The eye of March 1585
I am forever lost to this feral emotion that is consuming me….
It was said that on the day of her birth, the last words her mam whispered after she beheld her daughter’s beautiful round eyes and full red hair were “my poor, sweet Maroon”. That name forever stuck in honor of a dying mother’s last words and as Maroon’s pale skin illuminated a reddish glow in accordance with the setting sun, I resolved that no other name would have beseemed her more.
Her now fiery dark reddish hair splayed around the beach with the wind and she spun in ecstasy as the voice of the crashing waves sounded like an orchestra to her and thus filled her soul with mirth. She wasn’t beautiful, no! She didn’t deserve such paltry flattery because she was aesthetically complete, pristine and seraphic in all qualities. She was one not deserving a place on earth but a place in the heavens, one not befitting any mere man but one befitting a demigod.
Even as the shadows struggled to dim the glow from the stars, her eyes sparkled brightly; her teeth shone whiter and her smile for the umpteenth time, sent the butterflies in my underbelly into pandemonium. It was such a wondrous moment that was acutely frozen in my memory, permanent in my subconscious but temporary in reality for our love is but doomed to gloom. I have now seen that strength isn’t only of the physical but of the mind, for she has shown me this through the manner at which she has remained calm and joyous while I have been fidgety and troubled.
How she has managed to conjure so much sincere joy in the midst of our dire circumstances is beyond me.
We were two lost hearts, alone with the deep blackness of the night that showed us its power only through the thickness of it essence. After a time, we stopped to admire the cold sea as a thick mist rose, drifting around us and absorbing what little illumination the constellations offered. Beyond the faint mist the stars slowly twinkled out, and above her red hair I beheld the radiant moon struggle to unveil itself in all its befitting glory. It was a moment of peaceful calm where we let our passions and excitement simmer. We did not speak a word; we needed not to for we were comfortably resigned to our faith, which is forever in each others arms.
I gently held her hand and took a leisurely stroll along the shoreline as the tides stroked our feet in the sensuous way only a lover would. Our hearts are filled with mirth but heavy with sorrow but boldly we strolled, never fearful or mindful of the turbulent sea and it’s thrashing waves, for we know not the import of fear. Even when the lines of gray in the dark water aggressively rolled in towards us, gathering strength and fury typical of the turbulent Aegean Sea, we still weren’t intimidated by its sheer power and majesty, for the burden in our hearts by far outweighed it.
It was paradise in hell that we sadly wished would last forever.
To fear the sea now would be irrational and unnecessary, for wasn’t it from this same sea that we had come forth? We had nothing to fear in it for our fear lay elsewhere, so we chased each other and waded amongst the waves which smashed against our bodies and provoked screams of thrill from us. We took pleasure in the close physical contact that the sea afforded us but it was short-lived because suddenly, I felt the familiar touch of those menacing and invincible eyes scrutinizing us from the blackness.
My joy turned sour and I broke out in cold sweat as all the hairs on my nape stood at all ends.
But my fears were then cursorily repressed as she drew my attention back to her desire riddled countenance. Her bosoms were provokingly sprouting out from her wet gown and I couldn’t help but put them out of their misery, so I guided her towards the nearest shade and not a care was given as my hungry lips found and suckled on her beckoning nipples. Even when the great spell of our passion had quickly rid us off all form of clothing, we still remained oblivious to the watching and disapproving eyes around us for we were in a world where you only got to live once.
It was a beautiful moment filled with vibrant freedom that defined our love to be true, but sadly with no promise of encountering succor in this dark solitude. All these I thought as I was deeply immersed in her. All this I pondered as she desperately wrapped her legs round me in a vice grip while her fingernails painfully burrowed into the small of my back, leaving bloody trails in its wake. We were lost in the throes of our passion but that lingering feeling of melancholy slowly brought me back as I caught a glimpse of her face.
Doesn’t she feel it too?
What was to love in a situation filled with so much acrid pain? Was love in the actual sense of its significance, worth any form of mindless sacrifices? Was this plain ole’ love or complicated stupidity? Given a second chance, would we make the same choices?
Quite suddenly, the blinding memory of my plump, sweet and cherry faced Eunice with her rotund buttocks broke to the surface of my consciousness and tears streamed down my face. Then I remember my boys, Damien an infantile demon who was as naughty as they came and Alfred, a sweet angel who had the meekest of souls and a pathetic sob escaped my throat. It was as though a large stake had been wedged into my heart and a pair of pincer had been used to wrench my heart from around it.
