Pete the Pirate

By Floyd Largent

"Arrrrrrrrr, maties! Shiver me timbers, me hearties!"

Pete was practicing his pirate talk, since Talk Like a Pirate Day was coming up soon, yay! He scowled and adjusted the fabric patch over his left eye. It was secured with a thin band of fine silk that wrapped all the way around his head; what a friggin' pain. The patch itself was just a kind of flap that covered his eye socket, sadly. He had begged and begged the surgeons to rivet a black steel patch to his skull, because that would look so cool, but they had refused. After all, the eye might grow back someday, they said, and besides, it wouldn't do to mar the perfect skin of his brow and cheek.

Pete shrugged. He'd just turned nine yesterday, and Grandfather had given him his rad new silk eyepatch to replace the plain old hospital patch he'd worn since he woke up from surgery. Grandfather had desperately needed his left eye two weeks ago, so Pete had gone to the hospital and given it to him. Now he was finally healed up enough to return to school. They had been learning some cool history about piracy on the high seas lately, and he hoped he hadn't missed everything. Just before he left, they had even watched Pirates of the Caribbean! At school! And now he looked just like a bloodthirsty bad-guy pirate!

"Walk the plank, ye wormy swabs!" Pete the Pirate yelled, hoisting an imaginary cutlass in the air. "Yo ho ho 'n a bottle of Coke!"

He couldn't wait to show the kids at school his patch when he went back tomorrow, especially David! His patch didn't quite look as cool as it would have if it was riveted on, like in an anime or something, but everyone would be so jealous!

Pete went to a private school that he enjoyed very much. It was called the Second Hope School for Special Children. Apparently, special meant something like handicapped, although not all of his schoolmates were obviously "special." There was Maggie, who had suffered an accident in eighth grade, and now got around in a motorized wheelchair because she had no legs. She was a real sweetie, though. Colin walked around with a colostomy bag on his hip; the rumor was that his daddy had needed new guts after someone shot him. Jenna was bald because she'd donated all her hair to her mom, after she got sick with cancer and her hair fell out. And poor Gentry had suffered a brain tumor, and was out of school for a very long time. When he came back, he had a bandage wrapped around his head and was a little slower than he had been previously, both mentally and physically.

"Peter," called Nanny, entering the room. Nanny was actually a big tin can on legs, kind of like R2D2 in Star Wars, except that her legs were real legs instead of wheels. "Peter, it's bedtime."

"Aw, come on!" Pete whined. He'd just got his patch right, and now he had to take it off and go to sleep. "Avast, ya scurvy dog! Pete the Pirate ain't one for no bedtime!"

But Nanny had no sense of humor, it didn’t matter if she interrupted him when he was being Peter Pan or Pete the Cowboy Bandit or even Pete the Pirate. She just kept saying, "Peter, it's bedtime," and eventually he went to bed just so Nanny would shut the fudge up. Fudge!

***

When Pete got to school the next day, ready to wow everyone with his pirate patch, the first thing he learned was that David was gone. The second thing he learned, after rushing up to Miz Betty and blurting out the terrible question, was that David was actually G-O-N-E Gone, with a Capital G, which meant Pete would never see him again.

It happened once or twice a year. One of his classmates would move away overnight, and he never saw them again. With fewer than 50 students in Second Hope, that left a gaping hole in everyone's life, like the kind a toof left when it fell out. Your tongue kept going back to the hole again and again. Eventually the loss faded, until you accidentally touched that empty space, and it reminded you suddenly.

Once, a few years later, one kid's little sister had come back to go to school with him. That had been Jenna. She was almost six now, and looked a whole lot like Jess had. Except with no hairs.

Pete had lost a lot more classmates over the years than he had teef. But he'd never lost a close friend, and so he cried a lot that day. So did Miz Betty and Miz Gloria, and the dried-up old Principal, Dexter's daddy, made them both go home and taught their classes himself.

***

When he got home, Pete hurried to Grandfather's room to tell him what had happened. But Grandfather wasn't there. Pete didn't know what to do. He felt like he might explode. He was so upset he did something he had never done: he went into Grandfather's room and explored. He was way back in a big closet when he took the lid off the dusty box and found the photo album.

