First Leftenant Aniyah Smith

6:45 PM November 10, 2015

The thirteen-year-old girl ran toward the abandoned street end at Ocean Avenue and First. The parking lot was empty, and its owners battened the boardwalk booths down for the impending winter. An ominous haze surrounded scattered clouds with dark gray and black. The winds made a telling rattle as thirteen-year-old Aniyah Smith made her way through the narrow service alley between Sun-Kissed Glass & Shell and Napoli's Pizza.

The stench of soured salt and urine still lingered in the alley. As Aniyah emerged, she collided with a man, feeling his feeble embrace.

"Easy, my young one," he said. Aniyah couldn't help but smile when she heard his deep and unassuming French accent. Aniyah pushed away and saw the man's smooth, whisker-free face, giving him the appearance of a calm and aged grandfather. He wore a dark gray overcoat buttoned around a navy-blue scarf. Despite how low he wore his fedora, his eyes were still visible, piercing, and alert.

"I'm sorry," she said and smirked. She stared at the grandfather's red cheeks as he smiled. His gaze was gentle, and his face held a kind expression that she loved.

"There's a tempest upon us, child. Should you be here, outside in the elements? Haven't you a place to shelter?"

"This is my favorite place—"

She stopped herself from saying any more. While she liked the older man, nobody needed to know her secrets.

She pulled down on her Boston Bruins hat with her matching mittens and cleared her throat.

"Well, I have to go now," she said. "Thank you for watching out for me."

Before Aniyah turned, a strong wind funneled through the alleyway. Bits of sand hit her in the face, making her blink, and then she shielded her eyes with her hand. The older man's aftershave caught in her nostrils. Its top note was citrusy, but its base was a stiff oil.

"Go in peace, young one. And be safe from the storm's rage."

She thanked him and rushed away, eager to get to the beach. This place had been her escape in times of trouble and sorrow, but today, she faced hurricane-east winds.

She sensed an intruder as she left the boardwalk and headed towards the beach entry walkways. It wasn't the kind old man she had just met. He was flesh and blood. What she was feeling was the unseen. The thing that lay dormant in the corrupted earth of the town's four-hundred-year-old sin. While the events of centuries past were now laid in folklore and profited a community who exploited it with entry fees, apparel, and re-enactments, Aniyah was one of the few who knew the truth. She pointed at the black sky creeping its way inland.

"You're an ugly November Witch," she said.

Aniyah emerged from the alley onto the boards. "You're ugly and haunted by a spirit of loneliness. I know what you did in this town and who you are."

Aniyah winced in pain when the chill bit through her coat, Boston Bruins wool hat, and mittens to match. She descended the fading gray planks, twisting left then right, spilling onto the beach.

She turned away from the ocean's waves turning to the south.

"You shouldn't be here," she said. "They killed you for a reason. So go back, haunt your fields and pond, and leave us alone."

Aniyah was an awkward girl. She had a knack for hearing things that others dismissed as foolishness. Her studies of Western Civilization and Old England enabled her to uncover secrets lost centuries earlier in the Heights of King James' County settlement.

Aniyah, an eighth grader at Heights Intermediate School North, had sprung overnight into womanhood. Unfortunately, her shirts could not keep up with her budding body. This forced her to steal her mother's old blouses and tank tops.

She never worried about getting caught but felt embarrassed about having to use them. Her mother was high most of the time, and when she wasn't, she gave herself to whoever could help her stay that way. Regarding her clothing, it was more spotty fabric than shirts, and having to wear them brought her ridicule and bullying.

She thinks I'm worthless and a mistake from some random trick. No wonder I look like white trash.

Two years had passed since she last trimmed her straight brown hair. Because of the bad plumbing in their section eight housing, she could only shower every three days.

She shivered as she faced down another gust, but not just from the dropping temperatures or the easterly winds.

Her mother had beaten her again. Bruises from the fists and belt of a manic, heroin and man-addicted mom flared from the slightest touch.

She thought back forty minutes earlier to the saucepan hitting the ground. Her mother, Delilah, half-naked on the couch, pushed a man-friend from beside her and attacked. An eleven-second beating, all too familiar. The young girl endured screaming, flying fists, and kicks to her back and ribs.

"All's I did was drop a pot," she wept. "I just wanted some Ramen Noodles."

In the present, Aniyah threw her hands toward the sky and screamed.

"I'm sick of being beaten," she said. "You're not as strong as you used to be, and I'm not scared of you."

She felt the wooden boards beneath her black and white Vans sneakers and smiled.

It's almost story time.

She leaned back to slow her descent to the beach. Then, stopping on the last wooden plank, she watched the boardwalk fade into the marram and bending dune grass. She saw a tiny path between two rows of chest-high cattails.

She curled her fists into circles, and with a deep breath, Aniyah put one against her eye, and the other stretched as if seeing through a looking glass.

"Mister Barrie, we shall beat to quarters," she said. "To the log, engaged enemy Ship o' the Line at eight bells." She escaped into her fantasy world when her black and white vans hit the sand.