The agony and loathing I felt were so strong that my excitement deserted me in a whiff thereby losing my once gallant and ambitious erectile form. My member shamefully lay flaccid in the midst of her carnal fluid and my murky dejection as I slowly sank into an abysmal state of depression. As I spiraled out of emotional control, the sudden thought of rum assailed my head and I felt the sweet crippling feeling of intoxication derail my sense. The thought of roasted pork assaulted my mouth and my taste buds processed, translated and transferred the signals to my brain to do further torture to my soul.
Is our love justified or misplaced?
I dearly miss and crave all those little things I took for granted and wish time would unwind. The saying which goes thus; “you will never know how precious a thing is till you have lost it” makes more connotation to me now and I curse the very day I agreed to enter the service of Captain Phoenix Blackheart. I curse my valiant actions that led to my subsequent rise up the chain of command, which thus led to my access to the finer things, second only to Blackheart’s. I curse the day I had first set eyes on sweet Maroon and I curse my big head for allowing the little one bully it into submission.
It had been a battle of wits between common sense and my pecker, if only common sense had prevailed, if only.
I can’t explain when, how or where our chemistry reared its mangled head from, all I can tell is that one day we were sneaking glances at each other, the next we were sneaking kisses and the rest as they say is history. It was one of those unheralded conditions that occur with a bang and sweep all parties involved in an uncontrollable cyclone of emotions, afterward leaving them forever laboring in a losing battle to touch the surface of sagacity.
She was a lost soul who was deprived of attention, while I was steamy and still feeling cocky from my very recently quick ascension through the ranks. What she lacked emotionally and physically, I gave thinking it was just sports and never bothering about the effect on her or the future backwash.
Then the unanticipated happened!
Bloody cherubic faced Amor unlatched an arrow our way and she fell victim, forever lost to the one who rightfully held claims to her and now made available to one who didn’t care much, or so I thought.
Looking back, her sudden affection for me shouldn’t have been in the least surprising because during my sexual shenanigans with her, I had employed quite a few psychological and emotional maneuvers just for thrills. I doltishly never took into consideration that attention, no matter how surreptitious, sorry scratch that and let me rephrase.
I doltishly never took into consideration that attention showed to and received by a lady, no matter how infinitesimal and especially if it was surreptitious will blossom into full fledged and uncontrollable emotional feelings. After all we are only humans and it’s the things forbidden to us that hold our greatest fascination.
So on one faithful night, after everyone had succumbed to the effect of alcohol, she avowed her undying love for me. It is unnerving to note that the brain functions in mystifying ways as mine proved to me that day. My brain had ridiculously refused to acknowledge a single word she uttered in her fifteen minutes litany of love. It was like I zoned out due to terror or the absurdity of her claims shocked my brain into numbness or more understandably, my brain only processed quickly what it deemed important to me, then processed what it deemed as unnecessary darn too tardily.
Whichever the case, it took me about ten minutes after she was silent for the thick blanket of cold realization to settle in. Then quite suddenly something clicked in my head and it was as thought I had been mentally pole axed as a shudder of dread shot through me. So I jolted back to reality and the baritone voice of reasoning came forth spitting a barrage of obscenities. For once the big head took charge and I ended our illicit affair before I reminded her of whom she belonged to and the consequences of her wayward emotions.
Did I really deserve her love?
All she did as I blatantly rejected her love was to quietly sit down watching me with a strange look I couldn’t decipher. She had been too calm for comfort and it had left me unnerved even when she hadn’t raised her voice in discord. Her look had been that of a woman who knew she was in ultimate control and her desired expectations were inevitable, but this I didn’t know then for I was too caught up in my curses and threats.
She knew she already had my heart because I had already relinquished authority to her when I began to really listen to her worries and care about her welfare, but I hadn’t known then.
You see, it’s too darn easy for a man to give his heart away, hence the reason why we guard it jealously and fierily. It is also way easier for a woman to know when a man has lost his heart to her than for the man to know himself because we the men folks remain steadfast in our fight against our emotions. Call itself denial or pigheadedness but lay no blames on the men folks but on the creator because it has been deep-rooted into us by him.
Weeks after I ended our affair, I still couldn’t get the thoughts of her off my flaming mind. Where ever I went, I perceived the lingering scent of her hair and I began to ache for her kisses and company. Then she began to haunt my dreams and waking hours till I began to sometimes hear her seductive voice in the wind taunting, daring and harassing me. I blamed it on the fact that I hadn’t been with my wife for months and assured myself that it would pass. I continued to delude myself till when there came the day I felt this murderous rage when I witnessed her smiling and holding hands with her husband, Captain Phoenix Blackheart the most wanted man in the whole of Europe. The captain of the Flying Medusa, the supreme conqueror of the sea, the only man who has a £100,000 worth of gold bounty on his head, the only man who struck fear into the hearts of men and sailors alike, the only man who owed his life to me.
