The Boy Who Never Drowned (#JustWriteIt) #Wattys2015

Chapter Eight

It was as if a monster, lurking from below the murky water had risen up, its mighty tale striking the ship, sending us all lurching forward. I felt a cold bar slam against my head and then the icy floor of the Titanic. I was aware of my surroundings, my senses alert and throbbing; but I could not get up. My eyes stung and my vision was blurred, the picture in front of me changing...

A sailor's face, bright red cheeks and stained yellow teeth. His lips are moving and he jolts backwards, grabbing the railing for support. He looks as if he is screaming; I hear no sound...

Victoria. She is in her room, back home in London. She picks up her hair and balls it together, a cobweb of black. She sighs and lets it fall...

A woman and a child. She hugs its head into her chest, running past me, her face a terror stricken mold. She is pushed, her arms forced to relax for a second; the child falls...

My mother, trapped between her sheets back home. It is as if I'm watching her, but I do nothing. She's asking for help, to be saved. I let the shadows envelope her...

A young boy. He is sitting on the floor of the ship, his face captured in quiet panic, unable to scream or cry. Blurred bodies move around him in quick pace. He observes each one, wondering if anyone will take notice. They don't. The ship jolts. He is swept back, travelling away when everyone else is moving forward...

I hear no sound but foresee a flash of illustrations so bright that I think I've seen images of Heaven. I feel a force pulling me forwards, hazy bodies running, trampling me to get somewhere that is far behind. It is finally when I hit a door to the stairs, that I realise what is happening. The Titanic, the great, unsinkable ship that promised the poor riches and the rich treasures that they would not find in London, was sinking. An invisible force was lying on my chest, its arms draped around my neck and its legs wrapped around my waist. I could not get up. I could not run away from the inevitable ocean that lay waiting. So I looked up.

They were mainly from the third class dorms, and I wondered how long I had been asleep on the deck. They clung to the railing, their limp bodies being pulled down to the sea by the same force that was coiled around me. Children's soaking palms clung to their mother's and fathers. Screams of fear and dread were hailed towards me at speed, each cry a knife sent pelting downwards. Some couldn't hold on. It was normally the weak; the skinny men and the women and girls that didn't have a firm enough grip on any foundation. The children without a parent's protection; they fell. Like snowflakes to a bed of snow, they fell.

I heard the past echoes of the music. The melody drifted through damp corridors and through beads of water rushing horizontally across walls. Somehow I did not think I was the only one that could hear the music. I thought it was like the instruments were surrendering, remembering their last notes and, while doing so, echoing their harmonies.

I began to wake up from the dream like trance of which I was induced and realised that this wasn't a creation I had invented. The Titanic was sinking; and we were all going to die. It was as simple and tragic as that. I did not wish to die.

 I thrusted myself forward, and toppled over to the left, unable to balance. The ship was cruising forwards, vertically, plunging into the icy waters. My shoes lost their grip and I started to slide backwards, an electric current of fear bolting through me like a shiver. I leapt for the railing, feeling its layer of frozen eyes against my raw palms.

I wondered where my family were. If I could save them. I knew I couldn't. But I felt like I did not want them to miss me die. I scanned the inked ocean, and saw few lifeboats sprinkled upon it. Scrambling through the thick waters I saw innocent people drowning, their selfish instincts forcing their arms forward onto another person, pushing them into the water so they could stay alive a little longer. The lifeboats floated away from us, the ones left behind. Lanterns marked eight lifeboats. Each light fading as the frozen wind pulled them to safety. I strained my eyes, studying the people in thick coats and sparkling dresses that sat, shivering, inside them, their noses upturned at the drowning children clawing their way on. I then saw a young woman in a red dress sitting at the end of the eighth lifeboat. She was clutching her neck with one hand and the other was wrapped in the palm of a tall man in a trench coat. He had his other arm around a thin woman who sat as if a statue. My family. They had escaped, and had left me behind.

I screamed.

I screamed to them, the heavy wind stealing my voice and turning it into high pitched whistles. My throat became hoarse quickly, the frozen diamonds piercing it like needles. My helpless breath wavered in front of me, unable to float to them. I waved an arm but almost lost my grip. The icicles forming on my cheeks burned my skin, my eyes a stained circle of red. I did not want them to wonder what had happened to me, I wanted them to see me. I wanted them to see me and turn the lifeboat around and let the wind push them to the left railing and then I would fall to the hard wooden floor of the boat and it would swallow me up and I would be warm in the wool of my Father's trench coat and I would cry real tears and feel real warmth in his arms. But they floated further and my cries became painful whispers of grief and fear. I let my eyes fall to the ocean, one watery tear escaping from my stinging eyes and rippling in the blackness below.

I loosened my grip, dryly crying for the family that were drifting away from me. I was becoming more and more dead. So I thought, why am I still holding on? What do I have left to survive for? I had no faith, just cold hands.

Suddenly, every so subtly, my eyes only have witnessing it because I'd been looking so closely at the water, I saw a silver shimmer. Jagged squares of almost transparent ivory rippled below me.

The ship was almost vertical, and I knew we would soon plunge down together. I took a last glance at the survivors above me, trying to ignore the ones that were falling past me, and I saw a different picture. The once terror stricken faces, clinging for the hope that they might live, were now faces much more frightening. Their expressions were clouded with acceptance. Each hard blinking eye let fall any faith they might live. Hands were held so tightly as if trying to attach themselves to one another. Lips moved in words of prayer or 'I love yous'. Bodies shook in a fearful shiver for the fate that was near approaching. Some couples jumped together, their bodies dark silhouettes against the moon, entwined where they forever shall be frozen. Children buried their faces into their mother's or father's hearts, and they all looked at anywhere but the ocean. Only a couple of hours before the Atlantic was a spectacle of beauty and artistry; now it had matured into a monster.

I looked back at the slivery water and decided that I would think this space would be nice to fall into, if I must fall into any. This part of canvas, the only part of the painting that included any colour, would be where I'll freeze. I will freeze elegantly, I thought, so that when they find me, they will box me up in an ice cube, and take me to a museum; there, my family can observe my last living moment.

I placed both my legs over the railing, leaning upwards so as not to slip down and miss the silvery patch. My hands were stuck to the railing. I ripped them from the icy veil, my arms flying up past my head. The momentum flinging me forwards.

I fell.