Toy Boat: Chapter 5

Lost

My ears perked at the sound of wind whistling across my body. Cold air getting under my shirt. I struggled to open my eyes. I felt like I had been binge drinking for days before this.

By the time I opened my eyes, I regretted ever wanting to. I was lying supine across black, sharp jagged rocks. Knowing it now, I could feel them digging deeper into my back, arms and legs as I moved to sit up.

Where am I? The last thing I remember…

Oh Christ, it's got to be a dream. An island made up of the same rock that I now stood on. The island itself increasing in height the closer and closer to the center, to a peak that loomed over the rest like an ancient god. The wind that was tearing into my ears was visible as a sheet swirling around the island. Lifting and picking up water and rocks as it went, like I sat in the eye of a cyclone.

Am I in Hell?

Did I die in that horrid ship? Drown in the freezing depths? Torn apart by those things? I felt across my body, looking for any sign this could be true but I didn’t know what I was looking for. The whistle of the wind was driving me mad. I grasped both of my ears with the cups of my hands and screamed to try to drown it out. It was so loud I couldn’t think. Frustrated I didn’t know what was happening. Angry for what I had done.

Was I?

Was I really angry?

"He killed him. He deserved it. He deserved worse for the fear he toce fed your child."

A voice soaked into me like booze amongst the screams, through the wind, even past my hands held tight to my ears.

"Hello?" What was talking to me?

"Am I dead? Is this Hell?" I couldn’t stand to question it further, regardless of what was attached to the voice, I needed to know. I couldn’t spend another second not knowing.

"Does it matter?" The voice carried as if from a great distance, but clear as if whispered into my ear. Deep and laggard in its delivery.

"Whether it is or not, what does it change? You seem so close to breaking as it is. Your mind will not be saved by the answer." I hung onto each word like it would spell out what this was, where I was. Looked for some hidden meaning in this insanity. I felt a rumble deep in the ground. Just enough I could have mistaken it for the fear in my legs, wobbling slightly to the unstable rock, and unstable mind.

I fell to my knees, the points of the rock easily digging through my pants. My hands gripping at it. I felt the pain. I felt it all.

"Are you God? Satan?" I muttered, lost in the wind that howled across my body, across the island.

"Do you wish to know?" The voice now almost calming, in this wasteland. Every other noise background white noise to its heavy tone.

"Yes, please. Yes."

“God does not dream as I do, it wakes in fear of my existence.”

It spoke as if I knew something I was sure I didn't.

“The devil then?” my voice hoarse trying to speak over the chaos.

“It fears too.” The wind pulled at my body like some invisible leviathan hand.

"Wake up, sleeper. Sire me from the deep." The voice losing its purchase in my ear as the waves beginning to pick up and spun by the wind started to crash and rise along the edges of where rock met water. Consuming the island rapidly. I didn’t have time to run before the water swept me from the rocks and snuffed out any sight I still had left.

My body floating in frigid water. My eyelids felt glued to one another as they creaked open. Just a dull illumination of the glowstick that listlessly rocked in the microwaves that bounced around the drowning ship. The entire floor now more than waist deep in water. I dragged myself upright; a strong pulse of dizziness came over me. I could feel the pain radiating from the back of my head. I grasped the glowstick that was floating no more than a foot or two from me. That’s when I could tell the water wasn’t done; it was rising. I could still hear the slow thumping sounds of those creatures on the decks above me. Muffled screams, clicking harmonic noises. I refused to look into the cabin.

I pushed forward, trudging through the water as fast as I could. I felt this well of nausea in the depth of my stomach, I didn’t have time to stop. The water creeping ever upwards. It felt like the ship was rotating. Pitching to the right Or was it my perception that pitched? For all I knew blood was pooling in my brain, a timebomb waiting to detonate.

When I got to the stairwell I could barely use the stairs as intended, walking somewhere between the wall and the stairs, water running down them as it pooled and rose in response.

It took time, but I climbed to the main deck, leading outside into the torrential rain, a wall of deafening sounds. Rain, crashing waves, screaming men and women. I positioned myself on the outside wall of the ship, not being able to stabilize myself fully on the deck's floor at the slight angle it was on with the added rain and my lack of shoes. Leaning up against the wall gave me the ability to move at a decent speed towards the front of the ship. The whole floor beneath me rocked again, opposite to the way it sat, throwing me from the wall and across the slick wet ground into the guard rail. I gripped desperately for any purchase available to keep me from going completely overboard.

I could see the pool and bar area ahead, silhouettes gathered around the crooked pool only a quarter or so full of what just had to be rain water at this point, sloshing out and in as the boat rocked. Some of the figures kneeling within the angled pool, others the visage of those monstrosities, standing walking on the crooked deck with ease. I gripped to the railing, trying not to draw attention my way. A low neon glow across my face. The feeling in my fingers and toes now long gone. Watching the shadows move in the backdrop of discarded flashlights and glowsticks and the ever present dim glow of emergency lights. A crack of lightning miles off that set the stage for each shadow lost.

I moved closer and closer never fully righting myself, keeping the glow stick palmed tight in my hand to drown out the light it produced. The rain was so loud, so oppressive. Not enough to muffle the sounds of these creatures. Their clicking almost moving through the rain drops, using them as a means of amplification. I got close enough to start to discern details. Four of these creatures were surrounding a group of over a dozen people. All of whom were on their knees, begging.

