The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 15 - 18 (11 page)

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Authors: Cameron Jace

BOOK: The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 15 - 18
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"No," I begged.
"I want to be a pirate. I am striving to hurt somebody, kill someone, and
cause chaos. It's in my nature. It's what I like to do."

"Are you capable of
killing?" Hook asked.

"I killed my Puppet
Master with a chainsaw. If you give me a sword, I will show you I can kill. And
I can steal."

Hook rubbed his long beer-wet
beard, thinking it over. He seemed reluctant.

"Please?" I got on
my knees and prayed. "My name is Pinocchio. Pinocchio the Pirate. I think
it sounds gritty."

"Stand up,
Pinocchio," Hook said with a serious face. "Do you even know who I
am?"

"Of course, I know.
You're the man with the hook, the scariest and most evil pirate in the
sea." I stretched out my hands theatrically, remembering the days when I
used to act in the puppet show.

Hook took a moment, before he
burst out laughing again. His pirates followed, pointing at my naïveté. They
laughed so hard, they held their stomachs from the pain.

"Did I say something
wrong?" I put my hat back on.

"You think I am
evil?" Hook caught his breath and wondered.

"But you must be," I
blinked, confused. "Maybe you don't like to think of yourself like that,
but you're the greatest evil I have ever seen."

"Why would you say
that?" Hook still laughed.

"Look at you," I
waved. "You pick people randomly from the map and raid their ships. I
haven't seen a greater evil. I mean, I never did things as random when I was
the devil."

"He thinks I am
evil," Hook waved his hook in the air and laughed again. "Well, to
the untrained eye, I might seem so. But I am sorry, Pinocchio. I can't let you
work for me." Hook grabbed me with his hook. "I honestly don't know how
to deal with a devil when I meet one, because I am only concerned with the
ocean. So I am going to throw you in it, like anyone else I have no use
for."

I tried to free myself from
his grip, but it was impossible. I was just a little thing, and he had an arm
as thick as my whole body, "But wait," I begged again. "I need
to know who you are. At least tell me that before I die."

"If you can't figure it
out yourself, then you're as dumb as wood," Hook laughed. "Think of
it. Who has the right to do evil things and aren't considered evil, even by the
Gods? If you can solve that riddle, you will know who I am," he roared,
and threw me like pebble out in the ocean.

As I splashed into the water,
awaiting my darkened fate, I couldn't stop thinking about Hook. I couldn't
solve the puzzle.  Who the heck was he?  How was there someone who did evil
under the eyes of the Gods, and they still liked him?

I let myself sink deep toward
the bottom, knowing there were no other ships for me out there. And even if I
found another ship, it was probably destined to be raided by Hook in a couple
of days.

Sitting, cross legged, on the
ocean's floor, fish swimming around me, I realized that Hook had the power to
do whatever he wanted, with no consequence. Whoever he really was, I envied him
greatly.

I know, I am repeating myself,
but I just can't help it. I had to know who he was.

One of the few advantages of
being a puppet was that I didn't breathe. I could stay in the ocean forever,
and not die. The water wasn't really good for my skin, wood I mean, but I could
survive for a while at least. I was afraid of whatever creatures lurked in the
ocean, those the pirates had talked about. They'd said the ocean ate anything
human.

It was only a day later when I
was introduced to Mr. Shark, eating away every fish around me. I paddled to the
left and the right trying to escape him, but he still found me. He stopped in
front of me, and looked at me for a while. Something he doesn't normally do. He
was pondering whether I was edible or not. Surprisingly, he bit me.

The moment was longer than I'd
expected. The shark bit lightly on my arm, and spit away. He didn't like me,
and I was flattered.

I wasn't human and I had no
flesh. To him, I was useless. He swam away from me, and I felt great.

But not for long.

A great swirl waved inside the
water suddenly, and the world spun around me. I couldn't hold onto anything,
and found myself pulled into a spiral water twister.

