Young Writers Society

The docks outside are eerily empty and quiet, void of the even the usual song of seagulls as masses of the white birds bank in unison around the ports, intent on scraps dropped by sailors and passerby. The reflection of the tinted window leaves part of my upper body seemingly floating largely outside, as if I were some sort of giant apparition. Truth be told, I’d much rather be dead and haunting than trapped in this dank room with a bunch of smelly, nasty brutes and an egotistical female.

Adjusting my thick navy blue jacket with fidgety perfectionism, I sigh and tear my eyes from the only window on the east side of the room to the dim light within the space. The candle, of course, flickers like the waves of the sea in a raging storm, what with all of the chilled drafts that seep from between the seams of the planks someone nailed together half-arsed some twenty years ago before calling it an office. Not my type of establishment, to be sure, but I am not a woman whom is very much… well, liked, at this time. My opinion on the war is hated, and my guts are cursed, according to most of every man, woman, child, and employer I meet. It could have been that my soul was cursed… but I’m pretty sure it was the guts. How vulgar.

“The’e I was, complaining about the Queen’s t’ade laws,” I hear the Dock Master growl—never pronouncing her ‘r’s, as always—her tangled dyed-red hair somehow managing a rough bun at the base of her neck. I watch the light flicker over her greasy locks, thinking on how fire—however more elegant—looks slightly similar. She grunts, a manly bear-snore of a sound, before squinting as she looks up at me. The woman has the eyesight of a bat, I swear it. She’d think a dog eating a cat eating a mouse eating some cheese was one of the street biters—by which I mean children—finally earning their copper penny by sweeping the cobbles that make up the floor. “What ship is ye’s, skippa’?” She asks me, completely ignoring the proper pronunciation of the slang term for a ship captain.

All men present snort, chortle, gurgle, or spit. Some would say they laughed, but I don’t see any point in lying to save their faces. They lost all hope in rescuing those sad mounds of flesh long ago. “That there’s a woman, Dock Masta’,”

I flinch when Brawn—an aptly-named, brutish fellow—misses the ‘er’ sound at the end of the word. Why does everyone here do that?! I feel my left hand clench up into a fist behind my back and begin fiddling furiously with one of two brass buttons that have been sewn on—for decorative purposes—at each tip of the two points that form the back of the hem of my jacket. It clinks as I flick my thumb nail against it, the sharp, brief strike of pain reinforcing my irritation. I’m a perfectionist; it’s hardly a character flaw, given the state of the world, but it makes it terribly hard to remain satisfied with life for more than a few seconds.

The Dock Master’s eyebrows raise as she lifts herself from her desk chair, her cyber-prosthetic on her left arm scratching against the wood of the moldy desk. She limps over to me, young knees creaking as if she were about to retire to her coffin, until she stands but a few inches from me. Knowing her, my form is still a blurry mess in her eyes, especially since she squints those cold grey eyes up tightly, obviously struggling. “You don’t say,” she whispers. I stand a good seven inches taller than her, what with my superior posture, height, and tendency to lean back as far as I can without being obvious. Her breath smells like a whale’s arse.

Without much warning, she puts both hands on my waist. My eyebrows shoot up as high as they can given the restraints of human facial expressions, but I do not move. I clinch my teeth so hard they screech against the pressure, but I do not move. She inches her hands slowly up my waist, over my stomach, and finally to the underside of my breasts. If you can call them that. To give her credit, I don’t have much femaleness going for me, aside from a wretchedly fair face and some bony hips. Everywhere else, I’m flat. Flatter than flat, if possible.

For some reason, people think that, because I’m so flat and breast-less, I don’t mind removing my shirt, getting stared at, or groped. It’s a ridiculous assumption; I’ll remove my shirt if you’ll gouge out your eyes first and allow me to slash your throat afterwards. The staring is an inevitability; my mother used to tell me so, what with my pale blond hair and crystal blue eyes. As for groping, I once slapped a dirty drunk man so hard, I snapped his neck and had to flee the region or be prosecuted for cold blooded murder. I’d happily do it again.

