Rule Number Five

Rule number five: No men on my ship. I spent my life trussed up by rule after rule after rule and right now they all seemed weak and unnecessary. The smoke and drink lifted those self imposed coils from my body and dropped them like so much discarded clothing at my feet.

We stopped in the tiny darkened galley where I poured us another glass of wine. My head was spinning and my skin was hot. He sipped and moved closer, eventually placing his empty cup down next to my hip. His fingers wandered the small distance to my thigh and I jumped at the gentle touch. With slight pressure, he eased me onto the table where his hands suggested I part my legs. I took the suggestion and he moved into the open space and held me close, kissing me in a steady rhythm that was new to me but not unpleasant.

It was dark and silent down here in my ship. The waves lapped gently at my hull, providing a rhythm that was much more familiar than Jae’s lips. He took off his shirt first before gently lifting mine away. The young man took a moment to admire my bare chest in the scant light from the porthole before kissing down my cheek, my neck, and eventually cupping one breast and bringing it to his lips. I gasped as his mouth took me in and curled around him. His skin was warm and smooth as I ran my hands along his back. God, he was young. I noted a few minimal scars and wondered what he must be thinking about my stitched together torso. He didn’t say anything if he did notice, his mouth was skillfully applying his talents elsewhere.

Jae came back up to my lips and I reached for the drawstring on his pants. He was already hard at attention. He reached for my drawstring and I flinched. Despite the desire and the haze there were the scars. Always the scars.

“Do you have sex with men?” he asked, parroting my earlier question but in a softer tone.

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll need these off.” He pulled at the fabric tie and eased the garment past my hips. It was dark, I stood and let my clothes slip to the floor. My legs were still wrapped in their linen wraps and those would be staying on. The important parts were freed. I stepped out of my clothing, reached for his hand, and led him to my cabin.

I closed the curtains on my little portholes to keep us in darkness. My scars would ruin everything. He didn’t protest. He sat on the bed and reached for me. I couldn’t move.

“You are nervous?” His voice was calm and deep. When I didn’t answer he scooted closer to me and kissed me. I could feel him hard against my stomach. “I’ll be right back.” He was away only an instant and back with a small bottle which he uncorked and placed at my lips. It was almost pure opium poppy tea. I drank.

I’ve lost myself a number of times in my life due to one circumstance or another but this was my favorite. My world melted around me until I floated in it as one would float in a sensory deprivation tank.

Except I could feel what I wanted to feel.

I could feel Jae’s body as he stretched out above me. I could feel him press my legs back. I could feel his tongue enter me where I instructed him. I could feel him bring to life parts of me that hadn’t seen attention in years. When he entered me…he wasn’t Graham. I’d lost that man for good. Jae was new and I’d never feel Graham again. The young man was hard, sure, and steady. My world wrapped around the place deep inside where it was dark, quiet, and pure. That was where I wanted him. That was where I wanted to stay.

It was dark inside my cabin. I made sure it stayed dark. Jae let me know when one day turned into the next. I didn’t care. Hunger wasn’t a thing unless it was for his body. Jae was young. I was old. Graham had been well into middle age for a man of his era. Our marriage – would have been marriage – had long since passed where we could spend days at a time like this in bed; hands all over each other, bodies open and exploring the other, finding each and every way to make the other moan and quake and delight. Jae would spend himself, then recover to satisfy me again and again with a speed I hadn’t come to expect in years.

Sleep may have happened. If it did it was short and ended with his head between my legs, eclipsing sensations even my dreams couldn’t bring me, or I sat astride him riding him deep into ecstasy. He may have left for food, I didn’t know or care so long as he was back and naked beside me. The small bottle of poppy tea was nearly depleted and I knew no pain.

“You should eat something, Captain.” Jae crawled back into bed beside me. I ducked beneath the covers to take him in my mouth but he laughed and pulled me to the surface. “I have a plate for you.” 

He put a plate in front of me but I wasn’t hungry for food. All I wanted was the blissful solace of our warm, dark room where nothing existed on the outside.

No world.

No sisters.

No pirates.

No endless plates of snacks.

No husbands.

I pushed the plate away and pulled him over me.

“It’s been days, you need food,” he insisted and held up a piece of fruit.

