Mermaid Pirate Dispatch

Scrape. Knock. Scrape. Knock.

This is why I buried myself.

I rolled over, trying to ignore it. But it continued.

I should have dug a deeper hole.

I groaned and slammed my fists against the sidewalls of the coffin but the racket outside continued. I felt around for the matches and lit one, checking the dial of my mechanical thousand year alarm clock. It had only been a little more than 500 years! Ugh! Not even close to the thousand year nap I wanted.

I stared into the darkness while the scraping and banging continued outside. Obviously someone was digging very close. I considered my options. I could hope for it to stop soon so I could go back to sleep, or I could just decide to be awake and go say hi. What would I do after though? It was so much work getting buried, convincing someone to help, making all the arrangements…

The scraping stopped. The banging stopped. It was quiet. Relieved, I rolled over and closed my eyes.

Whack! Creak! Whack! Creak!

What on earth?

Suddenly a swirl of cool air drifted into the coffin and a little dirt trickled down one of the padded walls. The wooden lid creaked and cracked and groaned and suddenly it popped free. Slowly it was pulled out of the hole revealing a dark, starry sky above. The light hurt my eyes and I squinted, shielding my face with my arm.

Three bloodcurdling screams rang out. My ears rang afterwards. I sat up and blinked and caught a glimpse of the men running away.

Well crap.

These kinds of things always ended badly. Stories circulate, mobs form… Grumpy and sore, I grabbed my bag from the foot of the coffin, put the matches and alarm clock inside, and clambered my way out of the hole. Brushing dirt off myself I started walking in the opposite direction the men ran.

I’d have to find somewhere far away to finish my nap.

As I walked I wondered how the world had changed in the last 500 years. Just before I went down for my nap there had been some interesting activity, but it wasn’t anything special, just some artistic illumination and…

Oh yeah! That pompous jerk Shakespeare!

Ooh, that moron had really ruffled my feathers. I was a great actor, and he called me one-dimensional! I moved audiences to tears and he said all I was good for was flipping my fabulous hair around and sitting on the bench.

I decided I could take a break to see how theater had changed.

At the first sign of civilization I walked into a building and took in my surroundings.

“You look lost stranger. What’s your name?” A gruff fellow asked.

“Keanu,” I said, soaking in the unusual atmosphere, the strange lighting, and the odd clothing.

“Well, Keanu, what are you looking for?”

I paused. It was a shockingly deep question. An eternity of wandering the earth and I still had no idea what I was looking for. Unique experiences? Maybe. They were becoming increasingly difficult to find though.

Then I remembered he said I looked lost. He must think I was looking for something specific. “Oh,” I said, “uh, a theater?”

The man laughed. “At this hour? Bud, it’s like 2am. There ain’t no theater open at this hour.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, perhaps a place to sleep.”

“There’s a hotel down the road,” the man said, “but you don’t look like you’re from around here. Do you have any money?”

I looked him over. He seemed nice enough. He was rough around the edges, but in my vast experience it was men like him who had the softest hearts. “Afraid not,” I said.

“Well, the wife won’t mind if you sleep on our couch tonight,” he said.

He drove me to his house. The car was a unique experience. I have become quite adept at hiding my surprise at things, but a carriage that could move without horses was surely one of the more shocking things I had seen in a long time. Perhaps the world was worth seeing again. I tried to think of another 500 year period in the past that had resulted in such a vast technological leap forward.

500 years ago I thought what I really wanted was a thousand year nap. Now the world was filling me with wonder in a way it had failed to do for thousands of years.

Maybe the nap can wait.

[Reddit Post]