Life in a Bitter Sea

CW: Trauma, shipwreck

Nicky looked up in horror as the bow of the ship rose up in a final act of surrender to the raging sea. For a few moments, the front of the vessel towered over the six survivors in the life raft below, like some sort of giant black finger pointing at the night sky, then with a roar from within the hull as the bulkheads collapsed, the yacht slid under the waves one last time.

For a moment that lasted for an eternity, Nicky stared at the forming waters where the bow of the yacht had been just a few seconds ago. It was gone now but even with the vessel below the surface of the sea Nicky could still see the emergency lights of the yacht were still on, and for a few seconds after the whole ship was submerged, the survivors could see parts of the stricken vessel floating on the water’s surface around where the ship had just gone down. In the seconds that the sinking ship’s lights remained operating, Nicky could see that another life raft from the yacht was floating empty some distance away. Then as the ship slipped deeper under the water, the lights went out, and the area they were in was plunged into darkness. When this happened, Nicky lost sight of the other raft and everything else in the raging sea all around them.

In what seemed like a blink of an eye, nothing remained of the multimillion-dollar vessel or her crew that was once the staple of countless magazine covers. The crew who had been family to Nicky were gone in a flash. They had all died in a yacht that had cost millions to build and was supposed to have been “unsinkable.” At this, Nicky was filled with a mixture of emotions ranging from extreme sadness to abject horror.

But despite the huge loss she just suffered, Nicky was equipped with a mental ability to compartmentalize her mind, born of her years of living on the streets. Unlike many others, she was able to cut off thoughts of the tragedy that she had just lived through and concentrate her mind on the dangers of her immediate situation.

The capacity to shut out thoughts and feelings about what just happened made the situation ‘manageable’. Children from the streets develop such mental and emotional muscles naturally. Unlike others, people like her had no trouble scheduling time for healing and convalescence.

“Shit and damn it all, why did this have to happen to me?” Mr. Savage the owner of the sunken yacht shouted out against the roar of the wind and sea, “the salesman said that shitty boat would last a hundred years. Now look at it! This has got to be the biggest pile of crap in maritime history.”

Savage was a big and loud man who made a lot of his money shortchanging or not paying people he did business with, and there was a high degree of symbiotic interchange between the way he made a living and his everyday behavior.

Nicky watched and listened as Savage continued complaining loudly about the loss of the yacht, the situation he found himself, the inconvenience this sinking has put him through, and the fact that he was now wet and cold. The list of things complained about seemed unending, and in the context of their current situation, somewhat unreal.

Nicky however noticed that in all his loud complaining, he never once mentioned the fact that all of Savage’s guests who were on the yacht, the captain and the whole crew apart from Nicky were now dead. That little fact seemed to escape any mention in Savage’s nonstop rant within the wet confines of the life raft they were in.

Nicky looked around her and noted that there were only six of them in a raft that had a maximum capacity of ten people. The raft was not full because Mr. Savage had insisted that not everyone on the part of the deck that they were on were allowed to climb into his raft while there was still time to do so. The reason Savage refused to let more people get into the raft was because it would “crowd” his space. He was the owner of the yacht and so his word outweighed the safety of more lives that could have been saved. A situation where ownership rights eclipsed considerations of life.

Nicky was not meant to have been allowed to board Savage’s raft but at the last minute before the fatal explosion that sank the vessel, when the Savage family was already in the raft and others outside were pleading to get in, a quirk of fate put Nicky into the only raft to launch that night. Mrs. Savage had called out to Nicky to hand her a warm jacket whilst she was in the raft. Nicky got a jacket and was handing it to Mrs. Savage when the fuel tanks of the boat went off and the shock wave threw the raft off the yacht from its launch station into the choppy waters below, along with Nicky half inside it. Nicky landed half in the raft and half in the water. She instinctively pulled herself into the raft before Savage could muster any protest, thereby saving herself moments before the yacht went down.

After the explosion and the sinking, it seemed to be beyond the pale even for Savage to insist on keeping his “space” at the expense of Nicky’s life. So, her presence amongst the rich and infamous was not questioned beyond that point.