It was full of pictures of him, Pete! Mostly pictures he didn't remember getting took, including pictures from the future. There was one where he was having his tenth birthday party! And even one where he was a teen boy, almost as tall as Grandfather!

He snuck the picture album to his room and hid it way back in his bottom dresser drawer where he kept all his special rocks and stuff. But not until after he looked at it a lot.

In the following weeks, while he mourned David, he kinda forgot about the picture album. But one day, when he was looking for his ball of string so he could add his latest bit, he came across it again. This time he sat on his bed and looked at it for hours. It was funny to see printed pictures now that everything was digital. Some of the pictures looked really old and faded. They were all color, 'cept the first ones, when he was real little… though some of them were odd-looking. It finally dawned on him that they looked kinda like the Polaroids giggly Mindy at school liked to take with that annoying little camera, but way bigger. He finally removed one picture, and yep, it was thick and the back was black like with a Polaroid. There was a neat piece of tape on the back of it where someone had written, "Lance, 1975, Age 5." It looked like Grandfather's neat handwriting.

Who was Lance? Pete took the picture to the mirror of his dresser and compared the boy in it to his own face. It was him, no doubt about it. Or his twin, which he didn't have. But what did 1975 mean? Was that the year? Couldn't be, it was like 60 years ago. This him would be almost as old as Grandfather by now!

When he went back to the photo album, he found photos marked "Lance" through his tenth birthday party, dated 1980. Then Lance was replaced by another him named "Mathis," starting as a toddler in 1984. The pictures after that were printed ones, not Polaroid. That was the him who grew up to be a teenager until 1998. Then there was a baby him, "Nathan," who first showed up in 2004 and lasted only until 2008 before he vanished. Then another him, "Orlando." Orlando appeared as a baby in 2010, and slowly grew into a boy who looked exactly like Pete, at age nine in 2019. In the last picture, he looked pale and drawn, and had one of those funny bags at his waist, like Colin.

And that was it. There were no more pictures. The rest of the book was empty. Pete slipped the last picture back into its holders and slowly closed the book, thinking. Were these boys all his ancestors somehow? Or his brothers? How could they all look exactly like him?

Lance. Mathis. Nathan. Orlando. Peter, born 2022.

He wondered if there were photo books for boys given names like Albert, Benjamin, Chance, Devon, Eric, and so on… and how far back they went.

***

The next day, Grandfather was home. Pete marched into his room without permission, carrying the photo album. Grandfather watched him, his eyes gleaming bright, saying nothing. His new left eye seemed to be working perfectly.

He instantly knew that Grandfather knew he'd taken the album.

Peter stopped in front of him and held out the book. "Who are all these boys who look exactly like me?"

Grandfather was silent for a moment, then cleared his throat and said in his rough voice, "They were your brothers."

"Were?"

"Almost all passed away, now. Very sad."

Pete considered that. He reached up to touch his eyepatch. "How long before I die too?" he demanded, though it felt like every drop of blood in him was suddenly ice.

Grandfather said, his face blank, "There's no way to know, Peter. Months. Years. Maybe never. I'm very, very old, you know."

"I do know," Pete said, and he was very proud that his voice didn't waver. He threw the book in Grandfather's lap and marched out of his room.

***

Three months later, Pete unexpectedly woke up in the intensive care unit at the hospital, in a whole lot of pain on his left side. It had been an emergency, the doctors said. There wasn't even time to wake him. They had sedated him in bed and taken him straight to the hospital.

Grandfather had needed a new kidney, and he was a perfect match. But it was OK, they said; he had a spare.

By then, he was pretty sure his left eye wasn't really going to grow back.

They moved him to a regular private room as his condition stabilized, and there he stayed for eight more days. He had a lot of time to think. He didn't feel much like a pirate anymore. He felt like a looted ship.

He'd missed Talk Like a Pirate Day while in the hospital anyway. Arrrrr. He'd also missed the twice-monthly blood donation, but oh well.

