The Door

Chapter 4

After thinking more about my approaching fate, I decided that perhaps I was destined for slavery instead. My mind began to race thinking of the horrors that awaited me. Long days of toiling in the hot sun, being treated like worthless property, beatings, and all of it would very likely have to be endured without the proper tea times! Truly barbaric.

Another glance at, not to mention a sniff of, my captors told me immediately that they were certainly capable of running in those circles. I could see them going to slaver socials. Attending whipping classes to brush up on their form. Frightful. Simply frightful.

Yes, I decided, most definitely it was slavery in my future. No doubt I'd be sold at auction and shipped off to an island somewhere to work on a plantation. Well, I'd keep a stiff upper lip about it. Bide my time. Form close relationships with the other slaves. Perhaps even gain the trust of the master and his cronies. Then, one day, when they would least expect it, I and some of the other slaves would escape to a life of piracy on the high seas. I'd be the captain of my own pirate ship. The scourge of the seas. A man to be reckoned with! Yes, slavery was sounding better by the moment.

This daydream was suddenly, and oh so rudely, interrupted by me being cast headlong into the sand next to a beached ship's boat. I rose from the sand and dusted myself off. A glance out to sea revealed a large sailing vessel at anchor offshore, to which this ship's boat undoubtedly belonged.

My captors stood about on the beach watching what looked to be one of their number who was on his way down to the beach from somewhere uphill. They had largely lost interest in me, it seemed, and I briefly contemplated nipping off to hide somewhere, but then thought better of it. There really didn't look to be anywhere to hide and, after all, I must admit that I rather fancied the idea of becoming a pirate captain. So, I waited patiently in anticipation of being sold into slavery.

The man trudging down the hill soon reached the beach and, when he had, the tallest of my captors asked him, "Did you find it?"

"Yep, it's at the top of the hill," the man replied, gesturing up the hill he had just come down. "It's fine. All closed up and locked now."

What was he referring to? Could he mean the door that I had come through into this new world? Locked? Did he say locked? If that was true, could I ever return home? Was I trapped here for good with nothing but my pajamas, dressing gown, and prodigious wits?

The enormity of my predicament began to weigh on me like a two-ton gorilla who had decided to flop down on my brain. The unbidden image of my head parting the cheeks of a gorilla's backside caused me to reel in horror. The gorilla would likely enjoy himself too, the sick bastard.

It was then, with even more horror, that I realized that this newly arrived man was wearing my fuzzy rubber ducky slippers on his grimy feet! Something snapped inside me. I marched right up to him, jabbed my finger in his chest, and said, "Just what do you think you're doing with those?!"

He looked taken aback and said, "What? Who are you?"

"Don't you play dumb with me, mister. I'll have you know that those are my slippers you've pinched, and I want them back this instant! This instant, you hear?"

"If they were your slippers, then you'd be wearing them now instead of me, wouldn't you?" He replied as he took in the full length of my disheveled appearance.

"Oh, then, by all means, keep wearing them!"

"I plan to."

I stood dumbfounded, opening and closing my mouth like a fish out of water. The nerve of the man!

"Besides," he began again, "they couldn't possibly be yours. I found them at the top of the hill, completely abandoned."

"I did nothing of the sort! I merely left them for a moment so that I could run down to the beach for a brief swim. Everyone knows you can't run in ducky slippers."

The tallest of the band then interrupted by pointing at me and saying, "Get him in the boat. The king will sort this."

King? This? Did he mean that this king would sort me, or was he referring to the gross injustice of my stolen slippers? I hoped the latter.

As I stood there lost in thought, my two ham-fisted friends from earlier hoisted me off the sand and deposited me on a bench in the boat with a jarring thump. They and the rest of the group then went about pushing the boat out into the water, shipping oars and the like, as I rubbed my sore posterior. It wasn't long before we had cleared the breakers and were rowing for the ship I had seen earlier.