It was that moment I realized that she wasn’t Amor’s victim, I was. It was that moment I realized that I was a doomed man.
My detrimental and wayward emotions raged on till I could take it no longer. So I rekindled our love and a semblance of normality almost returned for me. It seemed like we never separated only that this time she was in complete control as I was hopelessly bounded to her enchantments. It was a complete role reversal as I the hunter became the hunted. But then again, had I always been in control?
Anyway, our sweet and sneaky love affair continued, and how we managed to pull it off without any of the crew members catching up was a miracle. But like all good or bad things [don’t know which in our case], our illicit affair finally came to light and ended through the most unanticipated circumstances.
You see, the rules of nature stipulate that a time will surface when a certain result must present itself after a man and woman have lain together too frequently. The rules of nature have also proposed that the eventuality is inevitability lest one or both are not blessed with the fertility.
Maroon was with a seed and it could never be Blackheart’s for the eventual inevitability of that possibility was but null.
My rise to the top came after we hijacked a Portuguese trading ship on its way to Venice to trade gold. It was in this hijack I had saved the captains life after he had been cornered by four Portuguese sailors. My timely intervention had saved his life but not without a cost for he had been maimed in the groin thereby rendering what made him a man permanently ineffective.
The wise men of age proposed that hell hath no fury than a woman scorned.
But what they notably omitted to also mention was that hell, heaven and earth hath no fury than a man betrayed. This lesson I learned the hard way as Blackheart’s heart was filled with wrath, bitterness and betrayal. He raved and bellowed in pain after our betrayal came to light and at that moment I realized that underneath that hard and scarred exterior, Blackheart was soft and only human. It was a hard lesson to all on board as Blackheart’s human side was forced out by his only weakness, by the betrayal of the only woman he loved.
His decision was swift and final and we immediately set sail for the island of Thera.
There is a legend amongst the men of the sea, in this legend it was said that Poseidon the god of the sea and Earth shaker decided to have children amongst men since the other gods were doing the same. So he created an island where he begat his children and it was called Thera. The children of Poseidon under the rule of King Atlas the first became conquerors and conquered a great part of Greece. They were feared for they swept into your land from the sea and made it theirs and they were feared for they were very advanced in weaponry and tactics. Their men and women alike were handsome and beautiful warriors and both very adept in warfare. It was said that they rained balls of flames from their ships and burned the lands to cinder, it was said that they could never be bested in a physical combat, it was said that they were indestructible.
For years, long after the passing of King Atlas, they reigned supreme and in their pride, they forgot their god who made them what they were. Poseidon’s wrath was so great that on the eye of March he destroyed his children and the island in a catastrophic occurrence unbeknownst to mankind. It was said that the earth and sea shook and rippled in fury and it was said that the screams of the inhabitants of Thera could be heard from a great distance across the sea as the island was swallowed completely. The legend also states that every decade on the eye of March the island magically re emerges at midnight and submerges again before the rise of the next day. It is said that Poseidon wills this as a constant reminder to man of the extent if his wrath and the consequences of their betrayal. It was also said that shortly before the island submerges again amidst the rumbling of the earth, the sweet and dreamy voices of merwomen could be heard singing the sad account of the inhabitants of Thera.
A bullet to the head or being thrown overboard would have sufficed but Blackheart opted for Thera instead. He claimed that it was destiny for our betrayal to have occurred on the year the fabled island of Thera was to resurface; he claimed that Poseidon was helping him dispense justice like he did to his children long ago. So we made speed for where the fabled island was to submerge again and got there two days before the eye. In my heart I prayed that the stories were false but as destiny would have it, on the midnight of the eye of March the island magically came before us and we were silently put aboard a small raft and left to our own device.
Isn’t it ironic that the name which was given to her was also the name for the fate Blackheart has left us to? Do I call this destiny?
It seems like we have spent a lifetime here rather than twenty three hours. In our heart we knew our time was near but still we hoped for some divine intervention we knew deep down will never come. So we take solace in the fact that we were two heart supposedly in love and going to a better place together.
Even as we felt the slight tremble of the earth underneath us which signified that it had begun, we held on tightly. Even as we heard the sad melodic voices from the sea singing, we laughed with great mirth and even when the darkness drew closer we held on to each other naked, kissing and weeping for we were two hearts resigned to our tragic fate but filled with love all the same.
My Dark School Of Thoughts 
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