When he returned home to the mansion, hobbling like an old man, he found Grandfather in the great room playing the piano. He looked like he had shed ten years, while Pete had shouldered them. Pete looked Grandfather in the eye and said, "It's started, then. Won't be long now."

Grandfather could not meet his eyes. "Yes, probably," was all he said.

"All right, then. May I suggest the name Quentin for next time?"

"Sounds good." Grandfather looked at him sadly. "You're the first."

"The first what?"

"The first to figure it out."

"Yay me," Peter said, then turned and hobbled out of the great room to go sit in the middle of the lawn and look at the world, really look at the world, for the very first time.

***

To his surprise, Pete made it to age 14 with no real problems, and noted with cynicism all the digital pics taken by Nanny at his happy little birthday parties, which were attended by all the other dupes from Second Hope.   

Half a year later, after a rough soccer match, he noticed that his urine was coming out brown. A couple of days later, the pain in his gut and right side started and his urine turned red. He knew instantly what it was: his one remaining kidney was failing. He tried to hide it, and succeeded well enough until one of the maids found the bloodstained sheets where he'd accidentally wet the bed while wracked with pain.

Grandfather called the ambulance himself. He even stood beside the vehicle as Pete was gently placed inside, and Pete could have sworn there were tears in the old fraud's eyes. Surprisingly, Grandfather even entered the ambulance with him as an EMT gave Pete a shot—a sedative to ease the pain, he said. The boy cut his eyes toward his Grandfather. "So this is it, then," he croaked.

Grandfather looked at him silently, steadily.

"I hope I last you for a while. Remember: Quentin. It's a good name."

Grandfather reached out and grasped Pete's arm as he started to fade. "Listen, Peter." Lips quivering, he said in a harsh voice, "Tell her this: Burn it down."

Pete's confusion was reflected in the EMT's face as Pete slipped under the surface of a deep, dark, opioid sea.

***

To Pete's surprise, he woke up in a hospital bed, hooked up to about a dozen tubes and lines, and both his sides were afire with pain. A kindly nurse showed up and injected a small dose of morphine into one of his IVs. He soon forgot about the pain, and found himself drifting on a warm, comfortable sea, just this side of consciousness. And that was when he remembered Grandfather's words: Tell her this: Burn it down.

The only "her" in Pete's life, besides the poor girls at Second Hope, was Nanny. After long thought, Peter surfaced and called for the nurse. She was quite solicitous and provided him with a tablet within moments; he suspected she had been waiting for him to ask. She was less solicitous when he asked her, "Where is my grandfather? I'd like to see him."

She froze for a moment; and when she unthawed, she said, "You should probably ask your doctor, sir."

Sir? He put some of Grandfather's steel in his voice and demanded, "Tell me."

She caved. "He's… he's in the dialysis ward. Critical condition."

"Why?"

She looked directly at him, eyes shining, and said, "When your kidney failed… he donated his to you. He was a perfect match."

Peer frowned in confusion. "But that would leave him without any kidneys!"

"That's right. That's why he's on dialysis." She added in a low voice, "He gave his life for you."

Although part of him wanted to shout, Where do you think he got the damn kidney in the first place!, aloud he just asked, "He's terminal, then?"

"I'm afraid so," she said, almost in a whisper.

Later, Peter cried, despite all that he knew and suspected about his grandfather, and how he had built his empire. He cried for a long time, for Grandfather, for all his brothers from Albert to Orlando, and for Peter, too. And when the pale nurse came in that evening and told him that Grandfather had passed way, she was so, so sorry, Pete the Pirate used the tablet to establish a link to the awkward robot he called Nanny, and typed the phrase, Burn it down.

Pete the Pirate was wheeled into surgery that night, and his Grandfather's left eye was harvested and immediately transplanted to replace his missing one. It was a perfect match. Pete the Pirate would no longer need his cool eye-patch. It was just three days before they unwrapped his bandages, and he could see on his left side again, at first a bit fuzzily but, within a day, sharply. He'd really missed depth perception.

