Villains Lament - Hook

I wasn't always like this. A crazed old man with a hook for a hand trying to – how can I put this nicely – murder a group of small children and their fairy prince leader. No, I had a stable job in the real world, not some random planet with a poetic location.

I was a brilliant clockmaker in London and a well-respected member of society. Unfortunately I was so good at my trade that the clocks I made never broke, so once everyone had one I was out of business. I decided to try my luck selling my clocks abroad, so I packed my trunk and boarded a ship.

That ended up being a bad idea.

Long story short: a big magic whirlpool transports the ship to a whole new world and the Captain disappears, the crew panics and makes me Captain, and before I know it a bunch of pip-squeak brats invade the ship with weapons – which is not at all safe – trying to steal our wares, calling us pirates.

Can you believe that? Theycall us pirates when they invade our ship to steal from us!

Naturally we fight back – in self-defense – and their fairy prince leader comes for me.

I'll admit, I never did like children; they were always coming into my shop messing with my precious masterpieces. The only time one of my clocks ever broke was in the hands of a child. A child that looked very much like this flying little boy swinging at me with a dagger, clothed in a bunch of leaves sewn together to make highly unfashionable overalls.

I may have gotten a little enthusiastic, but when one of the little buggers opened my chest and threw out one of my clocks – my best clock actually, it never needed to be wound – and threw it overboard into the jaws of an enormous crocodile, I just couldn't help myself.

"You boys deserve a whipping," I raged and rapped the flying boy across his knuckles, which he well deserved.

The boy then took his blade, cut off my hand, my hand, and threw it to the crocodile! Then if that wasn't enough, he pushed me in after it!

Those young miscreants ruined my life. I can no longer stand the sound I used to love most, the ticking of a clock. And I now have a terrible fear of crocodiles.

My name is Captain James Hook, and I despise Peter Pan.