[pirate witch]: 524.Short Stories.The Wall of the Crow and Hammer

This is just something I wrote in a few minutes for a class.


Five people had already died in that tavern. Three had died in bar brawls, one from poison in his ale, and another in the fire that had first devastated the Crow and Hammer. By the end of the night, it was widely assumed that a sixth person would be added to the ever growing list written in charcoal on the wall. Thomas Wooding and Edward Proof had been sitting at the scrubbed and wobbly corner table for hours, downing ale after ale. By eleven o'clock they progressed to rum, the best of the house.

Everyone knew the pair of drunkards, squabbling over a hand of cards. Mr. Wooding was the town exocutioner, and he loved to brag about all the hangings he had performed under the black hood. Mr. Proof was a merchant sailor who told stories that no one quite believed about his encounters with pirates in Jamacia. People avoided both of them when they were angry. 

"She's my wife because I rescued her from cannibals," Edward growled, drawing his pistol and pointing it at Thomas. "She promised that she would marry me!"

"Well I hung her husband, which makes me her husband!" Thomas argued, drawing his own piston and cocking it.

"Why don't you just ask the lady?" Minerva, the barmaid, asked while she was refilling their tankards, but they ignored her.

"We'll settle this like men," Thomas declared, putting his pistol on thee table. Edward followed suit. "The winner of blackjack wins the wife."

They played for hours. At first it was to be the winner of one game. Then it was best two out of three. Then eleven out of twenty one. By the time the agreement was on best 51 out of 100 games, the tavern had emptied and Minerva was tired. She had been the hapless barmaid of The Crow and Hammer for five years too many.

It seemed that the rules of blackjack had changed by three in the morning, and the man who drew his pistol the fastest always ended up with a perfect twenty one.


Minerva closed the roughened door behind her and bolted it. n Edward and Thomas were slumped over their final shortglasses of rum, one with a bullet hole in the head, another in the chest. They hadn't meant to kill each other, their guns hadn't even been loaded. Minerva had slipped the bullets in when she opened her last bottle of good rum. She wished that she could feel remorse, but as her head pressed against her pillow she only pictured a better day at work tomorrow.