SHIP'S LOG:

Thot Slayer

Slobodkina 12/14/2019 10:33pm

Sleeping at the Gilman House is SO restful! I swear I've never dreamed more intensely and vividly before. I dreamed of an enormous city of an extinct civilization, mammoth basaltic ruins, monstrous masonry and limitless caverns of eternal night. Frankly it got a little tiring, trudging through cyclopian hall after cyclopian hall in a giant heavy dress. Seemed like it went on for years!

Still, I woke up feeling great. It's been awhile since I slept that well, and I was perked up and ready to get on the move.

However, when I went to settle my bill with the Gilman's, can you believe it but they tried to bill me not for a handful of nights but for six years! Six entire years in that cute little (though slightly soggy) B&B? I wish! I pointed out the error in my bill and made my way out of their establishment, and back to the airfields where--obviously some sort of prank they like to play on tourists--the dockmaster also attempted to charge me for a six-year berth!

These locals can be charming, can't they? I gave the dockmaster a wink, but threw in an additional $3 as a tip for their good nature.

Slobodkina 10/28/2019 6:30pm

I highly recommend the Gilman House to anyone spending time in Port Nelson. While not especially talkative, the wall-eyed, gaping-mouthed British proprietors keep neat, if slightly damp rooms, and the sloshing, lugubrious sounds of their comings and goings provide a restful background to a peaceful night’s sleep. 

I have also found the small library on premises highly conducive to putting one to sleep, containing such hideously boring old tomes as Comte d'Erlette's Cultes des Goules, Ludvig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and even the surviving fragments of the puzzling Book of Eibon. Just try getting through just one page of any of them and I promise you'll be asleep in no time. Yawn-ola.

The Gilman house is also host a number of fascinating, if equally boring, antiques throughout their establishment. For instance, on a small table in my room is an object composed of a queer mixture of rods, wheels, and mirrors, though only about two feet tall, one foot wide, and one foot thick. I believe it to be some kind of clock, perhaps measuring the ebbs and flows of tides unimaginable. Whatever it is, it's keeping me up at night! I am attempting to find the off switch. 

Slobodkina 9/19/2019 12:08am

"Git aout o' here! Get aout o' here! They seen us—git aout fer your life! Dun't wait fer nothin'—they know naow—Run fer it —quick—aout o' this taown —"

I tell you there certainly are some characters here in Port Nelson! The old salty sailor almost knocked me over on his way out of the local eatery. What people will do to get out of paying their tab.

I, for one, feel it's our duty to help bring economic stability to establishments here on the frontier. So I had a wonderful sample of the local specialty--"Marsh Eggs" they call them, but it tastes like fishchicken to me. Observing the lurking, squishy staff of the restaurant I realized they bore a striking resemblance to those British castaways (with the bulgy, starry eyes) I rescued in the Bermuda Triangle who, in their enthusiasm to reunite with their loved ones leapt out of the ship and into the bay upon the Thot Slayer's approach to the landing fields.

"This is outstanding! My compliments to the chef!" I extolled to my waitress.

Her gills swelled and relaxed spasmodically.

slobodkina 8/18/2019 10:42pm

Checked on the crew. They appear no more ready to assume their positions on the ship than before, still gibbering and drooling in the hold of the Thot Slayer, but are able to assemble peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on their own with the materials I laid out for them. They are also now able to attend to themselves in the WC which let me tell you is a big relief.

Since Port Nelson seems like such a nexus for enforcing regulations against the inhumanely desiccated and potentially possessed animal trade, I feel like we should make port here for awhile. I joined the townspeople in their odd, shambling gait through the downtown streets, and have secured lodgings at the local hostel, called Gilman House. It's time to settle down a bit with the natives and get a feel for the cultures that we hope to bring up to the level of enlightenment I've outlined in my Leading Through Caring Guidelines, which I am sure will soon be incorporated into the Zephyr Air Transport Mission and Values Statement.

Slobodkina 7/18/2019 8:28pm

The Import/Export Authoritarian Air Authority in Port Nelson is a horrific, terrifying mausoleum. Eyeballs of every size stare back from their jars with hideous curiosity. Racks of amputated wings flutter when your back is turned. Taxidermied tentacles reach out, frozen in mid-air, but the texture of their skin appears pliant, supple, and moist.

I set my box of potentially inhumanely harvested iguana tails on the counter. A grizzled clerk emerged from the shadows and eyed it. He then produced a small maraca, covered with beads, and shook it with a brief intensity over the box.

The box shifted on the table, as if its contents suddenly squirmed.

"Five dollars."

Ah! A small fee for processing the paperwork. I nodded in understanding and went for my wallet.

The grizzled clerk opened the antique cash register with a kaching!, grabbed a five dollar bill and handed it to me. Then he grabbed the box and took it back into the shadows with him.

I was expecting a medal, but I suppose $5 will do.

