The Mariner Read Online Free PDF

trouble. She was dead.
    “How did it happen?” he asked, curiosity in place of emotion.
    The Mariner didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to hear. He stumbled across the room as if in a daze, and lowered the body beside the fire.
    Poor Isabel. Still, the bitch had it coming, no doubt about it. How many had she lured to death in that room? Absinth had no idea, she’d been doing it long before he’d met her. Inevitable that one day she’d find someone too quick to cut, or too messed up to spunk ‘n’ sleep.
    “You saw her go for the knife huh?”
    “What?”
    “I asked if she went for her knife?”
    The Mariner struggled as if the memory were a wet fish. “No knife. We were making love. And..”
    “Yes?” Absinth thought his own voice sounded rather too keen for his ears. Perhaps he should try to sound more sympathetic? Would be difficult though. Why should he care about a whore’s death? Lord knows another death meant little in this place.
    “I killed her.” The Mariner stared at a bloody knuckle as if he’d never seen his own fists before. He repeated it again. He’d killed her.
    “By accident?”
    “No. I just...” the Mariner struggled to find words. “One moment everything was fine. The next... Blood everywhere. I couldn’t help it.”
    A sexual nutbag,
thought Absinth.
Jeeesus Christ Almighty! He probably came as he did it too, bloody freak.
    “Easily done,” he said, offering his cigarette to the Mariner. “I once smacked a girl in the cunt after shagging ‘er. Don’t know why, just did. I’d pulled out and was getting dressed when I saw my jizz in ‘er fanny. It was trickling out, no,
gushing
out, and for some reason I just lost it. Punched her right between the legs. Was like punching moss. Didn’t go as far as you though, back in those days there were consequences. Not like now.”
    “What’s beaver?”
    Absinth blinked, trying to keep up with this man’s insanities.
    “You think we should eat them?”
    Absinth finally realized what the Mariner was getting at. About his triangular chest clung a tattered tee-shirt proclaiming to the world, ‘Save Trees, Eat Beaver’, the words peppered with tiny burnt holes like machine gun fire. “It’s just a fuckin’ tee-shirt.”
    “Oh.”
    “So where did you get the Neptune?”
    “The Neptune?”
    “Yes, your ship!” Absinth cried, his excitement bubbling over.
    “I didn’t know she was called the Neptune.”
    Absinth couldn’t conceal his amazement. “You mean you’ve been sailing an antique, a piece of history, and you didn’t know?”
    The Mariner shook his head, clearly he didn’t.
    “That’s the Neptune. Took convicts to Australia. Must have been around 1780 it all happened.”
    “I don’t know where those places are. Did it succeed?”
    “In a way. Over a hundred and fifty convicts died on the journey. Terrible what the crew did to ‘em. Terrible. I read about it when tracing back my family-tree.” He focused the Mariner with a wily stare. “A lot of bad memories aboard that vessel, I’ll bet.”
    “No, no memories.”
    A blank book this one. Nothing inside that head but a desire to cum and make girls bleed. Useful.
    “My name is Absinth Alcott, and like you I’m a sailor. A captain when the mood takes me. What’s yours?”
    “I don’t have a name.”
    “Bloody hell. Done something even worse than killing this honey here? Ok, we’ll play it your way. Your name will be...” Absinth struggled, searching his memory banks. He snapped his fingers. “Claude! Pleased to meet you, Claude.”
    Between them, a fly made a daring dive for Isabel’s corpse, only to be repelled by smoke. It banked, hoping to bring itself around for a second go.
    “So where to next, Claude? To which horizon will you be sailing?”
    The Mariner, still in shock, tried to assess the old man. He liked him, despite his vile nicotine stained hands and teeth, despite his frank talk of previous thuggery. The Mariner couldn’t bring himself to