“No.” I stroked him with my hand and watched his face ease and relax as all his blood collected elsewhere. He shivered and groaned as he grew hard and hot.

“After this, you eat or sleep.” He pressed me back and thrust between my legs hard and fast. I cried out at my sudden victory and fulfillment. 

The words he’s said belonged to troublesome souls who weren’t in this room and he and I both knew it and didn’t care. I laughed and angled him deeper. He grinned in fierce determination and we were soon caught up in the joy of the moment. We climaxed together and he collapsed at my side, promptly falling asleep after the lullaby my vagina had just sung him.

Sun peeked through my curtains and I twitched them back. The drugs in my system pulled at me, warning that the finish line was fast approaching and my bill was being tallied. I staggered to the little bottle and drained it. The opium white washed my nerves and I shuddered in the sudden vacuum of care and responsibility.

The Fountain worked in three ways. The initial measure was an automatic feature, a continuous drip of restorative that kept my immune system in top shape. This first measure made alcohol and other drugs particularly potent.

The secondary measures took effect in cases of extreme peril. I would, in effect, be turned off and turned back on again. The Fountain was life, and life was meant to be felt, not muted and gagged to the point that time became a meaningless blur. My bill had come due. The Fountain had had enough of my dalliances. My lungs stopped. I was paralyzed. My heart stopped. From the top of my head came the splitting pain of a drill opening my skull and forcing in what shouldn’t belong. I dropped onto the bed next to Jae’s sleeping form.

****

“Hey, Heeny.”

This wasn’t real. I was on the riverfront at the temple. It was night here. The blazing fires from the temple provided only dim light this far away. Maui sat next to me and watched the small surf break on the shore. We were never allowed to sit here. When we weren’t working we were locked in the sacrificial holdings/ghetto. There was commotion behind us as five boisterous young adults hustled over the dunes.

“I remember this,” I told the Maui next to me as the Maui from the temple stripped and dove into the river.

“I remember this too.” He watched himself splash in the dark river. “We weren’t supposed to be here.”

“But we all smelled so bad we couldn’t stand it anymore,” I recollected.

Over the dunes, Mo, Zheng, Marco, and I raced in Maui’s footsteps. Mo and Zheng were next in the water. Marco folded his clothing instead of tossing it like the others and reached his hand out for me. God, we were so young it was almost painful to look upon.

I watched almost as intently as the young Marco did, as the young Anne stripped off her clothes. She was beautiful. Her skin was flawless; only the brand on her neck and a few dull evidences of scourge whips on her back. I remember she thought of herself critically, thinking Zheng was much more beautiful and graceful, thinking the other girls at her high school were thinner, prettier, more worthy of attention. But this Anne, she had everything I wanted and she didn’t even know it.

“I wish I could warn her.”

“I know the feeling.” Maui had his eyes on his own younger self frolicking in the water.

“They probably have, what, twenty minutes till they’re chased back to the holding?” I looked back towards the firelit temple and knew the guards would be on their way soon.

“If they’d only keep it down a little they could have had more time.” Maui shook his head as his younger self boomed out laughter.

Mo tackled him and soon Marco was joining in on the game. Maui and I laughed from the shore.

“How bad was the punishment for this escape? Quarter rations and standing out in the sun for three days without sleep? Right?”

“It was worth it.” Marco and Anne were challenging Zheng and Mo to a chicken fight. Maui was the referee.

“Team Heeny, what are you seeking for a prize?” Ref Maui asked.

“First pick of tools tomorrow,” My younger self and I said at the same time. The Maui next to me chuckled.

“Team Zheeny?” Ref Maui turned to Mo and Zheng.

“If we win, these two finally have to kiss,” Zheng crowed and we went to war. They were having a blast. Mo and Marco were good bases and Zheng and I were ruthless trying to unseat the other. Zheng always wagered trying to get Marco and I to physicalize our affection. She always lost.

“You two drove us crazy,” Maui said. “Always together. Every night together. Clearly devoted to each other. Barely touching. Not until the very end.” He shook his head.

“I remember.” I smiled.

They’d been merciless to us. I just hadn’t been ready. Marco and I sent Zheng over backwards in the water and he spun me around in victory before tipping me backwards over his own shoulders and laughing. The group got out of the water and went to dry on the shore. It was hot out, the air would dry us as fast as a towel tonight. Zheng was complaining a blue streak to Mo about failing to keep her upright; she was a sore loser. Then she turned her diatribe on me and Marco.

