☼MARK∞
My heartbeat came in hurried thumps when I opened my eyes to never ending darkness. "Cassidy?" I called out in the dark. Everything is swaying. Nothing keeps still. Where are we? I blinked my eyes to make them adjust faster to the dark.
There was something warm and solid in my arms and I embraced it tighter as it started moving. There was that comforting sweet scent . "Where are we?" I murmured against her neck. I felt the soft wisps of her hair against my face and for a moment, everything is alright. I felt her hand touch my arm and it stayed there.
"Mark, we're on a ship," she whispered.
I've seen 'Captain Phillips', my family has yachts and I've been to a cruise before but a ship isn't supposed to feel like this. I can feel the swaying motion getting to my throbbing head to the pits of my stomach, making me dizzier. "What happened?" I kept my voice as low as hers and tried to make us smaller by drawing her closer to me. The air around us feels stagnant and dead but I feel cold all the same. My nose can pick up the acrid smell of sweat which worsened my nausea. I suddenly felt self conscious as I held her. Is that me?
Her hand on my arm moved to the back of my neck and some of the coldness dissipated. Her small breaths fanned on my chin as she turned to face me. "Mark," her voice was small as she said my name. I closed my eyes again and opened them to be able to adjust to the darkness. I saw the light of her green eyes and the dark hairs that stuck to the shiny sheen of sweat on her forehead. Uninjured. But my relief was short lived as I was able to fully take in our surroundings. We are surrounded by men and women in cages and children too-- most of them too tiny and skeletal to get noticed at first. Everybody is dark skinned. The ones who are not in the cages, the bigger ones have a collar around their neck and their hands bound with cuffs that looked like wooden planks. They all stared at us bug eyed and silent. Is this human trafficking? Isn't that illegal since forever? What are we doing here?
"Mark," Cassidy tried again. Her fingers lightly touching my jaw, asking for my attention. "I made a time machine."
I've had my fair share of locker room scents so I'll blame it on the shock and the sensory overload as I found vomit clawing up my throat.
"Sid, I'm going to be sick," blame my sudden use of her nickname on that too. I stood up all of a sudden, making her jolt up from my lap . There are no toilets or bins in sight so I have to make a hard break for it before our date makes a comeback in chunks in front of her.
There was a single door in the end of the room of cages. I found it unlocked and I swung it as fast as I could because my throat can only take so much. One of the captives shouted something in a language that I can't understand. Whatever it was, it can probably wait.
An arm came out of nowhere and tried to grab me but I'm not feeble enough to be moved. I punched the asshole sideways, my fist came in contact with a nose. I felt the crunch of bone at the exact moment that I felt the cool sea breeze against my sweaty skin.
I grabbed to the ship's wooden rails and emptied my stomach into the dark waters below. There's movement at the bottom of the ship, rows of paddles that moved in a singular motion. It resembled the legs of a centipede. What the hell? It looked familiar but unreal, like I might have seen it in a movie sometime ago.
When I was done, I looked up and saw the ink black cloudless sky. Stars twinkled sadly beside the plate sized silver moon. This has got to be a dream. I pushed back my hair away from my face and wished for a bottle of water to wash away the taste of sour vomit from my mouth.
I know that if I turned back now. The bastard who got a punch to the nose will bring his friends and the nightmare will resume. I took a deep breath and clenched my jaw waiting for the punch that I owed.
