Green Garey stared across the sprawling expanse of the pielight sky from the helm of the Floating Englishwoman, sighing and inhaling on a thick torpedo cigar complements of Danielle Johnson, esteemed witch-pretending-to-be-a-skyrate-captain.

“Yaaar—ahhaaack! Ahhack! Aack!” Green Gared rasped, having taken a thick milky drag and inhaled it.

“Green Garey you’re not supposed to inhale those you’ll get the ammonia,” sighed Pamela as she sketched imagined celestial figures naked and fornicating across the groundless oceanless skyscape. She was smoking a cigar twice as big, inhaling it all the while.

“Ahack! Aye! Ye mean the pneumonia. Ahack!”

“No, I mean the ammonia. As in all the ammonia in these things? Haven’t you ever had a public service dream magicked into your head?”

“Yaarg. That’s all a—haaaAAAaack—bunch of hooey.”

“Sure it is, Green Garey. Sure it is,” Pamela exhaled smoothly, turning to Danielle Johnson. “So how many of you are witches again?”

“Oh, we all are. You would not believe the tax breaks you get when you pretend to be a criminal. Nobody wants anything to do with your money. It’s great.”

Pamela took another deep draw, polising her Royal Gourd Badge and looking at it with pride. “That’s fair enough.”

Green Garey stared again at the sky, pretending to puff on his cigar unconvincingly. “Aye love this feeling. Makes me pine for the days of me youth, aboard me farrrgther’s lawyering ship.”

“Your father’s lawyering ship?”

“Aye, Parrmela. The nicest lawyering ship this side of the seventy skies. Not dissimilarrgh to this one, in farrghct. Though much cleaner. He took great pride in his lawyering ship.”

“You know Green Garey I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of lawyers sailing around the sky on a ship.”

“Aye. ‘e were a true pionearrrgh. If only he had not disappeared like a puff of this ‘ere tobacco, aye might be able to introduce ye two some day.”

Pamela paused, exhaling. “Green Garey, do you ever think that maybe, just possibly, your father—”

“Avast! Off the skybard bough!” Green Garey blathered incredulousy. “Arggnother ship!”

Everyone looked around, as all of the boughs were skybard and therefore the ship could’ve been almost anywhere. Eventually they all saw it, but a foggy speck far in the distance in the direction they had all been looking before Green Garey had shouted.

“Holy shit,” Pamela dropped her cigar out of her mouth, spilling ash all over her guilded Royal Gourd boots. “Oh cockhamnit.”

“Aye think they arrrgh coming this waye,” Green Garey grumbled. “What do ye say, captain? Shall we preparrrgh for a fight?”

“Hen no!” Danielle Johnson shuddered. “The Floating Englishwoman is a skyship of peaceful tax evasion, not of war!” She turned and bellowed to her crew, “Prepare to scurry away, mehardies!”

Everyone aboard screamed and frantically turned wheels and gears and mashed pistons and shit themselves as they prepared a daring retreat.

“Aye have a barrrghd feeling arrrgbout this,” Green Garey murmured, watching as the speck became larger and less foggy. “A ship going that aggressively fast, swerving around in the pielight so reckleslly, can only mean two things. It’s either piloted by an absolute madman henbent on crushing our bones like brittle twigs and sipping from the marrow in a chalice like a fine wine,” Green Garey took a sip of his cigar and instantly keeled over and vomited. He dropped it in the vomit and leaned up, wiping his face. “Or by a complete buffoon with no idea what in the hen they arrrgh doing.”

***

“Faster you buffoons, faster I say!” shrieked Biscuit Pisser, cackling as she whipped her first mates Broderica and Krumbumbum in the rump with a long belt.

“You have no upper arm strength,” fussed Broderica. “Why I could whip someone’s ASS better in my sleep!”

“Speak for yourself,” squeaked a withering Krumbumbum. “You know, Biscuit Pisser, if we keep swerving around like this we might overturn the ship.”

“I don’t want to hear what we might do to the ship you measley louse!” Biscuit Pisser squealed. “Someone get me some more wine! Not you Krumbumbum I don’t want any of your stupid magic alcohol!”

“Here ye arrrgh, cap’n,” a skyrate handed Biscuit Pisser an oversized, guilded bottle of pinot noir. “Would ye like a glarrggss or will ye contarrgnue to drink from the bottle?”

“Neither!” Biscuit Pisser snatched the bottle and smashed it over the skyrate’s head. “You know I hate pinos! Cabernet or bust!”

“B-but cap’n,” whined another skyrate, watching their companion writhing on the floor in a pile of wine, blood and glass, “We don’t harrgve any more Carrrgbernets. Ye drank them all.”

“Don’t tell me what I drank and what I haven’t drank unless ‘ye’ want to walk the skank!”

