Top of the Slide: Final Edit

The Lilli Elithiac was on a direct course to China, roundtrip to Britain. The ship and her crew were overseen by Captain Bruce Heinsbrooke, a gentle sailor of thirty-six. Heinsbrooke was 6' 2'', a thin build, but muscular; he guides his crew with a rusty voice and smiles, respected by them for they have come to know him for four years now.
The first, Mr. Elijah McGee, father of two; the second, Mr. George Peterson; next came Mr. Harris and first mate Shtough, followed by Mr. Oliver, Jacobs, Cameron, and Wabash. All eight men knew eachother as one knows his own face and Heinsbrooke was not wasted on care for his men. The ship and its crew had been importing goods for most of its four years, bringing in many items and only recently being assigned to opium.
Though Heinsbrooke his crew were not users of the illustrious drug, they had all seen its effects, present in bars and sailor supplied taverns. Bruce wasn't too keen on the idea of recreational narcotics, but when asked his opinion, his only reply is: “it puts bread on the table.”
Now sailing to china, the Lilli Elithiac always made impeccable time, and the ship and its crew made the trip, on most occasions, in under a week. Five days into their voyage, first mate Shtough approached Heinsbrooke after his evening meal.
Filling the small quarters with his muscled mass, Shtough made a slight bow of the head. He was not a shy man, though he could sometimes be persuaded into embarrassment, however humble he was.
"Captain," he declared his voice broken from overuse. "We are a few miles away from China, sir. We'll be bringing her in soon."
Heinsbrooke nodded his approval and lit his pipe. Quite remarkable, he thought. As if the wind itself sent God speed to our sails. Twenty minutes later, Mr. Oliver spotted land and the crew began preparing the ship to be docked. As they pulled into the harbor of a warehouse ridden town in China, Captain Heinsbrooke addressed the Oriental in front of him.
"I'm here for a load of opium. I want to be on my way by the time the sun rises."
The man nodded and showed Bruce his parcel, opium stored in two dozen wood barrels.
"Alright," said Bruce. "Load her up."
After everything had been said and done and over half of the opium had been loaded into the Lilli's cargo hold, the ship's hull slapping raucously against the waves, shouts emerged from the harbor. A group of Chinese policemen heading straight for the Lilli Elithiac came strolling through the bustling harbor, jostling young sailors running errands. This sight sent Captain Heinsbrooke surging forward.
"What's all this, then?" he demanded, waving his hands in the general direction of the Chinese enforcers. A sharp looking man stepped forward, tall compared to his comrades. His hair was combed against his scalp; glasses perched upon his pointed nose, a hat set upon his head. He was dressed straighter than a pin, pressed and steamed into a blue uniform.
"Haven't you heard?" he said in perfect English. ''The opium trade has been banned. You are not welcome here."
"What is that supposed to mean?" asked Bruce, outraged. "We were given strict orders when we left Britain five days ago. We were to receive the shipment of opium waiting for us in this very harbor."
“If you left five days ago, you would not have gotten news of the ban of the opium trade. This, however, is not my problem.” The captain motioned to a group of men to his left. “We are taking control of your ship and you and your crew into custody.”
“This is outrageous!” Demanded Heinsbrooke. “WE are not British officers! We are sailors!” Two men grabbed him from behind. He shoved them off as he continued to shout, his fellow sailors being grabbed by more and more Chinese officers. They seemed to be growing out of the cracks in the pier. “Release us at once!”
Bruce Heinsbrooke began throwing himself at Orientals with an unprecedented amount of force, towering over the squat, blue uniformed men. As he kicked and punched his way to Cameron, who had just punched a squashed looking man squarely in the nose, he shouted: “round them up!” He threw another officer off his back who had attached himself leach-like to his shoulders. He continued to punch his way through the crowd, spotting several members of his crew, though he had yet to spot Jacobs or Wabash.
He felt a punch strike his right shoulder blade and whirled; as soon as he had turned to face the young-looking man in front of him, the little weasel gave a shrill whistle, and Bruce was struck in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. As he spun in circles, dizzying colors bleeding together, men becoming machines and animals, he saw Oliver and Cameron go down, and as the sun set on the spherical expanse of his eyelids, everything became deathly silent. The world slept.
