Sir, There's Talk of a Revolution

Top of The Food Chain

She moved closer to the head. Something was off. Her hands slowly crept to it, until it gently brushed it. The Assist scoffed.

Plastic. It wasn't even real. It was an illusion. She figured the blood was an illusion too.

Sluggishly walking towards the main room, the Assist felt a newfound sense of determination. Everything about and on this ship seemed to be a trick, everything strategically planned and placed for your downfall, to showcase your weakness. And in a society where strength was revered, even in the face of the most horrifying and inhuman moments, where it's monstrosity and barbaric traditions could make the stoic weep, there was no mercy for the weak.

She got it now, she finally understood. She was strong enough, she thought it and she desired to prove it.

The Assist began her work, ticking off her tasks as they were completed, teaching herself how things worked and where everything was. She observed everything said and done, meticulously noting down anything seemingly significant in the notebook she kept hidden in her pocket. If there was no diplomacy, no escape and a culture of hunting the weak, she could not risk not surviving. The notebook that had everything in it, all that she needed, was her strength.

Lurking in the corners had its perks. The Assist learnt of the resentment held collectively for the Captain, the absolute fury for the man that led their ship. The verbal abuse, the jokes that went a little too far, the indiscreet pledges that one day, they would finish him for good. The first she heard of such rhetoric was troubling, overwhelmed by the intense rage that oozed out of them. But, the more she watched and listened, the more she learned and understood, the better she realised why.

The Captain was a menacing, frightening man. He had no mercy. He lacked leadership. And he loved, more than anything else, being the predator. He was the top of the ship food chain. He took delight in hunting those below him, attacking and devouring them and spitting whatever was left of them out and over into the sea. He was supreme, nothing stopped him.

Supplies would go missing. Food, clothes, medicine. Missing, taken, wrongly assigned - whatever it was, there was always one name that everyone held responsible. Some found that they were fed foods they were allergic to, some found they were fed lies and speculations about fellow members that devolved into deadly fights.

The Assist had witnessed one member who bludgeoned another to death after being told that he violated his unwilling younger brother, but not before the brother vehemently denied his closest friend had ever acted in such a manner. Another time, a group of members just out of banishment - a term the Captain had named for the area of the ship inspired by solitary confinement - were convinced that the only way to cure their friend of cowardice was to physically strike it out after falsely believing their punishment was as a result of his testament. In another instance, a member gauged the eyes of her friend after hearing rumours that she was responsible for the mysterious disappearance of a mutual friend, whose body was never found, because she envied her beautiful eyes.

Other times, there was no cruel or alarming pretext. Simply for sport, it was not uncommon to stumble upon fights, with herds of members watching, cheering drunkenly. What they did to the bodies of the deceased, the Assist did not want to know.

There was havoc on the ship. The Captain did nothing. In fact, it was the Captain's name that was the default suspect.

The fact that the Captain, per his own rules, was disallowed from the lower deck, and members from the above, intensified his sour reputation. How could a man, without physically being there, cause such chaos, violence and death on the lower deck? It did not have to make sense for members to believe, and the alternative theory that one of them may be fighting for the other side was so ludicrous that it was never even considered.