Tales From The Town #111: Captain Crabclaw

“And now, Captain Crabclaw, you die!” the Admiral said with a gloating laugh. He lowered his sword which signalled to his guards it was time to raise their swords and poke Captain Crabclaw in the belly so that she stepped back that final step and fell off the gangplank and into the ocean with a loud, satisfying splash as she definitely died. “And so ends the tale of Captain Crabclaw. IN DEATH! There’s no coming back from that!”

“No!” whimpered Daniel.

“NOOOOOOOOO!” bellowed Claire.

“YES!” Ethel exulted, exultingly.

On screen there was much rejoicing, all the Admiral’s guards and soldiers and the bo’sun and some sort of swabbie cheering loudly and giving the Admiral a series of triumphant hurrahs before saluting him because Admirals like being saluted. Then he turned round and marched off towards his cabin.

Outside the door stood Captain Crabclaw, dripping wet, but smiling and definitely totally alive.

“NOOOOO!” wailed Ethel.

“YES!” Daniel cried.

“IN YOUR FACE ETHEL!” Claire shouted, throwing a cushion on the floor and stamping merrily on it for good measure.

“Captain Crabclaw!” the Admiral spluttered. “But how? You’re supposed to be dead!”

“You forgot one tiny detail, Admiral Humanhands!” Captain Crabclaw explained. “I can swim!”

“And so can I,” said her merman, as the camera moved over very slightly to show he was there too now.

Then the merman swung his long flowing totally amazing hair round and grabbed on to the mast and him and Captain Crabclaw swung across the deck in each other’s arms, Captain Crablcaw kicking absolutely everyone into the sea. Even the swabbie. And the bo’sun. And the Admiral’s snooty son and both of their wives.

And that was the end of that for another week. The incredible theme song played over the end credits and they made sure to click at exactly the right time so it went back to the theme song and played all of it instead of skipping on to the next episode, especially as this was the last episode and there wasn’t any more yet they’d have to wait for the new series NEXT YEAR!

“I wish I was Captain Crabclaw,” said Claire, as she mimed kicking absolutely everyone into the sea.

“I wish I was her merman,” said Daniel, as he swung his long hair that was like a viking’s hair around in the celebrated merman style.

“I wish I was whoever finally gets to kill Captain Crabclaw off for good,” said Ethel, swinging imaginary muskets around and firing at Claire in the way that would usually annoy Claire considerably but didn’t today because Claire was too busy kicking imaginary people into a dreamt up sea to notice.

“I wish I was in an entirely different cartoon altogether,” Tina said wistfully, as she looked briefly up from her book and then looked back down at her book and continued reading her book which was a good book that she liked a lot it was nice.

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Notes:

1. Written on March 30th, 2023

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