Sally, Part 18

1.  I'm getting a hair cut today.
2.  My mom was cool enough to take care of my daughter while I'm there.
3.  I need to leave in five minutes so I really can't think of another thing I'm grateful for.

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You'll need to read Part 17 for this post to make much sense.

Stacey's ears rang and his sight blurred as his body was thrown out the door of his little kitchen and up against the opposing wall.  What was that?  His sight was still hazy when he saw what he could only assume was Mattias come stumbling through the door, he had obviously fallen to a similar fate.  Goodness, Stacey's ears would not quit ringing as he tried to stand but simply could not.  The ship was rocking heavily, and each sway sent Stacey back to his knees.

His vision began to clear when he saw a few members of the crew come running down the hall.  The first two passed him, but the third member, a dwarf with a bald head and a long red beard stopped to bring him to his feet.  In a thick Dwarven accent he said, "Lad, you're going to have to get up, we need you up top."  Then the dwarf steadied Stacey against the wall, and continued running down the hall.

A cannon roared a little ways off and Stacey suddenly knew what was happening, they were under attack.  His first instinct was to hide in his quarters until the fight was over, but he remembered Sally.  In the back of his mind Sally had become a very special child, one that watched over him always and wanted him to do the right thing.  The brave thing.  So, with the face of a little boy in an ally in his mind's eye, Stacey ran for the only weapons he really knew well, his cleaver and his carving knife.  Then, in a burst of adrenaline, The Cook burst through the kitchen door and ran up the stairs to the deck with a carving knife in his left hand, a cleaver in his right, and a blood stained apron tied around his waist.

If the other ships boarding party had known Stacey, they would have known that he was hardly a threat, but rather, just a tall fat man with a couple of knives, but they didn't know Stacey.  So, as they were swinging over on ropes, and looking down on the ship, they saw, what looked to be, the cook from hell, with the knife of pain in his left hand, the cleaver of destruction in his right, a warcry in his throat, and an apron, stained with the blood of his screaming victims tied around his belly, where the truly evil souls of the damned resided.  All of this was amplified by the large red circles around his eyes (where he'd been crying).

To say that he was completely harmless would not be fair.  He had killed a great many animals and knew where to cut so that the animal died quickly and painlessly, but then, the animals didn't fight back. He was running at men with swords and guns, but we can't disregard the effect of surprise and terror on people, and as far as the boarding crew could tell, this was a graceless lumbering demon who was coming for their souls.