The Forgotten Island

CHAPTER NINE:

BURNED ALIVE

-Arya-

I started to feel it building in the pit of my stomach; unbridled panic. What would happen now? How long would it take for them to find us out here, and where even were we? I felt a squeeze on my hand and looked up into Fish’s face. Her eyes were gaining back some of their focus, and I felt relieved that she seemed to be recovering from her own fears. I had held it together so we could get to safety, but there was no avoiding emotion indefinitely. Her small kind act of comfort opened the floodgates, and I began crying in earnest, the stress and panic of the situation finally releasing. Fish grabbed me in a tight hug while I sobbed on her shoulder, allowing me a moment of weakness as everything sunk in. This is the second time tonight I found myself in a situation that had me in tears, my poor eyes would need a whole field of cucumbers to recover from the swelling, I was sure of it. I wasn’t shocked to hear others in the lifeboat crying as well, clearly this night sucked for everyone.

The lone crewman gave a sharp whistle that drew our attention to him “Brace yourselves, folks! We are going down!" the slender man calmly commanded. I barely had time to register what he had said before it felt like my stomach was going to come up through my mouth, the boat dropping a few feet on the ropes. I had just finished swallowing it back down when the boat dropped another few feet and I felt it rise back up. I heard some of the other passengers gasping and crying out as the boat lurched a few feet at a time down towards the water. I saw Fish furrow her brow and heard her murmur to me “Feel that?“. I tried to pay attention, hoping to understand what she was talking about, but all I could feel were my bodies physical responses to the boats lurching. “Fish, the only thing I feel right now is my insides trying to become my outsides” I snarled in response. What was she talking about? I widened my stance as I tried to steady myself. Then I heard the rumble and knew the ship would be shaking in mere seconds. Shit.

I tried to find something, anything to hold on to in order to brace for it, but everything in the damn boat was rounded with smooth surfaces. There was one sidebar towards the front entry to which the crewman clung, not seeming to register the thunderous sounds. I knew I wouldn’t make it in time and spread my legs apart farther in a pathetic attempt to brace myself, my dress making the position difficult to hold. The shaking began and the boat rocked violently, knocking against the side of the ship with loud cracking noises. A young woman in one of the rows behind us vomited, and the smell made me gag. Another large rumble sounded, and our boat thrashed against the side of the ship once more, the noise of the impact reverberating in my ears as I struggled to remain standing. Our boat gained enough momentum to come in for a third impact, strong enough for a small crack to form near the ceiling. All of us flew around the inside of the boat like little balls in a Bingo machine, everyone struggling unsuccessfully to grab a hold of something and steady themselves. Most of us ended up on our hands and knees as the lady vomited again, the bile running across the floor around us. For a brief second, we were all weightless as the ropes finally gave out, right before the life boat plummeted the remaining distance to the water. There was a sickening cracking noise as our boat slammed against the surface of the water, followed by screaming and the sounds of bodies slamming against the sides and floors. The boat swayed precariously as it tried to right itself in the waves, and when unable to do so it began to slowly overturn, the passengers slipping down the now slanted floor. I saw Fish reach out her hand, vomit from the floor dripping from her hair. She called to the water around us, strong waves reaching up to straighten and steady the boat before giving a gentle shove away from the ship.

By now our small group seemed to be in a hysteria as people picked themselves up from the ground, covered in the woman’s stomach contents which had been flung through the air inside the boat during its tumultuous descent. That same woman now sat staring at us in disbelief as she realized we were all covered in her puke, while I silently vowed to never eat another surf-and-turf dinner again. An older woman screeched and pointed at the slender crewman towards the front, who now lay on the floor, his neck and limbs twisted at an odd angle and all the life gone from his eyes. A middle-aged man with a young girl covered her eyes with his hands and turned her away from the sight, murmuring calming words in her ear. “Fish” I croaked out “get us farther away from the ship”. I knew if we didn’t move away from the ship, the pull of its weight in the water would draw us in and keep slapping our boat up against it. I saw her reach out again and began to feel the boat move as Fish guided the waters beneath us. I managed to get on my feet, ignoring the stench of the filth I was covered in and looked out the windows.

Around us were hundreds of other lifeboats, but there were still many more that remained unused attached on the upper deck of the ship. There hadn’t been enough time to evacuate everyone safely, much of the ship now ablaze and blocking people’s paths to freedom. I stared in horror as the ship began to tilt, one end pointed almost directly upwards towards the sky, just like in the movie Titanic. Shit. “Faster Fish. Fish! Fish, faster!" I urged her. She followed my gaze and saw the boat starting to sink, the lights flickering out in the lower decks. Her eyes widened and she moved us away faster as I stared back at the orange and yellow flickering through windows on almost every level of the ship. As I watched I saw movement in the flickering glows; gods help me, there were people down there still. There was no help for them now, I thought, filled with grief. All any of us could do now was watch as they burned alive.