by A. E. Murphy
Again, I remain mute.
“Think about that,” he whispers, standing and taking the pen with him. “Shower. You’ll feel better. I’ll send you food at lunch.”
He does send food and I do try to eat it but it just comes straight back up into the toilet.
I’m awoken by rough hands grabbing me and lifting me to my feet. I wobble and shake as I try to balance.
“You stink,” he barks at me.
“Get the fuck off me,” I yell, weak from lack of food, sleep, energy and fucking everything.
I fight, struggling against his hold as he starts to half carry me to the bathroom.
I had this theory that he definitely wouldn’t touch me if I didn’t smell good. I was right, until now. Yesterday was much of the same as the day before. Me slowly getting smellier, but also getting weaker because of how ill I feel.
I should have asked to see a doctor but I haven’t seen the captain much and when I have he’s had that fucking smirk on his face, I’ll be damned and dead before I ask him for anything.
I scream but it is swallowed by hot water as I’m dropped into a deep tub and left to fend for myself the moment my head goes under.
“You absolute PSYCHOPATH!” I shriek at him once I resurface, ignoring the way the hot water soothes my aching joints. I’ve spent too many nights in that corner with books I can’t focus on. Three days without food, two nights without a blanket or a soft space.
“This silent protest has to stop. Do you think I’m going to send you back because of this little suffragette move you’re pulling?” he yells as he squeezes way too much shampoo onto my wet hair and starts rubbing it in despite my efforts to push him away. “You’re here, fucking deal with it. Stop whining. Eat. Learn some new shit. I haven’t confined you. You can free roam wherever the fuck you like so long as you’ve got one of my boys with you. Shit, you can even watch me sail the pretty boat. Just stop starving yourself!”
He pushes me underwater, holding my head as he rinses the suds out. Water goes up my nose, burning a path to my mouth. I claw at his hand and lurch over the side when he releases me.
“You’ve got no meat on you as it is, and I loathe force-feeding people but I will. I have the equipment to do so.” He drags conditioner through my hair and I’m so weak I resign myself to my fate, hanging onto the edge of the bath as his movements soften. The sweet smell of coconuts makes my mouth water. “Do you want to be force-fed?”
I shake my head, no, because I really do not want to be force-fed.
“Then will you eat?”
“I can’t keep it down,” I admit quietly and he crouches beside the bath, moving so his eyes catch mine. They’re sparkling with determination, annoyance and anger. “I can’t keep anything down.”
“Are you pregnant?” he asks and a muscle ticks in his jaw.
“No.” The word spills from my mouth before I can stop it. I should have said yes, played on it, used it to manipulate the situation. “Seasick maybe. In shock. Depressed. You name it.”
He sighs heavily and grumbles under his breath, “More fucking trouble than she’s worth.” Then he pulls on my head until I’m sitting up, still fully clothed in his bath. “Wash yourself, brush your teeth. I’ll fetch you something you can hopefully consume.”
I nod, hoping the tears I’m crying blend in with the water on my face.
He leaves and I do as I’m told because I don’t have the energy to do anything else. I’m genuinely ill.
Stripping out of my clothes, I bathe, cringing at the hair growing under my arms and around my groin. It’s still short but it’s degrading for a woman who has always shaved and likes it that way. I feel unclean and unkempt and so ridiculously unsexy.
Not that I want to be sexy. I guess my mind is just grasping at things to make me feel normal again.
When he returns I’m already out of the bath, in a new set of his shorts and T-shirt that were waiting for me on the bed. I’m in my corner nursing a plastic cup of water in my hand as I hug the pillow. It has become my new comfort. My only comfort.
“Here,” he places a plate on the ground beside me. It’s full of dry crackers, cheese, a few biscuits and lemon slices. “Cook swears by this. She said she’ll have you something a bit easier on the stomach in the morning.”