↑→↓←
Bruce Heinsbrooke dreamed of his twelfth birthday, when he had woken to the sound of laughter and bird calls made by the raspy throat of his grandfather. That had been the day he had jumped out of bed, throwing back the covers, rushing out to the front of the house, his father and mother and sister and slight old grandpa.
“Well what do you know,” his grandfather had said. “The birthday boy’s awake.”
His grandfather, upon seeing him, had placed a small wooden boat in his hands, pointing to the wheeling gulls overhead. That was the day Bruce Walter Heinsbrooke decided he would be a sailor and nothing since had ever been so important. Now he woke in a dark warehouse, a splitting headache wracking his brain and all he could think of being “if I hadn’t left home; if I hadn’t left to deliver some damnable drug to those rich pigs back home.”
He looked around. He was on his knees on a dirty warehouse floor, rough wooden planks covered in grimy straw crafting the ground he knelt upon. The walls were high, and wooden beams crisscrossed and rose up to the sloping cobweb-ridden ceiling, a large window, thick with dust and grime rose fifty feet above him and looked out on the harbor.
“He’s awake.”
Bruce whirled. Shtough was leaning against the far wall, and with what felt like agonizing slowness, he crossed that disgusting warehouse floor and stood over Bruce, palm outstretched.
“I’m afraid we’ve hit a spot of bad luck, Captain.”
As Shtough helped him up, he explained that the entire crew had been knocked unconscious and thrown into a dirty warehouse. Bruce had been dead to the world for thirty-six hours, the rest of the crew going sick with worry while Cameron nursed a dislocated shoulder and Wabash tended to cuts and bruises that had blossomed on his face and back. Heinsbrooke and Shtough gathered the rest of the crew, and they sat in a tight circle discussing their predicament. As they whispered and talked of how they had faired in the harbor brawl, new information began to surface.
They had been visited by the sharp-looking Chinese officer twice, each time learning a bit more information of the battle between Britain and China. The two countries had been fighting for a little over a week, Chinese soldiers stealing and destroying large loads of opium, though British weaponry and tactical know-how thwarted Chinese forces on the battlefield. Apparently, Britain was winning.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” declared Wabash. “We’re right next to the harbor; we can find the ship and leave!”
This was met with whispers and ill-will, and as more open conversation broke out amongst the crew, Bruce thought. They did need to leave; they couldn’t wait around to become the Chinese’ next retaliation.
Just then, the warehouse door was thrust open and the sharp-looking Chinese man came in, apparently on his rounds, looking as crisp and pointy as ever. Bruce stood.
“We demand to be released.”
The man chuckled.
“You are casualties,” he explained, speaking slowly as if talking to people not quite set to rights. “You have no rights here. You will do whatever we wish you to do. Your failure to comply will result in something you might find less, uh, appetizing.”
He motioned to a man behind him who aimed a rifle at Bruce.
“Please try and think of yourselves. If you make too much trouble, we’ll just kill you.”
He turned and walked out, the other man only lowering his rifle as the sharp-looking man (now affectionately named “Pinhead”) stalked past him, as if on cue. He walked briskly past the six other men by the door. It slammed behind them.
↑→↓←
Three days past and Pinhead returned twice. The crew had decided; they were leaving, plausible or not. They had no choice. It was escape or be killed, possibly escape and be killed. It didn’t matter. They were going to try; in fact, they had already crafted a plan. They would wait by the door for the next time the officers came in. Most of the officers were ill-experienced and didn’t know how to hold their guns, let alone fire them. The crew would take their fire arms and find their ship, make their way back to Britain. It was a stretch, but they couldn’t stay in the warehouse and wait to be killed. They had to act. On the fifth day, they waited.
Wabash and Jacobs, Oliver and Harris manned the door. McGee, Peterson, Cameron and Shtough stood with Bruce in the center of the open expanse of space, dust clogging the air. They stood that way for forty minutes, and at the time they perceived to be eleven A.M., Pinhead stalked in, flanked by six men. After that, the crew was swift.
