Herein lies the tidbits, treats and undersea morsels of
The Captain's finest masterpieces {in progress} just waiting to feed the fishes.
The Captain's finest masterpieces {in progress} just waiting to feed the fishes.
None have been finished, none have been published,
And all have been abysmally awesome!
Anchors Away!
~
Opening to
"The Vengeful Jackknife!"
Chapter One
~
Devastating Scene from
"Daggers of Anger"
~
Scene from
"Daggers of Anger"
"Daggers of Anger"
~
Scene From
"Diamond Underground"
~
Chapter 2 of
"Daggers of Anger"
___________________________________________________________________
Scene from
"Diamond Underground"
“And you’d make such a great match and beautiful children.” Marianne hollered.
Scene from
"Diamond Underground"
“Sure, son. Step aside and let me do the work.” 
~
~
Opening to
"The Vengeful Jackknife!"
Chapter One
My brother, Lance is pacing back and forth watching the window, probably awaiting father’s return.
“Sullivan.” Lance says my name slowly.
“Yes?” I am growing frustrated from Lance’s strange actions. He stares at me, his arms stiffly at his sides. His feet are planted firmly on the ground, about a foot-and-a-half apart.
“Father is supposed to return home today. I heard rumors.” Lance says.
“I hope you are right about him returning.” I say softly, looking up at him.
“Do you know who our president is?” Lance asks.
“Yes.” I say, looking out a window.
“Grover Cleveland.” Lance says, “He’s a pretty good president, don’t you think?”
“Better than some others.” I say, getting up from the chair.
“Sullivan, you are too young to know politics. Just wait until you are fifteen, like me.” Lance pats my shoulder.
“I don’t know much about politics, nor do I care.” I snap, shoving his hand away from me. I hear mom calling our names.
“You will care.” Lance smiles.
“Mom’s calling. Better go.” I say, running out to the back door.
“Sullivan! Wait for me!” Lance cries out, running after me.
I open the door and go down the stairs. Mother is holding two baskets, balanced on her hips.
“Did you call?” I ask.
“Yes. Can you boys please go and start gathering the walnuts? They are ready to be picked.” Mother says, handing both of us baskets.
I take the basket and then Lance and I go through a path in the forest.
“Sullivan, aren’t you afraid that one of those damn Confederates will come here and try to kill us?” Lance asks.
“No. Why do you say stuff like that?” I ask, “It’s scary enough that we have to worry about one of those slave owners bringing the evil of slavery around here.”
“I doubt we’ll ever become a slave state. It’s horrible. I would never want to be a slave.” Lance looks up at the sky, as if thinking about such a terrible event. He clutches my hand tightly.
“Lance, you’re squeezing my hand too tight.” I say.
“Sorry.” Lance’s grip loosens, even though he still holds my hand. his hand feels large and warm in my small, cold one. We find the walnut tree and commence on picking up the nuts and placing them in our baskets.
I pick up a few from the ground, thinking of the banana-nut bread and muffins that Mother makes. Lance is pulling down a branch and shaking it roughly, making nuts fall off the bough and tumble to the ground.
“Lance! You are going to bust that!” I cry out.
“Don’t worry.” Lance says, letting the branch go.
Suddenly, I can hear Father calling.
“Father’s back!” I say and then abandon my basket to go find my father.
I find Father sitting on the back step, talking to Mother about what he has seen on his trip. I rush over to him and hug him tightly.
“How have you been, Sullivan?” Father asks, straightening my shirt.
“Fine.” I reply.
“Do you want to see what I brought both of you?” Father asks Lance and me.
“Yes. Show us.” Lance sounds impatient.
“Come inside. I brought gifts. You should have seen the Indians that your Uncle Alan and I met. We saw Fort Laramie, which has been abandoned for four years. The ruins were amazing!” Father leads us inside as he tells us things.
“Wow.” I gasp, “I wish I could see an Indian.”
We go to the sitting room and see what father has brought us. He takes a deerskin bag off the counter and then sits on the couch between Lance and me.
“This is for you, Lance.” Father hands Lance a pocket watch.
“Wow! It’s so pretty! So elegant and immaculate!” Lance exclaims, his brown eyes wide with surprise and ecstasy.
“And this is for you, Sullivan.” Father gives me a jackknife.
I look at it carefully. My initials are carved in the side. S.K.T. for Sullivan Karsten Tremaine. I am so happy with my gift that I can’t speak.
“Thank you.” I say in a small voice.
