Author's notes: Well here I am, writing not only my first POTC fanfiction, but also a self-insert as that! But who, may I ask, could write a self-insert better than an author who hates self-inserts? Well, ok, so that argument doesn't make much sense but I hope you like it anyways. If I get some reviews on this I'll happily continue (no use writing it if no one likes it!)and if you promise to read it I promise to try my best to make it entertaining.
Oh, and one last thing. I feel like I need to interject here and note that there are some very funny, very good self-insert stories out there. For example: Leanan Sidhe stories "Of Heaven and Hell" (From Hell fic) and "Third Times the Charm" (POTC) are very funny and, even though I'm not finished with the latter, have entertained me greatly. So I'm not knocking all of it, alright?
Now please... someone read this! lol
The Damsel and the Distressed
Chapter One
It was three o'clock in the morning, and I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with my lap top in front of me. It had been an incredibly long day at work (I work in collections for a credit card company, meaning I spend my entire day being cursed, yelled at, or hung up on) and once home I had went through all of my cabinets looking for a suitable snack. I eyed the bottle of vodka for a moment, considering, and finally grabbed the peanut butter instead. Before I knew it I was in my sweat pants and tank top, eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon, and reading Pirates of the Caribbean fanfiction.
What an exciting life I lead.
I had already read most of the decent stories out there, and all that was left was shameless self-inserts or Mary Sues. It was depressing. Captain Jack Sparrow was one of the most interesting characters to ever come out of a Disney movie and here we were stuck with the same boring old stories about saving the damsel in distress and pirates falling in love! I licked the spoon clean and again contemplated my vodka. Truth is, I'm a bit anal about my grammar and I'm picky about my story lines, but when tipsy I couldn't give a damn. Cross the line from tipsy to drunk, however, and I couldn't care less about reading at all!
So I sat there... and I sat there... too lazy to even get up for the vodka, too tired to fall asleep, and too scared to write my own Pirates story. What if it turned out to be like one of those self-insert stories, where I wrote myself in (only much funnier, much prettier, with a slightly smaller ass and much larger breasts) and Jack fell in love with me and all the pirates wanted to be friends with me and I learned to swordfight but Jack was always saving me at the last moment and we fell in love with each other and...
Well really, that didn't sound all that bad. I mean, don't get me wrong... it sounded bad. Horrible really. Self-indulgent. But thinking on it, it beat the hell out sitting in my living room wearing my pajamas and eating peanut butter off a spoon. A small adventure, even an imaginary one, would certainly liven things up a bit in my life. I contemplated some more, and finally got up for the vodka.
Mixing it with orange juice made it taste a bit better, but the drink still burned the whole way down. It only took two glasses full to make me feel fairly drunk (I'm a light weight, and not ashamed to admit it) and I took my third back with me to the computer, reading a little and giggling a lot. I suddenly didn't want to write some imaginary fantasy, I wanted it to be real, I wanted to be there, I wanted to be with them! I could suddenly understand why all those horrible stories got written! Those writers, like I did now, longed to be part of something bigger, more important than the same old, same old of everyday life. And it wasn't their fault that they came up with trite story lines, they were just doing what made them happy and it was important to be happy in life very important yes important like cheese, cheese is important and suddenly I wondered if we had any cheese and I was standing up to look when I fell back down on the floor and realized with a start...
I was drunk. Very, very drunk. So I did the only thing I could.
I giggled again.
"Yo ho, yo ho," I sang softly, skipping into the kitchen, looking for cheese. But when I got there I forgot what I was looking for so poured myself another glass of vodka and orange juice instead.
Finally I settled back down in front of the computer, lying on my stomach with my arms propped up on my elbows. Smiling, I opened up my Microsoft Word, knocked the jar of peanut butter out of the way, and typed the words I want an adventure along the top of the page. I looked at the words for a minute and a shudder ripped through me, shaking the smile from my face. I waited a long moment afterward, my breath coming out fast, and when I was completely convinced that I had imagined the silly feeling of trepidation in my drunken state, I smiled slowly and laid my head down on the keyboard. I hoped for a moment that I wouldn't drool on the keys, but the thought was only that, just a passing fancy really, and I had no motivation to move from my position. Curling up a bit tighter into a ball, I smiled and began to hum...
"A pirate's life for me," I whispered.
And then I was asleep.
I woke up the next morning, dreading the day before I even opened my eyes. I had to work at 1:30, the dishes hadn't been done, and I was pretty sure I didn't have any clean blue jeans to wear. Not to mention the fact that my head was pounding like a drum set and CHRIST ALMIGHTY WHO WAS SCREAMING IN MY EAR?
I jerked awake as suddenly as if I'd had cold water doused on me only to find out, well, that I had. My entire body was soaking from head to toe, dripping in cold sea water. My mind hadn't had time to adjust to everything around me yet, all it could think clearly was that I was going to get evicted from my apartment for ruining the carpet and I was going to go to jail for murdering whoever it was that saw fit to wake me by dumping water over my head.
