Adrift

by Trimboli, TJ

  Surprisingly, Kendra pulled Valentina close to her hugging her as tight as she could, letting the hug do the talking that words could otherwise not accomplish. The hug felt oddly comforting to her, she felt a warmth that had escaped her since she took command. “This is the first time I’ve come back since putting them here,” Valentina blurted out.

  “How long?” Kendra wondered.

  “The night riot,” Valentina replied.

  Kendra placed a hand on her cheek wiping away the tears. “It seems that night took so much from every one of us. But your children are with GOD now, no one can ever hurt them again. I know it seems like a horrible path you must walk but think how much worse off they’d be if they were still with you. Their lives would be in danger every second of every day but they’re not. They’re playing catch with our LORD, they’re with all your ancestors, safe and sound basking in the glow and warmth of our savior. They are happy.”

  The line of thinking seemed unbearably queer to her but it strangely enough did its job of making her feel better. She couldn’t help but smile and laugh at the thought of her children up in heaven, running through the clouds, playing ball, smiling. It sounded infinitely better than this ship. She suddenly felt the brutal urge to fling herself off the ship and join them. Together, they would be happy as a clams, safe. But not yet. She was still needed here, there was a legacy to set right. Then she would join her children.

  They stood together for a while, silently staring at the bodies. Valentina desperately clung to the hope that at any moment they would sit up, smiling, shouting for her. She missed their voices. In every movie she ever saw, they always talked about forgetting the faces of loved ones as time goes on but they were wrong. It wasn’t the face you ache to remember but their voice, the inflection in their words and how they sounded out certain phrases and thoughts. This was what she missed the most. The way her son would sound out spaghetti wrong ending somewhere around the sound pisscetti. She missed the sound of her daughter reading aloud to herself before bed. Their voices were distant in her mind, fleeting with every second the longer time went on.

  Pretty soon, they would be inaudible to her and all she would have left were their faces. It haunted her.

  “I can’t look at them anymore,” she said morosely turning away from their decaying forms.

  “This is no way to go on,” Kendra said softly. “Leaving them here like wax figures you can visit whenever you feel the ache. They are causing nothing but pain this way.”

  “I can’t bring myself to dispose of them. They’re my children. I can’t just toss them away like a bag of garbage,” She cried.

  Kendra rubbed her hair soothing her fit of agony. “I’m right here, I can help. We can get through this together. We were meant to do this together. The LORD meant for us to become united. On our own, we are broken, two pieces of a puzzle struggling to find our spot on the board but together we are whole, we complete the picture and accomplish our goals.”

  Valentina stifled her cries looking to Kendra. “I am a mother without her children.”

  “And I am a child long without a mother,” Kendra said solemnly as she gently interlocked her fingers with Valentina’s.

  Valentina flinched for just a moment, but with the warmth Kendra exhibited, she finally let her guard down. She spent so long mistrusting this person, blaming her for everything on this ship, siding with Bobbi, she wondered if she’d made a vast error in judgement. After all, she never spent any time with Kendra, opposing her from the start because she was a thorn in her side of holding power.

  That makes me sound as bad as my father was.

  She let the people around her taint her thoughts of this kind young woman. She was unorthodox in her methods of faith but given what she’d been through in her life, she completely understood why Kendra was the way she was. The world shaped her that way. She couldn’t blame her for it. It was no different from the way her childhood shaped her to become an authoritative voice. Since the start, this poor thing had done nothing but try to make people better, to be better than they once were. She asked only that they purge their sins and be born anew, to start to build something new together. And what did I do? Stand in her way at every move. I stood by Bobbi’s side, a girl who is concerned with nothing but protecting a murderous husband while casting aside this angel from GOD. We’ll that stops today. “Alright. I can’t do it alone though.”

  “As long as we stand side by side, you’ll never have to,” Kendra assured her.

  Together, they stood against the edge of the crate pushing it towards the railing. The vibrations from the crate knocked her sons arm off the edge landing against her face. She did nothing to push it off, soaking in the last touches of her children she would ever feel. The crate knocked against the railing. They caught their breath.

  Kendra strolled to one end of the crate by the children’s feet.

  Her son was the closest to the rail and would be the first one tossed.

  Valentina stood on the opposite side caressing her son’s mottled hair. “My baby boy. I miss you so much and I know you’re somewhere up there coasting the stars just like you always talked about. You would have been such a wonderful astronaut. I love you so much and just know that I will be with you again. This is not goodbye forever. It’s just goodbye for now. Rest easy, son.” She kissed his forehead then nodded to Kendra.

  “OH GOD…Whose propensity is always to have mercy and to spare, we humbly beseech Thee for the soul of Thy servant…” She looked over at Valentina.

  It took her a moment to catch on. “Nicolas.”

  “Thy servant, Nicolas which Thou hast this day commanded to depart out of this world, that Thou will not deliver him into the hands of the enemy, nor forget it unto the end, but would command it to be received by the Holy Angels, and conducted to Paradise, its true country.

  Amen,” Kendra prayed.

  “Amen,” Valentina echoed.

  They softly lifted the boy pushing him over the rail.