What the holy shrimp was going
on?

The twister sucked me into a
dark place with thousands of other sea creatures with bulging and appalled eyes
like me.

"What is going on?"
an oversized shrimp talked to me underwater--gotta love this nonsense world.

"How the heck should I
know?" I bubbled out, spiraling upside down into darkness.

I had managed to float on the
surface of this strange flood in the ocean, paddling like an eight-legged frog.
The first thing I saw was a wall of white zigzags, which clapped shut from
above and below. Had I entered some kind of cave with teeth for a door?

A while later, I saw too many
things entering the cave with me; chairs, guns, tree branches, barrels, and
infinite amounts of small fish. I had even come across a bed, seized the
opportunity, and hopped on it.

The water began slowing down
as I entered a hollower place, with an enormously high arched ceiling. It
looked as if it was made of bones. But whose bones where that big?

"Over here!" voices
summoned me.

I looked and saw three old men
in their nightgowns; brewing tea, and sitting around a table nailed on the back
of a floating log on the water. They didn't look distressed by the situation.

"What is this
place?" I asked, having rowed closer in my bed.

"God's punishment,"
one old man said.

"We call it the cave of
sin," another said.

"One day, a long time
ago, we escaped a cannibalistic tribe and hid in a cave, caring only for
ourselves, and leaving our families behind," the third man explained,
pouring the tea. "We slept and prayed that it would all be over when we
woke up. When we woke up, we found ourselves in this cave instead."

"It's punishment for not
standing up for our families," the first one said. "I think we're in
Hell."

"Who knew the tea would
be that good in Hell," another chuckled.

"You're not in Hell, you
morons!" I was about to scream, pull out my hair, and bounce on the bed.

"And how do you know,
piece of wood?" another one snickered. Wow, wood had become an insult
here.

"Because I am the
devil," I said. "Piece of human stupidity," I admit, not the
best of come backs, but I was furious.

"And I am Santa
Claus," one of them chuckled.

"Seriously?" I
frowned. "You don't question a puppet that talks, and can't believe that I
am the devil?"

"A puppet that talks is a
sign from the Gods," the third man said. "A devil in a dire situation
like this is a joke."

I wasn't going to argue with
people who'd lived inside a cave, making tea for what looked like years. But
wait. This couldn't be a cave. It didn't make sense. I was inside something
organic, something that was alive. I could sense it breathing and puffing, causing
a slight bending in the walls.

Sailing away from the three
stooges, I glimpsed writings on the walls--bones, I mean. It looked like
someone had been here for some time, enough to fill a certain space with
endless writings, which he'd carved with some sharp stone. And it definitely
wasn't the three stooges. They were too dumb to do anything like that.

Closer, I saw that all the
words were the same. The previous prisoner of this place, whomever he or she
was, wrote only two words everywhere; two words explaining where I was exactly,
and frustrating me even more: Moby Dick.

I was inside the whale Hook
was trying to catch, and it was huge like a small town of its own. My options
of getting out were almost none.

I slumped back in the bed,
wondering what kind of fate this was, trapped in a puppet that was imprisoned
in a whale. It was as if I had been inside a Russian matryoshka doll.

In another diary, I may write
about the days I spent inside the whale, trying to start a new life with my
three lunatic neighbors. I spent so much time inside, I wondered why I hadn't
grown a puppet's beard yet.

Then one day I decided I
needed to leave this whale's belly. I couldn't swim toward its mouth because it
was a long shot.  Whenever I tried to, an incoming tide throttled me back again
among the whale's other favorite meals.

"If you want to get out,
you have to pray to God," one of three stooges told me.

"I am beyond
prayer," I mumbled. "Maybe you can pray for me."

"We have been for a
while, but it looks like the Gods don't like us," another tea-pouring old
bum said. "Why do you think that is the case?"

"Maybe because you're
stupid?" I mumbled.

