He had been adrift for several days. He didn’t know how to navigate it, and even if he knew this ship was too big for one man to command it. The instruments were all broken or pointing no were. The books made no-sense. The maps were useless. And, most importantly, he had no idea where he was.

What little food he found tasted bad. His clothes were always dirty, he was always dirty. Onboard of that ship he found no peace. No consolation. No stillness.

There was nothing to do but to wait for the next day to come. Shifting without an aim in an infinite sea without being able to reach the horizon. That horizon who was constantly drifting away, eluding him, playing with him, fooling him.

One day he set on the deck watching the sun all day long, watching how at dawn the sun ruse, how during the afternoon it moved across the sky and how at twilight it disappear far away into the horizon.

He felt was alienated by the world, he was there but not there. Walking and not walking. He was losing contact with the real world, losing his sense of self and time. His mind was a thunderstorm even though the sea was calm.

“DAMN SEA!” He yelled from the deck “GIVE ME SOMETHING TO DO.”

The sea remained calm, serene and silent.

“DAMN SEA!” He continued to yell.

His clothes became too heavy and warm for him, he started sweating more and more. His breath became heavy. He started feeling a great pain at the chest but couldn’t find the cause.

One day, when he had just finished eating he tripped and fell. At that moment he dismissed it simply as an incident, yet as time went on his condition worsen.

First, it was the sweating, then his legs started failing him, then came something worse, the fever came to him.

He spent his day alone and sick, without anyone to support or cherish him in the moments of greatest pain. All day long in its cabin, the captain cabin. The cabin was big enough for all the things he needed to be there. Still, after only a few days the cabin had become a rubbish dump. The fever just kept rising and rising. He was impotent. His body was becoming weaker and weaker.

How long before he didn’t collapse? How long before his body finally gave in? What was this disease afflicting his body? Had he lost his purpose? Was he wondering thought life without an aim or objective like others? Was he destined to mediocrity? What he was doing here? Why, of all places, was he there? What awaited him tomorrow? What would happen when he didn’t have the strength to stand up and go to the bathroom? Was there enough food left for him? Was life worth living? Why all the instruments were broken? The compass pointed somewhere, it wasn’t north and it wasn’t stable, but it pointed somewhere, were? What would happen when the dawn didn’t arrive? How did he read the numbers on those maps? Why there were only instruction manuals on this ship? Why sometimes he heard women’s laugh at night like they were in bed? Was he going insane? Why there were no stars in the sky?

It was when he wasn’t even able to leave his bed that they came. He closed and barricaded the door to his cabin.

He heard them, boarding his ship, exploring it, picking the various items. Wondering what happened to this ship, wondering if there was anyone on board.

He hoped that they wouldn’t find him, he hoped that they would skip that room and let him die in peace.

Yet fate had another plan for him.

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One of them tried to open the door and found it locked. Instead of going away, she smashed the door open.

It was a horrible vision, even for them. A horrible smell of excrement, a rubbish dump of items and books. And him, that thing with his eyes open and staring at them.

Was he dead? And if he was dead for how long he had been?

One of them came closer to him, she was beautiful, he recognized her as a siren. She looked at him, seeing if he was alive.

He hadn’t the strength to walk, four of them were needed to carry him. They picked him as part of their loot. Those beautiful sirens throw his sword into the sea and burned the ship.

They didn’t plan any good for him.

They brought him into an island where the sun never shone and no plant growth.

This was the island where people came, from all over the world, to “know” those sirens.

They trowed him in a chamber, a very big one, full of smoke. A strange smoke that gave him headaches and worsens his sight.

Not long after a group of them came and brought him into the chambers.

They belittle what little dignity and strength were left in him, made him even weaker.

Their concept of love was an insane and twisted one. They loved the flesh and pleasures, that was everything in their lives. They didn’t do anything else except that, they thought that was the ultimate aim of life: pleasure.

They lure young and old from their paths and quest, drunk the might and enslave the weak. Used their beautiful corpses as pleasurable distractions, their attraction as weapons and their love for destroying people. They infiltrate into communities and before anyone noticed it the entire community became depend and slave to them.

So with each passing day, his body became weaker, his mind more feeble and his spirit more broken. He became addict to the smoke and their corpses.

Not a moment passed that his mind was not overwhelmed with pleasure or completely dumb down. Its fever was increasing, no matter how much smoke they purred into his room or how many chambers he visited, he could feel that. He wanted to break free, to be liberated.

Yet deep down he feared, no, he knew that he had become a slave. He could be freed and he would have returned there. He hoped to die. Yet he didn’t die, he didn’t die.

He prayed and hoped with all his strength, he prayed to God, he prayed to deity and idols, he prayed to spirits, make amends, he promised everything, he prayed to gods of his imagination, illusions. He prayed for death, for salvation, for light. Yet no matter how hard he prayed its situation remained the same.

One day, Looking around his cell he noticed a little sharp thing! A knife! Oh, he was blessed, a knife, his prayers were answered! He could escape now. When the sirens came into his room he picked the knife and stab one of them... or at least he tried. She blocked his attack and trowed him into the ground, throwing away the knife.

In a moment of desperation, he picked the knife and tried to cut his veins. But the sirens stopped him and cured his wounds.

How much time had passed? Who was he at this point? In the few times that he glimpsed at his face, he didn’t recognize himself. He had become the shadow of a man, no, a shard of a shadow of a man, a walking skeleton of what was once a man.

In one of the chambers, he noticed a very strange statue very close to a chasm. That chasm was dark and obscure and no siren dared to come close to it. He didn’t understand why the chasm was there or why the sirens didn’t come close. At this point, he just wanted to end this.

When the sirens were distracted he dashed, nearly run on his legs! Into the chasm. He fell just a few centimetres from the chasm. The sirens were coming for him. In a moment of desperation, he called up all his pride and energies, made a little push, and roll into the dark chasm. He didn’t know what awaited him there, if the void or something else, but he was happy. Happy that he finally managed to escape. Happy that he finally managed to free himself.

He woke on a pile of corpses in a dark cave, he looked around and a strange and terrifying creature was watching him. He opened his mouth and spoke in a language that he didn’t understand. Then he trowed him into an arena.

He was confused at first, he looked around the arena and saw a siren, but not a normal one. This one had gone insane. She attacked him. He defended himself. His claws deeply hurting him. The monster pulled him out of the arena with one of his tentacles.

This brutal process was repeated many times until he didn’t learn how to defend himself. Then the monster gave him a black cloak and taught him how to attack.

For the first time in a long time he felt happy, he had something to do, he was happy to be learning, he had a purpose. Even though the food was shit and the water dirty, even though he was always dirty and with blood and flesh under his nails, he felt happy.

One day he gave him a short sword and trowed him into the arena with several sirens. They tried to seduce him, little they knew what he had become. He had no mercy upon those monsters with human faces.

He never in his life felt so liberated, the sensation of becoming free, of breaking one chain, of conquering weakness. His mind was overwhelmed with rage. Another one attacked him, another one was dead, one tried to escape and he cut her down. His eyes were glowing with insanity, his mouth dripping with blood and spit.

When he returned to his senses the arena was a blood bath. In the end, no sirens had survived. The monster grabbed him and told him farewell.

He had freed himself, he had become a free man