“Please cap’n please narrrght the skank!”

“Then get me my Cabernet you mangy bass turd!”

Krumbumbum looked at Broderica with a heaving sigh as they directed the heavy steering wheel to the left and then to the right and back again as Biscuit Pisser was directing them. “You know for some reason even this is even worse than I’d expected it to be.”

“Worse?” snorted Broderica. “This vitch is going easy on us. I think she’s grown,” Broderica piped up at this bit, making sure Biscuit Pisser could hear, “quite SOFT since the LAST TIME she went on a power trip. Maybe it’s because she’s a WOMAN now.”

“Broderica what the cluck shut up she’ll hear you!”

“Less yapping more sswerving you spindly old vitch!” Biscuit Pisser spat at Krumbumbum, lashing her ass’s crack with her cracking whip.

“Now Biscuit Pisser,” interrupted Broderica, who let go of the steering wheel to chug from yet another hidden tit flask, “You do see that there’s a ship on our skyrizon, right? That we’ve kind of been barreling towards like absolute lunatics?”

“I can’t ssee shit you clucking wwoman! Do you know how bad my tunnel vision is right nnow? I can barely ssee your tits from here!”

“Well cluck,” Broderica burped and started on another hidden tit flask, “There’s a ship on our skyrizon that we’ve been barreling towards like absolute lunatics. You clucking lightweight.”

Biscuit Pisser took the large bottle labeled ‘Kahburnay’ in weak penmanship and smashed it over the head of another subservient skyrate. “You did not jusst clucking ssay that to me Shitface!”

“What? Lunatics?”

“No! Llightweight. I’m no clucking lightweight!”

“You did just say you had tunnel vision. How many bottles have you even had? Three?”

“Four, thank you veryy much. And I can focus out of my tunnel vision at any second I just chooose not to.”

“Sure. That’s definitely not bullshit.”

“That’ss it. Where’ss the whiskeyy?!” Biscuit Pisser shrieked, standing up from her seat only to immediately stumble back down into it. She tried twice more before finally standing upright, though still wobbling. She pointed a gilded cutlass at Broderica and forced her mouth into a crooked, plaque ridden smile. “You. Me. To the messs hallll. We’re havingg a drink off.”

“Your funeral,” laughed Broderica as she polished off a third flask and started on a fourth, this one hidden between her butt cheeks.

“But cap’n,” whined a shriveled little skyrate, “We don’t harrrgve a mess harrrgll. We arrrgonly haaarrggve a cafeteria.”

“Very welll,” slurred Biscuit Pisser. “To the cafeteria! Krumbumbumm, take hood care ssteering the ship for uss while we’re awayy.”

Broderica laughed as she looked at Krumbumbum and noticed she had been spinning around stuck to the steering wheel at eyelid peeling speed.

As the skyrates ushered Biscuit Pisser and Broderica into the ship’s cafeteria the smell of stale cheese and discount disinfectant hit their nostrils. Feasting skyrates stopped in awe, watching near their captain like desexed dogs.

“What are you looking at?!” Biscuit Pisser demanded.

“Cap’n, it is the cerearrgmonial drinkarrging compargtition whiskey they be lookaarrgning at.”

“Ah. Verry welll, then keep lookingg at it!” she commanded. They obeyed.

Skyrates cleared out from their tables, throwing their food and drink on the stinky ground and gesturing, all hoping that their meager wooden table would be that which Biscuit Pisser chose. Biscuit Pisser sloshed around, disheveled and nearly unaware, rubbing her hands against each table like they were fine marble statues. Finally, she settled on the meagerest wooden table, full of many a half cleaned barf stain. She probably wouldn’t have picked this table had she had the strength to continue walking around.

“Excellennt. I havve chosen a fine table indeeed,” Biscuit Pisser patted the table with pride.

“Pat the table again you disembowled mongoose,” chided Broderica as she sat down across from her.

“Whaat? It’s got a nice feeel to it doessn’t it Shhitface?”

“No! Don’t you notice it rocking after you pat it? It’s lopsided you ant, you, you slice of limburger cheese, you clucking, you belligerent beluga whale!”

“Stop clucking insulting me!” Biscuit Pisser was pissed in multiple ways. “Bring me my drink slave,” she shouted, snapping her fingers and breaking a nail.

“Now cap’n ye should know we arrgh not slaves. Though if we weeasaarg ye would more prudently cargll us skyrates that have been enslaved by arrgpressors. We are yer mehardies, yer mates, part of an arrgtonomous collective wherein we have all decided as a people that ye arrg our captain. It is only through us that ye has any power, and it is a carrrgonscious choice of arrgs, not an arrgbstraction created by arrgpression.”

“Shut uup and pour us our drinkss already!”

“Yes, cap’n.”