*Knock*,*Knock*,*Knock*,*Knock* They knocked on the door violently.
“Come in” said the captain with his feet on the desk and a gun in his hand, looking at the door.
Ricardo entered the captain's room, it was a mess, wrinkled papers thrown on the floor, broken bottles everywhere, all the books on the shelf were on the floor. A black notebook was on the desk, the most striking thing about the notebook was that it had a rusty knife stuck in one of its covers and it seemed to be going through the entire book.
"So what is the truth?" Ricardo asked as he took his first step.
"Aren't you in a bit of a hurry, kid?... Two... Long... Weeks... More" said the captain, throwing the gun on the desk and putting his hands behind his neck nonchalantly.
"You promised me the truth and I want the truth!" Ricardo yelled somewhat annoyed, but without moving from his place, he was already tired of the captain's abuse towards the crew; someone had to do justice and that was our young hero.
"Do you mean 'my' truth?" The captain corrected, emphasizing 'me', with an itchy smile on his face.
"The one that is useful to me..." Ricardo answered, hoping that the captain would stop prolonging the talk; he had already waited too long, and now he felt that he had the courage to face the villain.
"The 'truth' is that there is no 'truth', boy, I just wanted you to come to give you Dima's last words..." Said the captain, taking an envelope from under the table and throwing it at the boy's feet.
Hearing that, Ricardo bent down and took the envelope, the envelope had Dima's initials engraved on the front and the phrase 'For Ricardo' was written. Ricardo opened the envelope carefully, but was surprised by what he saw, inside there was only a very small piece of paper rolled up.
Ricardo opened the rolled up piece of paper with his hands, it was so small that only one paragraph could fit inside it, which said:
'After I escaped, I wasted many years of my life repenting for the decision I made, time taught me that I had nothing to regret, now at the end of my life I realize that I lived well... Good luck, Ricardo , don't think about it so much and live your life as you want'
"A man of few words, huh? Ha, ha, ha, I have the rest of the messages, boy" the captain laughed like a wretch.
"And are you going to give it to me?" Ricardo asked when he saw that Wiliam stared at him as if he were a mouse to experiment with.
"Yeah sure... But this is the tricky part... When you know the message, you'll regret knowing it... Are you sure you don't want to live happily in ignorance, kid?" Wiliam asked with a grin from ear to ear, as if he had caught a fish in his net.
"Yes, of course! They are the last words of the man who saved my life. Unlike you, I still have a heart beating in my chest..." Cursed Ricardo bravely, without fearing the consequences, like a hero .
"Impatient, reckless, young and inexperienced... Like any good cabin boy, come take the message..." Wiliam said with a smile on his face of a reliable grandfather, as he took a box from the desk.
Ricardo approached the box and very carefully opened it, but when he opened it his hands trembled, tears began to fall on his eyes, he tried to dry them with his bandaged hands, but more kept appearing, preventing him from confirming if what he had in front of him was true or not.
"Come on boy, there's another small piece of paper... you weren't impatient, open it and see what's inside!" Wiliam shouted, hurrying the boy; as any evil villain would do against his hero.
Ricardo put his hand inside the box, several things could be found, one of them was a small piece of paper like the previous one, inside was the repeated phrase: "Good luck Ricardo, don't think about it so much and live your life"
Reading the message, Ricardo fell to his knees on the ground and began to cry uncontrollably.
"Very reckless of you, Ricardo, you should have prepared yourself better before opening the message, now you are on your knees, staining the ground with your tears..." Wiliam said with a disapproving look, shaking his head exaggeratedly as if thinking 'no, no no no and no'.
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"What's up, boy, aren't you going to take the contents of the box?" Wiliam said with a rather stupid smile, too stupid for my liking; I say the taste of a common sailor.
Then very correctly he put his hands on the box and began to remove it slowly, too slowly...; Take it back, idiot! He must have yelled at a random sailor on deck.
Because Ricardo stood up abruptly and violently took the box from the captain's hands, then opened it, as if checking that nothing was missing.
Inside the box there was: a very finely decorated bottle with bluish liquid, the log that the captain had given him, a rusty knife and a bag full of plates, for the amount it would seem to be the agreed salary plus various bonuses for the deceased.