The four men by the door grabbed the officers from behind, overthrowing them easily, forcing them to the ground in a state of unconscious stupor. Pinhead whirled, only to be hit from behind by the five men in the middle of the warehouse flour, now seeming like a large musty ballroom filled with people in dusty finery running through tedious dances with their rusty bodies as vessels. Grunts and thudding noises could be heard from outside the warehouse like a violent melody, muffled by the thick wood of the box-like building.
Less then five minutes later, the crew of the Lilli Elithiac slipped out of the warehouse, seven of them armed. They left the seven Chinese soldiers unconscious on the warehouse floor, suits crumpled, muffled moans echoing from their twisted mouths; the after party.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Heinsbrooke, speaking in a forced whisper. As he spoke, he checked his gun and surveyed the alley they had stepped into, checking to make sure the coast was clear. It was.
“We head for the harbor,” he declared. The adrenaline that had flooded into his body during the warehouse brawl, or ball as it was, had melted into a delayed panic as he had looked around the alley. The adrenaline slowly returning and the panic twisting and turning as it grew into a red hot anger, a metamorphosis of sorts. He thought back on all that had happened in the last seven days, rushing through his head like a film strip. Oh, how angry it made him. He had been imprisoned for over a week, malnourished and missing his home, nothing to do but think back to his years before being a sailor, the years before his grandfather and then his parents died, his sister leaving home. He had watched his friends and comrades’ wills dwindle as though they were flames being extinguished, thinking of the families and houses they had left behind in England. Happy home indeed. He was going to see them home, and God help anyone who got in his way.
They walked briskly and discreetly through the crowd of people, growing steadily larger as they progressed toward the harbor. An oriental here and there cast incredulous glances at them, but did nothing. The crew began to see familiar sights as they ducked through the current of rapid-moving people, swift and quick as shadows as they advanced toward the place they had docked the Lilli Elithiac.
A cry rung out, loud and angry, forcing the crowd to near silence; Heinsbrooke whipped around and saw Pinhead advancing toward them, running a good forty yards behind them. He was followed closely by the rest of his squadron and he clutched his face as he ran, his glasses askew.
“RUN!” shouted Bruce, breaking into a full on sprint. The rest of the crew followed suit. They waded through the river of people, passerby stopping and staring, jaws unhinged, some even batting limp hands at the crew arms and legs, hooking dead fish fingers onto the crews’ clothing, their hands torn away by the crews’ escape velocity.
More shouts rang out in front of them, more officers. Bruce dodged between another warehouse, followed closely by his fellow sailors. They kept running.
She should be just beyond this building, thought Bruce, his frantic chase reminding him of the time he had run about his house as a young child, looking for his mother. She’s just around the corner! He would think. Now they rounded a corner and Bruce’s face and heart fell. Their ship was gone; in its place, empty air, occasionally occupied by the ocean’s spray. Shouts sounded around them, and Bruce turned in a full circle, stumbling, to see that the crew was completely surrounded by Chinese officers, the rest of the crews’ guns aimed and ready to fire. Bruce followed their example. Pinhead stumbled into the circle, nursing a bloody nose.
“Swine!” he spat. “You die today!”
Bruce prepared for his final shot, aiming squarely between Pinhead’s eyes.
Guns cocked all around him, and he readied his own. As he was moving his finger to the trigg-
“STOP!”
A whistle sounded, shrill, a scream in an empty alley.
“STOP!” yelled more voices, voices twinged with a British drawl. Chinese officers whipped around and aimed at the group of three dozen men, easily outnumbering their meager fifteen. Shots rang out, Bruce didn’t know how many. Five officers fell to the ground around him, all of them Asian.
“SWINE! I’LL HAVE YOU BUTCHERED!” Shouted Pinhead. He grabbed a gun that had fallen to the ground at his feet and was shot by one of the British soldiers, in the exact same place Bruce had been aiming for. Blood and thicker things fell to the ground around his lifeless body.
“You would all do well not to move,” said a man upon a spotted horse, calm.
“This war is over.”
“Sir,” said Bruce. “What war is that?”
“The damnable opium war, that’s what,” he said. “These Chinese sons of bitches have signed some goddamn treaty. The war is over.”
