Finding (The Way) Home

The Incident: Chapter 4

A giant jolt wakes me up. Well, more like the impact of me hitting the floor woke me up. I sit up and look around grumpily, unhappy that my nice nap had been interrupted. Then again, the fact that we had such a jolt sends alarm bells through my head.

I climb to my feet, trying to stand with the shaking tremors of the ship. After my rude awakening, I've finally woken up enough for my brain to process that something was seriously wrong.

I open the screen that separates me from the aisle and stop short. There's a massive steel wall standing in my way. Well, maybe not steal. Whatever it was, I wasn't exactly getting through it any time soon.

"Hello!? Is anyone there!?" I yell and get no response.

However stupid it may sound, I'm not going to be waiting here. I look around the room and grab the heaviest thing I see, in this case, it's the vase of flowers by the window. I take the short step it takes to get across the room and grab it, marching back to the wall in the way. Here goes nothing.

I grip the top of the vase with both hands and swing as hard as I can. Nothing, not one dent. The only thing I've accomplished is scattering the flowers on the floor along with a large puddle of water.

Well, Aunt Cass doesn't call me stubborn for no reason. Bang Bang Bang! Over and over again. The only thing I manage to do is make a few scratches and throbbing hands from the impacts.

This was not working.

The next best thing to do is grab the knife. Stupid, I know. But I'm desperate. I turn back to the wall and frown, trying to figure out what is the best strategy. Looking more closely, there is an almost imperceptible seam in the center of the door. My best strategy at this point is to try to wedge the knife in there and try to pry the door open.

I grip the knife in both my hands and center myself so that if the knife deflects, it has a lower chance of hitting me. I take a deep breath and lunge forward, wincing at the harsh clang as the knife makes contact.

Thankfully, it doesn't deflect. And my aim was pretty good as it's directly on the seam. I nearly cheer as I see it go into the seam a few millimeters. I twist the handle and smile as I see it go in further, bit by bit.

I keep chipping away at it. It must be at least five minutes before the knife is all the way in the door. I was sweating up a storm. It feels like it must have risen at least ten degrees and the physical exertion isn't helping matters.

I nearly jump in joy when I can let the knife go without it going back out of the seam.

Well, now I have that figured out, I need to figure out how in the world I am going to get the sheets of metal to open. At this point, I'm assuming your thinking that I am quite dumb. There was a reason the wall was in the way. Me in the moment however, was not thinking about that. All me in that moment was thinking about was getting out of that damn cubicle.

I figure wiggling the knife side to side might get the panels to open, but it has a high chance of breaking and me having to start all over again. I leave the knife in the door and go looking through the compartment for other tools to pry the doors open.

After a few moments of searching, I come up with a fork, spoon, and a strong metal tray. Not the best options but it was going to have to do, I didn't exactly have anything else except a bunch of questionable fruit that half of it doesn't actually taste like fruit.

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For Pete's sake! How hard was it to open a freaking door!? I've been going at it for a good five minutes and I couldn't it to budge an inch. All I had managed was to finally slide the plate into the small seam.