I heard on the short-wave about the WonderFly9000 transporting mummified cats. I should warn @Worded about the potential of inhumane practices in the mummified cat industry, so we can help put an end to Zephyr Air Transport's involvement in this abhorrent trade!

Slobodkina 6/19/2019 8:41pm

Well, I can't say much about the castaways' manners, but I am a bit relieved to have their slimy handprints off all the mahogany and brass.

As soon as we made sight of Port Nelson, it was plop plop plop as they walked straight out the main passenger doors and straight down into the ocean below. I guess they must be good swimmers! I'm afraid I didn't see any of them pop up for air though.

I've gone ahead and docked the Thot Slayer, made sure the drooling, gibbering crew was locked away safely in the hold, and am taking our backpack full of iguana tails directly to the Import/Export Authoritarian Air Authority to turn them in.

I'm sure a medal is too much to ask, but some kind of written commendation? How could they not?

Slobodkina 5/20/2019 9:35pm

"God, that hand! The window! The window!"

These castaways just can't keep their hands off the windows of the ship.

"Please, everyone, keep your hands off the windows. And please wash the mud off. You can use the crew locker room down the hall and to the right."

While the original crew of the Slobodkina dries out in the cargo bay, gibbering, I offered to take the others I found back to civilization. They're a curious bunch, with distinct features that I can't quite place. Glassy, bulging eyes, shockingly wide and flabby lips, webbed hands and feet... British maybe? Not to make stereotypes. All are welcome on the Thot Slayer, just like it says in the Leading Through Caring Guidelines, which I wrote, and now that the rest of the crew is incapacitated it's up to me to enact them.

Now it's full steam out of the Bermuda Triangle and on to Port Nelson in Rum Cay, where I'll be turning in the iguana tails to the authorities. We have no way to tell if they were harvested humanely, and in the spirit of the Leading Through Caring Guidelines the Thot Slayer can not participate in their transport.

Depending on the frame of mind of the crew, I might just be in a position to chose our next economic endeavor. But I feel like we should get out of commerce and look into relief work--something with real, lasting social value.

Slobodkina 4/20/2019 11:12pm

Three days I'd traveled on foot across the vast, undulating plain. The ground had dried out significantly, and the unfortunate sea life left on it had begun to putrefy, rotting in the burning sun each day. I assumed it had been thrust up from some kind of tectonic activity, a vast bulge heaving the sea floor towards the surface, creating a new island. Where was the crew headed through this wasteland--a whole ecosystem suddenly ripped of its atmosphere?

Just beyond a greasy butte, a great chasm opened up. Deep at the bottom the trench there was still water--a gash so deep it must have lead to the interior of the Earth itself. At its shore stood a great white monolith, carved symmetrically, and inlaid with a kind of hieroglyphs made of sea creatures--fishes, eels, octopuses, crustaceans, mollusks, whales, and the like.

And gathered around that temple, weakened from dehydration and some kind of compelling madness, I saw the crew of the Thot Slayer--babbling, weeping, drooling, and worshiping an ancient, fish-brained god.

Slobodkina 3/21/2019 10:11pm

Apparently it wasn't Port Nelson where the Thot Slayer had docked. Something has played the havoc with the ship's navigational systems, and instead we've come to a dead stop in the center of a large, muddy, seaweed strewn plain, somewhere in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps it's a kind of sandbar or atoll, which, during times of low tide, seems to stretch endlessly in all directions, devoid of all life but the occasional starfish covered rock.

I can see foot prints leading from the ship across the muddy ground--apparently the entire crew headed off to the northeast, over the undulating ground and past the horizon. I assume they'll be back soon... what happens when the tide returns, and they're not on board? Don't tides work on some kind of... schedule? Frankly I'd been concentrating more on methods for creating social justice guidelines in quasi-military hierarchies than such mundane topics as tides. And winds. And weather. And though I do think I could helm the ship solo, what if they return to find it missing?

I feel I have no other alternative but to set off after them on foot.

Slobodkina 2/17/2019 8:49pm

I've reported the obviously immoral if not illegal job we've taken transporting iguana tails to the Bermuda Triangle that @Hugo accepted on the ship's behalf, and I can't get anybody to care! I'm in direct communication with Joy, the HR paralegal representative they've assigned to me on a very wide range of topics and have been sending her close to 15 emails a day noting potential infractions of the Leading through Caring guidelines that I've submitted, as well as a number of suggestions not mentioned in the Leading through Caring guidelines about how the ship could be operating more efficiently, on a karmic basis, but this particular message I clearly marked URGENT in the subject line, which I only reserve for the most pressing "front burner" priorities we need to be concentrated on as a crew. It got the same autoresponse as all the others.

So I took a saunter up to the HR deck to find Joy and see where she was with my requests, and the whole department is on shore leave in Port Neslon! In fact, now that I look around, the entire crew is! Why didn't anyone tell me?

Guess I'll need to get to shore if I want to continue our program of continuous improvement.