I fight the urge to thank him, it’s in my nature to have good manners but I just can’t bring myself to have them for a man who has stolen my life from me.
“Eat.”
I take a biscuit and bite into it, pretending not to notice the look he gives me as he walks away. One fleeting but there. It looked a lot like regret, or shame, perhaps a mix of the two. Or maybe I’m seeing things because I want to.
The biscuits taste bland but I manage to swallow some and keep them down. I scrunch my body up in the corner and close my eyes, thinking of places so far from here.
He’s wrong about me being awkward. I haven’t done this to harm myself. I genuinely am ill. I just have too much pride to ask for help.
“All finished?” Captain asks, crouching beside me again.
I nod against my pillow and the second I do, he hooks his arms under my body and stands, using his legs to push us up.
“Hey,” I whine, readying to fight but he plants me on his bed seconds later. I should protest but my body sinks into the mattress and I just can’t bring myself to flee this little piece of heaven in this hell.
“You should have come to me days ago,” an older-sounding woman shouts, sounding frustrated and irritated. “I could have fixed her easily days ago.”
“I didn’t know she was sick days ago,” Captain replies, his tone clipped. “Will she die?”
“No, she’s severely dehydrated.”
I open my eyes and see a flash of white hair before a hand comes to my forehead.
“See? Better already.”
Captain blows out a breath. “Keep her alive, Nonna.”
“Don’t you boss me around, boy, I’m not one of your captives. Poor girl.”
“Nonna.”
She moves her fingers to my neck and smiles a wrinkled smile at me, though her teeth are crooked and jagged from poor dental hygiene. “See? She lives.”
“Hi,” I murmur, trying to piece together where I am. “Am I sick? Did somebody call my mum?”
The old lady smacks the big guy in the chest, making him grunt.
He glares at her but then looks at me and winces before turning away. I close my eyes again, dreaming disoriented dreams of a handsome pirate sailing a pretty boat.
Groaning, I climb out of bed and stumble into the bathroom to use the toilet. To vomit or pee I’m not sure. My head is spinning but I don’t feel as weak or disoriented as I did.
When I return after brushing my teeth, I find an empty room, an empty bed and a tray of fruit and yoghurt on the side. I climb back under the covers and pluck a grape from the small punnet before popping it into my mouth. Where did they get fresh fruit from?
Were they frozen?
My hunger gnaws at my gut so I sit up and slide the tray onto my lap, digging in like a feral animal until every last bit is gone.
Then, with a sigh, I put it back, sink under the covers and close my eyes. More rest is needed.
I’ve never felt so lethargic.
A hand touches my head, checking my temperature and for a moment I think it’s Niall as I forget where I am. I grip it and hold it to my cheek.
It starts to pull away.
“One more minute,” I beg softly as I often do before he leaves for work in the morning.
He climbs in behind me, fully clothed. His denim jeans dig into the back of my thighs. Niall doesn’t usually wear denim and he would never wear jeans to bed.
Still… I won’t nag him, it’s been so long since I’ve gotten to hold him.
I turn in his arms, burying my face in his chest that seems to have a bit more padding than usual. My hand grips the front of his shirt, keeping him close and his other arm comes around me. I feel warm,
safe, and protected in such a large body and a large hold.
“Thank you,” I whisper though I’m not sure to whom I’m thanking anymore. Lines of reality are blurring.
When I wake up again, I’m alone and feeling even more dejected than before. I swear Niall was right beside me. I felt him, I know I did, he was warm and comforting, a human blanket keeping my back safe from the cold and kidnappers.
“Sleep well?” Captain asks, hanging upside down like a bat again like the first night I entered.
I nod once. “May I shower?”
He drops like before, dangling from one hand for a moment as he looks at me. “You may.”
“May I have a razor?”
Hesitating, he scratches his jaw and looks me up and down. “I have your word you’ll be good?”
“Will my word mean anything?”
