The Greatest Stakes are Always Paid with Blood

CHAPTER ONE

"Attention passengers..." The Captains deep, raspy, tired voice booms over the speaker system as the boat begins to rock. "Please refrain from panicking, we are going to be experiencing a little bit of rough traveling for a while, due to the incoming storm. Please, if you would return to your cabins and enjoy your evening, relax and remain calm, the storm should pass us by before too long." And just like that his voice is gone and silence takes the place of it again.

She pushes open the door to her sleeping quarters, feeling the roughness of the sea against the ship. Her stomach heaves up and down with the waves. "Why do I even do this job? I hate the ocean." She mutters to herself. She had thought long and hard about quitting, but her family needed the money. She needed this job, no matter how much she hated it.

She is thrown against the wall as the waves crash with more and more force against the sides of the ship, rocking and tossing it back and forth in the choppy seas. A shrill scream rings out and she races up to the deck, again. Salty water races across the deck of the ship, washing life jackets and expensive pieces of luggage off into the water. People scream and scramble frantically to hold on to the nearest bolted down thing they can reach with their terrified, shaking hands. Someone is washed over the side of the ship and sucked down into the torrent of vicious water. Screams echo louder than the thunder. The siren on the ship begins blaring loudly to alert the rescue team that someone has gone overboard. The screaming grows louder and she turns to pinpoint the source.

Her blue eyes flash bright with fear in the cracks of lightning. The wave is huge, taller than any building she has ever seen, and it keeps growing. She reaches for a life jacket, but it is washed over the side of the ship before she can get her slender fingers around it. Her heart sinks when the boat dips down in the waves, she falls several feet when the boat disappears from underneath her and she hits the deck hard a couple seconds later. Gasping for breathe. She looks into the distance, dazed and confused. Her scream echoes loud into the night just before the wave crashes onto the ship, dragging it under the water and then ripping it into pieces. Bodies dragged down in the swirl of racing water that pulls what is left of the ship to the depths of the sea. They will all drown along with her. She is gone. My mother is gone.

SCHRADDER

I shoot up out of bed, panting and soaked like I was in the ocean along with them, along with her. I felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was trapped in the undertow, drowning, lungs screaming for oxygen that is just out of reach. I could hear her screams and feel her pain. I could feel the life being squeezed out of her small, fragile body. I could feel everything. That is why everything seems so real to me. I dry the tears off my cheeks and haul myself out of bed. I take a deep breathe, my lungs burn and my chest hurts like I hadn't taken a breathe in ages.

I shuffle into the empty, lonely kitchen. The house is silent and it's very unnerving to me. I hate when there is nothing but silence around me. My thoughts take over when there is no noise to fill the void. There is no light to chase the darkness away.

The ever looming depression begins to set in when I look out the window in the kitchen at my brothers playing ball in the backyard. A faint smile plays on my lips, I can feel it, and the darkness begins to creep away once more. It fears the light and happiness. I am thankful for the reprieve.

I don't know where dad is. I haven't seen him all night. When he isn't working his hands to the bone, he tends to be out drinking, a lot. The sadness begins to slide back into my heart when I think about the funk that dad is caught in. I wish I could help him, but he doesn't seem to want help from anyone. He wants to drown his sorrows at the bottom of a bottle, like the bottle is the only thing that ever loved him. I wish things could be different, or just go back to the way it was before mom died. Things are just so hard now, and I can barely hold everything together. I am barely keeping my head above the water as all the weight of the world tries to drag me down.