“That’s a Swiss army knife.” Lance says, pointing at my knife.
“Wow.” is all I say.
“I’m glad you boys like your gifts. I got the watch in Council Bluffs and the knife came from Des Moines, both in Iowa.” Father tells us.
That night, at dinner, we have a roast goose, corn, potatoes, and biscuits. For a drink we have fresh milk.
I watch Lance, who carefully cuts the goose into pieces. He is frowning as he saws at the leg. After a minute or two, Father decides to help him out.
“Tomorrow, I have to go to Anna’s house. She broke her leg and needs help around her house.” Mother tells us.
“I plan on helping Jake fix his wagon. He busted it again yesterday.” Father says. His friend is always breaking his wagon. Jake is totally accident-prone.
“You two will be alone for a couple hours tomorrow. Stay out of trouble.” Mother says, “Don’t forget to milk the cows and gather eggs.”
“We won’t forget.” I groan. I hate milking the cows. It’s boring.
Devastating Scene from
"Daggers of Anger"
Rocco claimed he is very sick of me whining all the time, which I think is just his jealousy speaking. I have mentioned before how jealous he is. I mean, I can’t blame him. I’m a good football player. And I’m dating the most beautiful girl in school. And I’ve got a six-pack. Then he did something that really broke my heart of hearts. He sold me!
I moved away from my family, my girlfriends, all my buddies, and, worst of all, Paul to live with Alfredo and Jasmine Perri.
“You claim there’s a ghost in my house?” Rocco roared. “Now you can live with Alfredo and Jasmine! See how you like it!”
Mom didn’t try to stop him. A single tear rolled down her cheek and I realized then that she was crying and that she didn’t have the power to stop her evil husband from ridding herself of her son. And then I started to cry. It was such a sad, sad, sad event. Oh, I didn’t know what else to do! My heart was broken!
“Let’s go,” Alfredo said. He was a big, fat man with a wart on his nose. His wife was pretty, though, and she smiled at me. Probably because I’m good-looking, I realized. I just have that effect on people, even when I’m sad.
I got in the car. Rocco was clapping his hands and dancing around. He stepped on a baby bird and killed it. I looked back at the house and I swore I could see Paul in the window, crying.
~
Scene from
"Daggers of Anger"
I had myself a really bad nightmare last night that made me wake up shaking and crying and bawling for Mom. I dreamed that I was walking down a narrow hall and then…and then…I saw Monte…and he had a submachine gun pointed at me and then…and then…he said, “I’m going to kill you, athlete!” He still looked like a goth, by the way. Did I mention that Goths are scary people that hate jocks? I think I did!
But anyway, I woke up crying.
Mom held me and cooed and rocked me back and forth, saying, “It’s all right, Dirk. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.”
“What’s that boy crying for now?” Rocco boomed. “He’s sixteen years old, too old to be crying, and yet he’s crying again! Boo hoo hoo!”
“Shut up!” I wailed. “You’re just jealous of me!”
“Why would I be jealous of you?” he questioned.
“Because I’m a good athlete and I have lots of friends and I’m the football captain!” I hollered. “And you just own a stupid candy company that makes people fat! And I know you’re trying to make me fat! And it’s not going to work, Rocco! It’s not! You’re just as bad as Monte!”
“Calm down, Dirk. Calm down,” Mom soothed,
“Yeah, calm down, you little shit-for-brains,” Rocco sneered.
I cried.
Did I mention that Rocco was very abusive sometimes? Yes, he was! Last week, he grounded me from my Nintendo Wii for three days just because I forgot to take out the garbage! And he hit me sometimes, too! Of course, Mom doesn’t intervene, because she just loves him, but damn it, that just makes me so angry, because I’ve had a hard life with this ghost and a busy life with sports and just don’t have time for Rocco’s jealousy!
Mom kissed my forehead. Rocco watched angrily. They left and I stayed awake all night because I was scared Monte would kill me too.
~
Scene from"Daggers of Anger"
The ghost’s name was Paul. He became my friend. It wasn’t like I needed anymore friends. I had over seven-hundred friends on Facebook, bordering on nine-hundred. I was friends with almost everybody in school except for that dumb, ugly bitch, Wendy Mott. She smelled like a sour sponge and looked like poop, so I didn’t become friends with her, because nobody should be friends like that. But anyway, I was very good friends with Paul. Even if he was a ghost, I had lots of fun talking to him. I just make friends easily that way. It must be the buzz cut. Everybody likes a guy with a buzz cut.
