong?
I wrote that last sentence so something could conveniently go wrong and my readers would pat themselves on the back for recognizing the foreshadowing. For I am a gracious writer, my gifts to my readers—right, a distraction. Something went wrong. Namely, I was reasonable for a second.
“Uh, I’m not sure what’s so special about hands, Lyra.”
The mare gasped and drew her head back, finally giving me the space to breath in air that wasn’t recycled from a psychotic unicorn’s lungs. “You know my name?!” The reverent joy in her voice should have scared me, in hindsight. In regular sight, it scared me. My foresight ability thankfully functioned admirably, and everything worked out. With my cognitive abilities, anyway. The situation itself was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Yes, I do.”
“Show me your hands!”
“Uh, they’re right fuckin’ here?” I held them up. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. I sighed. Thank SuperBuddhaSpaghettiGod I remembered this was all fake and/or a mental breakdown, because my fear evaporated enough to say, “Why are these so surprising? Minotaurs have hands, right? So do dragons, even if they’ve got claws at the end of ‘em.”
“But they aren’t,” she gasped, hyperventilating at this point, “human hands.”
I stared at her. Dully. Fucking adverbs, man. I leveled a flat gaze at her? I shook my head sadly? I did something or another to express my aloof aggravation over her behavior. “Really? Hand-obsessed Lyra? Can’t you be a hidden badass like you were in Xenophilia instead?”
The mare looked confused for a second. “Xeno...Xenophilia?” she asked. I felt a wrenching in my chest as I realized I might have just made a terrible error. “Like, the story?”
Oh, God. I tried to explain.
“Look, I only read it for the plot.”
Her eyes widened and a dangerous grin appeared on her face. My brain was laughing at me because it likes the fact that I never listen to it and thus always find myself in more trouble every time I open my mouth. It has made me a very quiet person when I’m not having a mental breakdown resulting in delusions of cartoonhood. But mostly it’s made me hate my brain.
“No, like, seriously, the literal plot.” She wasn’t listening. I still kept trying to explain. “I only read it because people raved about the world-building. I skipped over those...parts. I didn’t even really like the characters, except for Lyra.”
“You...like me?!” I’m going to kill Captain Morgan. And whoever the fuck decided that Twilight should botch spells enough to summon creatures from different dimensions. Seriously, you’d think Celestia would keep an iron hoof on things from different worlds that could just pop up out of nowhere because a unicorn messed something up. I bet that’s what Tartarus is for. Haha, oops, someone knocked on the princess’s door at the wrong time, messing up her Greater Spell of Cake Conjuration, and now they have some smelly hairless ape on their hands! To Tartarus with them! As a studio audience laughs at the grieving human being dragged away to some god-forsaken hellhole, torn forever from their family.
I’m a cheery guy.
“Can you-” oh, God, Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy was still talking to me. “Can you turn this into a clopfic?”
I stared at her for a few seconds before I slapped her. It was a weak slap, but a slap nonetheless.
“You. Do. Not. Break. The Fourth Wall. In My. Story.” A manic gleam reentered her eyes, and I slapped her again for good measure. A black-gloved hand decided that this was a slapping contest and my face was the target. I flew a few yards as Captain Morgan’s hand connected with my face.
“You sometimes have to write things outside of your comfort zone to understand aspects of your story within that comfort zone,” he lectured. I imagine Sailor Jerry and Steely were somewhere around but I couldn’t be assed to write about them.
I spat out a bloody tooth and got to my feet. “This isn’t teaching me anything about characterization! Lyra’s just acting exactly like everyone else expects her to act in every bad human fic ever!”
Captain Morgan grinned harder. Yes, he grinned harder, fuck you, that psycho is always grinning, I dunno how you expect me to write that he was somehow grinning more of a grin. I could put something more flowery and prose-like here, if it would sate your UNREASONABLE READER EXPECTATIONS.
Captain Morgan’s ever-present grin widened, and the mischievous fays of mirth that danced constantly in his wild blue eyes pranced about with renewed vigor. There. Bastards. If I wanted to write bad fantasy prose I’d be writing my other story. I hope you’re happy.
Fuck it, simplicity for the win:
Captain Morgan grinned. “Now you’re getting it. We’ll see how you handle Pinkie Pie, next.”
“But,” Lyra interjected, “the clop? And what he can do with those hands?”
In lieu of looking for Pinkie, I headed towards Sweet Apple Acres. The farm was bound to have some sort of drill. And a funnel. And bleach. If the trephination didn’t kill me, the brain-bleach would.