For now, it seemed that Nicky was allowed or tolerated to take her spot in the raft if she sat quietly. But Nicky was under no illusions about the position she found herself in, she knew her employer too well to feel any comfort or confidence in her survival regardless of where she was. She was on the bottom rung of this totem pole and Nicky was very aware of what that could mean.

In her corner of the raft Nicky observed the others onboard. There was Mr. Savage in his corner going over the emergency provisions in the raft. He was throwing pieces of emergency rations all over the floor of the raft, complaining that no one could seriously expect him to eat any of this garbage. Then there was Mrs. Savage who sat impassively in her space obviously unhappy to be wet and cold and to be without her objects of comfort around her as per usual. Next to her was her son Randy, a proven and tested juvenile delinquent who could only be open to any transformation from his unfortunate condition by old age. Then as always in the darkest corner of any space they occupied were Mr. Savage’s two brothers, Brett and Seamus, both meant to be business executives in Savage’s business empire, but Nicky knew what they really were and how they made their money. Nicky was on the streets for a long time, and she personally watched Brett sell drugs to street people, and Seamus break the bones of those who could no longer pay his brother for any “credit” extended. They were both gorillas in ill fitting suits, but they were “family” and on the yacht they had made the lives of the serving staff like Nicky hell.

Nicky caught both brothers leering at her from time to time on board the yacht but in the confines of civilization, they never had the leeway to do anything beyond casting unpleasant looks at her. Normally as a defensive measure she kept to the staff quarters as much as she could because she along with several of the other crew were girls who were obviously within the target age group of the terrible twins, but here in the raft Nicky was in an unavoidable proximity to both of them and there were no other members of the crew for her to seek shelter behind.

Nicky looked out of the raft and onto the dark waters outside. The sea was still rough with the occasional white caps. As luck would have it, she was sitting next to the open flap and was close to the water so she could just turn her body and even reach out and touch the water beyond if she wanted to do so.

The night was dark with no light from the moon, or even the stars. So, Nicky could only see a very short distance outside of the raft. Without the lights from the yacht, visibility was limited to about five or six feet from where you were. The other raft and other debris from the sunken yacht were out of sight, and Nicky could not be sure if any of the floating remains of the vessel were still out there or in what direction due to the darkness all around them. Nicky had an idea where everything was but in all honesty to herself, she knew that she was only guessing where the floating remains of the yacht were or could be.

“Did you manage to send a message out that the boat was sinking before the last explosion?” Mrs. Savage asked her husband.

“Yes, I did,” answered Mr. Savage still disgruntled at the look of the emergency rations and then taking a generous swig of water from the single water bottle in the life raft, “damn holiday weekend meant it took three attempts before we got through to anyone at home base. Then all we got was that useless boy Roy because he was the only one in the whole mansion…everybody else was away for the weekend because we were not in the residence and it was the religious holiday…so they all buggered off home to celebrate the feast or whatever.”

“So? What happened? Did you get the message through to Roy that the yacht was in trouble and that he had to contact the authorities?”

“Yes…yes, we did, and I had to take the mouthpiece from the radioman and scream blue murder at that useless boy to get off his ass and call the coast guard. I had to keep repeating what I wanted him to do before he finally acknowledged what I said and signed off. “

“Damn idiot moron,” muttered Mrs. Savage, “you should fire him as soon as we get back.”

“Too late,” laughed Seamus, “he did it already.”

“Already? What do you mean?”

“He fired Roy already,” said the big man through grinning teeth as he pointed at Brett, “he fired that moron just before we left for the boat trip. He was only still at the mansion because he was serving out the rest of the weekend as it’s illegal to let anyone go over the holy weekend.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Brett with a degree of satisfaction in his voice, “but he’ll be gone by the time we get back.”

The rest of the raft then fell silent after this, but Nicky’s mind was reeling. No one else seemed to understand the full implications of what was just said, but Nicky understood the full ramifications.

Nicky knew Roy; they spent years on the streets together; they scrounged together, they stole from the shops and market stalls together; fought other gangs on the streets together; and so, she knew the boy they were talking about well.

In fact, Nicky was the reason why Roy was at the other end of the radio with Savage.