“I mean, her naked legs were around your neck and you aren’t even going to take a poke?” she scoffed. “My god man, I see how hard you are when you wake up in the morning. Anne, how can you be so cruel?” Our little hut had been very close quarters for the four of us. Maui lived farther away with a rotating door of women.

“It’d be one thing if you two obviously weren’t into each other but it’s been years.” Young Maui joined Zheng’s band. “Marco, if you’re shy we can go have a nice talk about your changing body.” 

But no such conversation would happen. The guards were on their way. Their heavy footsteps marched just beyond the dunes. Mo was on his feet and dressed in seconds.

“Don’t go.” Zheng held onto him.

“How many people did we bury today? 20? 25?”

“They’ll get you again. Just stay.”

“I’m not getting buried.”

“Not today or tomorrow. But they will punish you!” Zheng argued fruitlessly. Mo ran every chance he got. Tonight he’d get farther than ever before but eventually he was caught. Zheng had spent months nursing him back to health afterwards. She watched Mo sprint down the beach without looking back, her perpetual frown new on her young face.

“Maui, got any friends I can stay with tonight?” she asked. He nodded and they ran in the direction of his hovel.

Marco and I dressed and leapt over the sand and rails and into the sacrificial holdings, winding our way through the shabby huts and hovels till we got to ours. We’d all be caught the next day. Because of our bath in the river we smelled better than the rest.

I watched Marco and my young self get ready for the night. He held the thin blanket up and young Anne crawled in beside him. They lay face to face.

“Do you – why don’t you – am I cruel?” Young Anne was trying to ask why Marco never tried anything with her.

“You don’t want me to,” Marco answered.

“Don’t you want more?” Young Anne would have done it. She wasn’t ready but she would have done anything for him.

“I’m not a gambler, Annie.” He gently stroked the hair along her forehead. “I want what I have.” He pulled his hand away and whispered goodnight. The two were soon asleep. Eventually she would be ready. They would leave the temple, they would marry, they would spend their days enthralled with each other…and then they’d part.

“He’s good,” the Maui next to me said as he watched the sleeping would-be lovers.

“Yes, he is.” We wandered back towards the shore. This strange timeless land felt inordinately restful. In the distance (though it was a world away) I could see the Try Your Luck tied off on Zheng’s dock, myself dead on a bed next to a young man who did not deserve to get mixed up in my life, my sister partying with ancient strangers, and Marco sipping saké by a fire in a foul mood.

“What are you doing, Heeny?” Maui asked as if he could see the same thing I could.

“I don’t know. I’m very unhappy.”

“The war ended but sometimes I wonder if you ever stopped fighting. Do you even know how to live in peace?”

“No.” That was an easy question.

“This wasn’t the worst place. They said to come back here if we get tired. Maybe you should –”

“No.” Another easy question. Mo had said as much to me before.

“They will take action soon. Everyone is worried. It went really badly for them here after what I did. If you’re allowed to wake up from this it will be brutal. If you –”

“I’m not you, Maui.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You don’t exist anymore,” I told his ghost. “You wanted to get the hell away from me and you did. You can stay the hell away from me now.” I turned to find myself alone on the shore.

The sun rose on the temple shoreline and I heard the sounds of people waking and beginning work. I stayed where I was. Time passed in the night and those who were waking and beginning their day here were people I’d never met. Time and the river had erased my family’s footprints from the sand in front of me.

“Anne.” A priest stood on the dune behind me, his helmeted head gleaming in the sun.

“Hello, Mo.”

“Walk with me.” He didn’t wait. He turned and left. I caught up just over the dunes and halfway to the temple. I stopped in shock at the sight of the burial grounds beyond. It had expanded far beyond the quarry and into the fields, acres and acres of sacrifices, dead and buried.

“What happened?”

“Our actions have consequences. What you see was wrought because of Maui’s choice.” He rubbed his hands through his long and slightly graying hair and fixed me with a stare that said, what will this place look like if you decide to follow Maui?

“I’m not him.”

“You aren’t acting any differently.”

“I’m going home.”

“And where is that?”

“I want to go. I want to wake up. Let me go!”