Ashes of Port Royal

A grieving boy trades sorrow for steel, joining a pirate crew to survive.

The sun burned like vengeance over the Caribbean as Robert Blackburn stood barefoot on the docks of Port Royal, clutching the only things he had left: a silver earring from his mother, a sack of stale bread, and the tattered pillow from her deathbed.

She was gone now. Fever. And with her, any hope of an honest life.

The merchant ships laughed him off. No one wanted a seventeen-year-old without coin, name, or muscle. But Robert had something more dangerous; a will sharpened by hunger and grief.

He found the crew at dusk, drinking in a low-ceilinged tavern that stank of blood and brine. Their captain, a woman with a jagged scar across her throat, stared him down as he stepped into the flickering candlelight.

“You got a reason to speak, boy?” she rasped.

Robert tossed his mother’s earring on the table. “I’ve got nothing left,” he said. “No one to bury me, but the sea. Let me aboard, or kill me here.”

The captain stared, then leaned in. “You ever gut a man?”

“No,” Robert said, heart pounding. “But I’ll learn fast.”

The crew roared with laughter. The captain smiled like a shark. “You’ve got stones. I like stones.”

They called the ship Devil’s Mercy. By dawn, Robert had swapped his pillow for a dagger and stowed his sorrow in the hold. He peeled potatoes, scrubbed decks, and watched men die over spilled drink or bad cards. But he never flinched. Never begged.

A month in, he took his first life, quiet, clean, and necessary. The dead man had tried to slit the captain’s throat in the night. Robert caught an elbow to the eye for his trouble.

After that, the crew called him Black-Eye Blackburn.


Word Count: 287
Prompt: Write a story that includes the words: drink, earring, pillow
Written for: "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"