Floater

Charnce ’as a lot to do wiv life—an’ unlife, fer tha’ matter.  Wha’ if.  I mean, tha’ss a question, en’t it?  There I were.  Off a ship, pay in me ’and, lookin’ for ale to wet me whistle an’ some comp’ny fer a bi’ o’ in-out-in-out … wha’ if I’d gone up ’stead of down, ’long thataway ’stead o’ this?  Or picked up the yaller-hair cheena wi’ the scar on ’er cheek, ’stead o’ goin’ wi’ the skanky dark one wi’ the big groodies?  Worst I was reck’nin’ was she’d crast me gelt.

Or s’pose, when me corpus washed up on the shore, I woke to find some mudlarkin’ type a-searchin’ of me clobber fer coins—no’ tha’ I ’ad any left.  Or stealin’ me shoes—if I wore ’em, which I didn’t.  Well, then I’d be a proper vampire, wouldn’t I?  No different than the loikes of LaCroyzie ’imself or tha’ scary boyo of ’is, Detecative Knight.

As it was, I woke on me lone in the dark—an’ a bi’ o’ luck tha’ was!  ’Magine if I’d a come to in daylight?  Been the end of me, tha’ would.  Been the dustin’ of me to a pile o’ ash.

Starvin’ I were.  A gnawin’ in me innards, the loike o’ which I never felt before in all me mortal life, not even in the worst of all the bad winters when I was jest a kiddie-pop.  Cold to me guttiwuts, loike as if someun stick me wiv an icicle.  Then I ’eard a skitter and felt a warmph passin’ by—an’ made a grab.

An’ tha’ were it fer me.  I sank in me zoobies an’ drank, ’ardly even noticin’ wha’ I were about, ’cept that i’ chased the cold and filled me guts.  And then I felt the fur, and the scaly tail a-danglin’ ’long of me arm.  I opened up me oyes an’ saw—saw!—in the pitch dark, which no ’uman ever could on a moonless night, jes’ wha’ I were a-suckin’ on.

Troof to tell, i’ makes no ma’er to me nowadays.  Yer ackcherly come to loike the taste.  In fack, arter a while, yer turn a real conn-a-sewer.