Launch party writing

So it’s the morning after the launch party, and it was great! Live music, lots of people, good company, old friends; warmth on a cold November night is always welcome. So thanks to everyone who came, and the musicians who played, and everybody for your continuous presence and support.
For those who missed it, during the party we masochistically asked the audience for writing prompts. We then each (Alex, Duane and I) picked two at random and used them to write something in fifteen minutes. The results were then read out loud, whatever they were.
I wanted to share with you what I wrote last night. The prompts I got were “Fire extinguisher” and “Pirates”. So here it goes.

We were told not to come here. “Do not sail these waters,” the man had said back in Abu Dhabi after shaking his bone amulet. “If you go there, you could die. Or worse, you could survive.”
I would have liked to listen to the man with the bone amulets, I’m usually a listen to ominous warnings type of captain, but I could not. Not with what’s in my cargo hold. It’s got to be delivered to Akambo before nightfall on the 31st. The fate of the forever fire depends on it.
And everything could have been fine. But fate and the bone amulet have spoken. I forgot to replace the fire extinguishers on the Reliant, my old rusting Norwegian cargo that I won three years ago from a Swedish captain at a poker game. Apparently, that didn’t include fire extinguishers in working order.
So now, Somali pirates are boarding my old cargo.
I stand in front of their captain, a sweaty, stinky, bald gut with teeth that smell like the back end of an albatross, and he’s telling me to hand over my cargo. I can’t. Akambo will kill me in a much more unpleasant way than these amateur pirates could. So the smelly-teeth captain stares at me and grins, and then flicks his lighter. There’s Diesel all over the bridge, the Reliant leaks it from everywhere. I try to stop the man, think of the bon figurine, it was grinning too, I recall. And then the captain drops the lighter. Fire. No extinguishers. The pirates leave. As they get off the ship, the captain drops a bone figurine on the deck, laughing.
Fire. No extinguishers. Fireworks are coming.