“Me? I’m just a manifestation of your unresolved feelings for your father. The anthropomorphisation of your bitterness over his withholding of approval and your regret at not talking to him before his death.” The man in the white linen clothes paused, started to smirk and then burst into laughter. “Ha! No, I’m just fucking with you. It doesn’t matter when you come from in the time streams, it’s always funny.”
He pointed at the ocean. “See this. It’s not really water. And this? It’s not sand. That thing you’re keeping between you and I isn’t a tree either. And I’m not a man.”
“Yer not? Ye look…”
“Looks? Look at you, eh? Look like a Man, but really you’re a fucking animal. Rape and murder and all the evils inbetween.”
“Oh god!”
“No,” the man in white linen said with a wide smile. “But close. Of course, you look a little less human anyway, don’t you. Missing an eye, a hand, your teeth, and an ear. Have you never noticed how these things happen right after your little acts of inhumanity?”
“What happened to me? We was chasing a merchantman las’ I recall.”
“It wasn’t a merchantman, it was a privateer sent out by John Company. As soon as your ship came alongside they fired a broadside. A sliver of wood about so long embedded itself in your left shin.”
“I’m dead?”
“Not yet. Sooner or later though.” He seemed to go a bit vague and then refocused. “Your friends are about to do something. I’m easy with it and I imagine it will only give you more opportunity to become mine. Aloha…peg leg.”
“Wha…,” but the beach and the man disappeared in a white hot flash. “Arrrrrr!”
A woman in a white linen shirt sprayed with gore smirked at him from behind a dripping cutlass. “Easy, boyo.”
