Short scary tales
Title: Navy scary tales
Original title: Морские страшилки (Russian)
(that's not an official title, and they are not all navy)
Author: t*Larien
Translator: Edik the Ogre (and don't blame me for anything, I'm not a native speaker in the slightest)
Beta: id_ten_it
Raiting: G
Pairing: nothing special, everything canon-like... in a way.
Summary: just a set of very short childish-like scary tales about Jack, Stephen and some other nice fellows.
Disclaimer: O'Brian created them, and so it will be, we're just having fun.
Note: All credit to the marvellous original work and to the beta who kindly answered my request and did really a very good job.
Vampires
Once a ship came to a vampire shore. And there was a doctor on the ship who was obsessed with all kinds of weird creatures. So the captain told him: “You may land, but do not ever bring any vampires on my ship!” And they quarreled so much about it, that at last the doctor got very much offended and said: “May be it is that you would also prefer me to stay ashore?” The Captain laughed at this and replied “Of course you should return, my dear Stephen!” When night fell, Stephen returned to the ship and gnawed everybody.
Except for the Captain, of course, because no genre rules can approve the main character acting OOC.
Vampires, continued
Once Jack Aubrey went on deck and saw Stephen munching on the last of the hands. In horror and dismay, Jack cried: “What are you up to, Stephen?” “What am I, indeed”, Stephen wondered and even-heartidly tossed the bones overboard.
At night while having dinner Jack saw Stephen avoiding silverware, and hid a silver knife. Then they started to play, and Jack also noticed a hole in Stephen’s back. Eventually Jack hit the right moment, putting his knife into the hole. Stephen hissed and turned into smoke, and the knife melted. Then Jack fished a real Stephen, alive and sound, despite tied and gagged, out of the sea chest.
He was scolded by Killick for his silverware anyway.
Once again on the subject of Killick
There was a captain who had a steward, very peevish and dull, never a kind word to anyone. And once he suddenly turned all nice and polite. However, the captain had a friend, a man of science. And that friend noticed that the steward always laid captain’s table in gold instead of silver. He told the captain about it, and the latter ordered food on a silver tray. The steward had no other way and he had to bring it. The scientist noticed his hands wrapped in rags, and told the captain. He considered a moment and touched the steward’s bare skin with some silver. He hissed, started to writhe wildly… And that was how they ended the ghoul. And if a couple of midshipmen were already lost, it’s not as if anybody counted them anyway…
Wait a little more
There lived a man whose friend was a sea captain. Once he saw his friend coming in a dream and asking “Will you sail with me?” The man answered “Yes, I will”. And to that his friend said: “Then wait a little, I need to mend my boards”.
Since then the man had started to ail.
Two weeks after, he dreamt about his friend again:
“Will you sail with me?”
“I will”.
“Then wait a little more, I need to fix the bottom”.
“Well,” the man laughed, “I wonder what kind of a ship he was commissioned again that he needs to rebuild it from the scratch?”
However, from that point he got sick even faster than before. And for doctors he called, and a doctor he was as well, but he couldn’t find the reason anyway.
The third time he saw his friend in his dream, and the friend said:
“Will you sail with me?”
“I will”.
“Then wait a little more, I need to make stores and rear the mast, and we will be sailing right away!”
The doctor woke up and found he was very ill. Two days later he received a message that his friend, a captain, had been deceased already for a month. The doctor went to the cemetery, had the grave opened, and found the dead man lying in a real boat instead of a coffin, with an almost ready mast lying near it, one just needed to have it raised. And the corpse’s hands were freshly calloused.
The doctor cried and said: “My dearest friend, wait a little more, I’m on my way”. Then he pierced the corpse’s heart with the mast and he never saw him in dreams afterwards. However, he didn’t have life to endure for much longer - in a couple of months he was dead because of grief. And he had ordered not to dismantle the boat. In the day of his funeral, people saw the ground settling on his friend’s grave. They opened it again and found neither a boat, nor a corpse, only the remnants of the mast as though it had been broken by someone’s hand.
So they still managed to go sailing…
Turnskin
There was a man whose wife turned in a log in his bed. Nobody believed him speaking, they thought he was using a pun (and he was a joyful creature indeed, fond of puns, despite all the difficulties). Only a friend of his, a doctor, once gave it a second thought when pulling a splinter out of his groin. That was how the doctor found his disastrous end, and not because a turnskin-wife dragged him down… but because when Stephen gives a second thought, it’s a total damned disaster!
