The Anatomy of Drowning (ONC 2022 Longlist)

9. R.M.S Etruria, 1893

Vera felt the shift of cold around her like a draft.

It ebbed and flowed around her and where it touched it drew up the hairs on her arms. The softness of the bed was gone, the grip she had slipped and faltered. Only the pain in her fingers followed her. The fever and sick that had burned through her dissipated and thinned until it was a phantom caress at her temple. Barley there.

But the ache in her fingers felt good.

It settled something in Vera that had loosened in her spiral. The chaos of thought that would have continued to hollow her – cut the ties to something too vital and human: fear and guilt among them.

Vera stared down at her left hand, the fingers still curled like she could still hold onto the mattress under her fingers. She flexed them and turned her palm over to try and shake the feeling loose. The brush of material was absent but in it's place was a small line where the banister had pressed into her skin in a deep red fold line.

Not as deep as a bruise but a mark all the same.

It would fade in a better of minutes, the line on her palm. Somethings followed her here, some never made it through and now something followed her out. The bruise still there and far from faded.

That had been the first time anything had ever followed Vera out. Stay with me. I will. It was a change in a constant that had lasted for months. A steady and set loop. Something had disturbed that, caused the change. Which meant something wasn't the same and off balance – or she was going mad.

Which was worse?

Her head felt clear, focused. The last effects of the high fever dissipated and thinned taking with it the last of the grip she had on Sydneys bed. The safety she felt and needed gone with it. Safe. The though reverberated through her, she was alone in the foyer, something she checked for as she pulled herself up to standing. In all the places to be, on ship where none of the life could touch her, it was the safest place she could be.

Until the clock at her back, wound and notched, struck midnight.

Then the water would come for her and she would choke and sputter for breath alone in the dark. The loop repeated. Intact and unaffected. Just the burn of icy water dripping into her lungs, closing over her mouth. Across her eyes.

The light was always the last of the ship to go when the breach happened. Though, that too was a break in the constant. The light hadn't left Vera on the expedition vessel. It never banked or wavered, only she had, because she couldn't make it fast enough and when the light did die out it had been her fault. Her our body failing.

Your fault. Your fault, floating away, echoed Sydney in a mirror to her own thoughts.

Vera shuddered out a breath and stepped off the staircase. She leaned against the candelabra for support of leverage she wasn't sure.

It was beautiful.

But it was also unnerving. The light may be the last piece of the ship to dissolve around her when the water snuffed out the flames inside them, but each time Vera came back to the ship, where was no water to be seen. No damp carpets. No furniture thrown or displaced. The Etruria was a feat of engineering and it stayed that way.

The first time Vera had screamed at the passengers around her. She hadn't understood why they wouldn't help her, why they weren't doing anything about the rising level of sea water inside the ship. Now, Vera tipped her gaze up to look at the deck above where, that first night, she hadn't been able to outrun the water.

It had been – was, so cold it burned.

Vera kept her gaze turned up at the railing. She followed the line of spindles with her eyes before finding the exact one she'd been looking for. A corner piece, where a body had sagged the night before. Vera's mind spun and for just a moment she let it.