Tis September 19th, and celebrations for International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2009 on the Island of Whores are well in out of hand. Pirates, Whores, dockworkers, opiate suppliers and all manner of other denizens are partying in the streets. The barrels of rum are rolling constantly down the gangplanks as fast as the supply cutters can offload them. Fireworks were bursting in the sky non-stop, until they ran out. Then someone started setting ninjas alight and hurling them off second floor balconies, which honestly drew more appreciative coos and applause than the actual pyrotechnics had anyhow.
But amongst all the carousing and merrymaking, there is a cautious edge, with all but the most recently-arrived denizens casting the occasional furtive glance at the lone drinker sitting proudly at a table outside Honest Ted’s Shithole Pub. He sits there, drinking alone, because every bastard on the Island knows what happens when someone gets too close, and every now and then a particularly inebriated lost soul stumbles into range and reminds them all, to their amusement.
Its Fists McGee, and it just wouldn’t be Pirate Day without him.
Not everyone is happy that he’s back however (one person is more unhappy than most, but we’ll get to that). The Island’s publicans were slightly more upbeat during this year’s preparations, relaxed in the knowledge that McGee hadn’t been seen on the Island in several months after defecting to Russia back in March. Finally, they thought, a year in which damaged furniture and building repairs to their premises wouldn’t outstrip their day’s beer takings! And lo, for the first couple hours at least, the day’s festivities did indeed get off to a remarkably restrained start. Only two people died and one small sailing vessel burned to the waterline. However, as darkness began to fall and the partying in the streets really started to hit its stride, a booming howl reverberated around the main town square. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks and looked to the roof of the Insolent Cock from whence the cry had come. A burly figure stood outlined against the sky up there, bellowing with triumphant laughter before promptly falling off the roof and crashing through a cartload of untapped rum barrels (the traditional way to announce oneself at Pirate Day celebrations). He then stood up, sluiced himself off, and made straight for the barcounter of the Shithole Pub where he immediately laid a vicious right cross to the jaw of the poor tapmonkey behind the bar (roughly translated: “Make mine a pint!”). When the lad didn’t get up again, McGee shrugged and then served himself before wandering back outside to toss a tableload of drinkers off his favourite table, throwing them bodily a full 8 metres, two in each hand at once. He took his seat, quaffed his pint, and beamed happily at the crowd who had gathered to watch the show.
Everyone was in awe. Some, mostly those new to the island since after his departure, were seeing the Pitfight Champion of legend for the first time. They didn’t realise that what had grabbed everyone’s attention most was not so much the man himself, but what he was wearing.
He was dressed in the accustomed Whore Island national costume, of course – coarsely woven dark bellbottom trousers (manly ones that said nothing of free love or the disputed power of flora), and a horizontally striped cotton shirt beneath a wide-necked overshirt with the sleeves rolled up over his biceps. Chances are these were the exact same clothes he had been wearing when he left the Island. But a new addition to his appearance was displayed quite prominently around his neck, and he seemed to be proudly posturing in a way to draw as much attention to it as possible. It was a bronze torc of a style that most of the Pirates around him had never seen, and what with being Pirates and all they were all to a man fairly knowledgeable in the field of precious jewellery. But then one of the more observant whores in the audience, who knew her subject well, finally realised what it was they were seeing. “‘ang on a minnit…” she announced. “That’s a bronzed cock!“
McGee smiled broadly. Every whore nodded approvingly. Every man crossed his legs and quietly shuffled back a pace, as one.
“Only one man I ever seen with a meat-sword that big, and he were a right prick,” she continued. The crowd nodded, appreciatively. Not one among them hadn’t been irritated by the brash manner and insistent sales technique of the masked superhero Cialis Man. His constant mail-out campaigns had been the scourge of every letterbox on the Island, which were stuffed full each morning with fliers and special offers to help one and all with their crippling erectile dysfunction. Even the women. Especially the women.
After a moment’s thoughtful silence, the crowd cheered uproariously as one. This surely, was cause to make today the best Pirate Day celebration in history! The party started up again with a renewed vigour, the whoresons & working girls launched into their dances with enthusiasm, paused fistfights picked up again where they had left off, and one particularly excited individual who walked up to Fists McGee and landed a congratulatory clap upon his big shoulder was launched fair out into the bay. This year’s celebrations would be very hard to top indeed.
Epilogue
They never asked to see a body. They should have asked to see the body. The man was a Superhero, afterall. And with Superheroes, nothing is ever that simple…
