'The Worst Story I Have Ever Written'
Jonathan never liked anchors because they always had spiky tips on the end. Jonathan never liked spiky tips because he always feared they were going to puncture his skin. It of course didn’t help that he lived on a houseboat, where anchors were a common occurrence. It was his dread every day that he would have to hoist the anchor and set sail somewhere else. The thought of all those icky barnacles clinging onto the anchor. It gave him goosebumps.
One day, a big storm approached the town of Barnwell, where Jonathan lived and grew up since he was a baby. He didn’t know how he knew a storm was coming, but he could feel it in his bones--the same way old people always said they could. He could never understand why they said that, but suddenly he knew. A huge gust of wind shot by him, almost knocking him off the aft into the water.
“Hoy!” cried Captain Skillets, the oldest, most experienced seafarer in Barnwell. He always had a story to tell from his time at the sea. He even got his name from the time he saved an entire crew from a giant squid using nothing but a frying pan. Jonathan loved hearing about the Captain’s tales. But he would shudder whenever he would mention anchors. Those anchors. God. Why did he hate anchors so much?
“Breeze the sails, bratch up the shudders, flip up the quarternimbers,” the Captain cried, flailing his hands as he ran towards the center of town. “She’s comin’! Hurricane Elda is coming right now as we speak! She’s attackin’ our fair Barnwell!”
“Oh no!” Jonathan cried. “What do we do?”
“The only thing we can do, matey.” Skillets always spoke with a fake sailor accent, even though he was from New York. “You need to sail! Sail as far as the wind may take you. If Elda comes any closer, she’s gonna shred all of us into pieces. You got forty hours ‘fore she reaches us. Go out and sail! Hoist your anchor and find a safer place to settle, lest the winds of Poseidon behest your head and serves it on his plate of shrimp and scallops for his daughter!”
Jonathan stuttered, biting his lip. “Hoist the what?”
“Boy, you know what I said! You’re a sailor! You’re from Barnwell! Do what you were made to do and sail! I’m sure your pappy taught you how to hoist an anchor, yea?”
He did. That’s what he was afraid of. Jonathan’s pappy, Donnell O’Donnovan was Barnwell’s most renowned sailors of all time, until a freak accident with hoisting an anchor. He was too strong and pulled it up too fast, the points of the anchor puncturing his chest as he plunged into the murky waters. Jonathan sniffled and held his fist to his heart.
“I promised myself I would never hoist another anchor.”
“Then don’t! And let Neptune’s wrath swallow your fate like a giant carpfish.”
“Cut it with the sea analogies, man.”
“Aye, sorry.”
“But I know what I have to do,” Jonathan said to himself as he climbed back onto his houseboat. Carefully unwrapping the wound up ropes tethered to the boat, he heaved and he hoed until he couldn’t heave and ho any longer. The sky was looking worse and worse, and this was his only chance to make an escape. With one last yank, at last the anchor fell flat onto the floor.
“I did it!” Jonathan yelled. He had successfully conquered his fear, and just in the knick of time. The sky thundered in the distance, and he set off to the helm. With his fear of anchors no longer holding him back, the vast, expansive sea awaited. No longer bound to Barnwell, he set off to wherever the winds would take him.