1st 3 Chapters: Kraken in a Coffee Cup
On a damp November, I pause before a coffin warehouse below a black-eyed widow who watches the muddy progress of carriages as they pass in the rain.
You’re familiar with retellings of famous stories. You remember the trend of slapping zombies and sea monsters into classic novels. This—isn’t—either of those.
Kraken in a Coffee Cup takes chunks of Moby Dick, mixes them up, and blends them with new material to create a story about a ship that sails beneath the waves, capturing the souls of drowned sailors.
While retellings plays with the story but throw out the original text, Kraken plays with the original text but throws out the story. It’s fun. It’s experimental and deep—ocean-bottom deep—and it’s free to read.
In addition to the text taken from Moby Dick by Herman Melville, the opening image was inspired by Cornelius Matthews and his story, “Noadiah Bott; or, Adventures with A Governor and a Widow”; from his The Motley Book (1838).
I’ve also used passages from the book of Jonah beyond those quoted in Moby Dick and taken passages from the hymn, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” by William Cowper (1772).
The serialized novella, Kraken in a Coffee Cup, begins August 23rd, 2024.
Cornelius Mathews, The Motley Book: A Series of Tales and Sketches.(United States: J. & H.G. Langley, 1838)
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851)
Kraken in a Coffee Cup
The first three chapters.
Thaddeus Thomas, author of literary fantasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Chapter One
On a damp November, I pause before a coffin warehouse below a black-eyed widow who watches the muddy progress of carriages as they pass in the rain. The storm is slight but lingering, a veil fallen upon a mournful horizon, and from behind the pane, her black eyes settle with a glint of recognition. Ashamed of my coffin lust, I flee, a wretched man in flight from a sin which cannot be outrun. Night falls upon New Bedford, and with neither food nor bed, I wait for sleep as I wait for death, though no one will pay the warehouseman for his goods on my behalf. I shall enter that under-earth journey without the merest dinghy to buoy me.
My teeth chatter against the curbstone, beneath a dim light not far from the docks. Above the light, a sign swings and upon it rises a tall straight jet of misty spray. The sign’s dilapidated little wooden house, gable-ended and one side palsied, leans sadly over my sharp bleak corner, and poor men with tattered soles step over me in search of golden liquor. I know the poverty which finds its sanctuary in a bottle and have seen the wealthy drunken on the tepid tears of orphans. Honest feet are poorly clad, and the same hard hand drives us under, some to drink and some to die; the time has come I play the latter.
Though most ignore me, one stops, and I look up into the widow’s eyes. She calls me friend and commands her companions to lift me to my feet, and in her company, I find myself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminiscent of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hangs a large oil painting of unaccountable masses of shades and shadows. A frosted hull is half-capsized over three, blue, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.
The widow follows my gaze to the painting. “It’s the end of the ice-wrecked Starling, the phantom of which they say anchored in this very harbor.” Her description reeks of mockery, but I am no one to argue with the cruelties of human kindness. “At first light that day, her widows watched the ghost ship sail, and the town’s fastest vessels, giving chase, lost her in open seas, clear and calm.”