EXCERPT: Son of Joxer and the Escape From Space Monkey Island

Chapter 1: A Portent of Things to Come (Wherein Son of Joxer begins his tale)


It is I, Son of Joxer, who tells these tales. I have grown old and weary from my many travels. My memory certainly isn't as sharp used to be. I fear that if I don't write these tales down for posterity, I'll eventually forget them myself.

I have been struggling for some time now to start my tales from the beginning. In my mind, the stories are all jumbled together and confused. Sometimes I don't remember things in the correct order, or how old I was, or how many wives I had at the time. A properly told story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I don't know yet how the story will end, and I can assure you that the middle is quite muddled, but I can distinctly recall how my adventures began.

I suppose if I was telling a proper story, I'd tell you about my humble origins and neglected childhood, if only to gain your sympathy. But truth be told, I had a fairly unremarkable childhood. I was an orphan, but not a slave. I grew up with many siblings, though looking back on it now I suppose most of my childhood friends where actually the children of household slaves, and not really kin of mine. As I said, I was a merely an orphan, a charity case for the senior wife of the household. It's not like her children were really kin of mine either.

All things considered, I think I had a rather happy childhood. Of course, a goodly portion of my fellow siblings died due to accident and disease, but I survived to tell the tale, and don't remember ever being sick or bed-ridden. I lived a quiet, unassuming life. Most young boys dream of doing heroic deeds, living lives of adventure with glorious confrontations between gods and men. I was never one of those boys. I mostly kept to myself, tried to stay out of everyone's way. Above all else, I wished to be left alone, to be free of toil and trouble.

I eventually wed and set up a small basket-weaving shop to make my means. We settled in a small fishing village along the coast, quite oblivious to the ruckus and mayhem of city life. I should probably tell you a bit more about the city. It was the most impressive and magnificent city in the world at that time, the city of Atlantia. Renowned for its insufferable arrogance and poor customer service, Atlantia was the only city founded upon the isle kingdom of Atlantis and its royal navy dominated the trade routes of nearly a dozen other countries.

What most people didn't know at the time was that Atlantia was utterly doomed, cursed by the gods. My wife knew. She told anyone and everyone who would listen that the entire island was fated to be swallowed up by the sea someday. No one ever really paid her much heed, I'm afraid. Not even I. Her occasional rants against the corruption and taint of city life were easily dismissed as the ravings of a mad woman too taken with rural living for her own good. I didn't mind it though. In the rural coastal area in which we lived I had my wife all to myself, I suffered no rivals, and reported to no overlord (save the occasional tax collector).

Then one fine summer morn, my wife urged me to go on an unscheduled fishing trip. The fish happened to be out of season, but she insisted that she was really in the mood for sea fish and that she was sick and tired of having crab cakes for breakfast every morning. Just to humor her, I set out alone in a small sailing boat with a couple of hand nets. I didn't actually believe I would catch anything, mind you, I just wanted to get away from my wife's nagging for a short while.

Looking back on it now, I often wonder if my good wife hadn't had a vision from the gods during the previous night. Perhaps she had an ominous portent that the island would sink that very day. In any case, it's probably a good thing that she goaded me into taking a fishing trip, knowing full well that I would have chided her for her superstitions if she had attempted to warn me (yet again) of the city's imminent demise.

My tiny boat was soon caught up in a tremendous squall and the mast was snapped in twain. I wouldn't know for certain until years later that the entire island of Atlantis had indeed been swallowed up by the sea, just as my wife had prophesied. At the time I had more pressing concerns, such as whether or not I would ever see land again. Thus began my life of adventure and really wild things. And so my tale begins in earnest...

This excerpt is reprinted with permission of The Trojan Pulp Fiction Press.