“It will to me,” he replies as he passes and digs a fresh razor out of a grey bag in the back of the cupboard he retrieves from under the basin. “Here.”
I take it from him, ignoring his kind gaze. How can he be kind to me now? After all he has done?
“This will be over soon.”
I tense at his words. “You’re going to kill me?”
“If Niall doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain, we have no reason to travel back to return you.”
My breath catches in my throat and my heart aches with pain. “Thank you for your honesty, I guess.”
His green eyes sparkle with intrigue. “You’re not going to cry?”
“I just want to shave… at least I’ll be bald and beautiful when you throw me overboard. Maybe I’ll be saved by a merman and we’ll live happily ever after.”
Laughing through his nose, he exits the bathroom while calling over his shoulder, “Come out when you’re done. I have some jobs for you.”
I ignore the fact that laughter comes so easy to him in the face of my end.
“Jobs?”
Silence is all that follows my question.
Whatever.
I bathe slowly and thoroughly, scrubbing and shaving every part of it until the remainder of my hair and resignation swill down the drain. I hope it clogs it.
When he said jobs, I didn’t realise he meant mopping.
I do it as choppy waters gently rock the boat and roil my stomach. The clouds above are grey and I’m terrified there will be a storm. I don’t like storms while on land but I’ve seen enough movies to know that a storm in a boat is a bad thing. No matter how big it is.
Most of the men on deck avoid me as I mop around them. I’m grateful. None of them touch me or even try to speak to me, not until I’m done in this area and Geoffrey sends for me.
I’m escorted to his lab where we make friendly conversation as we mix together some kind of concoction that requires a glass chamber in which gloves sprout within. I dab his head as he sweats from concentration and pray the storm doesn’t come and rock this up, effectively fucking this up.
“So, you and your partner?” he asks cautiously. “Is it love or a fling?”
“Love,” I reply, not wanting to talk about life outside of this retched existence but also not wanting to anger the only person who has shown me any kindness since I arrived. “He’s it for me.”
He chuckles nervously. “I hope he feels the same.”
“He does.” And I know he does, he told me so and showed it in the ways he touched me, held me, protected me, kissed me, spoke to me.
There isn’t another man alive who can fill Niall’s boots. The man is my own personal god.
“From what I’ve heard, he’s doing what he can to get you back.”
The man in the corner stamps his foot aggressively but Geoffrey doesn’t seem to care. He frees his hands of the long shoulder-deep gloves and grins at me as though caught doing something naughty.
It makes him look so boyish and friendly.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t say, but just know, he hasn’t abandoned you.” He places his hand on my shoulder. A friendly gesture. “Maybe now you can find a little bit of peace aboard this here vessel? Hmm?”
I bite my lip and shrug his hand from my shoulder. “I’ll never find peace here. I’m a captive and I don’t even know why.”
“Oh look.” Geoffrey beams and claps his hands. “Dinner is here.”
The thought of eating still makes me nauseous but I need to regain my strength and try to keep something down.
“You should start getting used to the seasickness soon. Every time you feel ill, just spend an hour on deck doing odd jobs and the nausea will pass.” He nods to the man in the corner. “His brother had seasickness so bad he almost died too. You don’t realise how dehydrated constant vomiting can make you until you can hardly walk.”
“I find it odd that they bothered to keep me alive at all,” I murmur.
Still smiling he replies, “You haven’t yet served your purpose.”
“Well—” I have no more words.
I don’t think Geoffrey has a filter.
As we’re cleaning up around the lab and putting things back into their proper places, the door opens and the mute guy, whose name is Chatterbox of all things, stands with hands by his sides and his legs parted.
Roger steps in and my panic immediately hits the red zone. I step back into Geoffrey who moves in front of me just enough for me to feel a little less open.
Roger sneers at me, his lips twisting with a demented smile. “The new list, Geoffrey. Next month’s order.”
