The Requiem: Chapter One

Its time. I feel the ground beneath me once more. I wonder where else my travels may take me next.

They left the dock that night, but with reluctance. The night it self had an air of foreseen malice. Menacing. Even the hardest of hearts would shiver at the touch of the wind. An over the placid, obsidian waters was the glowing waxed orb of the newly risen moon, snuffed out by a sinister eclipse.

“Creepy.” Frank Heilser said without thinking. Gazing at the masked moon touched a shiver down his spine.

“What did you say?” Lester Parcfield, another shipmate said.

“Nothin’.” But he couldn’t help having a certain feeling in the pit of his stomach. No one could that particular night. A sixth sense feeling of fate.

The boat creaked and ached through the dark silence. Frank took another long drag of his cigarette and fed his expanding beer belly to drown out the worry.

Humming was heard in the distance, but yet so close. Pretty tune. Frank thought to himself. But eerie all the same. As if it played between you ears, in your mind. He took another long drag and a gulp of beer.

The darkness moved. A concealed figure detached itself from the shadows. It was Marron, the recluse. But no breath of relief came. Tall and lean with a jagged scar worn upon half of his fair face. The crew knew little to nothing about this man. So detached. He abandoned all forms of socialization. It was said that he had a preoccupation with an unknown piece of cargo, the only cargo they had that night. It was Marron’s job to assure its safe passage.

But the fault of this detachment wasn’t all Marron’s. Some if not most sought to avoid him. “His eyes.” Some would say. “Didn’t you see his eyes?” His eyes were deepened and weathered by age and experience is face lacked. A face to young to have eyes so jaded and cold, eyes that have stared into a cold abyss to never return. He had seen things, thing no man should and could witness and remain sane. Too many things and cold nights like these.

Slowly he sauntered by.

“Hey! You want a beer.” Frank called out to the lonely wander on the deck. The things that the others have said, they cannot be true. No man like this can exists. Young and jaded, just an oxymoron. Poor sap. Heilser thinks.

Marron stopped. “No.” His voice was cold with that single word. Only the smooth portion of his face remained visible.

Lester asked the question before Frank could stop him. “So how did you get that scar?” Lester pointed to his face.

Marron’s have went up to his left cheek as if remembering a lover’s kiss. He stood thoughtful for a moment. “A woman.” He answered but his voice wasn’t the same. I had a certain kind of tone you would share with a lover. Marron gazed longingly into the darkness.

Shit. Frank thought. I hope it wasn’t rape. Heilser took another long drag of his cigarette. The tip glowed brighter in the darkness. Then it was gone. “What the?!”

In the next moment Marron was besides the two men flicking the cigarette over the side of the railing.

“You’ve forgotten, no fire.” He said as he watched the tiny glow until it was snuffed out.

“Hey, are you crazy or something?! It was just a cig. No harm.” That didn’t nearly piss Frank off as the fact that it was his last one.

Lester remained quiet.

“Oh but it means all the harm in the world.” The recluse’s voice was void of all the warmth in once had, as if his tender memory never happened. For one moment their gazed locked. Cold insects ran over his body. Cold, too cold.

It was true that no man could have eyes such as the other have said, because he was no man.

* * *

Then all at once, it all stopped. The waters grew still and flat as glass, the power had stopped and the lights erupted in a hail of glass and sparks. Deafening silence flooded the ship. An icy draft drifted from below. All was still, except…

* * *

The next morning. Headlines. “Cargo Ship Found On Coast. Still Looking For Bodies and Lost Cargo”