Prologue: Lightning

And so Pirates of Appalachia begins...

Howdy! Pirates of Appalachia is an epic absurdist satire releasing as a weekly serial. You can learn more via the button below or just start reading here (this is the beginning)!

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“So ya want to know what’s in that mason jar yer forbidden to touch, do ya? Well, I reckon it’s due time ya know where ya come from. And who yer daddy is. But be forewarned: it’ll make it impossible for you to ever trust yerself again.

“Kohl, inside that jar is yer inheritance—the one thing yer good-for-nothin daddy left ya. Now, it’ll make a boy rotten learnin what he’s to inherit before it’s time, but in yer sad case, knowin may just prevent ya from repeating the same sad sins as yer kin. Son, yer going to inherit a map to the most despicable, bitter-tasting, mind-collapsing, depravity-inducing treasure this world has ever known! Now, folks hear TREASURE MAP and think theys on the trail to fame and riches, but that map was written with the devil’s tears. And all it can offer ya is death… and probably herpes if I know yer father, and trust me—I do.

“Ya see, when I was a chile, folks could barely feed and clothe themselves in the hills. That was after the Trumpocalypse. Before the Steel City built tubes across Appalachia and gave us a taste of their high-class way of life—before the leaves turned into disco balls thanks to the radiation at the toxic waste dumps, before Wheeling 1.0 was submerged beneath Lake Dozmary, and before the pussycats grew to outrageous sizes and began stealin from the rich to give to the poor.

“Back then, there were pirates in these here hills, and when I was still in pigtails, the Pungent Pirate Pat—so called ’cause he smelled worse than Satan’s taint, like pickled eggs infused with wacky tobacky—laid siege to Wheeling. Why, when he sailed into town he had little more than some fishin line, a piece of chewin gum, and some mason jars full of Devil’s Lightning. He didn’t even have a ship or a crew, just a dinghy and his pet rat, Asparagus. But it only took him three days to rig a pulley system through town with the fishin wire. I remember seein it, lightnin bolts dancin inside those jars as they bobbed down the avenue. I was sixteen and had been out of school for five years, so I thought I knew it all, but it thrilled me every time I saw folk open a jar and get zapped! It turned young men into old lechers, old lechers into grey cads, middle-aged women into Spice Girls. Sometimes someone’d spill and the lightnin would shoot out and start a fire in the square or pinch a grandma on her behind.

“By the time the sheriff tried to intervene, the east side of town smelled like armpit and misplaced inhibitions. Half the population mutinied and joined up with the Pungent Pirate. And right there along the river theys built a ship—a grand vessel with sails and cannons and a place for making more lightning on the deck. They turned Wheeling into a port, and the pirates sailed the rivers and creeks—the Ohio and the Potomac and the Shenandoah and even the Gauley—pillagin and fornicatin and disrespectin mamas along the way! Why, they’d lay siege to yer trailer and sing ya merry songs, reaching their fingers into any hole theys could find until they’d fish ya out of bed and out of yer overalls. The Devil’s Lightnin turned guns and good intentions mute, and before long every cop in the hills had turned pirate and the Northern panhandle was as malodorous and swarthy as Memphis!

“Pungent Pat stole booty in every town along the Ohio, and when he returned to Wheeling he took my shoes. They say the Mothman foretold of his comin, but I didn’t believe in the stories, so I didn’t know he was comin until he’d already done and came. When I awoke in the mornin I was alone in the barn stickin to a bale of hay, and next to me was that mason jar. I reckon ya came along nine months later. Some folks say it was only six months, but I ain’t ever been very good at a-countin, and our kin is notorious for brewin babies suspicious fast.

“While I slept, the pirates sailed for Pittsburgh. So immense was their greed and lust that they sought to pillage the City of Bridges and sack the upstanding, righteously hygienic folks therein. But as fate would have it a bridge collapsed along the way and sunk their intrepid ship. The Pungent Pirate and his crew of stinky bootleggers were never seen again—not even at custody hearings. Some say the treasure tore yer father in two, cursing each half to wander the Earth desperate to reconnect but too ravenous and bloodthirsty to stop for needle and thread. Others say he died and became a dumpster—”

“You mean died in a dumpster, Mama?”

“No—I meant what I said, boy—died and became a dumpster. Other stories go that the pirates built a new ship and sailed to foreign lands as far away as Georgia and became known as the Hillbillies of the Caribbean. But I believe there are people amongst us as old as the clay who live as long as they loot. And I know those moonshining buccaneers are still here, lurkin, and at any moment the pungent pirate could return and start poking his fingers where they don’t belong!

“Kohl, I’ll be damned if any son of mine is going to follow in those loathsome footsteps! Is that how you want to turn out, boy? All bits, no brains, reekin to high heavens? Pirates are not heroes, Kohl. They are selfish, violent, horny, calamitous creatures who would rip themselves inside out to git what they want. Theys why we can’t have nice things, and why our kinfolk think catfish is acceptable dinner fare. I want more for ya—I want class and sophistication and routine showering. That’s why I named ya Kohl, after the fancy department store where ya can shop all night during the holidays. By God, yer gonna go to Pittsburgh, git one of them fancy jobs with a chair that swivels, and have babies that learn the difference between aftershave and cologne. Assimilate—that’s what good folk do. And I want ya to assimilate with a modern woman, not one of these vixens with glowin thighs like that harlot yer always a-googlin…

“Don’t ya go fussin tryin to deny it—I see how ya look at her. Eyes bulging. Like yer no-good father. Just bulging from every split end. But glowin thighs and piratin just mean trouble. So ya won’t be gittin yer grubby hands on that map till I’m dead and gone! Ya hear me—dead and….

“Sorry, Mama got herself riled up. Hand me my oxygen and Twinkies, would ya…?

“Ah, that’s better…

“Kohl, the Pirates of Appalachia are still here. But theys slumberin, and for the sake of society and our property values they must remain that way. If they ever git their swarthy hands on that treasure, cities will fall. And when cities fall, the hills always follow. And if that happens, we’ll all end up with the herpes.”

“Were the jars really full of lightning, Mama?”

“Kohl, our kind is brimmin with lightnin. When we act, we bring the thunder. That’s why we gotta keep our lids screwed on tight, else there ain’t no tellin the storm we’d unleash. Now pass the Ho Hos and do a good job growing up, would ya?”

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Reading from the author during a special “pirated” edition of Writers Drinking Whiskey.

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