A Sinking Feeling

By Warren Benedetto

 

“How long before help comes?” Andrei asked.

 

The two of us were sitting on a sodden mattress that was semi-submerged under the water. It wasn’t exactly a life raft, but it was buoyant enough to keep us somewhat dry. Without the mattress, we’d be in the water up to our necks. With it, the water was only up to our ribs.

 

I glanced at Andrei. Wet hair stuck to his face in thick, matted strips that looked like rotting seaweed. Beads of water clung to his spiny, rust-colored beard. The chattering of his teeth reminded me of the clicking of Scrabble tiles in a velvet bag.

 

“I don’t know,” I replied. “A few hours? They’ll probably need to wait until the sun is up.”

 

“But they’ll come, right?”

 

I nodded. “They’ll come.” I tried to sound more certain than I was.

 

The ship had an emergency beacon, that much I knew. When triggered, it was supposed to send a distress signal, along with GPS coordinates and a bunch of other data that could be used to help locate the damaged vessel. If it worked, help should be on the way. If it worked. In the meantime, we were on our own.

 

I have no idea what hit us. We were asleep when it happened. Both of us were thrown from our bunks, sliding across the suddenly slanted floor and crashing painfully into the opposite wall. I managed to stand and stumble over piles of fallen debris toward the cabin door. Before opening it, I paused to peer through the peephole into the hallway. It was a good thing I did. Otherwise, we’d be dead.

 

An irregular gash, maybe 15 feet long, was gouged through the hull right outside our cabin. A torrent of water the color of graphite foamed in through the breach, transforming the narrow hallway into rapids that roared angrily toward the front of the ship. My stomach cartwheeled when I saw it. The ship was nose-down. It was taking on water at an incredible rate. That could mean only one thing: we were sinking.

 

The descent was quick. At first, I could hear the screams of others in my crew echoing through the ship, overlapping with the sounds of rushing water and rending metal. Some were begging for help. Others seemed to be praying. Others wailed inconsolably. Then, one by one, each of them fell silent. Even after the screams ended, there was still some banging, metal on metal, as if someone was hitting a wrench against a pipe. The pattern was unmistakable: S-O-S. Soon, that, too, subsided, growing weaker and weaker until it tapered off to nothing.

 

Andrei and I called for help until our voices were raw. After a while, we lapsed into silence as well. There was no use wasting our breath. We were too far gone. We both sat quietly on the crooked floor, each of us lost in our thoughts, waiting for the end to come.

 

I mostly thought about my mother. She was an addict who used to go missing for days on end, taking off with whoever was supplying drugs to her at the time. She’d stumble home for a few days, burn a quesadilla or two in a halfhearted attempt at mothering, then disappear again.

 

Nighttime was the worst. I’d sit in the dark for hours, huddled on the filthy mattress in our tiny one-room apartment, waiting for her to return. I always left the door unlocked in case she forgot to bring her keys. As I grew older, her absences grew longer. Hours turned to days, and days turned into weeks. Eventually, I started locking the door again.

 

A few months after I last saw her, I found out she had OD’d in a hotel room in Arizona, 350 miles from home. The police found her with a needle in her arm and a baby in her belly.

 

I was twelve.

 

I guess my mind went there because it was the last time that I remember feeling so scared and alone. I had the same sense of being completely powerless. There were no good options. No good outcomes. No matter what I might do, I was doomed.

 

The funny thing is, I was wrong about that. I turned out all right. I moved in with my grandmother, finished high school, took some community college classes, and ultimately ended up finding a life as a ship’s cook.

 

I knew being at sea was risky. Intellectually, that made sense. But I never felt like I was really in danger. There were some close calls, sure, some wicked storms that made me puke on my shoes, but I always felt like, ultimately, everything was under control. Until we sank, that is.

 

When the ship hit bottom, I was sure I was dead. The hull let out a mournful groan that sounded like a whale song. Then, there was a series of bangs, one after the other, like a ten-car pileup on the freeway. A second later, the whole room turned upside down, sending Andrei and me tumbling ass over elbows. It was like being in a snow globe thrown from an airplane.