Captain William McCarthy and his squadron had rescued the crew. His unit that had been instructed to release any British men or women who had been held captive by the Chinese; McCarthy explained this himself, and it was only afterward that the crew had found out that the Lilli Elithiac had been destroyed, used for firewood and wagons to carry firearms. This had been the hardest news to cope with.
It had spawned a long night of reminiscing between Heinsbrooke and his crew of the years they had been sailing together, each letting go of the vessel that had carried them around the world. Bruce promised they would purchase a new ship when they arrived back in Britain, but he could tell by the sullen look on his crews’ faces that they would never sail together again. They had been tried too hard and cut too deep. This was something Bruce thought he could live with.
One day after being rescued, they sailed back to Britain.
↑→↓←
A ship sailed into the horizon, sun meeting sea in a seamless line, blue melting into blue, and light floating lazily overhead. The boat rocked and dipped as wind filled the sails, a tall and lanky sailor at its helm, watching the nothing in the distance.
Much had happened since leaving his home, a nightmare too real to be believed, one that had resulted in the change of more than one lifestyle. Things would continue to change, lives would continue to bloom like flowers in the spring sunshine, ivy climbing up the walls of brownstones, wind rustling through feelings of nostalgia, when the world was in order and life had been sweet.
Now the figure at the bow of the boat was older, in a way that cannot be measured by time or intellect. He had seen things he had never wanted to see, done things he hadn’t wanted to do, But don’t we all, he thought with a certain degree of bitterness. He looked to the setting sun, a cliché, as it were. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.
He was going home.
↑→↓←
It was late April, trees slowly filling out, men, women, and children all in lighter spirits. Birds sang in the parks and boats rocked in the harbor, basking in the sun’s rays, a welcome relief from what was left of winter.
Bruce watched all of this from the porch of the house that had been left to him by his parents. It was the house he had grown up in and would be the house he dies in, that he had decided, would be for certain.
It had been a short year since he had returned home from China, long enough for all of his bruises to heal, his body to return to its natural order, but there was something left over. Beneath the surface of the skin, a wound that had manifested itself twelve months ago, the kind of wound that was drawn to hurt by memories, like a moth to a flame.
It caused pain even now, as Bruce thought of how his old shipmates would walk to his house today, families in tow, to spend a spring afternoon talking of...what? Plans for the future? Bruce didn’t think they would be speaking of past years, not much anyway. He thought of how he passed his days, in his quiet house, tucking memories into the rarely dusted corners of his mind, similar to, he though with bitter content, that warehouse.
As laughter sounded from around the corner, and Bruce eased out of his own thoughts to watch his friends walking down the street toward him, he thought there may be hope for the future.
What’s left of it, anyway.

Top of the Slide Part Three

Captain William McCarthy and his squadron had rescued the crew. His unit that had been instructed to release any British men or women who had been held captive by the Chinese; McCarthy explained this himself, and it was only afterward that the crew had found out that the Lilli Elithiac had been destroyed, used for firewood and wagons to carry firearms. This had been hard to cope with.
Heinsbrooke and his crew had spent a long night reminiscing of the years they had been sailing together, each letting go of the vessel that had carried them around the world. Bruce promised they would purchase a new ship when they arrived back in Britain, but he could tell by the sullen look on his crew’s faces that they would never sail together again. They had been tried to hard and cut too deep. This was something Bruce thought he cold live with.
One day after being rescued, they sailed back to Britain.
↑→↓←
A ship sailed into the horizon, sun meeting sea in a seamless line, blue melting into blue, and light floating lazily overhead. The boat rocked and dipped as wind filled the sails, a tall and lanky sailor at its helm, watching the nothing in the distance.
Much had happened since leaving his home, a metamorphosis of sorts, and a nightmare that had resulted in the change of more than one life style. Things would continue to change, lives would continue to bloom like flowers in the spring sunshine, ivy climbing up the walls of brownstones, wind rustling through feelings of nostalgia, when the world was in order and life had been sweet.
Now the figure at the bow of the boat was older, in a way that cannot be measured by time or intellect. He had seen things he had never wanted to see, done things he hadn’t wanted to do, But don’t we all, he thought with a certain degree of bitterness. He looked to the setting sun, a cliché, as it were. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.
He was going home.