So when the Dock Master pokes my chest and finds it at least a little plushy--no doubt attempting to confirm my femaleness--my arm flinches and my face contorts awfully; I have a bit of a personal-space problem. I shudder involuntarily at the touch, and she laughs. “Did you shiva’, doll?” Remaining stiff, I deduce the best thing to do in this situation is to remain silent and unmoving. Maybe if I don’t waver, it—I mean she—will go away. “Don’t tell me ye’ one of those.”

A man whistles; a quick glance tells me they’re all wide-eyed and drooling at the sight before them. I think I know what she means, and with that, I grip her non-metal wrist firmly and remove her hand. “I’ll kindly ask you to remove yourself from my immediate person, Dock Master,” I growl, lip curling slightly. She looks up at me, grinning, choosing to ignore the insubordination.

“You know you just gave us a ‘yes’, ‘ight?” She chuckles, lifting her hands defensively as she turns on her heel to return to her desk.

“One tends to drift towards solitude when surrounded by persons of the drunk and smelly persuasion.” I hiss.

She laughs—a loud, barking sound—shaking her head. “I like this one, boys. Don’t see why I ain’t seen he’ thin little a’se flitting about mo’e often,”

With every missed ‘r’, I flinch. It’s a compulsive action, really. If you can’t say it properly, don’t say it at all. “She’s a loner, boss,” I hear Wire—also aptly-named, given his physical structure—wheeze in an airy, nasally attempt at speech.

“That so?” The Dock Master nods as she settles into her chair, pushing it up close against the desk so that her ribs are nearly crushed between the back of the chair and the edge of the surface. “Well then. Ye’ not a skippa’, so what a’e you?”

“On-land housing management,” I say, loud enough for her to be able to hear all the way across the large room. It has to be a good twenty-five yards long.

Someone feigns a coughing fit, clearly stating “Substitute housewife”. I choose to blatantly ignore the insult; as for the Dock Master, she either follows suit or simply does not hear it.

Picking up a hawk feather quill, the Dock Master lifts a small stack of paper, filtering through it with her good hand, searching for something. I watch her eyes shift from left to right as she reads over some data chart or personnel report, occasionally swaying her head away from her stack to a single piece of paper, where she jots down chicken scratch notes. As the minutes pass, her neck cranes more and more, her body subconsciously making up for her poor eyesight and the wretched lighting.

I glance at Brawn, who is hunched over close to the very short, very rat-like man, whom I believe is named ‘Rat’. He’s grimy, perverted, and a pretty damned good example of why the Queen was a better ruler than any of these filthy beggars could imagine. She wouldn’t have allowed these imbeciles to set one foot on such an important port; especially not Rat. I wish I could say that the parents of these men were wonderful, practical people for giving their children such straightforward titles, but alas I know that most of these names are too good to be true. Nicknames given by drunken ‘friends’ or attributed to some abnormal personality or physical trait, they were insults in and of themselves. It was pleasing in most cases; there are certain names I stress bitterly on purpose just to spite the subject of my irritation.

I catch the back-end of the term “tramp-on-tramp” and scowl, biting back a low growl that threatens to burst from my tightly clenched teeth like an angered animal’s protest. It would only fuel their slandering. “Ah!” The Dock Master suddenly cries, startling most of everyone present. “Found you,” she jerks a paper from its sandwiched position between Rat’s file—the bloody nerve, putting a picture of my face so close to that wretch’s information—and someone I don’t recognize. I do see rather ample breasts though, and I certainly can’t help it; the pictures depict our faces from the front view, including a good portion of our chest and waist. The women shown was wearing a scandalous V-neck at the time she had her portrait painted for the employee list, dark chocolate locks waving gracefully down past the reaches of the picture. I’ve never seen hair so long it drifts past the waist… I wonder how far it goes down.

Then I see the bold red “TERMINATED” stamp over the top of her portrait and most of her basic information at the top of the page. The Dock Master then waves my file in the air triumphantly, dropping nearly 200 pages back to the desk. The woman’s file gone from sight, an itch begins to form at the base of my back, right where I can’t reach. Damn it.

As the Dock Master begins to scan over my file, flipping through roughly stapled pages, I think on how unfortunate this situation is. The itch intensifies as I let out a quiet, agitated sigh. This happens every once in a while; I’ll catch a quick peek of some random thing that seems entirely meaningless and my back will begin itching like a demon has clipped his nails and trimmed his hair back there, leaving behind the skin-irritating filth.

