So there we was, singing and dancing and drinking the swill they called “Clamato”. When it came over us like a foamy riptide: the voice of Ahab himself.

It was a voice of pride, of power, of unrelenting savagery. A cruel, commanding tone. The sort of sound a man could only ever hear from a Klipsch Synergy Series SC.5 Center Channel Speaker. The other sailors were the superstitious kind and they begged the captain to flee. But it was I who had his ear. I had won in it a card game. You play for larger stakes on the high seas.

Ear in hand, I ran to the captain to tell him what I knew. For, before a sailor, I was the son of a fisherman. A fisherman with a really good dvd collection. And I knew that 60% of the average movie’s soundtrack comes from the center. An unearthly voice like Ahab’s could only come from a 4 inch square Tractrix® Horn and the 2.4 inch graphite-injected woofers. It was no man. It was some sort of cyborg.

The captain gave the order to turn about, and quick. The men raced to make sail, and it was not minutes later when we saw it on the shore, a thing that had been Ahab once, but was now nothing but speakers and rage, stomping along the beach, each footfall a masterpiece of bass and well-balanced treble, but still a mockery of what it meant to be a man.

I never sailed back that way again. A few men did, from greed, mostly. They never came back. Before long, I couldn’t face the lady ocean again, and came here, to sit by this table and drink with anyone who might need the company. Still thirsty, lad? Maybe you’ll let me tell you a new story? While we drink, of course, while we drink.

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