Imagine if you will a creature of fantastic proportions and curdled frightening features. A ghastly beast with one ruby eye, thirteen yellow crusty pointed teeth, two long spindly spider like legs and nine fingers which crackle when they move, A monster of hideous dimension and angles with green bile skin, overflowing ear wax and nose hair which hangs down to his pencil thin lips. Can you picture such a beast in your head? Can you imagine it in your mind? If you cannot, put down this book immediately. You’re far too dense and boring to ever have any fun. And I am only looking for the curious.
My name is Captain Krinkelfoot. Captain Mosby B. Krinklefoot to be exact. A name which struck horror into the masses for well over four hundred fantastic years. A name which made children cry, women weep and men cringe in their very shoes, a name which even frightened a ruby eyed, yellow toothed, nine fingered, crackly bile colored, hairy beast in its day. But that is another matter altogether and one too horrible for your dull imagination no doubt.
But as I was saying, My name is Krinklefoot. I have traveled the world for well over four hundred years, and I have scene every miserable thing, every rotten cranny, every terrible time and every disastrous decade that has past since the time pirates first sailed among the great sirens of the ocean and the monsters in the sea. But this day, this miserable, scurvy, dark, smelly day is far worse than all combined. It’s the day before doomsday. Its the day before that sniveling, weasel like, nitwit wins his bet. I speak of none other than my rival, my nemesis, the infamously boring, tedious, chubby and pale accountant, James B. Deman. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Things all began wonderfully enough in 1603, the year I took charge of the Lady Kryptos, the grandest ship ever to sail the seven seas. She was two hundred and twenty two feet long with sails as high as a redwood tree and an anchor carved from ancient stone and I was a natural born captain. From the day I took command, a legend was born and any of my crew, were they still alive would tell you the same. In the first year alone, we had sailed across the Atlantic, battled no less than six great sea monsters, been swallowed by two great white whales, encountered one foul tempered Cyclops, three giant Siamese brothers joined at the elbows and battled a whole host of nasty Vikings armies. Needless to say, word quickly traveled that I was a pirate on the move.
Now nothing travels faster than imagination except perhaps a rumor, and when they combine, the world can indeed be a fantastic place. Such was the case of the Kryptos and I dare say yours truly. Tales of our adventures spread far and wide to every corner of the world and soon we were known as the fiercest, darkest, meanest, most contemptuous, ill mannered, adventurous, excessive band of pirates ever to assemble upon the open seas. Our exploits became legends, our names immortal, and our shadows much larger than the body from which they fell.
At every port we landed, the screams and piercing bellows of town folk would echo on the wind like thunder. Some would run, some would hide, but most would wait, foregoing all danger, ignoring all fear, to see the figure that they pictured in their head. They wanted to face the embodiment of the nightmare which haunted their simple dreams. Like those who pull open the closet door after it creaks open at night, they were propelled by more than fear. They wanted to see something fantastic even if it was horrible. It may sound strange, but they wanted to believe!
We were a concoction of wild imagination, fed by whispers of extraordinary feats and mummers of magical moments, too eccentric to be ignored. Women would cry at my presence. Men would tremble and children would run through the streets screaming, both scared and proud that they had faced the mighty dreaded Krinklefoot. I relished in it all and dare say, grew mightier because of it. That is until I met that horrible, treacherous bore, James. B. Deman.
I recall the day distinctly, the same way people recall being in horrible accidents, tasting something disgusting or being violently ill. It all plays out in sickening slow motion in my mind. We sailed into Okiato point, a secluded lovely peninsula off the coast of
Needless to say, things went terribly wrong. It all went well enough at first. The locals screamed wildly and ran this way and that. Women fainted, men cowered in the corner, children cried, dogs yelped and the clouds turned black from raging fires. This was a town of true believers! And then I saw him. A fat bald, toad of a man, sitting dumbly by a table, slowly slurping a spoonful of cold oatmeal or something equally as boring. I stared at him wildly with a look that would have instantly killed anyone with the slightest bit of imagination, but the tub didn’t even flinch. Dismayed I walked closer and gave him my best aarrrgghh, as only a pirate of my stature could do. Nothing. I couldn’t believe it. A nasty knot grew in the pit of my stomach. What was wrong with this silly dult?
“Are you daft you tubby little troll?” I said “Scared senseless perhaps?” Once again nothing, only the slow disgusting slurping of boring purified gruel. A sound that still haunts me to this day and turned me off all forms of soup completely.
Peturbed, I looked over at the sheet of parchment he was reading. It had a series of numbers on the page, which to this day still elude me…1-1-2, 2-1-2, 1-2-2, 1-3-4, 4-1-4, 4-1-3, z, 1-2-2, 1-1-3, 4-1-1, 6-1-1, 1-3-1, 1-3-3, 2-1-3, 2-1-6, 1-2-2, 2-1-1, 12-1-10, 1-2-2, 1-1-1, 2-1-3, 2-1-3.
He seemed utterly fascinated with this gibberish, but to this day, it still seems like a wild chase.
