Pestilence, Pirates, Paternity (feat. The Devil)

I had a dream that my dad made a deal with the devil, and some how I owned part of his debt. The trains were all open-topped boxcars: cattle convertibles. On our commute into the city, the passengers around me had charred fingernails. They complained about aches, constipation, and terminally ill pets. 

I went with my dad to a merger meeting in some uptown restaurant. The devil was there with a captive who was the most sunburned man in the world. My dad had a captive too, the second most sunburned man in the world. Were they sacrifices to Baal? Were they living membership cards to a death cult? Were the sunburned men occult symbols of status that, if I follow the path long enough, I will acquire? I watched from the far end of the table as the devil removed his own hand like a department store mannequin's hand – a pen still in its fingers. The devil bathed the tip of the pen in a low candle and he and my father signed more paperwork with the melted plastic of the pen. On our way out my dad coughed up blood - first into his sleeve, then into his handkerchief, and finally spat into the snow. 

The dream ended in an apartment, settling up with the devil who had become female since the restaurant. Both of us were sickly and weak, crawling with rotten skin. Before my father could hand over the loot he owed, a band of pirates leapt from the closet, kitchen cupboards and from under the rug. The devil laughed. Then my father laughed and coughed, as half the Pirates meant to murder us turned on the devil. Then we were on a couple of Spanish galleons fighting it out with cutlasses and braces of pistols. The moment before waking I saw we were lost in the sunny Atlantic, three or four ships smoking and full holes where hull should have been, and all around us, clear air and water.