A mistress
There was a man living near his mistress’s house. Once he started to turn pale and skinny, and woke up completely washed out. One night his friend saw him coming out of the door and walking down the passage to her house. But when the man woke up, he didn’t remember a thing. Then his friend decided to follow him. So he went to the woman’s house and in the window he saw her in the white gown leaning towards his friend’s neck with her mouth half-opened. He immediately rushed into the house, ran up the stairs and into her room… Er, it appered to be rather an awkward situation. Stephen chided him afterwards: “Jack, how could I possibly tell you I was visiting a lady? I’m taking into consideration my beloved one’s reputation, unlike particular others…”
As for his neck, he had a sincere lovebite, for sure…
Brain eaten - 1
Once there was a ship surgeon who opened sailors’ heads at night and ate their brains and blood with a silver spoon, and left silver coins there in return. And nobody knew about that. He also had a captain’s heart, he stored it in a little sea chest in his cabin.
He had a total of three chests: in one of them he kept coins for heads, in the second there was a captain’s heart, which he treasured above everything in the world, and the third would eat whoever was to look in it. It would abstain from the Doctor only, as he knew the secret word. Once in a battle the Captain was wounded in his chest where a heart is supposed to be, but he never puckered. “Ahead!” he cried. “Board her!” The hands saw their captain was not harmed by bullets, went on the enemy’s ship board and overran all the French. And nobody even had a though why it was so. Which indicates once again, that a British sailor can do perfectly well without his brains.
Brain eaten - 2
There was a boy whose neighbor ate his brain when staying alone with him. She would open a textbook on trigonometry, read a task, and when he yawned, she would grasp his ear, tack a spoon into it and start eating his brain.
Then the boy grew up, became a sea-captain, and he had a friend, a man of science, a doctor. And once he returned to his father’s house and took his friend with him. And the neighbor showed up again. His friend saw her eating his brain, spelled a prayer in Latin, and crossed the witch. At this she disappeared without a trace, together with a trigonometry textbook. And nobody noticed that the captain’s brain had been already partially eaten, since he was fortunately a blonde anyway.
The Teratoma
One night two travelers were riding through a forest. One was a naval captain, the other was a doctor and a scholar. The captain said: “There are gangsters in this forest, let us check if the gunpowder is dry. Be so kind as to open your holster”. The second one answered: “I’d rather not: I have a teratoma there, with hair and teeth”. The first one didn’t know what teratoma was and started chiding the second: “Why on Earth, would you, so-and-so, carry on all kinds of lubber instead of guns? What if the robbers appear? We will both be gone!”
Indeed, it turned out that the robbers surrounded them. The Captain shot a gun, and a robber fell, shot the other, and another robber fell, and that was all. And there were a lot of robbers, two dozen. Then the doctor opened his holster and let the teratoma out. And being teethed and hairy as it was, it crept out and ate all the robbers. The doctor told it a Latin word and it withdrew back into the holster.
They went on riding. And the doctor realized his friend went all silent and holding the side of his head with his hand. He had a closer look and saw that his friend was lacking his ear. Then he opened his holster the second time, and told the teratoma very strictly when as it creeped out: “Spit it!” It spat out the ear, and he put the teratoma back again.
Then he sewed his friend’s ear back and it fitted more handsomely that it had before.
Red stockings
Once a doctor decided to buy a good pair of stockings. So his friend told him: “Buy any stockings you like, so long as they are not red”. However, they had only red stockings in the shop. So the doctor had to buy them. He went home and found his friend nowhere to be seen. He had his dinner without his friend emerging. Then he played his cello also in his friend’s absence. And then he had nothing to do but sleep. At midnight sharp the door opened, his friend came in and said: “I told you not to buy red stockings?” The doctor then asked: “Why, for all love?” So his friend answered (a pause): “You see, only whores at port are wearing ‘em”.
Red Stockings - 2
Once a doctor bought red stockings and put them into his chest. While he was sleeping, the stockings told him: “Get up, Stephen!” To that he answered through his doze: “Shame upon you, naval creatures, with your orders!” and slept on. Then the stockings told his friend, who was sleeping in the same cabin: “Get up, Jack!” He rose. The red stockings said: “Come up to the chest!” He came. The red stockings said: “Open the lid”. He opened. The red stockings tried to choke him, but he was very strong, tore them off from his neck and slaughtered with his cutlass.
The first conclusion is: the naval discipline is evil.
The second conclusion is: if you have brute force, you don’t need strategic logic.
