Popeye: New short story from Jim Ruland

A new short from author/Navy veteran/tattooed hipster inkslinger Jim Ruland: The Previous Adventures of Popeye the Sailor. Look for his stuff in Barcelona Review, Exquisite Corpse, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. Snip:

He goes by many names. In the Mediterranean he is Iron Arm. In Sweden he is known as Karl Alfred. In Denmark he goes by Skipper Skraek. Here in the Western Pacific he is best known as Father of One Hundred Bastards. Popeye's past is forever creeping up on him. When he mutters his half-mad asides, is he speaking to those who would bring him down, or is he speaking to me?

To control Doan Vien, he introduced her to opium and made sure she had enough to smoke when he left her bedchamber each morning. Soon the pipe became more than an accoutrement for managing the quiet time between clients. Within a matter of weeks, it had become her master.

It is an easy thing to take out an eye. In the lexicon of tattooing, an anchor symbolizes a search for a home. This is ironic because a home is precisely what Popeye was not searching for.

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