So anyhoo, we got to talking about a ghost named Monte! He was a very evil ghost who might have had something to do with Paul’s death, but Paul doesn’t remember who killed him or why he haunts my mansion. He looks scared when he tells me about his murder.
“I don’t know who killed me, but I’m very scared it could be Monte. If he killed me in the past, then he could kill me while I’m a ghost!” Paul said.
“Don’t worry,” I console Paul. “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”
But then…Monte appeared!
He was very scary with a skull face and gothic tattoos all over his arms. He wore black fingernail polish, too, and had very long, long hair that reached to his butt. He was nobody I’d be friends with if he was real, because goth kids shoot up schools and kill athletes like myself. I heard goth kids are always prowling around America and Canada looking for schools to shoot.
But anyway, Monte was very, very, very scary!
I peed my pants!
“I’ll get you both,” Monte said, “and you’ll be sorry you became friends with each other!”
But there needed to be a storm for his power to be complete, so he disappeared.
Paul and I sat there looking at each other for twenty minutes. Then I started to cry, both because I was scared and my pants were wet and soaking into my Captain Kirk bedspread. I loved that bedspread. Everybody at school who knows I have a Captain Kirk bedspread thinks it’s very, very, very, very, very cool. Plus, my Darkwing Duck underwear are probably stained for good! That’s horrible!
There was a knock on my door.
“Dirk, Liz is on the phone!” Mom cried. “She’s coming over!”
“Okay! I’ll be down!” I got up and left, figuring I have to meet Liz.
I heard Paul cry as I shut the door behind me.
~
Scene From
"Diamond Underground"
The kidnappers dragged Marianne into their car and slammed the door. She screamed. Oh, did she scream! One of the kidnappers was Mexican. He hit her in the face.
“Where those diamonds be, Ma’am?” he asked.
“I don’t know!” she yowled. “Oh, I don’t know!” She cried for her husband, her poor husband, and her sons! And the diamonds! What would become of those diamonds now that these kidnappers knew about them?
“Let us go,” the other kidnapper growled.
They drove around the block and came to an abandoned shed! It was falling down! There were black cats running everywhere! Marianne knew it probably smelled like the toilet Maxwell plugged up last week! She screamed and screeched and bellowed and roared!
“Let me go!” she ejaculated. “My husband will kill you both!”
“Shut up,” the Mexican man muttered.
“Yeah, shut up, you whore,” the white one laughed.
They took her in the shed. They tied her to a chair and stuffed a rag in her mouth.
“John Berdforth will give us the diamonds,” the Mexican guy said. “And we’ll be rich.”
“Should I write the ransom note?” the white man inquired.
“Yes. You go and do that now,” the Mexican guy said. “Then, when you finish, you can rape the wench.”
“yippee!” The white guy said and ran off.
~
Chapter 2 of
"Daggers of Anger"
I love school. Of course I couldn’t wait to go the day after I first saw Paul and tell everybody what I saw. Would they believe me, though? I didn’t know, butI wasn’t scared. I was the football captain and most people believe what a football captain has to say. Even the dorks who are jealous (I’m also class president), will believe me.
I sat in the courtyard at lunch. My friends gathered around me. We ate hot dogs and French fries and drank cartons of white milk. The sun shone upon us and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. There were a lot of birds chirping. It was a beautiful day. I wasn’t scared because it was so beautiful, so I decided to tell my friends everything about what I saw last night.
“You guys,” I said, “I saw a ghost last night!”
“You guys,” I said, “I saw a ghost last night!”
“No way!” Patrick Vargas yelped. “You saw a ghost?”
“Well,” Liz said, “they have a mansion after all.
Most mansions are haunted.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I haven’t been in a mansion that wasn’t haunted.”
“I haven’t been in a mansion that wasn’t haunted.”
“What about my uncle’s?” Jake Burnett asked.
“Was it haunted?”
“Was it haunted?”
“I didn’t see anything,” said I.
“I think my house is haunted,” Bob Jenkins said.
“I think I heard a kid crying the other night.”
“I think I heard a kid crying the other night.”
“Could be your brother,” Sharon Lee threw in.
“Could be,” Bob mused.
“Guys,” I said. “We’re getting off track.
I saw a ghost in my house last night and it was very scary.”
I saw a ghost in my house last night and it was very scary.”
“He slept at my house,” Liz added.
“Ooooh!” Patrick cried. “Did you guys sleep together?”