  Valentina couldn’t bring herself to watch. She shut her eyes waiting. After what felt like an eternity, she heard the haunting splash she knew would echo in her dreams until the day she died. She held herself firm, forcing herself to be strong. She had to be strong, for the people who couldn’t, including her newborn.

  “Are you okay?” Kendra asked.

  Valentina nodded her head. They slid her daughter over stopping just short of the railing. She patted her daughter’s head, rubbing her cheek. A tear fell from her eyes landing on her daughter’s forehead. “My first born. My pride and joy. Little Katrina. I am so sorry for what happened to you. I should have been there. I should have protected you. If there’s a Hell, I certainly deserve to go to it for leaving you to suffer such a fate…but I will spend whatever time I have left doing whatever good I can in hopes of earning yours and GOD’S forgiveness, so I may join you two one day soon. I love you so much baby girl. Rest easy, no one can ever hurt you again.” She kissed her daughter’s forehead.

  “OH GOD, by your mercy rest is given to the souls of the faithful, be please to bless this grave,” Kendra spoke. “Appoint you Holy Angels to guard it and set free all the chains of sin and the soul of her whose body is buried here, so that with all Thy saints she may rejoice in Thee forever. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Valentina uttered. Then she took a deep breath and heaved. The little girl went tumbling over the railing free falling to the ocean below. Once again, she refused to look, waiting for that horrifying splash to echo from below. Three seconds later, she had her sound, the vibrations of which encompassed every bone in her body. She shuttered.

  Kendra rubbed her back, easing her pain.

  Valentina took a deep breath settling her nerves.

  “I am proud of you mother. You did so well here today.”

  “Thank you child. We should go. I don’t ever want to come back here again.”

  “I know just where we can go. I now hope that you can give me the stre
ngth that you so bravely exhibited here just now,” Kendra replied sullenly. “I will most surely need it.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Kendra walked and Valentina followed. The whole entire descent to her floor below, she heard the splash. Over and over again, the echoes of them boomed like fireworks in her brain. She pictured them sinking to the ocean floor again and again, to join the rest of the poor souls below that she had let die. Below them was a graveyard of her doing. Every soul that called the ocean floor home was her responsibility and she failed them.

  How many more must I dump below? Am I doomed to follow in my father’s footsteps?

  The splashes of her children were the only reply she received. It reminded her of something a childhood friend said to her mere days before he was arrested for armed robbery.

  We are the sins of our parents and our children will follow suit.

  She never believed his words and up until the night riot, she never gave his words another thought but you don’t lose the lives of a hundred souls without mulling the thought over once or twice.

  I am my father, I continue his legacy. And my children pay for the price of the people I’ve put away. Innocent, guilty, condemned, it made no difference. They suffered for my injustice.

  Valentina had fallen so deep in thought, she never saw Kendra stop, so she collided into her.

  She snapped out of her trance confused as to her surroundings. It was pitch dark except for Kendra’s candle and they stood at a gray steel door you had to spin a wheel to open. “Where are we?”

  “The first floor,” Kendra replied. “No one comes down here, so it seemed the most appropriate place to bury it.”

  “And what exactly did you bury child?” she asked curiously.

  “My past.” She handed Valentina the candle and faced the wheel, slowly turning it. A loud metallic clank reverberated down the hall. She pushed the door open.

  The room looked pitch black except for the small flicker of light from the candle. The odor poured through the door. The pungent stank reeked like a mixture of berries, apples and feces. It was rotten. Valentina’s stomach churned. She gagged almost bringing back her small meal from earlier but she swallowed it like a boss.

  Kendra took the candle back before entering the room.

  Valentina ripped a piece of fabric off of her shirt to mask the smell. Placing it over her mouth and nose, she entered.

  Kendra stood in the center of the room staring down.

  The room was too dark to make it out but whatever it was, it seemed big. She walked closer as Kendra knelt down, the light illuminated the object on the ground.

  A dead body.

  Add it to the list. A hundred and forty seven.

  “Who is that?” Valentina wondered aloud.

  Kendra didn’t reply for a very long time. She simply held the candle over the face of the body.

  For a decomposing body, Valentina hated to admit that the woman still looked pretty good.

  This room felt colder than all the other’s on the ship, most likely due to the fact that it was the only floor parallel to the water floor. It no doubt helped slow the decaying process. The woman’s pupil’s had dilated, her jaw laid open, lips blue. Her skin had sagged making the bones in her face more pronounced but her skin didn’t look flushed or ragged. She looked at peace. Her fingers interlocked, hands resting on her stomach. A halo of flowers rested upon her head.

  “Kendra?” Valentina asked concerned.

  “She’s my sister,” Kendra replied.

  Oh, shit. “I thought you said your sister was adopted when you were a kid. That you guys didn’t see each other again?” Valentina questioned.

  “We didn’t. Not until a few months ago. She’d gone to the orphanage and traced a path to me. It took her years to find me. I was living in Louisiana at the time, helping a guy I had met run his crocodile farm. It wasn’t glamorous work or even happy work but the man was kind to me, something not many people were, so I stayed and helped. Three months ago, she showed up at his door step looking for me. Shameful to say, I didn’t even recognize her at first, she was so much more beautiful than I remembered. Neither of us said anything for, I don’t know how long, it felt like an eternity until finally we leapt into each other’s arms crying and sobbing. At least I was. I never thought I’d see her again.” Kendra sniffled through her tears.

