I looked over at Alphonse as I asked that before nodding and gesturing for him to sit down, he brushed himself off as he sat on the couch, something about how nicely he dresses and his general appearance and all, he seemed out of place against the blasé boringness of my apartment. The sunlight that washed into the room made his skin look like polished marble or stone with how smooth and flawless his complexion was, there was not a single pore, no scare or anything across his skin, not even a single freckle from what I could see. A few stray wisps of his auburn hair were across his temples and forehead, his matching thin and arched brows and long, thick lashes painted black by his makeup…matched with his sunken cheeks, softly hollowed temples and his gaunt features, he looked like unearthly, haunted and strangely beautiful in that way that ghosts are depicted; ethereal, immaterial and almost incorporeal, like the light was moving through him.
“It was…rather quick” he laughed as I sat on the other end of the couch, setting the coffee and beignets on the coffee table, “I was seventeen…the engine of the Gov. Frances T. Nicholls started overheating and before we realized that, the hull cracked from the heat of the hold against the cold of the water…so, that shift made the metal burst inwards. We noticed we were taking on water and because I was the cabin boy…my captain told me to inspect what was wrong, it was a loud boom that alerted us, but most of us thought something in the cargo hold had fallen loose or something. I went down to find the hold so full of water it was already to my knees. I screamed out for help, but everyone was trying to abandon ship…captain wouldn't let us, telling us that there were some kind of way we could be safe and already, that the ship could be repaired and it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.”
“He…sent you all to your deaths?” I asked, he looked over at me as he softly nodded as he leaned forward and picked up his own coffee, which was heavily scent with honey and chicory.
“And like a good captain, he went down with us.” He sighed, “I was obviously the first one to die from everything, I had to try to patch the hole when it was large enough fish and other animals were being pulled into the cargo hold with me. Something flew in and knocked me back and I tried to get back to my feet, but every time I got close, another wave knocked me back.”
“You…drowned?” I asked
“If I did, I’m not sure. The last I recall was my hands up, pushing towards the hole in the hull…then…nothing, just a strange, heavy, comforting darkness: like being cocooned in blankets. Then when I took my next breath, instead of air, water entered my lungs and I was at the murky bottom of the Mississippi” he sighed, “the plants and murk holding onto me as if it didn’t want me to leave, but I pulled myself free and when I breached the surface…all around me were bodies and burning wreckage as the ship’s nose was to the sky, nobody screaming…no splashing or trashing…just an eerie quietness of crackling flames and the metal bent rent from the heat as the water pulled it into her depths.” He sighed as he wafted the steam of the coffee towards him before taking a drink.
“No pain?” I asked
“Not that I can recall” he said with a shake of his head, “But there was also nobody there, when I pulled myself onto the banks…there was nobody there to tell me, I didn’t even know I was dead yet. I just started walking along the river towards…I was hoping a close city or something, it was a few days of time. By the time I got there, I was seeing my name listed in casualties from the wreckage and it being called a total loss.”
“What…what about your family?” I asked, “Wasn’t there…someone out there who you wanted to return to?”
“No” he said with a shake of his head, “My parents passed when I was young…young enough that I can’t recall them really at all, I was raised by my uncle…who was not kind at all, treated me like a servant…so the moment I was able to leave, I did. Signed up to be a cabin boy and a few weeks later…boom” he sighed
“Nobody was there for you to return to?”
“No”
“What about afterwards? Who took you in then?” I asked, he sighed
“A very kind woman, she is still alive…lives out in the swamps outside of Gretna. Obviously because of the fanaticism over the accident, but nothing really being taken down, people didn’t believe me when I told them my name, people told me I shouldn’t tell people I’m a dead man or things along those lines” he sighed with a soft laugh. “A woman…found me. I was just sitting on the sidewalk in the rain, lost…not myself and…so confused. She took me in.”
“What’s her name?”
“It was a while for me to call her Mother, but…her name is Geraldine Maxwell. She showed herself to me when I was…quite literally in a gutter, she treated me kindly, she took me in, told me about what I could do, what had happened to me and everything like that. She all, but legally adopted me, because legally…I was dead, you can’t adopt a corpse” he explained, “But I stayed with her for…quite some time, I see her as more of my mother than the woman who birthed my living form. She taught me magic, how to make potions, she’s the reason why my magic is as it is, she taught me everything I know.” He said with a kind smile, “Never been able to make gumbo as well as she can, though she’s…I don’t even know how old she is, so she’s had a lot of time to learn how to cook.”
“She sounds lovely” I said quietly as I reached over, resting my hand lightly on his wrist as his other hand reached over and rested on my hand.
“I’m sure she’d love you too…she’s
always had a soft spot for gators.” He said with…actually a wink.
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