"You are very young, cabin boy, the rest of the crew already has a life at sea, but Dima gives you another path, you can take it or not, it is your decision... But my advice is not to think about it so much, and choose to live. .. But by how you took the box, it seems to me that you already made your decision, or was I wrong? Wiliam said, kicking his legs off the table and tilting his body as if this was the most interesting answer he was going to hear in a long time.
Ricardo didn't answer, he opened the bluish bottle and took it in one gulp. He knew that this was the famous 'smurfette', if he took it he could reach port alive in a few hours and his body would heal all his wounds, that's why this bottle was so expensive, it was 1001 times better than any boat life jacket.
Ricardo heeded Dima's advice and did not reflect on it, 2 more weeks with 5 crew members was impossible. Now what mattered was saving his life, to make matters worse the captain paid him a quantity of plates sufficient to buy a ship and hire his first crew, his days as a cabin boy were over.
The other way was to continue suffering as a slave to die with the rest of the crew. It was easy for heroes to make a decision, but for normal people like Ricardo it was difficult to march to death without hesitation; however, being so many days with death knocking on your door, ends up destroying the heroism of any person and the doubts of him.
Seeing the determined face of the cabin boy, Wiliam fell from his chair with laughter and was left laughing like a maniac on the floor: "And I was the one who had no heart... ha ha ha... Boy , only 4 men would never make it, you're doomed us all ha ha ha"
Ricardo ignored the captain, the sooner this ended, the better for him, but he didn't feel anything, absolutely nothing was happening… The drug was useless!
"What an inexperienced idiot ha ha ha" The captain laughed like a damned man.
Ricardo's eyes turned red with anger...
"Ha, ha, ha, bastard, you condemned everyone without even hesitating" Wiliam kept laughing harder and harder
Ricardo, with red eyes from his damaged pride, slowly approached the gun on top of the captain's table; he seemed to have made a decision that would change the course of this trip.
"The blessed big brother!!, the one who was going to take us to the port... And now look at him!! Betraying everyone to save his own ass... ha ha ha... and all thanks to Dima he sacrificed himself for you Ha, ha, ha ... 'Humanity was not defeated, it defeated itself'" The captain laughed with his eyes closed from laughter rolling on the ground.
Ricardo with red eyes, teeth grinding with hatred took the gun, pointed it at the laughing captain on the ground and pulled the trigger to kill this bastard.
*Click*
*...* The gun was not loaded
"Hahaha!!" I laughed like a wretched William, pointing my finger at him on the ground as if trying to tell him something, but the laughter prevented it.
"Like any good cabin boy, completely useless, you didn't even know it wasn't loaded!" Wiliam was finally able to say between laughs.
Ricardo with all the hatred in the world ran to the knife stuck in the captain's binnacle, took it and looked at the captain like a lunatic, but before he could move a muscle, he felt his body begin to transform.
The captain stopped laughing and looked at him curiously from the ground, little by little the boy's body was shrinking and was taking on the bluish color of the ocean.
But before he could finish transforming, the captain, without smiling as if he had never found what was happening hilarious, said seriously: "You should see Dima's message and the one I wrote, it was more than evident that I didn't they were written by the same person the next adventure, boy, try not to be so impatient, reckless, and inexperienced..."
Hearing those words, tears began to come out of Ricardo's eyes. The last thing he wanted is to have danced to the beat of this idiot and on top of that have betrayed everyone. But his body didn't respond, it just kept transforming, so he couldn't verify if what the captain said was true.
The captain took his log and Dima's last words and left the cabins, he didn't have much to do there.
In the end, Ricardo finished his transformation, now he was a kind of very small bluish creature the size of a shoe, he did not have feet but two tentacles instead and his hand was also two long tentacles, his body was round like a ping pong ball.
Ricardo, following his instinct, took the box that the captain had given him, it shrank until it looked like a button. Ricardo's body split in half, he swallowed the box and rejoined its two halves.
Immediately afterwards, Ricardo ran out of the cabin, his speed was impressive, to the point that he only seemed like a ball of light to the human eye. With crashing roars caused by his speed, he shot out over the water towards the horizon following his insistence he knew he would find land and then return to being human, when he hit the sand...
Without goodbyes, without painful greetings, without tearful glances, Ricardo forgot his past as a crew member of La Vieja Ana and headed for the horizon; Leaving behind 4 poor forgotten souls.