I flex my muscles, trying to relieve the agitation without moving from my stiff, ramrod pose; chin high, hands clasped behind my back, legs straight and close together. “Says he’e you’ve been taught the ways of a ship, Ms. Aye’s,” the Dock Master mumbles as she reads the many, many passages of information the company has on me. I was asked so many questions, it took a total of 36 hours of questioning before I could get to work; it wasn’t even an interview. They were especially tedious with me because of my political orientation. I know for a fact that my file contains twenty-nine pages total; it’s ridiculous.

“That I have,” I answer cautiously, my eyes locking on the corner of the page of the woman’s file that I can still see.

“A nickel fo’ an explanation, doll,” she smiles faintly, resting her chin on her clasped hands, elbows firmly planted on the edge of her desk as she looks to me. The pet-name she’s obviously chosen to give me makes me cringe horridly; she’s only said it twice, and the men that surround us are already leering at the both of us. I find myself shuddering near-constantly, a steady bone-purr of shivering that I’m finding hard to subdue.

I clear my throat, desperate to clear the thick film that had gathered there. “My father was a captain.” I say, not putting any more detail into it. Of course, the Dock Master, with her brutish manners—or better yet, her lack thereof—decides to push farther.

“A captain? Of what, a t’ade vessel, o’ the navy…?”

I wince. “Just a ship. Unregistered.”

“Un’egistered? That’s highly abno’mal, doll,” she prods, a thick lock of red hair falling into her face as she leans forward. Damn it to Hell; I can see it in her eyes and the way they gleam. She already knows exactly what I mean; she just wants to hear me say it. Filthy wretch.

“A Looter. He was a goddamned, foul-playing, dirty Looter who stole a navy captain’s ship after seducing the old man’s daughter.” I snap, fists clenching. They have to pick at it. They always have to pick. Glaring at the dingy, frayed green rug on the floor, so covered in mud you’d think it the color of the bark of the pines that inhabit most of the valleys inland to the west, I seethe. Three months. I made it three months in this city before anyone found out. At least I’m up from the four weeks it took last time.

Startled, the Dock Master leans back, biting the tip of the feather of her quill absently; perhaps she was thinking I had meant something else. A pirate, maybe? What a preposterous thought; the Queen didn't tolerate such miscreants. Looters, however, helped the world go round, no matter how disgusting they might have behaved. “Out, the whole lot of you,” she barks suddenly, flicking her cyber prosthetic hand violently in the general direction of the door. The men practically stampede; last time the Dock Master got such a harshness in her voice, it was when she took out her massive iron-tipped whip and lashed fifteen men for getting a ship confiscated and destroyed by getting caught trying to smuggle the powdered version of the intensely illegal Chaos drug. The only one who survived the beating quickly had his nickname changes to Scar; three guesses why.

Once we were alone, the door shut tightly so that no sound got out and none could get in, the Dock Master beckoned me closer. Complying, I take long strides over to her desk, trying not to make it too obvious I had to look down quite a ways to make eye contact with her. “It wasn’t in ye’ file,” she sighs, running her non-cyber hand through her hair tiredly, “says he’e, when asked about ye’ pa’ents, you say ‘I was bo’n to a skippa’ and a me’chants daughta’, but left them long ago’. The’e is no way I could have known… Unintentional insult aside, this means you we’e not completely honest with us, doll.” She looks up to me expectantly, rubbing her temple.

“No, I was not.” I state simply, eyes hooded darkly as I anticipate the next question. My theories for the next query are immediately proven correct.

“Anything else you we’e not honest about?”

“Crimes committed.”

She sighs again—more of a grunt, really—readying her quill, the metal tip hovering over the blank space on the last page of my file. “Let’s have it, then,”

“Murder,” I say it flatly, but even so she shakes her head roughly, eyes widening as she begins to write it down. “Micholin Ayers, aged 52.”

“How long we’e you in p’ison?” She asks absently, not making the connection. I remain silent, keeping my eyes locked on hers. “Sweet me’cy, doll; you could’ve lied.” She growls, jotting something else down. I cannot resist; I quickly glance at it, trying to process the words from my perspective before she notices I’ve stolen a peek. Strangely, if I’m reading it correctly, she’s written that I served nine years in prison before being pardoned. My eyes snap up, meeting hers, which stare back at me as she smiles knowingly. Heat prickles my face at being caught, even though she doesn’t seem to make much of it, returning to her writing. “Next,”

“I green-lighted the sale of a high-grade ground-to-air missile to supposed terrorists shortly after the King took the throne.” I continue, half-heartedly checking the time. 7:00 PM on the spot.