  Valentina could see how upset she was as she waited for the rest.

  “She had a husband and two kids and wanted me to be a part of her life again. It took her so long to find me. She tried year after year but it always came up a dead end, she said. She apologized again and again, for it taking so long but it didn’t matter how long it took to me, I forgave her the instant I saw her. So, I kissed the man goodbye and went to live with my sister and her new family. My new family. And it was wonderful, it was everything I thought I deserved in life. For Christmas, her husband Paul, gave her two tickets for this cruise…for her and me. A chance for us to bask in the sun and truly reconnect with each other.” Kendra sobbed.

  Her tears became so fierce by the end and she couldn’t continue.

  Valentina knelt down beside Kendra hugging her tight. “Shhh. I know. It’s okay, let it out.

  Let it all out, child.”

  “I haven’t had the heart to let her go, knowing this time—she won’t find me again.”

  “I’m here now. We can do this together.”

  Together, they lifted the body onto a rug that rested in the corner. Wrapping the end over her face, they rolled her up. It was as morose as it sounds but life had become so morose, they felt desensitized to the actions they were committing.

  “Did she get sick?” Valentina asked.

  “What would make you think that?” Kendra asked confusingly.

  “Her lips are blue and she’s frail as a tooth pick. I just thought…” Valentina trailed off.

  “No. She didn’t get sick. She died just like yours did. During the night riot,” Kendra insisted.

  “I’m sorry. So much went wrong that night. I feel like we’ll never right the course we took that night.” She said hopelessly.

  “I know what you mean. I often wonder what GOD will make of me when I finally approach his golden gates. I did so much that night that I must repent for I feel he will not have me. That’s why I am so desperate to bring us all together. If I can unite us and get us to safety and save his children for him, then maybe, just maybe, he will forgive me for my sins,” Kendra spoke as she stared off into space.

  Valentina kept quiet, feeling there was more to come from Kendra’s diatribe.

  “I found her in the Captain’s room that night. She had multiple stab wounds on her stomach and chest. She was bleeding out too fast for me to do anything other than say goodbye. I looked into her eyes soothing her cries with my voice as best I could. I watched the life leave her body. I watched the only good months of my entire life disappear in a flash. She was the first prayer I ever spoke. If anyone deserved a seat at the king’s table it was her and I made damn sure in my prayer he knew that…” She paused for a minute seeming to be choked up with the memories. “…Then I pulled the knife from her stomach then I found the Captain and I opened his throat from ear to ear.” She fell silent.

  Valentina stared at her, struggling to find any words to speak. None came to her. Since the night riot, they had searched for any answer to the Captain’s death. They were all so sure it’d been suicide or he’d been killed by some rioter and yet, they were all wrong. This young girl, in anguish, sought him out and murdered him, and she just confided it in her.

  If this were anyone else, you would arrest her. Hell, if it was a day ago and she told you this, you’d arrest her. What’s stopping you now? She battled internally, but she knew she would do nothing.

  Valentina shared something unique with this woman, something she hadn’t felt in ages. She shared emotion. They were bound to each other now and she couldn’t bring herself to destroy all this and lose the warmt
h she so desperately craved, so instead she rationalized it. The Captain murdered this girl’s sister, he deserved to die for what he did. If she didn’t kill him and they found him, they still would have executed him for his crimes. All she did was expedite the trial and given what happened to her sister, she couldn’t blame her. If she found the people responsible for her children’s death, she would have done the exact same thing. She wrapped her arm around Kendra hugging her tight kissing her on the forehead. “Don’t worry, this will be our little secret,” Valentina confided.

  Kendra smiled. “Thank you Mother. You have no idea how long I’ve wished to purge that sin from my soul.”

  They lifted the rug up carrying the body from the room.

  “Mother, do you think the people who killed and raped your son and daughter are still alive?” Kendra wondered.

  It hurt Valentina to hear the word. The splash echoed in her mind once more. “For their sake, I hope not.” She mustered up the courage to say.

  “If we ever find them, we will make sure your kids are avenged. Same as my sister,” she said sternly.

  Valentina never gave a thought about the murderers and if they were still alive. Even more, she never thought of revenge. All she ever thought was about their lives, everything they would miss out on. Husbands, Wives, kids of their own, careers. The thoughts now poisoned her mind, making her angry. Kendra was right, if they were still alive, they better hope she never finds them because she would give them a fate worse than death. What that fate would be, she didn’t know but she relished in the fact that she had nothing but time to figure it out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  BOBBI

  Tethering the rope through the davit, she began. The mechanical line may have malfunctioned but they could still use the pulley as a weight to lower the boat below. As she fed the rope through the breech on the escape pod, Richard arrived with what he promised; four large men with arms the size of cannons. Two of them were shaved bare. It didn’t matter to her what Valentina said, she would never let herself trust Kendra. That woman was a snake, tempting them to take a bite of her apple. She would not be a victim to its charm.