An end-of-term English assignment required us to do some work on 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and I chose a short story. I would really appreciate some out-of-school feedback (since I know YWS doesn't sugarcoat things /braces self) and tips on how to improve. So, thanks to all!
I'd just like to ask whether this would be better suited to the Fiction > Fanfiction Short Stories or Misc. Work > Other section?
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It is cold as death. I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t already halfway there. If it wasn’t for the likelihood of the blood freezing in my veins, I would not move from my hammock at all.
When I patrol the deck, I am surrounded by an endless icy necropolis and a strange heaviness falls upon me, like I had downed a pint of liquor. ‘Tis not homesickness nor desire for land (it’s been a while since I were a lily-white mariner’s apprentice) that I feel, but a queer suppression of thought. I am not the only one caught in this incorporeal net, I suspect (or hope).
The monstrous groans of shifting ice seem like the only kick that can drag a man out of the unnatural stupor. Ever since the wind led the ship into this frozen hellhole, an eerie dampening has spread its roots throughout the crew. I can feel a parasitic growth pulsing behind the ballasts of the hold and stretching leisurely across the ship’s keel, spawning slowly as to escape detection. I’d wager my remaining farthings that this alien thing is patiently waiting until the entire ship is under its hypnotic spell, and waiting to drag us down to the slimy ocean floor. I have not shared this notion with anyone else.
The ship is not stocked for the Antarctic cold. The winds have steered us southward and the days grow longer and dimmer. “Like the Devil himself’s pullin’ us along,” Old George swore with an odd light in his eye. “Pullin’ and pushin’ and the last thing you’ll see ‘er his great big grin.” Most of what he says is superstition but I’ve crossed myself all the same and I’ve seen the other men do it too ere we sail past a particularly nasty block of ice. Every icy peak, every frozen gorge is identical and so I don’t look back, nor forward, because their jagged arrays are cruel imitations of grinning teeth.
I was in the storerooms cataloguing our diminishing foodstocks when the ever-engaging Louis Carver stuck his head through the hatch and hollered, “Oy! The wind’s changin’! The wind’s changin’!”
Under normal circumstances, this would have been unworthy of such a bellow and Carver would have received a particularly strenuous field day duty. But the ship had been off-course in this ice-ridden graveyard for a fortnight (or was it two?) and so the news was received with no less than hearty relief. Even skipper spared him a good clouting to the head.
I clambered over ballasts and rope to squeeze out the hatchway, as keen as anybody else. A gratuitous foot flapped dangerously near my nose and I received a good conk on the forehead (an angry mark appeared there, much later) so my eyes were stinging and watering by the time I emerged onto the deck. Ah! Indeed, lo! Even as I scanned the starboard (we were as speedy as the infamous Flying Dutchman!) I felt the (warm?) wind carrying the disquiet from my shoulders. I looked to the skies – the stormy clouds had not yet passed, but were surely scarcer than before.
“The wind is blowin’ almost t’the beam itself!” James Burr whooped from the crow’s nest, his voice almost whipped away by the gusts.
“What d’you see?” Skipper shouted, hobbling down from the quarterdeck.
“The blue, blue ocean, Cap’n!” Burr reported. “And the first sea-bird I’ve seen for leagues ‘round! An albatross! A beauty this one is!”
“Hail the bird!” I suddenly cried, snatching my hat from my head and raising it over my head as if in tribute. “Hail it, and let the east wind fill the sails t’burstin’!”
The men took up the chant. “Hail! Hail the albatross!” It was as if the collective heaviness that had afflicted us all had been replaced with a wild adoration, yet uncanny, yet perverted in a way I can’t explain. I believe this perplexing emotion (and my subconscious knowledge of its peculiarity) was why, while the crew threw their hats into the air and stamped their feet; I dropped my hat and drew a crossbow to my shoulder, levelling it to my eye. If you inquired of me, at the time, ‘what are you thinking? Why the sudden change of heart?’, I would have been struck dumb. The act itself was as clear as day – though it felt as if I had relinquished my control to a waiting spectre (the Devil himself, mayhap) and stood, spectator-like, from the sidelines. I don’t believe I returned to awareness until at least a quarter of an hour afterward. By then, it had been too late.
I let an arrow fly – it was released with a feathery whoompf! The albatross fell without a sound; it fell, dead, upon the rigging and its thick blood wept across the knotted rope. The men were silenced.
My hands hung limp with the crossbow by my side. The feeling that had been mistaken as joy overwhelmed me and revealed its true colours – it was premonition. It had been the first time I felt it and it would be the last. Death had guided my hand to the string, it had nudged my finger to the trigger, and ultimately, it was I.
With my crossbow, I had shot the albatross.
very interesting