Her face wrinkles up, jaw slacking slightly. “The same one that nea’ly killed the King and his eldest daughta’?” I nod, and she groans. “Why a’e you telling me these things, doll? You could have easily kept that to ye’self.” Were I to be perfectly honest with myself, my answer might have been ‘I haven’t a bloody clue’. However, it isn’t in my nature—well, honesty isn’t either, but that’s beside the point—and so I simply shrug.

Following my noncommittal physical reaction to her query, there is a long period of time during which the air is void of all sound. This includes the scratching of a quill; the Dock Master can only stare blankly at the paper before her. This moment seems to last forever, even though I know this is simply faulty human judgment of the passing of time. Finally, she lets out a long, breathy sound, grinding her teeth as she makes a decision in her head. “How fa’ does ye’ knowledge of sea-going vessels ‘each, doll?”

The question takes me off-guard. I was fully prepared for a ‘you’re fired’ or even a ‘stay here while I fetch the authorities’, and had already wound up my calve muscles to jump on her. Keeping my left hand on the hilt of the needle-point knife I have concealed up my right sleeve, I tilt my head back, studying her. Eventually, I reply “I’ve sailed quite a few minor trading vessels, captained a stolen royal navy Infiltration ship, flown quite a few air-born vessels—including the Ariavana GX12 model everyone keeps going on and on about. They really aren’t that great—and sailed quite a few Submersed Sailers.”

“How old a’e you?!” She asks, incredulous, flipping back through my file with a fervor. I roll my eyes ever-so-slightly; you took the time to read my file and you couldn’t even remember my age?

“Twenty-five,”

“Findolyn’s seven arses,” She curses, referencing a mythological being resembling seven humanoid figures conjoining at the shoulders to form a single, hideous head. Technically, since the beast’s legs consist of the bottom half of the human anatomy—genderless, for some reason, in this particular case—it has seven bottoms. Hence the curse. I think. “Neve’mind, doll. I have use fo’ you yet. ‘ecently I invested in a ce’tain Ae’ial Stalka’ device, but no one to captain it. Cou’se, I was planning on hi’ing the p’oper pilot, but it seems I needn’t waste the money. Ye’ cha’acter doesn’t fit the ‘ole of some ‘substitute housewife’, now does it?” She grins at me—a wide-mouthed, feline-like gesture that reminds me of a book I read as a child—dropping her quill onto the desk as lifts herself from her chair. She stands up to fast, and the chair falls to the floor; not noticing, she reaches out her mechanical hand, the joints creaking quietly as she flexes her fingers out. I take a moment to admire the technology of it; despite the patches of rust that have begun to erode the thinnest, weakest pieces of iron, the device seems to be functioning perfectly. Carefully nailed plates of sheet metal have been warped to fit snuggly over the majority of the wiring and miniature Mancian engines required to process the shockwaves pushed out by the nervous system and into muscles. As the mechanics pick up energies that tell them to straighten fingers, each carefully crafted and engraved metal finger whirs as it flattens.

I stare at the hand for a while. Maybe a few seconds, maybe several minutes, but either way I don’t move. Finally, I lift my white fingerless-gloved hand and set it in hers. The metal is warm, which surprises me; I thought cyber prosthetics were as cold as death. Maybe they’re lying about passing on, too; perhaps it isn’t as bad as they lead us on to think.

“We have a deal then, Ms. Aye’s?” She asks hopefully, obviously masking any insecurities she has about hiring a potentially dangerous criminal with a layer of boss-like authority.

“I suppose so, Dock Master. Please, though,” I slip my hand from hers after she shakes it, discreetly pulling my glove off behind my back. I stuff the discarded article of clothing into a hidden pocket on the inside of the hem of my jacket, tugging at the pinky of a replacement glove. I pull the new, untainted glove into my bare hand, deciding I’ll have to wash my exposed fingers later. “Call me Maira.”