“No, you twit,” I growled. “I slept in a spare room.
You know about my promise to my mother to wait
until marriage. You have a dirty mind!”
You know about my promise to my mother to wait
until marriage. You have a dirty mind!”
The bell rang.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Math time.”
“What about that ghost?” Bob asked.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said.
“I’ve got to take a math test now.”
“I’ve got to take a math test now.”
“Yeah, you go and take that test now,” Jake said.
I went to math. It was advanced calculus. Even if I’m only in tenth grade, I am doing college work. I plan to be a math teacher one day. I got a one-hundred percent on the test. Then I had History of the World, which was boring. The last class of the day was study hall. I took a nap. Then I went home…to where the ghost was lying in wait…
~
Scene from"Daggers of Anger"
My name is Dirk Caselli. I live in a mansion known as Caselli Manor with my mother, Serena, my stepfather, Rocco, and my brother Eric. It’s a very nice house with gargoyles all over, an indoor swimming pool with a diving board and slide, and even an indoor basketball hoop! A lot of my friends like to come over and shoot hoops.
I have an almost perfect life. My stepfather owns a candy company that makes lots of goodies that my friends all like to pig out on when they come over. I’m the football captain and I’m dating the most beautiful girl in school and I even won an artist of the year award! Everything was going so well!
But then I found out there was a ghost in our house.
It was very scary when I first saw it. It was dripping water and looked like a zombie! I ran downstairs into the kitchen and hid behind the cook! Oh, how could I sleep now that I have seen such a ghost? Oh, how could I even live in this house? But, ah, I could call my girlfriend. Both of us have pledged ourselves to wait till marriage, but sleeping at her house is okay.
I called Elizabeth up. “Liz, I saw a ghost!” I screamed.
“You did? Do you want to come over? Ricky’s got a new video game set,” she trilled. “And we can play all sorts of games and everything on it!”
“Sounds great,” I said. “Let me get the Camaro out and I’ll be over.”
“Could you stop at the store and get some chips and soda? We’re all out.”
“Will do.” I smiled.
~___________________________________________________________________
Scene from
"Diamond Underground"
Now that the Berdforths were rich once again, Abe could carry on his relationship with the beauteous Veronica Smith. Oh, Veronica was so pretty with her long blond hair that fell heavily to her teeny, tiny waist, her huge blue eyes, teeny nose, full mouth, and pointed little chin. Her feet were so dainty that her shoes had to be special ordered. Abe loved her so. He wanted to marry her, he did, and now that he had a bunch of diamonds, he certainly would!
“Oh Veronica!” he wailed. “I love you so much! Let’s get married.”
“Okay!” she jumped up and down, clapping her hands.
He kissed her heavily.
He went home.
“I’m getting married,” he said gravely to his parents.
“To Veronica?” Marianne screamed.
“Yup.” He told her.
“That’s good, son. She’s a very pretty girl,” John said.
“They certainly would. They can carry on the Berdforth name,” John grumbled.
“And you’ll be happily ever after.” Marianne bellowed.
Then Maxwell entered the room. His face was as pale. He looked like he saw a ghost.
“What’s wrong, Son?” John asked.
“I plugged the toilet again, Pops.”
~
Scene from
"Diamond Underground"
Maxwell Berdforth stormed into the room where everybody was sorting through the diamonds. He looked very, very embarrassed.
“What’s wrong, Maxwell?” John inquired with quite a bit of concern.
“Dad, I just plugged the toilet,” Maxwell said with a flush. “Can you help me unplug it?”
“You plugged the toilet? How did you plug the toilet?” Marianne squawked. “Think what all our new friends will think with you always plugging up the toilet! That’s the fifth time this week!”
“I can’t help it, Ma!” Maxwell started to cry.
Marianne patted his shoulder. “There, there, son!” she screamed. “It’s okay!” she screeched.
There was a knock at the door. Lionel answered it. Mr. Martin was in the door. He had on a hat and suit. “Hi, Mr. Martin,” Lionel said. “Come in.”
Mr. Martin saw the diamonds scattered about. “Wow, that’s a lot of diamonds. Where did you get all those diamonds?”
“We found them,” Lionel grumbled.
“That’s amazing! Can I have some?”
“Maybe,” Lionel mused.
“I made a turkey for dinner. Do you guys want to come over?” Mr. Martin asked.
“Turkey!!!” Marianne ejaculated. “Of course we’ll come over!”
