erm hi i know its not what most people will want from me lol but ive seen it twice this week (once at my mums and once with my dad) so ive got fanfictions on the brain lol
"….and here's a picture of my great grandmother Carrie. She was married to a sailor too."
I struggled to hold back a yawn.
It was 'family history' week at my school so we had to write a project on our family history. I'd asked my mother five hours ago about our family.
She hadn't shut up. And it was dull history. Everyone else in my class was like, Polish or Chinese or African or French or something else.
My family seemed to have always lived in Portsmouth and been sailors.
Dullsville or what.
My mother was proud of this.
I was trying to hide this.
"Hmmm what's this? Oh yes our family tree. My father had this done when I was a little girl." My mum flung out the family tree. It was BIG. Mum traced her finger along it and tapped her finger.
"That's me. Anne-Marie Turner. I was only three so I'm just a little leaf. And here's your seven uncles….."
I didn't need it pointing out. I'm fifteen. Hardly stupid. I didn't even see the need to do this project, as I was leaving the day after it was due in for a trip to France with the school. But I knew the teachers would be 'Emily Turner have you no family? Because otherwise you should have done your work!'
Yeah my mum kept her name when she got married to my dad and made him change his name.
The one interesting thing she's ever done.
"Now you should do your project on this man!" My mother held up the family tree and pointed near the top. I peered at the old fashioned writing.
"William Turner II? Who was he, another sailor? Did he make it to I don't know, Admiral or something?" I sneered, flicking the tree disdainfully.
"Don't do that!" Snapped my mother, smoothing the paper. "No he was a sailor but there is great mystery around him and scandal within the family."
"Scandal? What, he was a sailor then ran away to be a police man?"
"No! he was a pirate and so was his father so I'm told."
That has to be the most interesting thing this family has done in like, 200 years.
"A pirate? A real yarrr Jim lad pieces of eight parrot on shoulder gold earring wearing pirate?"
"Yes Emily. His father was murdered by the crew of the ship he was on for instance over gold or something it's all very muddled. But it's the son that's interesting one."
Murdered for gold.
Cool.
And he's not the interesting one.
WOW!
"Yes so anyway, this son had been a blacksmith before turning pirate. But he suddenly disappeared."
He disappeared.
That's just a polite way of saying he drowned.
That is boring.
"He drowned or something?"
"Well that's the thing. No one knows. It says gone to the locker here but the thing is he would suddenly turn up on records every ten years or so! But after his wife died they stopped for a while before his name started randomly turning up again! The last time it did was when you were five. It's a family joke. It's why we never name anyone William so if we get calls about a 'William Turner' we can just go 'Oh that's just our ancestor he likes to turn up every now and again!'"
Seriously, this is how my family go for entertainment.
"Mum, there's gotta be more than one Turner family in the entire world."
"Huh. You just haven't got any romance in your soul Emily."
Yeah.
Cos that's the problem.
"If you wanna have a look his old sea chest's up in the loft. It's a family heirloom."
"Mum that's like gross. It could have like 200 year old dirty laundry in there!"
"Oh stop moaning and just go look at it. You can take it to school if you want."
I dug it out from a pile of old sea junk in the loft. A great big dust pile flew out and covered me.
Great.
I coughed wildly and due to not being able to see crashed into everything. It all fell down with a giant crash. My mother screeched up to me. I flicked a v at the loft hatch, wiped my face and eyes and pulled out the chest.
It was old and creepy looking. Contorted faces leered out of me and I got the most awful bad-gut feeling about it.
I tried to open it. Surprise, surprise it was locked.
"Mum are there any keys for the old sea chest?" I yelled down.
"That thing's never been opened and to what I know, there's never been a key." She yelled back.
Great.
No key.
I pulled out my lightning bolt hair clip. When my mum took away my Halloween sweets when I was five after they made me puke I learnt how to pick locks.
I twiddled the clip in the lock and suddenly heard a noise from it. I stopped twiddling.
A kinda dull beating noise.
Like……..I don't wanna think it………..but a heart.
Highly creepy.
But I wanna find out what's in here.
The lock finally gave out and I swung open the chest.
I slammed the lid down almost instantly, my face green, my stomach churning.
It was a heart in there.
A real, life human heart.
I'm highly squeamish.
But that is just too sickening and sinister for anyone!
Its highly ewwww.
I took one look then turned and shut the lid. Just seeing it there, all red and bloody, beating away….
Note to self: Gotta bring it in to show everyone.
"….stop it Em. There's no way an actual human heart was in that crappy old box you brought in." My best friend Georgia and I were on the deck of the ferry to France, looking into the English channel. Since I'd found that……thing I hadn't shut up about it.
Would you easily forget a real human organ in an old box in your loft?
Didn't think so.
Shame no one else believed me.
"It was! You know me, do I lie?"
"No… but then I listen to my BRAIN which tells me that a heart can't like live outside a human body shut up in a two hundred year old box." I turned away in disgust and walked down the deck.
Suddenly I trod in a massive slippery pool of water as the boat lurched severely.
I was thrown overboard.
I heard Georgia scream and felt my bag almost try to fly off my back. I landed with my coat flying around me, legs straight into the freezing water. I went under the water straight away before I broke the surface, screaming wildly.
I trod water desperately, but I can't swim. Shock horror for a child of the navy, I know but I didn't like the sea.
The iron grey water kept re-covering my head and I found that breaking the surface was getting harder and harder….
I took one final breath, sucking the air in until my lungs felt they would burst before the waves broke over my head again.
My throat burned and I felt myself get dragged down by the heavy weight of my sodden clothes. The sea was pitch black around me but I think that was just my vision. My lungs were aching now, burning, dying, desperate for a breath.
Go on……just one breath nagged a little voice at the back of my head. I struggled to get my coat off. Then I could breathe again.
Take a breath…….one won't hurt nagged the voice again. I breathed out, my world full of bubbles.
Breathe and everything will be alright…..against my better nature I breathed in.
I breathed in lungs full of dirty water, my vision clouding.
My head fell on my shoulder and I stopped struggling.
Suddenly, I was on the deck of a wooden ship, spluttering and sucking in air on my hands and knees. I couldn't breathe properly, choking and coughing on every precious breath. I spat up a load of water, it falling all down my front and on my hands. My vision was clearing and I blinked away sea water from my eyes. I could see a lot of legs around me. Men I think.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and forced me to look up at something. I couldn't see what, water was streaming from my hair into my eyes.
"Do you feel death? Asked a voice.
okay you know the drill...
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