The Ballads of The Skeleton Crew

The Ballad of the Gone Girl (3|6)

(№3.6)

Her groom grabbed her hand, whisking them out of the bowel's ship outside, where inferno raged.

An assembled convocation of the darkest, loudest clouds filled to the brim with drops and rubbing against each other conquered right above the ship, wind seeped through her hair with freezing claws and pricking needles running down her back, the captain and his crew crouching in the space of the wall all spread, fearful looks locked into each other and prayers mumbled a miracle might emerge yet, when aloft the wailing, nerve-splintering snarl of an animal cornered rang, one you challenged for its hunted prey, when the dark scenery cleared for the briefest of seconds and the screaming of the symphony reached the highest, most glorious, golden apex of crashing and splintering, a lightning bolt precise and the thickness of arms reached for the mast, pointed at it judgmental with the idea of an extended index finger and a lightning bolt struck the ship in sizzling cascades of singed, burnt timber and drops of illuminated water appearing like perfect pearls of crystals flying all around them.

A sharp of the most wicked pole had hit the girl straight in the brow and her long, beautifully hair greedily drank the water pouring from the skies, hanging sluggish over her shoulder, the boat still unceasingly tossed aside and aside.

The girl blinked little below the blood seeping into her eyes, groaned in the blooming tips of pain flaring alive, her groom coughing and sitting up beside her, drenched in shards of sail and wood and wiped desperately the blood from her forehead, half turning and blinking.

Unbelieving, she opened her mouth in disbelief, to perhaps note the obvious, but no words of wise epiphany would come. Trails of blood ran down her cheeks as if she had cried tears of crimson for the disaster evermore that had struck them.

The lightning bolt had fractured wood until meeting deeply the base of the ship, effectively just hitting a huge hole in the boat, the panels coming loose all around her and solely trailing away with the now all too eager sea wanting some bone as a price for the daring passage in such baleful conditions, water surrounding everything under and over deck, trailing down in the cupboard of a room beneath them and taking the lot of screaming crew and groom's family away into the ocean, her promised man gone beside her with the ice-cold water, all her body burned and shrieked as if thrown into blistering grease.

Her sight went blurry, the edges flummery and sounds dulling to ineffective white noise around her, languid slushing and whooshing of wind dimmed down tragically a hundred times, actions happening too fast for her brain to act and react to the consequences.

She bit her lip bloody, desperate to live, and gripped the remaining pole as fixed and grim she fathomed with a roar of ferocity, angry for the world, for the sloshing water, for the Black Sea of threatening her future, making her regret her decision terribly.

Another wave collapsed on the deck, masses of water violently massaging the wood, letting it break, letting it bend, letting it lend violence and toying around in a losing game.

Well, lost for the humans anyway. The crew was fully dipped and far away shipped from the boat, some screaming, some exasperatedly puddling with their arms, but it was a damned engagement, for the doomed tentacles of death lurking in the water gripped their ankles tightly and pulling them under water there, where calmness awaited and the water gloomily would store their skeletons as a keep-safe, until the fish would nibble that away as well and gone would be any idea of mortal residue, gone the image of this bunch of fools.

For several seconds, the girl thought what to do right now, right on the boat, alone and abandoned, as it was slowly and surely torn apart beneath her finger tips, the air clean cut out of her lungs, she desperately attempted to fight against the surface of the water attempting to raise beyond her head, to let it not in her body, to not give in the impulse of breathing in, of giving up, but oh no, where was the sky, the fleeting illumination of a bolting struck again?