Thomas Redford & the Cutlass Curse
A Short Story
Pulp, Pipe, & Poetry Magazine is honored to publish two short stories authored by Nathanael Hummel and L.S. Goozdich for interested readers to get a preview of what is in store in the Fighting Heart of Man Collection.
This short story was written by guest contributor, L.S. Goozdich.
Enjoy,
- The Editor
The sun rippled through the turquoise water above, shards of light dancing across the ocean floor seventy feet below the surface. Thomas Redford adjusted his buoyancy, the hiss of compressed air from his diving tank echoing faintly in the liquid vastness. His grip tightened on the carbon-fiber spear gun strapped to his forearm, its sleek black body blending into his wetsuit. His eyes scanned the underwater landscape—a jagged forest of coral and a sunken wreck jutting out like the ribs of some long-dead leviathan.
He wasn’t alone.
A flicker of movement—subtle, but enough to trigger the instincts of a man who had spent years balancing on the knife’s edge of danger. Thomas Redford’s gaze snapped to the left, catching a silhouette darting behind a coral shelf. The water thickened with tension, an invisible weight pressing in from all sides.
Then it happened.
A burst of motion, faster than a barracuda’s strike. His attacker—another diver clad in dark gear, a mirrored faceplate concealing their identity—closed the distance in a heartbeat. The blade’s edge glimmered, a cold spark in the depths as the figure swung a serrated dive knife toward Redford’s regulator.
Redford twisted, narrowly avoiding the blade. The whoosh of displaced water roared in his ears as he thrust his legs, propelling himself backward. He brought the spear gun up, but the attacker slapped it aside with the kind of ease that suggested this wasn’t the man’s first underwater brawl.
It would be his last, Redford thought, gritting his teeth.
The attacker shot forward, every move as sharp and sure as his blade. Thomas Redford didn’t think—he acted. His fist drove into his opponent’s chest like a piston, a crackling jolt of power that sent the figure careening, limbs flailing in a clumsy whirl. For a heartbeat, it seemed like the fight might end there, but no. They twisted into the spin with a kind of eel-like agility, snapping back toward him with a speed and determination that seemed to feed on the pain he’d dealt them.
Redford’s mind raced, cataloging every option. The currents tugged at them both. The liquid rhythm of the violence was quick and deadly. He let the attacker get close, closer than any sane man would. At the last second, he spun inside their reach, yanking the hose from their secondary air supply.
The diver recoiled, disoriented but not out. They reached for Redford’s regulator again, this time with both hands, trying to cut off his lifeline.
Thomas grunted as they grappled, his oxygen hose twisting in their grip. His lungs burned as bubbles spewed around them like a silver cloud. Then he saw it—the solution as wild as it was effective.
With a feral grin, he twisted and kicked toward the wreck. The attacker followed, relentless. Redford reached the jagged hull, a rusting maw of sharp edges. Timing it perfectly, he ducked low and twisted his body sideways.
The attacker, too focused on ending the fight, didn’t see it coming. Their momentum carried them forward, headfirst, into the wreck’s razor-sharp edge. The hull tore through their faceplate like foil, a geyser of bubbles erupting as water rushed into the mask.
They thrashed wildly, disoriented, their knife tumbling into the abyss. Redford didn’t wait for a second chance. He grabbed the spear gun and, with a deft motion, he used the harpoon to cut their regulator hose in two.
As they sank, consciousness fading, Thomas Redford hovered for a moment, panting through his own regulator. He watched as the attacker drifted downward, limbs limp, the ocean swallowing them whole.
"Just another day in paradise," he muttered, his voice muffled by the mask.
Thomas Redford adjusted his buoyancy, his lungs still burning from the fight. The wreck loomed ahead, its skeletal remains shrouded in shadows. The currents whispered through the jagged steel, creating ghostly moans that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, even underwater.
He kicked forward; the flashlight mounted on his wrist slicing through the murk. The beams illuminated a chaos of rust and decay. Torn nets tangled into themselves, barnacle-encrusted panels peeled away like old scabs, and the yawning gaps in the hull where nature had claimed its prize all caught his eye. All of it he had seen before. But something about this wreck felt different. Wrong, even.
Redford swept his light across the debris, staying alert. The attacker he’d dispatched might not have been working alone. His pulse thudded in his ears, mixing with the mechanical hiss of his regulator. Somewhere behind him, a piece of metal creaked—just the pressure shift, he told himself.
He swam deeper into the wreck, squeezing through a narrow gap in the hull. The beam of his light caught the interior: a twisted maze of collapsed bulkheads and strewn cargo. His breath came faster now, more from the unshakable feeling that he was being watched than from exertion.
Something gleamed up ahead.
At first, it was faint, like a distant candle flickering in a dark room. Redford’s flashlight passed over it, and the glow intensified—a sickly green and then blue that pulsed like a heartbeat. The locals weren’t full of it after all. Thomas knew it spelled trouble to keep going at this. Especially if more of that urban legend proved to be true, but curiosity was a stronger force that fear for the adventurer.
He drifted closer, his eyes narrowing as the object came into view. A compass. It sat on a warped table bolted to the wreckage, its brass casing remarkably untarnished, the needle spinning lazily against the eerie light emanating from within. Its shape was off. It wasn’t round. It wasn’t square. This was unlike any compass Thomas had ever seen.
This thing was doing more than glowing—it was alive.
The light seemed to ripple, like it was watching him, waiting for him. Redford hesitated, every muscle in his body taut. He reached out, the hairs on his arms standing as his gloved fingers hovered over the compass.
Then it pulsed.
A sharp, electric jolt shot through his chest, and for a split second, he wasn’t underwater anymore. He was... somewhere else.
A storm raged around him, violent waves clawing at a crumbling island under a blood-red sky. He heard screams—some sailors, some pirates—and the distant crash of cannon fire. A towering silhouette, holding a cutlass drenched in blood, stalked toward him.
And then, just as quickly, he was back in the wreck.
Redford’s breath came in ragged gasps. He snatched the compass, the metal warm, almost hot, against his glove. Whatever he’d just seen wasn’t a hallucination. He had no idea what he’d just gotten himself into, but he was sure of one thing: the fun was just beginning.
With a smile on his face, Thomas Redford began his ascent to the water’s surface.
The End