My life was easier in 1717, but that damn storm took everything I ever held dear. The world became foreign, hostile and cruel. It had no place for a man thrown through time.

       I was born in Hittisleigh, a small run down town in Devonshire, England. 1689 was known for its cold beginning, and one January night was colder than the rest. Winds were wild outside as my mother screamed in pain, my father at her side. My two older brothers sat in the other room, waiting to be called upon to meet me. When I was finally delivered, my mother wept as she held me. Her name was Elizabeth, my father called Stephen. A single look at my frail body wrapped in wool and my parents chose the name that would one day be placed on my tombstone. From then on, I was named Samuel Bellamy.

       At first it seemed like life would continue in a positive way, but not long after my birth, my mother became ill. Her body could no longer produce milk for me, her arms becoming too weak to carry me. Eventually, her heart gave out and she passed in her sleep. After that, my father turned to whiskey and rum to subdue his emotions. My eldest brother Eric, no older than ten at the time, had to take on a lot more responsibilities than any child should be asked of. My father was in no shape to raise me, so Eric did it instead.

       He would milk the neighbor's Jersey cow and pour it into a leather pouch, putting a slit in the bottom and cover it with linen to create a barrier for my tiny lips to wrap around. He dressed me in his old clothes, too large for my infant body but still better than shivering through the nights with nothing. My other brother, Adam, was merely two years older than myself but still helped out as best he could. He would talk to the cow about how big I was getting, how helpful the cow was being after mommy had gone to a better place. He even held me a couple times while I drank, telling me that he would protect me from anything evil. At least, that were the stories told to me.

       My first memory was the summer of 1693 after Eric met a pretty girl named Amanda who was 15, a year older than him, a few towns over. He and our father were talking about marriage, and of course our father disapproved. He had a bottle of whiskey in his left hand, his right holding Eric’s shoulder either for support or to keep him from walking away. With a swig of his drink, our father looked straight into Eric’s eyes while the eldest stared right back.

       “You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’ll let you marry.” His breath must have smelt like liquor when he spoke, for when he did, Eric’s face convulsed in visible disgust. He brushed his father’s hand off his shoulder before responding, a thing we rarely did while our father was drunk.

       After clearing his throat, he once again met his father’s gaze. “It’s my life, you can’t control it.” A flash of movement happened and our father’s hands were gripping Eric’s collar hard, tightening it around his neck in an uncomfortable way. I felt the urge to intervene, but I knew I would merely get hurt in the process. With fear in my body, I just watched the fight take its course.

      Through clenched teeth, our father gave his reply; “I helped bring you into this world, don’t make me take you back out.” He watched Eric very closely, expecting a very specific response from his eldest son.

       “But-” Another flash and Eric was pinned up against the room wall, his pain shown through his expressions as our father held him there firmly.

       The limited control our father had over his drunken anger finally stopped, and his voice became a thunder directed toward Eric’s face a mere inches away from his. “Do I make myself clear boy?”

       “Yes sir.” Eric’s mumble was barely audible, but it was enough for our father to restrain himself and back away, releasing Eric from the wall. Eric felt his father’s grasp disappear from the collar of his shirt, and corrected the shirt’s position on his body before walking away. He strode with granite features masking his face, a brisk movement in his steps as he went to his room. From then on, our eldest brother rarely spoke to our father. When he did, it was always a “Yes sir,” or a “Right away, sir.” It was like the flame within Eric had been snuffed out, but in reality the fight had ignited an inferno.

       A month after the fight, I had awoken in the middle of the night to the sounds of glass smashing and wood splintering. Wiping my eyes from sleep, I descended the steps of our home to find Adam at the base, staring at our father in disbelief. He had thrown bottles of whiskey around the room, shattering them against the walls and floor. The table that used to sit next to a window was now mere planks of scattered wood throughout the entire house. In the middle of the entire mess sat our father on his knees, a single bottle of rum in his hands, still intact. Beside him laid a perfect piece of parchment, somehow unharmed by the destruction our father had caused. Taking a few steps closer, I noticed it was a letter. A letter addressed to me. Adam must have noticed too, for he crossed towards it through the sea of broken glass lying upon the floor. While wincing in pain, he leaned over and picked up the letter, adamant about not disturbing our father. Once back beside me, he placed the letter in my hands and went to his room, biting back screams of pain with every step he took. For a second I just stared at the letter, wondering what it had said.