"Just what the HELL do you think..." and that was it. That was all I got out. Because standing above me, around me, completely surrounding me, was a group of the nastiest men I've ever seen in my life, and one of them was holding an empty water bucket. I gaped at them, taking in their clothing, their matted hair, their ear rings and their capped teeth, not quite believing anything I saw. My mind jumped to ten million conclusions in the space of a second: they were lunatics, escaped from some local asylum; they were outlaws, dressed like pirates for their gang; or, I was dreaming, fabricating the whole thing, just a drunken fantasy from the privacy of my home. I hesitated, liking that idea.
"Well hello poppet," one of the totally fabricated, completely in my mind, not really a pirate, pirates said to me. I looked down, noticing I was still wearing the sweat pants and tank top from the night before and... dammit! My breasts and ass were exactly the same size as they were before! I was a writer for Christ's sake! I was supposed to have a better imagination than this!
"Thought ye'd stowaway on the Black Pearl, eh? Well it's the last mistake you'll be making lass. The cap'n don't tolerate freeloaders on 'is ship! To yer feet or we'll drag you up ourselves!" One of the other totally fabricated, completely in my mind, not really a pirate, pirates said, looking pointedly at my breasts through the soaked shirt. 'I really wouldn't imagine that,' I thought, depressed. Or maybe I would. It would be just like me to go to sleep thinking about hot outlaw pirates and instead have a dream where totally unsexy, toothless pirates stared at my (still unimpressive) chest.
I started to stand, wobbling a bit and realizing for the first time that the tiny room we were in was moving. I was on a ship! With pirates! And I still had a hangover!
I gripped my head angrily, scowling and muttering. The fantasy to beat all fantasies and here I was in the middle of it with an aching head and a rolling stomach.
"This is my dream and I want my hangover to go away right now, ya hear!" I shouted, to God only knows who. The God of bad fanfiction perhaps, if there was such a thing. The men around me looked at me like I was crazy and I was starting to believe they might be right. Where was Captain Jack Sparrow anyways? Shouldn't he be showing up anytime now, saving me from uncertain doom and very certain pervy pirates?
One of them grabbed my arm roughly and yanked me in the direction of a set of stairs, expecting me to follow. My arm hurt in the place where his fingers were still clenched and even with my hangover I thought that sensation felt a little too realistic for my liking. Ignoring the stench that was rolling off of them in waves (another thing just a little too authentic for me) I let them drag me up the stairs to the main deck, not fighting because I still wanted to believe it couldn't be real but feeling the dread build inside of my stomach all the same. The sunlight was bright in my eyes, blinding me and drilling into my head, causing my whole body to feel like one aching wound. I was thrown to the floor at the feet of another pirate and when I felt my palms fill with splinters I began to entertain the very scary idea that this wasn't a dream at all.
"Look cap'n, a stowaway. 'e found her lying in the brig, sleeping like a baby. Wot you think we should do wit her cap'n?" one of the pirates leered. I looked at the boots of the man in front of me, fascinated, scared to look up because I knew who I would see and not knowing how I could explain that to my already fragile sanity. But part of me was relieved because I knew this was my way of finding out for sure just what was going on... because if this was my dream, my badly written fanfic fantasy, then I would look up and Captain Jack would be smiling down at me. He would take my hand, defend me to the crew, allow me to sleep in his cabin, and all would be peaches. So I looked up.
It was Captain Jack, but he wasn't even looking at me, let alone smiling. He was staring at his compass in deep concentration, shaking it a little when he didn't see what he wanted. Annoyed, he looked up at his men and waved his hand in that way of his, the way that was all Jack Sparrow and a little bit silly looking.
"Stowaway then? Well, overboard with her mates, then back to yer places."
The men laughed and began to move. What seemed like one thousand hands reached for me at once and I was outraged and scared.
"Excuse me?" I shrieked, and Jack finally looked down at me lying there in a heap, my hair disheveled and my clothes soaking wet. I wanted to say so much more than that but that was all I could get out because he was looking at me now and the effect was a little overwhelming.
"No worries love, it's not a long swim to shore. You'll make it in no time," he told me, smiling infuriatingly.
"But... but... I..." I faltered, unsure how to respond to that. "I'm not a very good swimmer!" I finally exclaimed. It was a silly point, as if a pirate who was perfectly willing to throw a girl off his ship and into the sea cared about what happened to her afterwards. Jack seemed to think it was silly also. He smiled widely, his gold teeth gleaming in the morning sun as his eyes swept up and down my wet body and my see-through shirt. My cheeks burned at the blatant way he examined all of me.
"Try the breast stroke, love," he said finally, and the crew burst into merry laughter. They reached for me quickly and carried me to the side of the ship. Raising me on their shoulders, still laughing and yelling, I closed my eyes as they prepared to dump me overboard, waiting only for the inevitable crash into the water that would signal that my adventure was coming to an end before it had even begun.
This was the worst dream ever.