Unsinkable

The Lives of the Boat

It's been three hours.

Three shivering hours of waiting, praying, and the waves taunting us with hope: of another ship, or land, or anything that could light the spark of our frozen hearts. 

But nothing has happened. And I can only assume that nothing will (Hope for the best, expect the worst, right). 

Shivering. So cold...

But it wasn't the cold that scared me. It was the people. First class people. 

These people had dark eyes. It was a popular look back home. They used dark makeup around the eyes to look like they had bigger or brighter eyes. Mother used to take me to town to show me. But here on the boat, in engulfing darkness and closed eyes, it looked as if they had none at all.

And being on a boat with black holes for eyes and dozens of them... does something to you. 

But I can't tell what.

There are 45 people on the boat with me; an old woman, barely keeping her eyes open, a young boy, probably around the age of six or seven. His eyes darted through the darkness as he screamed three names at the top of his lungs; "Mother", "Father", and "Julie" (which I can only assume was his sister). 

Devastation tore at the limbs of the people on the boat. Some people muttered through chattering teeth. Some people sobbed over the harsh beatings of the wave against the boat. All were shivering.

Whether they were shivering from the cold, the shock, or the thought that they would die out here, I couldn't tell you. But they were shivering.

I studied the faces of the people surrounding me. A woman held a stern look, but you could tell there was longing in her eyes.

A short woman in a black coat, studying faces as I was. We caught each other's gaze and stared out of pure curiosity. I broke the spell when a young girl - barely five, I would guess - coughed and shuddered in her night gown. 

The fabric was so thin you could see her goosebumps underneath. It weaved around her arms and legs, fluttering in the harsh winds, like a weightless feather battling to fly against a significant bar of gold resting atop its shoulders.

I turned away to see the old woman again. After all the staring, I figured out what those dark eyes do to you.

First, scares the daylight out of you; Then, if you stare longer and longer, into the depths of their souls, you can feel the nonexistent eyes slowly stopping the blood in every inch of your body: every vein, muscle, every part the red liquid goes. And you feel just like them. Soulless and cold inside.

I realized I was still staring at the old woman. She was now fully awake, staring at me. She didn't flinch when my body violently shivered, nor when I yawned. She held her stare. I didn't.

There was a dart of lightning that looked as if it could warm our hearts, but so much that it burned our souls. Then a noise. A low hum, the rumble of a motor. Then light. One beam. No, two. They flashed away from our boat. The silhouette of a smaller ship danced through the waves, where the shipwreck that - I suppose - we had drifted so far away from.

But no one moved. No one tried to call, shout, scream; Nothing. I stared at the younger adults of the boat, but they just stared in awe. I shivered. I was on a boat of ghosts. Hungry, eyeless, soulless ghosts. Shivering in the night as if they had feelings.

Then the old woman spoke.