A few years ago, it was Nicky who first noticed the life led by the staff of the luxury yacht in the harbor compared well to the life they had on the streets. Nicky had been the pioneer who cleaned herself up and adopted a new way of speaking to fake her way into an interview with the captain of the yacht when he was recruiting a new crew. By hook and by crook, Nicky had faked and lied her way into a position on the serving staff of the yacht. And, as soon as she landed her new position, she went straight to Roy to coach him on the way for him to get into the crew as a cabin boy. Roy with Nicky’s coaching managed to get past the first stage and got hired. However, Roy was not like Nicky, and he was not as quick on his feet as she was, and consequently he was not as good at staying out of trouble with the Savage family.

For example, despite changes to their appearances, Seamus once remarked that both Nicky and Roy looked familiar and asked if he had ever seen them on the streets around their old neighborhood. Roy was stumped by the question and did not know how to respond, but Nicky quickly got out of the bind they were in by putting on her fake French accent and saying, “J'en reviens pas!?”

To which Seamus, who had no inkling of what she said, had no answer nor follow up question. Nonplussed the big man left the two street kids alone without pursuing his line of interrogation.

Afterwards, Roy asked Nicky what she said and what it meant but Nicky just replied that she had no idea. She had seen the words she uttered out at Seamus on the pages of graphic novels she once found in the dump, and she practiced a bit as to how the words might be pronounced. She had no idea if her pronunciation of the words she spoke that day was anything like the way they should have been pronounced, but that didn’t matter because Seamus had even less of an idea than she did.

To a room full of blind people, you could mix up the description of a mouse with that of an elephant, and no one was likely to contest the authenticity of your report.

They got away with it that time, but Nicky knew they were living on a razor’s edge. Obviously, from what she had just heard Roy’s run of luck had dead-ended and he had now been dismissed. Unlike everyone else in the raft, Nicky knew Roy well and she was certain that since he had been currently left alone in the mansion, with the rest of the staff gone for the weekend, he would be busy doing several things. None of which involved getting in contact with the coast guard. In her mind’s eye, Nicky could see Roy collecting the stuff he could get to Sid the fence as soon as possible. Roy would be gathering the stuff he could carry easily and the crockery and cutlery as well as the electronics in the house. He would not be interested in getting anywhere near people in uniforms such as members of the coast guard. Of that, Nicky was confident and so she was also confident that no one was going to report their situation to the authorities.

Nicky’s mind was also focused on the fact that no rescue was on the way because the sinking had been so sudden, nobody else on board would have had the time to summon for help of any kind.

Consequently, Nicky realized that no help was coming because no one outside of the raft know of their situation if it was solely up to Roy.

The girl looked out at the heaving waves outside, and then back into the raft and its occupants. In her jacket unknown to the others, she had a bottle of water and a protein bar. These were items she had purchased back in town before the yacht cast off. Together the two items cost her less than three dollars, but now the value of either of them had to be measured with a different set of values not normally used any place else.

Randomly, Nicky’s mind flashed back to a childhood Sunday school lesson, and she recalled when a nun had read to the class a passage from the bible about how Jesus was suffering on the cross when he said, “…if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

In an instant, all remaining elements of her developing resolution fell into place.

Quickly and without any announcement she leapt out of the raft into the cold waters beyond. She heard the splash and then the sound of water before breaking surface, and without pause she started swimming at a pace that was as fast as she could manage.

Behind her, Nicky could hear loud questions, exclamations and cursing but she ignored all that as she worked as hard as she could to put distance between herself and the raft.

Nicky did not pause her swimming until she had put some distance between her and the raft. She stopped swimming for a few seconds and looked back in the direction she had come from. The raft was in the distance now, and with the low amount of light present, she could barely see it. Looking around her as she treaded water she could not see anything much as the darkness was all embracing.

Nicky was trying to find the other life raft she saw momentarily just before the yacht went down for the last time. Whether she was headed in the direction of the raft or of any other piece of floating debris she could hang on to, she did not know. Ahead and all around she was surrounded by darkness and water. She thought for a moment and then set off in the direction where she might find something based on nothing other than her best guess.

She did not feel fear nor anxiety as she started swimming into the blackness of a sea without light.

It was in a way not hard for her to do this.

In her mind, you can venture forward toward the unknown without hesitation when you truly know well what you left behind.