Assorted Ancient Texts

Generic Pompeii Fantasy Story - Part Two

He sputtered and choked as salty water rolled down his throat. The entire cabin was filled with at least a foot of water as he grabbed a bunk to pull himself up. His arm gave out in searing pain as he screamed into the raging storm outside. Jars of food floated around, most of them unbroken. He sat up and started to climb the stairs when his foot stepped on a shard of glass, bringing him to his knees on the steps. He ignored the new pain as his head throbbed. He used his good arm to pull himself onto the deck and look around. Nothing but a raging storm in all directions as waves over forty-feet high crashed around the little boat. He called out to his mother as the boat tilted this way and that. He looked around and saw no one else on the boat. A wave swelled and grew as tall as the sails as he wrapped his arm around the railing and braced.

Freezing cold water swarmed over him. Lightning filled the sky with almost persistent light as he scrambled to the sails and began to take them down as fast as he could. The sails were slapping back and forth like a wild beast trying to escape a death grip. The boat lurched to the side as the wind threw water over him with a howl that surged into his soul. The sea was a overwhelming evil...and it was going to kill him. He looked back at the tiller and saw that his ropes holding it down had frayed and come undone. He held onto the mast as he rolled the sails into a wadded ball of soaked fabric. Water gushed over him as he stuffed it in a hatch. It was still attached somewhere, but he forced what he could wind howled with the likeness of a thousand mouths. It sounded human. His hair was permanently pulled back by the wind as he fell back into the cabin and splashed about in the water inside. Something clawed at his mind as he slowly grew tired. The water around him had a red tinge, illuminated by the lightning outside. He felt the back of his throbbing head and yelled as he directly touched a massive cut. That woke him up long enough to sit down on a bunk and hold onto anything he could as the boat rolled around in the fury of the night.

He had done all he could...or all he knew to do. He had pulled the sail down to keep the boat from easily capsizing. He looked at the red-ish water around him and ran to the cabin, slamming the door shut to keep any more water out. His foot still hurt and he took two big steps back to the bunk and resisted the urge to vomit as pain overwhelmed him and the boat moved more nearly than he could handle. She was floating, and he couldn't do much more but wait out the storm.

He thought of his mother, who had likely been pulled overboard by the waves when he hit his head. He should have gotten back up. He should have ran back out and thrown a rope out to her, wherever she was. He should have jumped in and pulled her back onboard. Tears began to roll down his saltwater-soaked cheeks.

He thought of his father. He had risked his life to save another sailor and lost it in the process. He looked out the porthole beside him and could see no land at all, just swells and crashing waves over twice as big as the boat. He had no idea where he was going, or where he was. He watched as blood rolled down his shoulders and he needed to bandage his head. He pulled off his pajama shorts and tied the legs around his forehead as he clenched his teeth in pain. His foot wasn't bleeding that bad, but he needed to bandage it with something. He grabbed a floating pillow out of the waterlogged cabin and tore the pillowcase into strips, holding it with his knees. His left arm still hurt too much to use. He did his best to tightly bind his foot before he grew dizzy. He had lost a lot of blood. He tried to fight the slumber but could not win as he sat on the bunk and watched the lightning light up the ocean outside.

He fell over and everything went black. A second passed before he woke up again, splashing about in warm water as he gasped for air. He wiped the water out of his eyes and looked at the porthole and saw a white light outside. The entire porthole was a yellowish-white light. He limped through the water and pushed the cabin door open to be blinded by sunlight. Shielding his eyes with the pajama shorts around his head, he looked out at the ocean. It was as flat as paper. There was not a single breeze for miles of flat ocean in all directions. His breathing was ragged; he needed water. The warm sun must have been beating down on the boat for hours. He began to hoist the sails back up haphazardly and was a little broken-hearted to see that they didn't even flap.

Watching every step in the cabin, he somehow avoided any pieces of glass hiding invisible under the surface of the seawater and opened the cupboards to look for cans of water. He found one and looked around for a knife. One was in the pump sink with a bunch of broken glass and dried fruit that started to mold. He carefully picked the kitchenware and stabbed the top of the can, gulping down the water that came dribbling out until it would not drip any more. He tossed the can and searched the cupboards for more. There were only three. He tossed them onto the bunk behind him and kept looking for anything to eat or drink. He found a can of meat dented but unopened, a can of fruit, and a couple sealed jars of dried grains that seemed edible. He could ration a cup of water a day and the can of meat could last two days but he wouldn't be able to sleep with the hunger. The fruit would only fill him up for a short while anyways. He had three to five days before he would most likely die from starvation. He remembered the cut on his foot and head and feared that they might get infected.

The bandage on his foot had drifted off in the water sometime earlier, but the foot looked fine. It was a shallow cut that scabbed up nicely – and the seawater had washed away most of the dried blood around it. His head, however, hurt like hell and was impossible to see. He grabbed the pillow and knife from the cabin and waded to the steps and up to the deck. The mast had a shiny metal piece on it that might be relatively reflective. He sat down and untied the shorts from his head, pulling them off slowly. They came off too easily, he hadn't even tied them tight enough to stop the bleeding. He was beginning to wonder how much luck he had left. In the distorted reflection, he saw the cut had dried up alright. It was a rather large cut, too.

He put his bloodstained shorts on and decided to find a bucket inside to get most of the water out of the cabin. There was a bucket in a cupboard full of seashells. His father must have collected them for his mother when he went fishing. He dumped them into the sink and saved the nicest one for the bunk. And with that, he began to scoop up water and throw it out the cabin door onto the deck. His arm still hurt and limited the amount of water he could carry in each bucket load, but he continued like this for over an hour before the water level was only enough to cover his toes. The sky had turned red. What he thought was morning earlier was actually afternoon. He opened a porthole and closed the cabin door. It was starting to get cold. His stomach growled, and it was the only noise on the windless water.

He decided that the best thing to do was to sleep.