“They say fifty lashes will kill a man. So I'll spare you the last one.”
“He wouldn’t charm her. She’d almost forgot what his kiss tasted like., felt like. She only remembered it when she drifted into dreams. Then it became so vivid, so real. To her mortification, she always felt a little thrill. Her life had been filled with gentlemen of the finest quality. James Sterling was like none of them, he was unpolished. A diamond in the rough. A scoundrel. A pirate.”
“Better to face the devil than have him at your back.”
“I’ll always be there, Anna, in every ship you see sailing past. I’ll be the wind in its sail.”
“How did you come to be a pirate?”
“I was aboard a pirate ship.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “How did you come to be aboard a pirate ship?”
“When she returned to her cabin, Dr.Gabriel was already there examining Sterling's back. Sterling lay on his stomach, on her bunk, his eyes closed. She wondered if he was sleeping. She doubted it. He was probably unconscious. Or perhaps he'd closed his eyes in order to hide what he was feeling.”
“Her heart lurched and tears burned her eyes. “Surely you can escape.”
“Not this time.” He captured a tear that rolled down her cheek. “Don’t cry. You’ve given me more joy than I’ve ever known.”
“It’s not enough.”
He gave her a sad grin. “That’s how pirates are made. The plunder we take is never enough. We’re never content with what we have. We always want more.”
“Keep telling yourself that, m'lady. Maybe you'll come to believe it.”
“You were his protector, yet he betrayed you.”
James shrugged. “Odd thing is, I know if I asked, he’d die for me.”
She studied him for a moment. “But you’d never ask.”
“Nay. I never would.”
“You’re a complicated man, James Sterling.” She said softly.”
“You're the only treasure I'll ever need.”
“She’d looked so beautiful standing there, gazing out to sea. Crimson had once told him a tale about Sirens, magical creatures that lived on an island. Their songs lured mariners to their destruction – their ships were destroyed by the rocks surrounding the island. And even knowing that death awaited them, they couldn’t resist the lure of the Sirens’ song.”
“I think: there at the point where thought joins with me I am able to subtract myself from being, without diminishing, without changing, by means of a metamorphosis which saves me from myself, beyond any point of reference from which I might be seized. It is the property of my thought, not to assure me of existence (as all things do, as a stone does), but to assure me of being in nothingness itself, and to invite me not to be, in order te make me feel my marvelous absence. I think, said Thomas, and this visible, inexpressible, nonexistent Thomas I became meant that henceforth I was never there where I was, and there was not even anything mysterious about it. My existence became entirely that of an absent person who, in every act I performed, produced the same act and did not perform it.”
“I care about Violet more than I care about myself. Maybe even… Love her? Fuck, am I in love? No, there’s no way. I don’t even know what love is.”
“I opened my mouth. My tongue wouldn’t form words. I had so much to say. I took a bite of spaghetti. Time passed. When she stopped speaking, her eyes were wet. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were full. Full of eighteen years of what someone had taken from her. I smiled and stood. I looked away. I ran my fingers through my hair. As I carried my plate to the sink she raised her hand to her face. Wiping eighteen years of love from her eyes, she spoke, “I love you Marc.”
“Do you really believe that freedom of choice exists? India still has a caste system. Most of the Middle East treats women as inferiors and those who practice other religions as enemies. China regulates how many children couples can have, genocide abounds in South America and Africa, Malaysia has a booming underage sex trade, and the list goes on and on. All around the world the people in power abuse it and human rights are ignored. But what if we were incapable of hurting our fellow man? What if our core impulse was to help each other rather than control each other? The human race is destructive. This research could fix it. Purify it.”
“I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all the small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. But, talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.”
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