Howdy! Pirates of Appalachia is an epic absurdist satire releasing as a weekly serial. Think 2 parts Huck Finn, 1 part Slaughterhouse-Five, served with a punch to the face by A Boy Named Sue. This is a completed novel—not a work in progress. Learn more or start from the beginning via the buttons below. Happy pirating!
Previously on Pirates of Appalachia… After giving chase to a mysterious, perhaps diabolical, phantasmapanther, Kohl and Keet gave chase through a dual-use toxic waste-human waste dump, crashing into a subterranean barn.
Farmhouse of Terrors
Kohl could no longer hold it. After forty paces and a handful of turns, the boys had become lost in a network of tunnels as intricate as an ant farm and as foul smelling as a dung beetle village, making them as difficult to maneuver and repulsive as the family bathroom after Taco Tuesday. They hadn’t come across a single lamp, but Appalachia had shined her light upon them: Keet’s skin was glowing something fierce on account of the radioactive mudbath he’d taken during the chase. Kohl reckoned he was brighter than a 400-lumen Coleman lantern. Unfortunately, as was her wont, Appalachia’s gift came with a side order of scorn, as Keet’s luminosity also made him as easy to spot as a video screen in an arcade. Between the ominous sounds of the world’s deadliest alley cat stalking them from the darkness and the realization that they hadn’t brought any weapons suitable for giant kitty slaying, Kohl had completely lost track of time, space, and indigestion. The only things he was sure of were that he’d missed supper with Daisy, and the sharkitten sushi they’d snacked on while deboning the beast had been a very bad idea.
“Could you shine yourself down yonder?” Kohl asked as he pulled his overalls down and squatted in a nook in the cave just wide enough for a pair of butt cheeks. “Give a fella some privacy.”
“Yank-yank,” Keet replied tersely, crossing his arms.
“Suit yourself, but I reckon with as bad as sharkitten smells going in, it has to be doubly bad going out.”
Keet scooted an inch away but no further.
Kohl chewed his lip and pushed—he should’ve been content just sharing a meal with Daisy. Maybe simple moments of togetherness were better than marriage. He could almost convince himself of that until the thought of never holding Daisy in his arms and melting between her thighs triggered such an explosive reaction that his hands balled into fists and flatulence wailed down the corridor. He could feel Daisy burning his skin—the heat permeating his mind and setting his loins ablaze. And while his desire penetrated the Appalachian clay, and while his thoughts illuminated the thicket of darkness, and while he searched for loot to impress her and hunted a phantasmapanther that was simultaneously hunting them simply so to bring Daisy home a pet, and while he scorned himself for missing one highly questionable meal—some half-naked twit from the city was doing Mama-knows-what with the woman he adored.
Kohl clenched and pulled his overalls up—he would get out of this maze.
He’d escape with his ring, a new pet, and treasure galore.
And once he was out he’d teach the whole fucking city a lesson.
But first, they needed to find some weapons.
They continued deeper—or perhaps wider, or higher, or backward; there was no way of knowing—until they came to a hole so small Kohl imagined even the little folk from the city would have to crouch to get through. “That cat can’t fit in here,” he said, crawling into the shaft, the distinctive rotten-eggs-and-sulfur smell of coal growing so thick the smell of his recent deposit seemed mild. “Maybe we can fetch some pickaxes.”
As they burrowed into the hole, the crunching and crackling of the phantasmapanther’s footsteps grew faint, but in their absence an even more foreboding sound took roost: slithering. With Keet behind him, the path ahead was a black veil, and with the sound echoing off the narrow walls, it was impossible to tell from which direction the slithering was coming from. Kohl twisted to check on his pal, and sure enough the terror in the man-bird’s eyes was brighter than the lime green glow of his skin.
“These tunnels are my veins,” Kohl said, hoping his words would drown out the slithering. “Don’t think of it like you’re stuck up inside the underworld—think of it like you’re stuck up inside me.”
Keet’s face scrunched into an uncertain expression.
“That came out wrong.”
After what could have been another twenty feet or twenty miles, the walls widened and the ceiling rose, giving birth to a grand dome-shaped foyer with six rectangular openings, each large enough to fit a train through. As if attesting to this, railroad tracks emerged from three of the openings, one appearing to belong to the Colonial era, another so rusted and gnarled it looked as old as sin itself, and the third so pristine it could have been part of a commuter shaft.
Kohl waded into the station, pulling Keet along behind him. Luckily, there weren’t any snakes to speak of and the slithering faded to a distant whisper, but Keet still squirmed and dug his feet into the ground like he had somewhere else to go. Then, with a breathy chirp his reluctance subsided, and he pointed to the walls where ornate stained windows sprang to life in his glow. Though dusty and broken, the intricate patterns carved into the glass seemed to twitch and stare, even move their mouths to speak. There were bears and hawks, what looked like a Norwegian woman with angelic wings, and in one peculiar case a picture of a bald purple giant with a nut-sack for a chin signally peace with his fingers. The glass around the giant’s hand was splintered, and it took Kohl only a few jiggles to pry a jagged, seven-inch-long piece of triangle-shaped glass from the window. He examined the gaudy gold gauntlet pictured on the splintered glass—it looked like something someone from the City of Cocks would wear—then carefully slid the shiv into his side pocket.
“This place is as fantastic as a witch’s hoard,” he said, approaching the center of the station where the tracks converged at a large structure shrouded beneath a fabric tarp. Longer than it was tall, it resembled a gondola with a ghostly gondolier standing on one end, oar raised. He drew a breath of stale air, tension fingering him like suppressed memory worming its way into dreams, then reached for the tarp and pulled the prohibition away.