Chatterbox yanks the file from his hand and nods for him to leave. He has a foot of height on Roger but Roger doesn’t seem intimidated in the slightest. Especially when he blows me a kiss before he leaves and I finally release the breath I was holding.
“That man is a special kind of crazy,” Geoffrey murmurs, placing his hand on my back. “You’re safe here with me.”
“Can I always stay with you?” I mumble and his face echoes my sadness.
He doesn’t reply and we don’t talk again until it’s time for me to go. It is Geoffrey himself who escorts me to the captain’s room, leaving me to my own devices as a party seems to rage somewhere below deck. I heard it as we passed the berthing quarters on our way up top. I can still hear the hum of music mingling with the sound of the ship’s mechanics. We’ve been stationary for two days now, letting the tide take us as storm clouds pass overhead. I wonder why we aren’t heading for bluer oceans but I guess we have to stay out of range of sonar, or radar, or whatever else. I know nothing about any of this.
Blowing out a breath I decide to look around for some kind of “ships for dummies” book, should one exist. The more I know about this massive battle boat the better. Maybe I can figure out a way home?
Making this my new mission, with a flicker of determined fire in my heart, I exit the quarters and pray I won’t get stopped on my way to the study hall. I only know of it because I heard two of the younger crew members discussing it while I was mopping around them.
Turns out that even though this might be a place full of criminals, they offer classes to teach members to read, write, do math and other subjects the world didn’t properly teach them once upon a time.
Or at least, that’s what Geoffrey told me. He has a lot of love for this ship and its crew, despite the dealings.
Now I just have to find it, which is terrifying because if I get caught by the wrong person… I dread to think.
I silently slip out the base of the bridge and look around. My guard is sleeping beside the door. I hadn’t realised I had one. I figured I might.
At least he’s passed out, and by the empty bottle of whiskey in his hand, I’d say he’ll be passed out for a while.
I creep around him, taking the first heavy metal door on the left that leads away from the berthing quarters. If there’s a place of study surely it won’t be close to the noise. I have no idea what I’m doing.
I make my way down a long, narrow, metal-smelling hall. It’s absent of life for the most part.
I hear voices beyond the doors as people work and then realise how truly stupid this idea was.
This ship is huge and nothing is labelled. There are no maps, or arrows.
I’m not brave enough to continue so I turn back, only finding relief when I return to the deck and move to the side to watch the water below. It sloshes gently against the side and glistens like a billion black diamonds when the moon shines through a crack in the clouds.
Fantasies of a great whale surfacing and carrying me to safety runs through my mind. Offering me a moment of peace, no matter how brief.
I cry again, unable to stop the tears. They spill down my cheeks as I imagine Niall’s gentle caress. He’d move behind me were I to stand like this and wrap his arms under my breasts.
We’d rock together, sway and appreciate the moonlight as one. Whispering about the next day so as to not disturb the silence.
Wiping away my final tears, I lean on the side and bury my face in my hands.
If only somebody would tell me why I’m here so I can at least try to make sense of it. Not that there’s an excuse at all.
The door that leads down to the berthing quarters opens and men spill out, cheering and laughing drunkenly. Music carries with them until the door closes.
I don’t turn, I’m hoping I’ll go unnoticed.
“Well, well, well.” Roger’s voice has me tensing so sharply all of my limbs ache. “Look who’s trying to escape.”
“Roger,” somebody else warns.
I turn to face him, showing him no fear as his buddies shift awkwardly but do nothing to stop his approach.
“It’s alright, I’m just showing her back to her room.” He grins, and I notice his missing top right fang tooth.
“Don’t come near me,” I warn, moving to a defensive position, ready to fight him off if I have to.
When his hand wraps around my bicep I bring my foot up and into his groin.
He groans and drops like bricks off a building and I try not to gloat.
“My balls,” he chokes as his friends laugh.
“She’s got spunk.” One of them grins, his orange beard moving with his smile. “Come on, before the captain has our fingers.”