Begging?

As If the creatures were to be reasoned with, could be reasoned with. The clicks now seemingly mocking the begging, captive audience as they circled around them with their unnaturally large gait. Amongst their waving, frantic tendrils that almost seemed to not be under their control, a pair of each tendrils near the front of the cluster unsheathed like a glove pulled from a wet hand. Revealing fleshy digits from under the loose oil-like skin. One reached out and wrapped those digits around the neck of a young woman. Brought to her feet, but not under her own weight. She gripped at the tendril, which was easily thicker than her torso. She was brought higher, held to the sky. Like an offering, every one of the creatures stared up at her struggling, fighting strangulation. After a moment another crescendo of lighting tore through the skyline and all of the creatures clicked along together before another tendril unsheathed a long boney curved blade, like a claw from another tendril. With one swipe the woman's belly split like an overcooked sausage she poured out across the deck. Splattering across the legs of the creatures and across the face of other people laid over as if praying. I don't think they understood that god had no power here. Her body went limp and with a joyous harmony of clicks her body was flung over the side of the railing. The people didn’t move, not an inch, merely kept still as if waiting their turn.

I crawled along the ground trying my best to be as flat as possible. Before getting out of sight of them. I lifted myself to my knees then my feet, stumbling forward trying to keep my forward momentum. I heard the ritual behind me grow quiet. All of a sudden the rain was that much louder. Not a single click or vocalization. I kept moving towards the front of the ship, along the wall of one of the many outbuildings across the top of the ship.

The silence in the rain was driving me mad. I could feel eyes on me. My steps slowed as I turned. Nothing but grays and blacks between the specs of light, mixed with the pitter patter of rain across every surface.

I felt a tug and then a forceful pull at my neck as my entire body was lifted up into the air by a flesh noose. All breath in my lungs now trapped. The creature was above me.I stared directly into the dozens of sunken eyes that dotted the skull of these creatures. Octopoid-like pupils and a deep purple color. It was oddly beautiful, the lightning that would streak across the air would send shimmering rainbows of almost neon light through the membrane of the creature's eye. For a moment I felt lost within it. Like how I felt deep in my dreams. Like home wasn't far from me, just a switch inhale of salt water.

I didn't want it to let go, didn't want this feeling to leave. Maybe Frankie would be wherever I was going.

Frankie?

I shook my head and pushed on the creature, but the grip of its fingers was far too tight. It took one large step onto the deck from the roof, lifting me up above it as it walked along the ground on all of its legs, like a reptilian insect. Undulating back and forth like a snake would. I knew I was being taken to my death, though now I feared it. No calming sensations or acceptance. Every person I had seen close to one of these things has been murdered, discarded into the ocean or left to rot within this sinking ship.

At the bow of the boat it slid me across the wet deck on my back. I clenched my entire body waiting for the pain, the infinite black, but nothing came. The lightning flashed again. A form was revealed to me at the very tip of this now severely tilted boat. Humanoid and tall. Perfect posture, its hands clasped in front of him, waiting politely.

The darkness hid the figure, but still it radiated fear like staring in the eyes of a shark. Every bone in my body wanted to turn and run but I could tell that I wouldn’t have gotten far, with a handful of creatures lingering in my periphery.

"Oh Benny, Benny boy." The voice echoed through me, rattling my bones.

I rotated from my back and stopped halfway up. Shadows seemed to leak off the figure, like reality itself diluted like paint around him.

"I am eager to see you, truly see you. Face to face."

His voice was not dampened by the battering rain. It was as clear as if he stood not an inch from me. The leaking shadows shifted. The lighting imprinted the face of the waiter on my vision like a photograph. That same smile he always had.

"What is happening" was the only thing I could think to ask, to say. I felt frozen by the rain, by the aura this “thing” in front of me radiated. Though he looked human he felt far more alien then the creatures around it.

"Would it make a difference?" It took a breath that seemed to inhale any ambient light around him and exhale it back out across the deck. He took a step forward. I couldn’t speak, I had no idea what to say, what to ask. The smile climbed along the sides of his face farther than was natural like clay being forced upwards.

“Random chance doesn't solve any of your questions. Wrong boat, wrong swath of ocean?” The gravel in his throat sang. Another step and it was my husband. Shadow covering the side of him I had mutilated, but he was there. In front of me. My mind started to find excuses for this to be real like everything could be forgiven, like I had forgotten what he took from me.

"Despite these less than insightful answers, you are still merely fueling your curiosity. Why continue at all? With what was ripped from you." Another flash and Frankie stood before me, shadow snuffing out everything but his bulging eyes and gasping face.

"Now go feed your curiosity." In a flash of light,the shadows that formed my husband in front of me dissipated. Giving me a flash of the island not two hundred yards from where I kneeled. Like a leviathan breaching the surface, impossibly large and getting closer.

My stomach turned; overwhelming guilt filled me up. He was right. Why do I continue? maybe just to understand why this was happening. Even though I knew I could never fully grasp this. But still, I wanted to see what was lurking in the shadow of this man, these creatures, that island.