By then, many, many files had been released to the media, and quite the circus was unfolding. It was the news of the century. He watched avidly as the networks reported on the children being rescued from Second Hope and taken into state care, the news anchors and reporters dumbfounded and appalled at their origins and purpose; and he watch with grim amusement as their teachers, "parents," "grandparents," "caretakers," and "guardians" were rounded up and taken into custody. Several were killed "resisting arrest" or "committed suicide"; they were the lucky ones. About a dozen slipped away before the authorities could take them into custody, having been long prepared for this day.

Pete the Pirate watched with a sense of quiet triumph as the clone parents were hunted down, one by one, and beaten to death by outraged civilian mobs. He had footage that even the most daring networks wouldn't show. He was pleased that he lived in an age where smartphones had high-resolution video cameras, because he saw each of them die. He was quite rich now and could arrange such things. He couldn't swing the cutlass, so he had others do it for him. But he made sure that they weren't too mutilated. He made sure that his friends at Second Hope got their parts back.

The last to be hunted down was Colin's mob-boss father, and Pete was so happy to see the first videos of the boy living without his colostomy bag, his lower intestine having been returned to him. "Arrrrrrrrr, matie," he whispered on that day.

After his hospital stay, Pete the Pirate was delivered into the custody of his only living relative, a tall, middle-aged bearded man with a hook for his left hand… and a black steel eye-patch riveted over his left eye socket, just as Peter had once dreamed of!

"Hello, Peter," the man said, holding out his good hand for a shake. "I'm your big brother. Name's Mathis."

Pete's eyes went wide, and his nerveless hand fell out of Mathis's. "How are you alive?" he whispered.

Mathis smiled grimly. "It seems I was the only one of us to make it to adulthood, if a little less than whole, so he… he let me go. I never saw him again, but he sent me to college, set me up with a great job." His face crumpled in pain. "I didn't figure it out until years later," he admitted. "I tried to get back in, to save whoever came after me… but his organization was impregnable. Until you burned it down."

"Oh," was all Pete could say.

Mathis's face twisted. "I told myself I didn't want to know, but… were we alphabetical? Were there boys whose names started with N and O?"

When Pete said, "Nathan and Orlando," Mathis covered his face with his hands and wept. Pete the Pirate tried not to join him, as pirates are supposed to be stoic, but a few tears slipped down when he thought of the boys whose names started with A through L. He knew Mathis was thinking of them, too, when he muttered, "The old bastard must've been 200 years old."

Pete hugged his big brother impulsively. After a while, to get his mind off the bad, he told Mathis, "You look like a space pirate, you know?"

Mathis looked up, grinning suddenly. "Ha! That was the look I was going for."

"They wouldn't let me get my patch riveted on when I donated my eye. I had to make do with silk! If I hadn't gotten my eye back, I'd've had it done myself."

"It's a pain in the ass. Hurts like hell sometimes. Hard to clean."

"But worth it! I'd still do it, because it looks so cool!"

Mathis laughed. "Could still happen. Our left eyes tend to fail, apparently."

"Hmmph." Peter crossed his arms and looked at the man, he seemed healthy. "I sure hope you don't need a kidney someday. I only got one left."

"Me too." Mathis smirked.

They looked at each other for a long time, and Mathis said solemnly, "We can never let this happen again."

"I know," said Peter. He lifted an imaginary cutlass. "We'll haunt the high seas o' this world, and strike down anyone who tries!"

And they looked at each other, smiled suddenly, and spoke in stereo:

"Arrrrrrrrr, maties!"

Floyd Largent is a former archaeologist who never woke a sleeping god or unearthed an ancient evil (alas). Currently a full-time writer and editor, in the past nine months he’s published or had accepted for publication three poems and 17 short stories, in venues including Altered Reality, Bewildering Stories, Bullet Points, Chewers, Dream Theory Media, Freedom Fiction Journal, Masticadores International, Suburban Witchcraft, 5-7-6 Haiku Journal, and more. His short story "Reckoning" ran in Issue #112 of Black Petals.

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