       Then my legs began to work again, and I walked towards my room in a sluggish manner. Once on my bed, I scanned the parchment for anything I could make out. Eric, like he did with my other brother when Adam was four, was teaching me how to read. Sadly, I had only learned the alphabet and a few basic words. On the page I saw my name, Samuel Bellamy, written at the top. I could also make out a few scattered words like had to go and goodbye. Frustrated with how little I knew, I decided to hide the letter until I could read better. I removed a board in my bedroom floor that was loose from age. Inside, a small space could be reached. I folded the letter with timidness before placing it within the floor, then replaced the board back to its original position. I told myself I would return to the letter when I could, but for now its mysteries were left alone.

       I could no longer feel the beckoning of sleep. Instead, I dressed myself and went down to Adam’s room. He was sitting on his bed wrapping his foot in linen, the glass that was once piercing his skin now on the floor speckled with blood. “I can’t sleep,” I told him as he looked up at me, noticing the awareness in my face. He nodded once and got dressed, then we both left our home through his window. We traveled down the street to the river, oil lamp posts flickering as they illuminated the cobble streets. The moon and stars shone above us, a cloudless night filled with a soft mid-summer breeze. The calm warmth lowered my alertness, and soon we were lying next to the river, looking at the moon through the ripples of water made by the fish under the surface.

       “I want to see the world Samuel,” Adam said as he turned to me, a look of excitement and the hint of an inferno that was found in Eric. “I want to sail the ocean and be a captain. That’s my dream.”

       I looked at him, trying to think of a good response for my older brother. “Will you take me?” I smiled as he laughed at me, his eyes closing and his feet kicking the ground lightly.

       “Yeah, you can come along. I’m captain though.” he said with a small grin.

       “Promise?” I looked at him, the seriousness and hope in my face clear for him to see. He sat up, looked me in the eyes, and swore an oath to me that our dream would one day come true.

       “I promise, Sam.”

                                                    To Be Continued...

Title: The Prince of Pirates

Genre: Historical Fiction, Science Fiction

Age range: 16 - 45

Target audience: North America, Central America, Europe

Word count: 1111

Author's name: Jefferson House

Synopsis: "My life was easier in 1717, but that damn storm took everything I ever held dear. The world became foreign, hostile and cruel. It had no place for a man thrown through time." After losing his mother at birth, Samuel Bellamy is set on a path in his life that no one could predict. Filled with loss, blame, and a beloved to return to, Samuel must face the test of time in order to return home.

The apartment in which Jane resided was plain, and reflected her in the simplest of ways. It was comprised of bare white walls, bland textured carpets, and here and there she had touches of home incorporated. There was a rug in the living room, regardless of the fact that it was carpeted to begin with—it was mostly there to cover up a wine stain from the previous tenant. There was just a bean bag from her room back at home, though that room hardly felt like hers anymore ever since her parents moved the washer and dryer up from the basement to the spot where her bed once sat.

Her bed was also her living space. It was up against two walls, with a pillow cushioning one end so she could sit for hours pretending that the mattress and pillow were a couch. From this spot she had a perfect vantage point of her half-empty refrigerator. She couldn’t remember the last time the damn thing was full.

Jane was well aware of the consequences of becoming an adult too early in life. She could sacrifice a few meals to continue living here, away from her parents. They thought enough about her to move the washer and dryer up to Jane’s old room. She thought enough about them to keep their picture mounted on the front of her refrigerator. The photograph was from a trip her mom and dad took to Spain, when they were younger and less inclined to settle down.

It took approximately ten minutes before she realized that she’d been staring at the refrigerator long enough to start even thinking about her parents. Now that was a strange topic—one she hadn’t encountered in several days, even weeks. She couldn’t follow the thread that connected her previous thoughts to that of her parents, and the longer she thought about it, the more her head ached. She could see her computer screen highlighting the blanket thrown over her legs, which meant that it was getting dark outside. Eventually she would have to get up and turn on the lights.

She didn’t get up off her couch-bed until a knock sounded on her door. She checked her phone briefly and sighed. No messages. Which meant she knew exactly who was at the door, arriving unannounced.

Jane pushed her laptop aside and scooted off the bed. As soon as the blanket slid off her legs, a chill threatened to sweep her straight back under the warm embrace of her couch-bed. She fought the urge—but then again, her lights were off, the apartment was quiet, ergo, the visitor would have no reason to think that she was home.

She slipped back on to her bed and pulled her laptop back on to her lap. As soon as she started typing again, the second knock sounded. She kept at it until the third knock, and then the handle being tried.

