Pirate Secrets

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.


The prompts: This story must contain the words: earring, wheel and lamp


Pirate Secrets


“Yo-Ho, Yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me.”

Captain Half-Lip chanted to himself as he pranced in front of the mirror. He’d just wrapped a new scarf around his head and was impressed with how the red and blue design set off his dangling black earring.

The flickering light from the hanging gas lamp gave the perfect impression; an impression wholly dependent upon what one expected to see.

His crew would see a bloodthirsty savage. The jewelry, scarf and nearly everything he owned had at one time or another adorned someone else. The epaulets on his shoulders had once belonged to a British sea captain. His belt had held up the trousers of a man piloting a small scow that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bracelets and earrings would say, “Behold ye scallywags. Look at the booty I have taken from the many young women I have known.”

The scarf, well he had picked that up in a little shop along the Barbary Coast.

The captain drew his sword and practiced his swagger and thrusts. The mirror watched him wheel and prance about. Frequently, the captain would peek at his reflection to see how he looked.

Yes, to his men, he was as fearsome as they came. But they were uneducated dolts, unable to see the truth that lay beneath.

Their leader was more complex than any of them could have guessed.

Half-Lip had a secret.

In the dim and flickering light of his sea cabin, the captain paused and looked closely at his reflection. Yes, the scarf and earrings did go well together. He liked that everything went with everything – how it made him look. How it made him feel.

He began to dance about again. He loved it when he felt pretty.

Word count 300