 

The Metamorphosis

By Angelique Fawns

 

Seth hesitated before tossing the knife into the suitcase lying open on his antique mahogany four-poster bed. The ornate hunting blade with lamprey eels carved into the wood handle fell squarely in the middle of the overflowing clothes. The artist’s rendition of the jawless fish looked like Stephen King’s version of a leech. Many-toothed monsters. Oil lamps cast a dim light on the sweaters, shorts, t-shirts, and boxers in the well-worn leather luggage. The black bag was enormous, covered in travel stickers from farm shows all over North America, and holding up well for a 50-year-old item. He needed the space for his size 46 pants and XXXL shirts. What was he supposed to pack for an experimental medical treatment?

 

“Better to overpack than wish you’d brought your favorite sweats, eh Charlie?” Seth asked the miniature pig lying on the dog bed in the corner of his bedroom.

 

He’d inherited the knife, the suitcase, and an aggressive form of diabetes from his recently deceased father. Charlie squealed when he zipped the bag shut.

 

“You can’t come little pig, but no worries, I got you a hog sitter.”

 

He picked up a small morsel of chocolate on his bedside table and tossed it to her.

 

“I was saving this for a late-night snack, but if I’m serious about kicking this diabetes, I got to kick the sweet treats first.”

 

Charlie’s pink tongue snagged the chocolate. Seth painfully shrugged off his overalls and forced his swollen fingers to undo the snaps on his plaid shirt. He looked at the cornucopia of drugs on his bedside table. Aleve, Advil, Tylenol, CBD oil, even a tab or two of Oxy. He dry-swallowed an Advil and climbed into bed.

 

“Time for some shut-eye, pretty pig.”

 

His potbellied pet laid her head down and gave a contented grunt.

 

“If this treatment works, Charlie, you and I can start jogging together. We could both use more exercise.” The pig was already fast asleep, her jowls vibrating as she snored.

 

Seth was too nervous to fall asleep. He ran his hands over his belly. Gut fat on a thirty-year-old man was not healthy, even though he hid it pretty well on his six-feet four-inch frame. A year ago, he had moved back to the farm when his Dad died unexpectedly. His Mom had already been gone for years. Someone had to run the piggery farm. But when the time came to send the fattened pork “to market”, Seth couldn’t bring himself to slaughter any of them. The intelligence in their eyes, the way they played with each other—he half-wished he could join them and roll around ecstatically in the mud.

 

But what kind of pig farmer can’t kill a pig? He missed both his parents. He was annoyed he had to leave his job selling the farm’s produce at the city market, and now, he felt like a farming failure. So, he ate. And ate. And ate. He devoured everything except bacon.

 

Trying to force himself to sleep, he mentally envisioned his pigs jumping one by one over a hay bale. There were fifty pigs on his farm, and he was busy naming them all.

 

“Jump, Esmerelda! Okay, Notorious P.I.G., you’re up. Over you go, Bertha, you need more speed to clear that hay,” Seth mumbled until he was snoring like Charlie.

 

***

 

The next morning, Dolores, his closest neighbor on their remote country road, pulled into his driveway in a beat-up Ranger 4x4. She ran a tanning and mud bath business called Sun & Mud. Seth had yet to see many clients, though. He had no idea how she kept it afloat. His front door banged shut.

 

“Get outta bed, you handsome hunk of manhood! You’se got yer appointment with the diabetic doc today,” she hollered from the bottom of the stairs.

 

Scrambling out of bed, he pulled on his overalls and grabbed his suitcase. Charlie followed him down the stairs. Leaning provocatively in the doorway, Dolores was dressed in a thrift store prom dress. Pushing fifty, she wore a cheap pink wig, which matched the lace gown.

 

“How are you going to do farm chores dressed in that?” Seth asked.

 

“I’ll take good care of your farm, big man. Just come back to me good ’n healthy so we can have a hot romance already.” Dolores winked one over-mascaraed eye.

 

She sashayed over to pick up his suitcase sitting beside the front door. Charlie trotted into the kitchen to eat breakfast out of the automatic food dispenser.

 

“Are you sure this doctor knows what he’s doing?” Seth asked, grabbing his wallet and keys off the antique buffet.

 

“I’m tellin’ ya, this healer guy works miracles! My brother had a bad case of them diabetes and he got cured up right quick. It’s a highly experimental top-secret treatment all right! You’ll be thanking me with a deep kiss when y’all get back!”