Coffin Island by Will Berkeley

hungry to eat. That voracious
machine must have its meat. However there was something jamming up
the grinder. How did that old chicken bone get in there? He was
choking off the dog of war.
    Professor Coffin managed to board a
skiff. He couldn’t even die properly. I wanted to watch him die in
the most undignified manner possible. Sitting on the toilet with
his head cut off. Throw it into his lap as his last bowel movement
exited him. What the hell was he doing saving himself?
    Professor Coffin refused to do anyone’s
bidding. Not even a mermaid could convince him of anything. He had
snuck up behind one that was gutting a pirate. I thought those
stupid fish were mind readers. The mermaids just couldn’t fathom
his thoughts.
    Were his thoughts just too garbled?
Were they just too destroyed by rum? Or were there just too many of
them that ran in constant opposition to each other? It was like
trying to understand the mysteries of the universe. It was easy for
that old black hole to catch a Mermaid off guard.
    Professor Coffin grabbed her golden
hair. The last expression on her face was one of abject shock.
Professor Coffin had pulled it off. To send his point home he
pulled the long golden hair taut. Then he decapitated the mermaid
in one swift hack. Violence was one of his unrecognized areas of
excellence. I hadn’t seen that coming. Bravo, costumed fool,
bravo.
    Professor Coffin was a butcher of the
first order. I was finding it necessary to rethink my position on
him. He wasn’t just a janitor. He could make fine messes too. Blood
was spurting everywhere. Who knew that a mermaid could hold so much
blood? Then again the emerald ocean was brutally cold.
    Professor Coffin raised the mermaid’s
head above his head. Crimson blood poured out all over Professor
Coffin’s own head. He drank in the blood like a savage of the first
order. Was he drinking in the magical power of his kill? Perhaps he
was just thirsty from rum dehydration. He then let out a battle
cry. It was horrific. The whole world shook. Professor Coffin
possessed massive power. Even I shuddered. He could call down the
universe on odd occasions apparently. What a mop jockey!
    The remaining pirates in the emerald
ocean boarded the skiffs en masse. The mermaids could presumably
read the thoughts of that savage rabble. It must have been horrific
to be in their minds. They tried to flee into the emerald ocean but
the pirates speared them with harpoons in the skiffs. They stabbed
harpoons right through them.
    The mermaids were tasked with reading
the thoughts of their assassins? You have to think what your killer
is thinking right before you died? All that hate is coursing
through your mind as you are savagely murdered?
    I found myself rooting a bit for the
pirates now. Why not mix it up a bit with witchcraft? Take the
unexpected view. There was also the fact that I was currently under
the captivity of a mermaid. The tides seemed to be turning a bit
too. It was time to rethink my original position in this
battle.
    The pirates were still a pretty bad bet
though. They were definitely killing all the mermaids. The problem
was that they were spearing their own skiffs. They were killing the
mermaids with such ferocity that they had no sense of
self-preservation. The pirates were overcome with rage. They were
stabbing the mermaids with the harpoons with barbaric force. They
weren’t just driving their point home. They were driving it right
through the hulls of the wooden skiffs. The skiffs started
sinking.
    No one had ever accused the pirates of
being delicate even in their victory. They were winning the battle
and sinking their skiffs at the same time. Something told me that
this was not the first time. Victory and defeat were mixed states
for the faculty. However the outrageous rage was fully
understandable. I was trying to plot the death of my own mermaid in
a pocket of my own mind that she couldn’t reach. I looked off to
the horizon and tried to have hundreds of