But then, out of sheer shits
and giggles, I got on my wooden knees and prayed to God to save me, and get me
out of here.

The result?

I felt sleepy. Who knew prayer
makes you feel so relaxed? It was better than sleeping pills or yoga. I decided
I'd try that occasionally later, since I was sure the Gods weren’t going to
answer my prayer, not even when I was disguised as a puppet.

The next morning, I woke up to
an awful smell inside the whale.

"What the heck is
that?" I tried not to inhale, standing to my feet. Even a puppet couldn't
stand that horrible smell.

"It's a horde of
Zorillas," ones of stooges said. The other two had already fainted.

"What's a Zorilla?"
I asked.

"This!" he pointed
at a number of striped polecats that had arrived with another tide. Who knew
what the whale was thinking, swallowing awful smelling creatures like that? The
smell was so intoxicating, I felt my horns numbing to an inevitable cold.

"And what will we do
now?" I screamed.

"It's our fate," the
old douche said. "We're destined to die from an awful smell. What a harsh
death the Lord has bestowed on us."

"Tell you what," I
said impatiently, escaping the Polecats. "I had enough of you. Please die
like your two other friends, and just leave me be."

I swam away, wondering if the
Gods had been upset with me yesterday saying my prayers, so they sent me
polecats to kill me mockingly. But it just couldn't be. In my opinion, the Gods
needed me; if there wasn't someone like me being blamed for everything bad in
this world, how could they be Gods, the symbol of all things good?

The answer to the argument in
my head came a moment later, when the whale's stomach that I lived in began
churning. It was like a hurricane inside of him, the water acting like a
twister again, and sucking me in. It was a good thing, though. The whale
couldn't stomach the smelly polecats, and was puking.

Hallelujah! The whale was
puking, and I was going to be spit out, among other things.

As I was thrown out back to
the sea, I learned for the first time that the Gods worked in mysterious ways,
indeed. First, they answered my prayers by sending me the smelly polecats, then
the cats made the whale puke, so I could get out.

I swam away as fast as I could
from the whale. Again, I was paddling for my life inside the ocean, but I was
happy about it this time.

And finally, after a day or
so, I reached the shore of a mysterious island.

I knocked a coconut down from
a tree and treated myself with it, my back to a palm tree and the sun slanted
on my skin--I mean wood, of course.

Note: I had to imagine how
coconuts tasted because as a puppet, I didn't need to eat, nor did I posses the
ability to eat. I relied on my older memories.

The Island was empty, but
sunny and full of yellows and greens. It never rained and no ships came by, but
the place was all my own. I felt like this was my reward after all the
hardships I had been through in my short life as a puppet--huh, this was even
harder than being human.

But as I sat there on top of a
palm tree pondering the wisdom of my journey, I realized that I was in much
conflict as I had never been before. I mean, I was just a silly thug who
disobeyed the Gods, and wanted to seduce each human for revenge. Why would the
Gods answer my prayer, and even reward me with an island all by myself? The
last time I checked, they had sent the Dreamhunters after me, to kill me.

Was that because, like I had
contemplated before, they couldn't live without me? That they needed me as a
dark-ended mirror, so they would shine on the other side? And if so, should I
be thankful, or use it against them and expand my army of evil?

Shut up, a voice inside me
slapped my wooden cheek. You are useless. What army are you talking about, when
you can't even free yourself from this puppet form? Did you forget you were
looking for the Piper in the first place?

I didn't want to get
cheek-slapped again, so I didn't argue with my inner voice, but I decided to neglect
it--a thorough solution to most annoying things in the world, by the way.

Walking through the island, I
saw a wooden sign dug into the sand. It said: “Robinson Crusoe was here.”

I got so furious and dug out
the sign and burned it, replacing it with another one:

“The devil, recently known as
Pinocchio, Prince of Puppets and this island, was here.”

A little lower, and in much
smaller writing, it said: “p.s. fuck Robinson Crusoe.”

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