Kincade remained in place, his face pale and his hands visibly shaking. Time failed to progress, and Charlie's hand was just in front of Kincade's own naked coal-stained feet, making no sense at all.
"How was this possible? How am I here? How do I get home!". Kincade thought to himself.
Wallace's hand intruded into the frame of this macabre picture, picking up the hand by the tip of the index finger, blood still dripping from the lacerated wrist. Kincade's vision followed Charlie's human paw up from the floor. Observing Wallace remove and open the brass bracelet, it just flipped open with the slightest click of sound. Wallace walked over to the firebox and, with a quick kick, lifted the latch on the firebox door. Turning his head, Wallace looked directly at Kincade capturing his gaze in the most intimate way. Connecting to Kincade and smiling like they were old friends. Wallace tossed Charlie's lost appendage into the fire with a simple flick of his wrist.
Kincade steered at Wallace's face; the smirk mocked Kincade, challenging him to say something when the best course of action is to say nothing.
"Take me home now!" Kincade lunged forward wildly, grabbing at Wallace as his hands touched Wallace's lapels. And an intense pain radiated up through Kincade's groin, and Kincade dropped to his knees in front of Wallace, who broke out in deep bellowing laughter.
The pain in Kincade's entrails held him in place, rooted him to the deck, unable to get up. He reached out with his right hand grabbed Wallace's belt, pulled on it, and lifted himself up the muscled giant before him. Wallace was unmoving save for the bellowing laughter.
"Take. Me. Home NOW.," demanded Kincade forcing the words.
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"So, my lovely. If you die at sea. No one... Will care, and I don't have to pay out any contracts." Wallace's said through his laughter quieted to a chortle; Kincade shot out his left hand, grabbing the knife's handle hanging from Wallace's belt.
Triggering Wallace to slap his own hand down hard against the back of Kincade's, forcing a wince out of Kincade as Wallace clamped down around Kincade's wrist and squeezed.
"My lovely. That is not for you." Wallace used his other hand to grab Kincade's wrist; with an audible click, the brass bracelet snapped closed. And a sound of braded line pulled quickly through a shackle came from the inside of the iron shackles of yesteryear born new in clockwork terror.
Wallace struck Kincade's face with the back of his hand. Kincade's head rocked back, then a pain in his left shoulder as his arm was jerked, uplifting him off his knees. The room started to dim, everything developed a haze around it.
"O my lovely, stay with me, no passing out. Just yet." Wallace drew his knife, the blade pointing down at the deck. Tapping the bracelet with the knife's edge, the tink-tink sound pulled Kincade's attention to his handcuff.
Wallace tapped the bracelet twice again. Kincade noticed the ornately carved octopus into the brass pommel of the knife. The blade was long and broad with nicks in the cutting edge. Charlie's blood still covered the smooth surface of the bracelet and colored his wrist with a fine crimson line.
"That's it, my lovely. Focus on my voice. The present I have given you will let you focus on the work you need to do. Listen to Boson do what you are told and nothing else, and maybe you get to live a little longer, maybe long enough to go home. But I doubt it. " Wallace shoved Kincade back down to the deck and climbed the ladder.
Wallace stopped at the top of the ladder and looked back over his shoulder. "If I don't turn a key in that bracelet every 48 hours, my lovely, you will never go home."
He left the view of the room, Kincade's head dropped kneeling, hoping for his head to clear and the smell of burning flesh to stop. Boson put a gentle hand on his shoulder.