Hello sailors and dreamers,

I like to read and I like to write. I used to live on a sailboat and I’ve written quite a few short stories about it, which I enjoy sharing in these Amazon guides. As way of advertising, so that I can share these stories, I will list some good books for you to look at the end of the story.

Thank you very much for reading,

Jack Priest
Sailor home from the sea

Kill Skin Cancer, Stop it Before it Starts

I got tired of playing with the scaly red spot on my forehead, so I went to see a dermatologist in Trinidad. She looked at the spot, put a magnifying glass to my face, frowned a lot and said I spend too much time in the sun.

“I live on a boat,” I said.

“You should consider changing your lifestyle,” she said. Then she prescribed Efudix cream. “It kills the fast growing pre cancerous cells. Use it for two weeks, come back in five and I’ll burn off anything it dosen’t get.”

Yikes, I thought as I left. This is serious, my face is being eaten alive. I went straight to a pharmacy. I wanted to start using the stuff right away. I slapped down my prescription on the pharmacist’s counter.

“Finished,” she said.’’

“Finished, what’s finished? I haven’t started yet.”

“Efudix is finished, we’re out.”

“When will you get some more?”

“We won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Not enough call for it in Trinidad.”

I snatched up the prescription and went to the next pharmacy, then the next, then I went to a phone book and let my fingers do the walking. I located a tube of the stuff down south in San Fernando. They said they’d send it up. I’d have it in two days. Great. I’d lived this long with the problem, my facial skin wasn’t going to flake up and turn all crusty in a few more days, I thought, but I was wrong.

Back at the Yacht Club, I met a friend named Mike on a boat named Sashay and told him my dilemma. He’d been plagued with the same problem, but he solved it by going to Miami and having a chemical peel. This got all the pre cancerous skin sells but had the added side affect of taking off some of the wrinkles and making him look a few years younger. I didn’t want to do that. It sounded like it hurt, besides, I spent too many years getting this over the hill look. I wasn’t so eager to throw it away. No, no chemical peel for me.

“Efudix, I call that stuff liquid chemo,” Mike said. “I’ve got a tube I don’t need. “It’s yours if you want it.”

“I do,” I said with all the exuberance of a young bride, because I could feel those fast growing cells eating away at my face. It wasn’t my imagination. They were there, little Pac Men, gobbling up my skin.

“I don’t have the directions,” Mike said, “but I assume you know how to use it.”

“Sure,” I said, “it’s a cream, you put it on your face.”

Back on the boat, I spread the stuff from forehead to chin. Then to the flaky spot about a quarter inch in diameter on my chest and a good six inches around it. Then my arms. I was covered. In a few days those fast growing guys were gonna be toast.

The next day my face started to get a little red and I smiled at myself in the mirror as I heaped on more of the cream. The battle had commenced.

My skin was tingling on the fourth morning, but it didn’t hurt, besides, what’s a little pain when you’re fighting cancer. I covered my face with the cream, worked it in good.

On the fifth day I ran Sara took one look at my face in the morning and said, “Oh, you poor thing.” Kind of the way a mother hen might say it to a chick that had just been run over. She shook her head.“You better get an article out of that face.”

I looked in the mirror. It was a little red, sure, but it didn’t hurt all that much. I smeared more of the stuff on.

And the next morning I woke with my face on fire. The guy in the mirror looked like the victim of a Mafia acid attack. Rather than slop on the cream, I went ashore and called the dermo lady for an appointment, then I took my face to the Trinidad Writer’s group and learned just how wide some of those women can open their eyes.

Back on the boat, I started to feel sick, nauseous, and I had a ringing headache, almost a migraine. I lay down, closed my eyes, couldn’t sleep. My face got redder by the hour, purple spots started to appear, it blead in a couple places. Afraid of the mirror now, I watched TV and started to envy the guys on the tube with normal faces.

The next morning a friend called on the radio. She’d gone to her dermo and her doctor had prescribed the same cream, however not being a fan of the “If a little is good, a lot is better” school of thinking, she read the directions. “You’re only supposed to put a little of the stuff on,” she said. “And you’re not to use more on your body than the area on the palm of your hand. That stuff is poison.”

Holy smokes, I thought, my heart was thumping. I thanked her, rang off and started to panic. The palm of your hand. That’s not much. I must’ve put ten times that on my face alone, then there’s the arms, the chest. Aikaramba!

The next day the dermo told me the same thing. Of course, by then I was done with the stuff. She asked if I hurt and I said not after the fourth glass of rum. She laughed and said that it looked like I’d given myself a chemical peel. She said not to use the stuff anymore, that I should be good as new after the skin all peels off, maybe better.

Okay, I didn’t read the directions. That was stupid and maybe a little humorous, but skin cancer is no laughing matter. If you have small tender spots on your forehead, face, hands or arms that get red easily in the sun and maybe crust up, it could be time to give the dermatologist a call.

Oh, yes, did I look any younger after my chemical peel. I think so.

Thank you for reading and maybe someday I’ll see you out there,

Jack

Some Mysteries and Thrillers I think you’ll like are:

'Honeymoon'
'Scorpion'
'Bangkok Tattoo'
'Skinny Dip (Hiaasen, Carl)'
'Map of Bones'
'Broken Prey (Lucas Davenport Mysteries)'
'Cold Truth : A Novel'
'Half Broken Things'
'The Camel Club'
'The Lincoln Lawyer : A Novel'
'Consent to Kill : A Thriller'
'Cinnamon Kiss : A Novel (Easy Rawlins Mysteries)'

Some James Patterson books I think you’ll like are:

'The 5th Horseman (Women's Murder Club)'
'4th of July'
'3rd Degree (Women's Murder Club (Paperback))'
'2nd Chance'
'1st to Die: A Novel'
'Lifeguard'
'Honeymoon'
'Maximum Ride : The Angel Experiment (Teen's Top 10 (Awards))'
'The Jester'
'The Beach House'
'When the Wind Blows'
'The Lake House'
'When the Wind Blows'
'Sam's Letters to Jennifer'
'Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas'

A few James Patterson Alex Cross stories, very good:

'Mary, Mary (Alex Cross Novels)'
'London Bridges (Alex Cross Novels)'
'The Big Bad Wolf (Alex Cross Novels)'
'Cat & Mouse (Alex Cross Novels)'
'Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross Novels)'
'Roses Are Red (Alex Cross Novels)'
'Pop Goes the Weasel'
'Jack & Jill (Alex Cross Novels)'

Some more books that I think you’ll enjoy are:

'Indelible'
'Eyes of Prey'
'St. Albans Fire (Joe Gunther Mysteries)'
'Mercy Falls (Cork O'Connor Mysteries)'
'Out of Range (Joe Pickett Novels (Hardcover))'
'Entombed'
'Just One Look'
'The Innocent'
'Velocity'
'The Historian'
'Dracula'
'Life Expectancy: A Novel'

And lastly, if you get this far, here are three books I wrote:

'Ragged Man'
'Gecko'
'Night Witch'