Her heart momentarily stopped, realizing that the door was completely unlocked. She had no reason to be scared of the visitor; he was her neighbor, but it was still weird that he even tried opening the door.

It pushed open a crack, and he seemed put off by the fact that the apartment was pitched in darkness. He opened it a bit further, pushing it open and blocking his view of Jane sitting on the bed. When he finally peered around it, her wide eyes dropped into a glare.

“Milo, what the fuck?” she snapped at him. He recoiled against the door, but stepped aside anyways to close it.

“I knew you were home!”

“Don’t tell me how you knew that.”

“I never saw you leave this morning—which either meant you stayed over at someone else’s place, or you just didn’t work today,” Milo explained. “Clearly, you didn’t work today.”

“Fuck off, Milo—don’t you have a girlfriend to pester?”

“Yeah, but she’s reading and I figured she didn’t want to be bothered,” he sighed, and began wandering in the direction of Jane’s kitchen. On the way there, he flipped on the lights and struck Jane with the sensation of being blinded and betrayed. She rubbed her eyes, sweater slipping down to her elbows as she glared at where Milo was scavenging around her half-empty refrigerator.

“I should really take you grocery shopping because clearly you don’t know how to shop for food,” Milo commented, dipping out of Jane’s line of sight. The island countertop only managed to show his fluff of black curls where they rose approximately two inches from his head.

“You come into my house and criticize my shopping skills?” Jane complained. “Get out of my refrigerator, you utter dingbat.”

“You have interesting ways of insulting me,” he said, reemerging from below her eye level. When he popped back up, his goofy grin reminded Jane of all the reasons she despised letting him in her apartment. She should have locked the door.

“Why are you here? I’m kind of busy,” she complained, gesturing wildly at her computer.

“I’m just checking up on you,” he said. “You don’t get out much, and Quinn’s been worried about you.” Jane could hate Milo all she wanted, but his girlfriend was another matter. Quinn was a goddamn angel and Jane respected her for it. For one, she was apparently reading on a Friday night when she could be doing what Milo was doing just now.

She felt flattered to know that Quinn was thinking about her, until she realized that Milo could have just used Quinn as an excuse. He often did that ever since Jane told him off and kicked him in the shin when he as if she was “all right” a while back. Of course, the circumstances weren’t the greatest at that time.

She leant her head back against the wall, eyes closing. “I’m fine, Milo. You can go home now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am absolutely certain,” she answered. “Contrary to your belief, I am perfectly capable of understanding my own emotional wellbeing. Thank you, Milo, for treating me like I’m not.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but Jane raised her eyebrows right back at him. Instead, he floundered before pursing his lips and saying, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

The computer screen blinked at Jane, so she looked down at it with a muffled groan. “I’m sure you didn’t,” she mumbled, and proceeded to type until Milo got the message. He approached the door and grabbed the handle, but she could still feel his eyes on her. She rubbed her knitted sweater sleeve against her forehead and looked up at him expectantly, silently insisting that he get the fuck out of her apartment.

“Have a nice night,” he said, and she muttered the same as he opened the door, left, and shut it behind him.

Jane stared at the screen in front of her for some time before realizing that she had no idea what she was looking at, much less trying to comprehend. Spacing again, she mused in annoyance. She gingerly pulled down the sleeve that had fallen to her elbow before folding the ends up three times. She would never understand Milo. They were just neighbors. She could never understand people who thought they had a right to care about her situation. People should mind their own damn business. That’s what she always did.

It took her a moment to realize that it was the lights bothering her, and not the sleeves of her sweater. She never asked Milo to turn the lights on, but he did anyway out of his own convenience. She huffed as she scooted off the bed for the second time.

She got to the lights and flicked them off before finally looking at the time on the microwave in the kitchen. It was nearly eight at night, and she hadn’t eaten dinner at all. “Unbelievable,” she moaned, throwing her arms down. Why did she have to think about food? Up until then, she hadn’t thought about it, and therefore, didn’t feel hungry. Pizza Rolls sounded excellent now.

Jane’s feet, clad in fluffy striped socks, padded around the island counter as she made her way to the freezer. She was nearly there, reaching for the handle, when her sweater caught on the corner of the countertop. A thread snagged and puckered.

She cursed, twisting around and tugging at the sweater to see the damage. She could feel it where the loose thread and tightened knots touched her bare skin. Pizza Rolls forgotten, Jane pulled off her sweater and looked for the loosened stitch. It was too obvious to ignore.

She cursed aloud, folding her hands over the massacre and resting her forehead on them. She’d need crochet needles—her mom had crochet needles. There was no way she’d call her mom up for crochet needles.