Original title: Морские страшилки (Russian)
(that's not an official title, and they are not all navy)
Author: t*Larien
Translator: Edik the Ogre (and don't blame me for anything, I'm not a native speaker in the slightest)
Beta: id_ten_it
Raiting: G
Pairing: nothing special, everything canon-like... in a way.
Summary: just a set of very short childish-like scary tales about Jack, Stephen and some other nice fellows.
Disclaimer: O'Brian created them, and so it will be, we're just having fun.
Note: All credit to the marvellous original work and to the beta who kindly answered my request and did really a very good job.
Vampires
Once a ship came to a vampire shore. And there was a doctor on the ship who was obsessed with all kinds of weird creatures. So the captain told him: “You may land, but do not ever bring any vampires on my ship!” And they quarreled so much about it, that at last the doctor got very much offended and said: “May be it is that you would also prefer me to stay ashore?” The Captain laughed at this and replied “Of course you should return, my dear Stephen!” When night fell, Stephen returned to the ship and gnawed everybody.
Except for the Captain, of course, because no genre rules can approve the main character acting OOC.
Vampires, continued
Once Jack Aubrey went on deck and saw Stephen munching on the last of the hands. In horror and dismay, Jack cried: “What are you up to, Stephen?” “What am I, indeed”, Stephen wondered and even-heartidly tossed the bones overboard.
At night while having dinner Jack saw Stephen avoiding silverware, and hid a silver knife. Then they started to play, and Jack also noticed a hole in Stephen’s back. Eventually Jack hit the right moment, putting his knife into the hole. Stephen hissed and turned into smoke, and the knife melted. Then Jack fished a real Stephen, alive and sound, despite tied and gagged, out of the sea chest.
He was scolded by Killick for his silverware anyway.
Once again on the subject of Killick
There was a captain who had a steward, very peevish and dull, never a kind word to anyone. And once he suddenly turned all nice and polite. However, the captain had a friend, a man of science. And that friend noticed that the steward always laid captain’s table in gold instead of silver. He told the captain about it, and the latter ordered food on a silver tray. The steward had no other way and he had to bring it. The scientist noticed his hands wrapped in rags, and told the captain. He considered a moment and touched the steward’s bare skin with some silver. He hissed, started to writhe wildly… And that was how they ended the ghoul. And if a couple of midshipmen were already lost, it’s not as if anybody counted them anyway…
Wait a little more
There lived a man whose friend was a sea captain. Once he saw his friend coming in a dream and asking “Will you sail with me?” The man answered “Yes, I will”. And to that his friend said: “Then wait a little, I need to mend my boards”.
Since then the man had started to ail.
Two weeks after, he dreamt about his friend again:
“Will you sail with me?”
“I will”.
“Then wait a little more, I need to fix the bottom”.
“Well,” the man laughed, “I wonder what kind of a ship he was commissioned again that he needs to rebuild it from the scratch?”
However, from that point he got sick even faster than before. And for doctors he called, and a doctor he was as well, but he couldn’t find the reason anyway.
The third time he saw his friend in his dream, and the friend said:
“Will you sail with me?”
“I will”.
“Then wait a little more, I need to make stores and rear the mast, and we will be sailing right away!”
The doctor woke up and found he was very ill. Two days later he received a message that his friend, a captain, had been deceased already for a month. The doctor went to the cemetery, had the grave opened, and found the dead man lying in a real boat instead of a coffin, with an almost ready mast lying near it, one just needed to have it raised. And the corpse’s hands were freshly calloused.
The doctor cried and said: “My dearest friend, wait a little more, I’m on my way”. Then he pierced the corpse’s heart with the mast and he never saw him in dreams afterwards. However, he didn’t have life to endure for much longer - in a couple of months he was dead because of grief. And he had ordered not to dismantle the boat. In the day of his funeral, people saw the ground settling on his friend’s grave. They opened it again and found neither a boat, nor a corpse, only the remnants of the mast as though it had been broken by someone’s hand.
So they still managed to go sailing…
Turnskin
There was a man whose wife turned in a log in his bed. Nobody believed him speaking, they thought he was using a pun (and he was a joyful creature indeed, fond of puns, despite all the difficulties). Only a friend of his, a doctor, once gave it a second thought when pulling a splinter out of his groin. That was how the doctor found his disastrous end, and not because a turnskin-wife dragged him down… but because when Stephen gives a second thought, it’s a total damned disaster!
