Heart That Never Quits - An Excerpt

Wet, steady beating,

steady thump

— ba-bum.

The Captain gazed down at his dead men in a slump,

Crushing death-silence except for the steady thump

— ba-bum.

It was a slow reassurance of life in the dark of the hold

and The Captain hunted it down,

sought out that wet, steady beating as his last hope in the world.

But his steel kerosene lantern discovered that the head to the heart,

the face to the hope,

the skull and the torso lay a few meters apart.

Still the heart beat on inside the gaping, protruding crack-ribbed chest cavity.

The sound of lone beating and death silence broke.

A shifting in the darkness,

every hair on The Captain's dread-drowned body bristled

and heavy footsteps slammed across the sticky, dried-blood wood floor of the hold.

Sharp claws scraped and a scream pealed through the ship.