Singing the Body Electric

Powerage is AC/DC’s best album, y/y?

Izzy paused at this last message, thumb poised over the screen just shy of flicking it into the trash. The little profile picture next to it didn’t feature a face. Nor, unlike several of its neighbours, did it feature pecs, arse, or cock. There was only a figurine, some vintage tat of a black cat wearing a shirt and tie. The cat looked vaguely stoned.

He clicked through without much thought behind the action. The profile he found was spare, reading simply: Frenchie, 36, starving musician.

There was a single photograph of a good-looking, lanky man with a short beard and afro holding a guitar in front of a heavily graffitied brick wall. Izzy glanced back at the age in the profile description, surprised at the candour, especially when he could have passed for younger.

Online fraud wasn't his area of expertise aside from occasionally moving some money around, but clearly the profile was fake. No one who looked like that was on a site like this. The lad was too specific in his good looks, and fashionable in that baffling bohemian sort of way that wouldn’t make the punters feel rich, but would only make them feel old. That snapshot had likely been lifted from some acoustic musician that no one here would have heard of, or a model for one of those brands that sold $500 joggers.

Nonetheless, the claim that Powerage was anything near AC/DC’s best album bore refuting.

He typed: It's Let There Be Rock, and fuck off.

In the half a minute it took for him to clear out another scroll's worth of messages, a new one unexpectedly popped up, followed by two more in quick succession.

redhouse: I'll give you Crabsody in Blue
It's my 4th favourite song about minor STIs
But consider: Cold Hearted Man and Kicked in the Teeth

Roach had always been partial to a man who was good with a knife.

"I could do something with some of this," Fang had offered a few days ago, helping him sort through the collection of sachets and bottles that had started their voyage at sea in the larder of a Dutch schooner, only to be liberated for a life of greater purpose aboard the Black Cat.

Why not? They were stocked up on the things that kept bellies full, spirits high, and teeth in heads. No one was going to starve if a little extra sugar and spice went to waste, and it couldn't be worse than when Izzy relented on the chore rota and Archie had decided she knew how to make scones.

Which was how Roach found himself with a front-row seat to Fang—jacket laid neatly aside and Roach's straining spare apron tied around his broad chest and belly by the very last inch of its strings—sheened with sweat in the steamy galley and working the mixing paddle with an arm that rivalled a prize beef shank.

The next part happened very quickly. One second Fang was churning the contents of the cook pot with all the steady strength of a mill wheel, and then a wrist-twisting roll sent the boiling sugar arcing out onto the waiting stone that transformed it in an instant from sea foam to solid. Fang brought down the greased cleaver in a tap-too of chop-and-flicks that turned out a gleaming line of candy drops.

"I'm a bit rusty," he said, flipping the knife over absently in his hand as he frowned at the cooling sweets.

Apology rejected.

"Bullshit," Roach countered, clapping Fang on the shoulder. The air itself tasted of herbal sweetness, and he was very glad he thought to barricade the door against premature beggars.

Izzy's next moment of awareness held no conscious thought, only the knowledge that choking meant he was still alive.

He surged up onto hands and knees and proceeded to sick up half the Atlantic. His body shook wildly as his stomach heaved up the seawater onto a blurry patch of white sand, every inch of his flesh feeling beaten and bruised.

He'd been keelhauled, his brain provided uselessly, lagging behind him in another time, on another ship. No, no, that wasn't it. He'd been on the Queen Anne, chasing the Dutch Indiaman through the storm, and he'd gone over, he'd gone over after—

"...Fang."

The word had barely any breath or strength to it, no more than another watery cough as he looked to both sides through the sodden curtain of his hair.

A figure lay up the beach, ten or twelve yards away.

Arms and legs uncooperative to the point of mutiny, Izzy dragged himself over to it.

"I swear to fuck...if you're dead, I'm going to fucking murder you."

He struck Fang on the arm with a weak swipe and got a living groan in return and a mutter that vaguely sounded like 'just one more minute.'

Izzy sagged in relief, sitting down hard. Water, sand, and a great deal of greenery swam across his vision.

"Lazy twat," he said as he fell back with his head on Fang's chest.

His eyes fell shut, and it was some time before they opened again.