A mistress
There was a man living near his mistress’s house. Once he started to turn pale and skinny, and woke up completely washed out. One night his friend saw him coming out of the door and walking down the passage to her house. But when the man woke up, he didn’t remember a thing. Then his friend decided to follow him. So he went to the woman’s house and in the window he saw her in the white gown leaning towards his friend’s neck with her mouth half-opened. He immediately rushed into the house, ran up the stairs and into her room… Er, it appered to be rather an awkward situation. Stephen chided him afterwards: “Jack, how could I possibly tell you I was visiting a lady? I’m taking into consideration my beloved one’s reputation, unlike particular others…”
As for his neck, he had a sincere lovebite, for sure…
Brain eaten - 1
Once there was a ship surgeon who opened sailors’ heads at night and ate their brains and blood with a silver spoon, and left silver coins there in return. And nobody knew about that. He also had a captain’s heart, he stored it in a little sea chest in his cabin.
He had a total of three chests: in one of them he kept coins for heads, in the second there was a captain’s heart, which he treasured above everything in the world, and the third would eat whoever was to look in it. It would abstain from the Doctor only, as he knew the secret word. Once in a battle the Captain was wounded in his chest where a heart is supposed to be, but he never puckered. “Ahead!” he cried. “Board her!” The hands saw their captain was not harmed by bullets, went on the enemy’s ship board and overran all the French. And nobody even had a though why it was so. Which indicates once again, that a British sailor can do perfectly well without his brains.
Brain eaten - 2
There was a boy whose neighbor ate his brain when staying alone with him. She would open a textbook on trigonometry, read a task, and when he yawned, she would grasp his ear, tack a spoon into it and start eating his brain.
Then the boy grew up, became a sea-captain, and he had a friend, a man of science, a doctor. And once he returned to his father’s house and took his friend with him. And the neighbor showed up again. His friend saw her eating his brain, spelled a prayer in Latin, and crossed the witch. At this she disappeared without a trace, together with a trigonometry textbook. And nobody noticed that the captain’s brain had been already partially eaten, since he was fortunately a blonde anyway.
The Teratoma
One night two travelers were riding through a forest. One was a naval captain, the other was a doctor and a scholar. The captain said: “There are gangsters in this forest, let us check if the gunpowder is dry. Be so kind as to open your holster”. The second one answered: “I’d rather not: I have a teratoma there, with hair and teeth”. The first one didn’t know what teratoma was and started chiding the second: “Why on Earth, would you, so-and-so, carry on all kinds of lubber instead of guns? What if the robbers appear? We will both be gone!”
Indeed, it turned out that the robbers surrounded them. The Captain shot a gun, and a robber fell, shot the other, and another robber fell, and that was all. And there were a lot of robbers, two dozen. Then the doctor opened his holster and let the teratoma out. And being teethed and hairy as it was, it crept out and ate all the robbers. The doctor told it a Latin word and it withdrew back into the holster.
They went on riding. And the doctor realized his friend went all silent and holding the side of his head with his hand. He had a closer look and saw that his friend was lacking his ear. Then he opened his holster the second time, and told the teratoma very strictly when as it creeped out: “Spit it!” It spat out the ear, and he put the teratoma back again.
Then he sewed his friend’s ear back and it fitted more handsomely that it had before.
Red stockings
Once a doctor decided to buy a good pair of stockings. So his friend told him: “Buy any stockings you like, so long as they are not red”. However, they had only red stockings in the shop. So the doctor had to buy them. He went home and found his friend nowhere to be seen. He had his dinner without his friend emerging. Then he played his cello also in his friend’s absence. And then he had nothing to do but sleep. At midnight sharp the door opened, his friend came in and said: “I told you not to buy red stockings?” The doctor then asked: “Why, for all love?” So his friend answered (a pause): “You see, only whores at port are wearing ‘em”.
Red Stockings - 2
Once a doctor bought red stockings and put them into his chest. While he was sleeping, the stockings told him: “Get up, Stephen!” To that he answered through his doze: “Shame upon you, naval creatures, with your orders!” and slept on. Then the stockings told his friend, who was sleeping in the same cabin: “Get up, Jack!” He rose. The red stockings said: “Come up to the chest!” He came. The red stockings said: “Open the lid”. He opened. The red stockings tried to choke him, but he was very strong, tore them off from his neck and slaughtered with his cutlass.
The first conclusion is: the naval discipline is evil.
The second conclusion is: if you have brute force, you don’t need strategic logic.