The Ballads of The Skeleton Crew

The Ballad of The Sought Girl (2|2)

(№2.2)

As the humans only continue to fail in their history, no one believed the story of an anonymous blue ship with Death at its heel, not before encountering and dancing the waltz of death themselves, when it was too late, and Destruction was the aftermath.

Navis mortis, was the term in Roman Empire, used as a curse and hushed only when it was absolutely necessary soon after, frisson reverberating through the masses whenever it must.

In the first three years after their first concert, the Skeleton Crew eliminated three whole towns, as they didn't like the flaw of human civilization invading the beautiful countryside with their dirt and tainted cabins, filth thrown in their home, the powerful Sea and woods decimated, trimmed for intended construction of more dwellings yet.

Of course, nobody remembered these cities to be there in the first place, as this was the whole and complete meaning of elimination.

The emperor on the apex of chains, ruling at those times – many actually at these times, for one was like the other, totally indistinguishable or peculiar in character – ordered a whole search party on the Sea to find and get rid of the members housing on the ship entirely, whilst munching himself on a sheaf of grapes, fanned by a scarcely dressed slave-girl, fat belly commodiously draped on cinnamon-tinted cushions with a deviating stray of his hand, the affair already dismissed and off the mind. Only after six months of desperate searching, detecting something you should better stay away from, his wife found him dead in his chambers, poisoned with belladonna, eyes open and whitening yet to become complete nacre perly beads, black lips formed into a conspirative 'o', alike the utter astonishment engraved about his impending death, upon prying the truth from its testing cage. The ruler two steps ahead of any foe taken by surprise of something he'd never be capable of sharing with the world now.

Unusual in this affair was the fact that the previous evening, he informed everybody with a thoughtful expression he would take a swim under the full moon in the Sea, although it was autumn and the water was freezing cold, currents unpredictable and getting bolder at the nights' expansion.

And when they found and examined him in scrutiny, dead he was dry as drier.

And when the notes were revealed to the eye of day and the culprit figured out, still ironically far fetched from getting captured and punished for deigning such indignity put on their ruler.

In a dark, foreign scribble matching the hue of red blood, someone smeared a message on his skin resembling much like the symbols they used to express in their native tongue. Notes, they were notes all over his body, tiny but defiant, telling them about a piece of music, prickly and invisible, looked over.

Theirs. Their melody.

Apparently, the rules known to the Navis Mortis weren't applying anymore, for the demons would never leave their ship, or so it had been uncleverly assumed. The bulky, fat fingers of the emperor were never crafted to create such tiny art, leave alone this crashing, dazzling masterpiece.

They stepped foot on their sacred earth and the people had never even noticed their arrival to begin with. The rules were abandoned and trodden to dirt and anything seemed horrifically in the realm of possibility.

People whispered that they would destroy everything and everyone coming in their way to stop them from fulfilling their deadly mission, their destiny, as if this little roman emperor would really be menace to them.

When in reality, they only killed him for fun. Unadulterated and raw, pure fun, out of simple leisure. Because they could and had nothing better at hand.