The Gypsy Queen
Inspired by Sign of the Gypsy Queen by April Wine.
Heed the spirit that brought despair – April Wine,
Sign of the Gypsy Queen
1952
Travis discovers his newest get rich quick scheme in an abandoned riverboat. Dreaming of the wealth and glamour she will bring, he becomes obsessed with rebuilding her.
Darius sees only rot, decay, and their ruination in the old boat. Travis’s best friend and unwilling business partner, Darius is unwilling to abandon Travis to his fate. He is committed to seeing it through, regardless of the costs to himself.
Struggling to rebuild her together, they are pitted against everyone from the Shipbuilders’ Union to the even more ruthless local casino boss, who desires to possess the Gypsy Queen himself.
As Travis and Darius’s lives become further intertwined with the Gypsy Queen, the strange accidents surrounding the boat escalate. Under the Gypsy Queen’s spell, Travis is oblivious to the sense of dread that fills those who enter the boat as she awakens with a hunger for blood. The Gypsy Queen’s dark past will not be forgotten.
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It is the end of an era, the era of the paddlewheel riverboat; flat-bottomed floating pleasure boats serving people seeking to escape their mundane lives for a few hours of pleasure. The showboats propelled lazily down the river by large rolling paddle wheels powered by steam-belching boilers have mostly vanished from the waterways.
The proliferation of the railways and invention of the automobile have taken over the transportation landscape. Most people travel cross country by train now and, with the exception of the occasional aging paddlewheel, the riverboats that used to move people from one city to another up and down the rivers have nearly all been decommissioned over the years.
Only the ugly rust-stained barges used exclusively for transporting goods up and down the river fill the docks and waterways now.
It has been a bad few years for jobs, and many of the lower working class have found themselves out of work. Transient men willing to do anything for a meal, bed, and a few dollars in their pockets, mill around at the edges of the docks next to the barges in hopes of landing a job on the dock or one of the boats. Large sacks on their backs hold everything they own
Dwarfed by the larger barges surrounding it and looking out of place, a lone pleasure boat is moored at the dock,
The Queen Rhiannon resembles a garishly decorated small cruise ship, its small size compared to the barges and the telltale paddle wheel on the back gives away its purpose. The crowds of well-dressed people arriving to embark on it are out of place amid the bustling dockworkers and boatmen.
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LV Gaudet, author of dark fiction 