Jane hated the fact that she thought about food, thought about eating Pizza Rolls—if only she just hadn’t gotten up to turn off the light. Perhaps then, by the time she realized what time it was and how hungry she was, there was the chance she never would have ruined a perfectly good sweater on the corner of her goddamn countertop.

She picked at it and tried to tug the loose thread back in. No matter how much she stretched and plucked at it, the loose thread never shrunk. It only seemed to get bigger. In a matter of minutes she began panicking over it. How could she not be able to fix this? She went over to a drawer and frantically rummaged around for a pair of scissors. If she couldn’t put the thread back in, the least she could do was diminish the size of the damage.

She snipped the loop in two and tied it in a knot. There was a lump somewhere in her chest that seemed to pulse as she pulled the sweater on and tried to convince herself that it was fine. This was fine. Look, she could hardly notice it now. In the bathroom she twisted and turned around in front of the mirror looking for the damage.

It was still there.

Damn Milo for entering her apartment. Had he not turned the light on, she never would have felt the urge to turn it off, look at the time, realize she was hungry, go to the damn freezer to get food—

Jane ripped off her sweater again, breathing hard, feeling as though her tank top was constricting her chest. This is unbelievable, she thought, and plucked at the knot until it came free and she pulled at the threads with her shaky fingers. She dropped onto her bed in the light of her laptop screen and pulled the thread through the other loops and knots and knitted patterns of the sweater until she had an arm-length thread, and an indent running across the middle of her sweater. She pulled and pulled at it until the arm-length thread became twice as long, and began pooling on the navy carpet of her apartment.

The next day, Jane didn’t leave her apartment. She didn’t realize it was daytime until she found herself blanking again, staring at the floor where her sweater was, letting the sunlight collect on the ball of fabric lying there. Now, it was one, continuous line of string—untangled, impeccable, perfect.

The bulge that once pulsed in her chest stopped aching, and she sighed in relief, looking up and blinking away the burning sensation in her eyes. How long had she been staring at it?

Eventually, some time during the middle of the day, Jane woke to the sound of someone knocking on her door. “Hey Jane! It’s Quinn and Milo,” a perky feminine voice said. “We have pizza!”

Jane sat up and slid down from her bed just far enough to hiding the remnants of her sweater before calling out, “Come in!”

The clickety-clack of the Trans-Siberia Railway was equally hypnotic and torturous. I woke up half-naked in my compartment, with a throbbing, two-day, drug-induced headache and a note taped inside my briefcase that read, “If I can do this, think of what the FSB and CIA are capable of.” My thoughts ran to self-preservation rather than the mind-numbing sounds.

So much of my odyssey had been a living combination of Monty Python meets Dr. Strangelove that I had almost forgotten I was dealing with superpowers, real people, and telling a secret that would change the world. I entertained the notion that if I could concentrate, the migraine would dissipate.

I reached for my backpack and pulled out my notes. I spread them on the bed and tried to make some sense of what I learned on my journey thus far. After sorting through them aimlessly for a while, I decided there had to be a system: put each prong of the story in one pile rather than trying to make a single, convoluted epic from four diverse groups who had no idea any of what the others were trying to do. The participants sounded like a bad joke. What if the Soviet Union, the US, a small European prince and an angelic African leader were all trying to save their countries at the same time?

The first portion of the story came from the data I had collected about the Russians-Soviets, as they were known at the time. I’d uncovered a lot of information about the inner-circle of the Kremlin. I read it and re-read it, unable to believe what I knew from experience was true. There was no way these megalomaniacal buffoons and paranoid apparatchiks could have run an empire that spanned major parts of three continents.

As was always the case, the worker bees were the competent ones, brave and able to work under pressure. Much of my information had come from former KGB operatives who had been involved all those years ago,

Damn, I kept thinking during the five-thousand-mile journey each way from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, this can’t be true.

My piles of notes kept shifting with the movement of the train on antiquated tracks. I grumbled and stood, opening the door of my compartment to recapture the ones that slipped under the door.

A beautiful conductor bent over to help pick them up, and her skirt rode up to show spectacular legs. She smiled as she handed me the stack of papers. I struggled to remember my rudimentary Russian, finding her beauty distracting. “Are you writing a book?” she asked me with a brilliant smile.

Oh shit, had she read my notes? I swallowed against the sudden dryness in my throat. “No, I’m helping with some research for a university.”

“How interesting,” her eyes sparkled.