Dust rushed over them like a gritty tide, swarms of white moths riding it like mist. The boys shielded their eyes, and when the wave had passed, an enormous copper contraption remained in its wake. Shaped like a bell with a wide bowl, what had appeared to be a gondolier was actually a pot crowned by a malformed, dented bulb resembling a thunderhead. A lightning-shaped crank stuck out of its side, forming what had looked like an oar but now more closely resembled a demented sex toy. Dials and gauges adorned the contraption’s body like piercings, and at the belly of the pot was a wooden wheel that could have passed for the helm of a pirate ship.
“It’s a still,” muttered Kohl, touching the machine’s belly where the words The Details were branded into the metal. “Crappalachia—we found treasure.”
Keet smiled, his tiny teeth shooting green lights out like a laser show.
Turning the crank, Kohl peered into a small opening. “I think this is where you pour the molasses,” he said, tracing a finger down the belly to another opening. Keet fluttered about the still, turning valves, adjusting dials, and inspecting the swan neck connected the pot to a gnarled drum surrounded by the shattered remains of ancient mason jars.
Rubbing dust off a dial with the heel of his hand, Kohl unearthed a large “S” with the numbers “32.065” below it and “16” beside it. “Mama said during a raid in Jackson the Pungent Pirate opened up a hole in the earth, uncovering a dragon slumbering upon its treasure, snoring thunder and exhaling smoke. The crew told him to retreat, but Pat would not be denied. He wrestled the dragon throughout the night and emerged at daybreak, dragging a still rippling with lightning behind him—”
“Got-dandruff-in-my-hair!” Mama’s ethereal voice punched through the space between time and memory. “That ain’t how the story goes. There weren’t any wrestlin or dragons. Yer good-for-nothin father went to Jackson lookin for booty. As always. And while pillaging he learned of an underground train system used for transportin treasure. And wouldn’t ya know it, lo and behold, he hijacked a train and turned it into a mobile distillery to fuel his greatest guest of all.”
Kohl looked up into the shadows like he was a child hearing the story for the first time. “What quest, Mama?”
“The only quest a man-child ever truly takes, boy,” Mama’s belligerence rattled the stained glass windows—“to kill his mama!”
“Everything always comes back to killing mama with her,” Kohl said, giving the still a brisk spank on the bottom. “Now that we’ve found this, I reckon ain’t no need to go after my inheritance now.”
The spank seemed to jar something loose in the machine. It hissed and spat a red bolt of electricity out of one of its pipes, shattering the purple man window. Kohl’s hair stood on end and a wave of drunkenness washed over him. Next to him, Keet swayed from side to side, singing like a skylark after a sip of wine.
Kohl hugged Keet, trembling with joy, the potent taste of fermented apple lingering on his tongue. “We’re going to be rich,” he moaned. “There’s no way the girls could deny us now.”
A gust of icy breath ran down their necks, and the smell of decaying flesh announced the phantasmapanther’s return. It was then that Kohl realized that the hissing hadn’t come from the still but from behind them.
“Nice kitty,” he said, reaching into his pocket and taking hold of the glass dagger.
But when he turned around what stood before him was no cat. So black it was blindingly bright, a snake with goat horns and an electric guitar-shaped rattle stared down at them with piercing yellow eyes. Though its physical form was different, the icy chill, rancid smell, and evil eyes convinced Kohl that the phantasmapanther and phantasmaviper were the same diabolical creature.
It coiled its neck to strike, and Kohl thrust out the dagger. In a flash of movement and shadow so sudden and precise he could only process what had happened from the effect, the phantasmaviper bit him, cleaving a hole out of the center of his face. He wheeled backyard, slamming into the still, blood spraying from where his nose had been just moments before. With a flurry of alarm calls, Keet flung the tarp over them and positioned himself between Kohl and the beast.
“Goddamn snake bit off my nose,” Kohl hissed with an ironically nasally tone. Woozy and in shock, his eyes glossed over and all he could see were mirages, thick droplets of blood impaled on his eyelashes, and Keet’s radioactive aura vibrating atop him.
The phantasmaviper prodded the tarp, flicking its pitchfork tongue at their feet. Adrenaline shot through Kohl like a slug of Jack, and the taste of blood filled him with extra determination to live. He grasped for the tongue, meaning to sever it from the beast, but his mutilated hand foresaked him and the tongue slipped from his grip. Despair washed over him, but then he saw Keet’s fingers shining like laser pointers on the ground and realized that the tongue wasn’t flicking at them; it was attracted to the light.
Not only were the phantasmapanther and phantasmaviper one in the same, but they had the same impulses.
“Keet, give me your finger,” he said, grabbing Keet’s hand and covering all but his pointer finger. Shielding Keet’s other hand with his body, Kohl directed the single beam of light out of a hole in the fabric and down one of the openings leading into the still-station. The serpent’s head snapped around to follow and its tail wiggled like it was launching into a guitar solo. Under different circumstances, it would’ve been the cutest thing the boys had ever seen. Kohl jiggled Keet’s finger, the point of light dancing like a lure, and the snake could no longer control itself. It sprang for the light and disappeared down the corridor.
Keet helped Kohl to his feet and the two hustled down the opposite shaft, holding the tarp over their shoulders like a cape, leaving a trail of blood and gore as thick as ground beef smothered in ketchup.
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