His Majesty King George the Third's Frigate, Pomone.

Ten November 1809

Somewhere S. of Sardinia, Mediterranean Sea

38 guns

198 souls

In the present, she found her spot on the shoreline, sitting close enough to feel the ocean's spray. Aniyah tucked her knees under and fell into her imagination.

"Report if you please, Mister Barrie," she said into the wind. She was First Leftenant Aniyah Smith, and this was her first fantastical story, The Sands of a Midshipman.

"Come up on the wind. Sharpshooters to the topsail and get me alongside pistol shot." She saw herself rush toward the larboard side quarterdeck division batteries. "Mister Barrie, make ready on the up row."

The heavy seas refused her the weather gauge, though she found favor when the wind pushed against her. The guns cleared the driving waves, showing the enemy's hull. She threw her hand in the air.

"Fire!"

In her imagination, they broadsided, with significant effect, the much larger French Ship o' the Line.

In the present, a raging gale took her out of her fantasy world to the pain caused by her mother. Staring at the horizon, wanting to escape this reality, she cleared her throat.

"One day," she said. Aniyah winced and spoke to the magnificence of the Atlantic. "One day, I'm going to sing songs about you. I'm going to write poems about your beauty and your strength."

Another wind from the east pushed her long, uncut hair against her milky cheek and nose. She fought to keep her eyes clear, her face stung by the sand.

Aniyah gnashed her teeth and shouted at the east wind.

"You're an ugly spell caster. The old whalers named you the November Witch. They feared you, but I don't."

Aniyah leaped to her feet, leaned, and took a broken shell from the sand. She hurled it at the incoming blackness overtaking the sky. The wind caught it and spat it back at her.

A gale from the November Witch kicked up the sand and hit her again. Losing her balance and breath, Aniyah gave up. She tried tying her hair with a soft pink scrunchie but failed. So exasperated with the wind and her hair sticking to her mouth, she grabbed both sides of her wool hat and yanked it over her ears to her eyebrows.

"You're as vicious as my mother," she said. The rolling tears touched her cheeks, prompting a quick backhand removal. "How can you be so mean?"

She sat, desperate to command her beloved, Pomone, but another gust took the hat from her head and shredded her scrunchie. She cursed the November Witch.

"You're just cruel. You're unforgiving and just—plain—shitty, mean."

A chilling breath answered as her flesh pimpled.

Then, she felt a sudden and violent pain. It befell her back and neck, ripping through her coat and scarf.

An intrusion. A foreign object severed Aniyah's cervical spine.

As her breath faded, her ears mourned the sound of breaking bone and tearing flesh.

Terrified of the mysterious pain and its cause, she retreated to the deck of the HMS Pomone.

"Damage report, if you please, Mister Barrie."

Aniyah's mouth was dry, and she felt a surge of panic, wondering if her fantasy world had come to life.

"We've lost the rudder, juene fille." The voice belonged to a man, soft and calm, but she remained skeptical. His accent confused her sense of reality.

You chill my spine, sir.

Aniyah wanted to cry but lost her voice and all sensation throughout her limbs.

"We're derelict, mon Capitaine. All are lost."

That's when she knew. This wasn't her fantasy world at all.

She would never have imagined herself a captain. The title was grand, and she lacked the necessary tenure in His Majesty's Fleet to warrant such an honor.

No! I am Leftenant Smith, aboard His Majesty's Ship, Pomone.

"Let us abandon ship together, young one."

Her first thought was of a mother's friend sent to make her disappear. But when she saw his face, she recognized the evil. In his nakedness, he loomed over her, his breath steaming. She averted her gaze from his body and focused on his eyes.

His stare showed no emotion, only a chilling, pale orange glare.

However, the thick black ring framing the tips of his eyelids unmasked the bemocking demons.

You're not a man-friend. You're too neat and clean and smell of a pleasant aftershave. You're Mother Carey.

Her body seized until she lost all sensations.

The man stood over her with a black steel blade and a quizzical stare. He studied her, his head moving from left to right.

"Such an odd place and such an odd girl, but never you mind. You won't feel any of this."

Her breath waned, and she wanted to choke, but her body wasn't working.

Her thoughts flashed, her mind raced, and she wanted to go home, but not to her abusive spike and man-addicted mother. She aspired to be with Midshipman Barrie, fighting beside him in the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere south of Sardinia.

You will not be the last thing I see. My shipmates await me, and I spend my last moments on the splintered deck of the HMS Pomone.

And in her fantasy world, the smell of the salt air spent gunpowder, and the ship's burning timbers filled her nostrils. She felt the tears against her temples and ears as she looked at her favorite midshipman.

"But, no, Mister Barrie. I am mortally wounded. To you, sir, go the guns."

On the ravaged quarterdeck, amidst hellfire, steel, and shot, Leftenant Aniyah Smith took her last breath and passed into the ages.