The train shimmied, and she fell into me. I wrapped an arm around her to steady her, or so I told myself. Her smile grew to almost feline proportions. Man, this was more of a test than any other I had thus far. I couldn’t cheat on my girlfriend. More importantly, no matter how cute she was, I couldn’t let this conductor see what I was doing. For all I knew, she could be FSB.

“Th-th-thanks. I need to get back to work,” I said, releasing her and clutching the notes to my chest.

“If I see your papers in the corridor again, I’ll knock on your door,” she smiled and walked away and into the next car.

I closed the door, sat on my small chair, and took a deep breath. Looking in the cabinet for water, I discovered only a bottle of vodka. I drank it straight from the bottle like a true Russian.

Fortified by the liquor, I returned to my review, starting on the next stack of notes: the scant of information referencing the United States. As I read through it, I couldn’t help but laugh. Doonesbury wasn’t a cartoon. It was a documentary.

I gagged on my next slug of cheap vodka. The idiots in charge of the United States were every bit as crazy as the Soviets.

I found that the American team left a land of Victoria’s Secret, Monday Night Football, and shopping malls for Russia, a country of perpetual gray skies, no hot water, and umbrella-wielding babushkas. The KGB was omnipresent, and the Americans could be shipped off to enjoy the Siberian winter if they were caught. Hell, if someone caught them, being sent to Siberia would have been downright lenient. I doubted any of the Americans would have made it to the next street corner. Stealing Soviet national secrets was understandable during the Cold War. But how could anyone have come up with this crazy plan?

I understood why the world’s superpowers were so frustrated and willing to try anything, but their plans weren’t what really ended the Cold War. In the geopolitical world, as in the real world, accidents often create the greatest results. I needed more vodka and sucked down a third of the bottle in one swig.

My notes blurred, and my head spun as I considered the two men central to my journey. The key players in this farce couldn’t be more different. No amount of vodka could possibly make this make any sense, but I had met them and knew all of this was real. Insane, wild, crazy, but real.

Of course, I had to change the names of countries other than America and the USSR. The names of the players had to change, also. For my own safety and the safety of everyone involved.

The next player in this mad story was President Mbangu of Madibu, who has often been considered a living saint. Hell, he’s known as The Great Man throughout the world. During a time when Africa suffered through brutal civil wars, dictatorships, corruption, and economic unrest, his idyllic island nation was poor and happy. He was a much better man than I ever could hope to be. However, his nation’s successes were waning and he had to come up with a way to turn Madibu’s fortunes quickly or chaos could ensue.

Although it was against his better angels, he tricked the U.S. and U.S.S.R., but no one lost, and his people benefitted greatly. How could he ever know that his beaches, hotels, a cargo/cruise ship port, rhesus monkeys and new-found libation production would help end the Cold War?

Mbangu’s friend, and polar opposite, was Prince Claude of Luxenstein. All anyone needed to know about him was his nickname: The Pied Piper of Pussy. As outrageous as it may sound, it was a gross understatement of his life. Casanova was a virgin compared to the Pied Piper, and the Pied Piper was real. He was a one-man good year for casinos around the world. But this time he had gone too far, he only had a short time to fix it or his fairytale nation would be gobbled up as a province of France or Belgium to protect the public from his excesses. His family’s five-century-old principality would be history. He couldn’t hold back. If he had to be dangerous and crazy, so be it. Who would take him seriously anyway? So, he jumped in full force, hoping he would succeed against all the odds.

The last notes I organized before putting them back in my briefcase for the evening were the perfect ending point for the night. They came from Petey, an eighty-five-year-old former pit boss in Vegas, who had seen the Pied Piper in his wildest days.

“You gotta promise me one thing,” Petey had told me.

“What’s that?”

“If you find out the real story before I die, you gotta tell me.”

“Absolutely.”

A huge smile lit his wrinkled, ancient face, “When you come to tell me, make sure I give you my will first.”

“Why?”

“Because when I hear what he did, I’ll probably laugh my ass into the big one. It’ll be a helluva way to go. Die with a smile on my face. Man, I haven’t been this excited since that hooker in ’83. You’ve made this old man very happy. I’ve got something to look forward to now. Thank the Pied Piper for me.”

“You’ve got it, Petey,” I said with a snicker.

Perfect. I let the vodka and clickety-clack of the train put me to sleep. I smiled to myself with that one last thought.

When your kid asks, “How did the Cold War really end, daddy?” You can tell him, “This is how. Don’t believe what you read in the history books. Sit back and read the real story.”