Jamie Hook: The Croc's Visit

As Jamie Hook prepared to receive a hair cut from her father's loyal first mate, Mr. Smee, she was doing what she usually did when she had someone with no choice but to listen to her: gripe about Peter Pan. "But Miss Jamie, the lad didn't even cut off your hand! You sliced it off yourself to get that hook like your papa's!" Smee interjected at one point.

"So? That doesn't mean I wanted my hand stolen afterward!" Jamie fumed.

"Yes, well," Smee replied, "Peter Pan stealin' your hand was just a childish prank, you might say!"

"Oh, but Smee! He threw it into the crocodile's maw!" Jamie shot back, getting more and more worked up over the subject, "And the beast's been lickin' his lips for the rest of me ever since!"

Jamie shuddered after saying the last part. Although she fancied herself a brave warrior of the sea, the thought of that gargantuan reptile swallowing her whole scared her like nothing else.

"Calm down, young miss, calm down!" Smee chuckled, "You know that crocodile's got an alarm clock in his belly, so it's not like he can ever sneak up on you! He warns you, you mght say, with his tick tock, tick tock, tick tock..."

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock...

Smee stopped talking as the actual sounds of a clock filled the air. Jamie, who was seated in her barber's chair with a cloth laid over her, at first wondered if Smee's impression of a clock had gotten much better all of a sudden. And then she turned her head and looked over the side of the ship rail. And then she screamed.

The crocodile surfaced from the water, looking up at Jamie Hook with a wide grin on his face as he clawed his way up a large rock jutting out from the ocean floor. "Smeeeee..." Jamie whispered.

As he gazed up at the girl whose flesh was the finest he had ever tasted, the crocodile winked at her as he began rubbing his belly while his tongue flopped out of his maw and slid across his lips, making his intentions all too clear. "Smeeeeeeeeeeeee...." Jamie whimpered.

When the crocodile finished licking his chops, he opened his jaws up wide, saliva pouring from them in the process. That did it. "SMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" Jamie shrieked at the top of her lungs, jumping out of her chair and into Mr. Smee's arms.

"Oh save me, Smee! Please!" Jamie pleaded, climbing out of Smee's arms and hiding behind him, pushing him forward toward the ship rail while she continued her cowardly blubbering. "Don't let him get me, Smee! Please! Don't let him get me, Smee! Smee!"

Stumbling over to the rail, Smee looked down to the crocodile and scolded him. "Hey now! Shame on you, upsetting the Captain's poor daughter!" Not listening, the crocodile eagerly stood up and got into a begging position like a hungry dog, panting and snapping his jaws in the air.

"There'll be no hand-outs today!" Smee declared, "Shoo now, shoo! Go on, get!"

A look of disappointment and irritation on his face, the crocodile obliged and slunk back into the ocean, the tick-tocking of the clock within him gradually fading away as he submerged himself once more.

Jamie Hook, now hiding behind a chair, peeked out from behind the cloth she had wrapped herself in. Her body was still quivering and her voice trembled as she asked "I-is he gone?"

"Aye, Miss Jamie! All clear, nothing to worry about!" Smee cheerfully replied.

Standing up but still shaking, Jamie made her way back over to the barber's chair. "Oh, Smee!" the girl said as her voice broke into a sob, "I can't stand it any longer! I tell you, I can't!"