[-Ellimist-]

Kinda wanna know how people like the story, how it flows, the characters, in this segment. I don't think i'll be doing this too often, as the chapters seem to be progressively growing, and i don't want to drain up people's time with long entries.

1

Below in the hold all that had happened on the topside had not gone unnoticed by the prisoners or passengers in their cages. That was all that there was in the ship’s hold—shelves and the cages that lined them. All the way down to the cavernous bottom of the ship, which was taking on water and drowning the poor souls that had chosen or been put in the bottom. Not too far from the bottom was a cage that held two passengers, helpless in the grip of fear that the water would soon be coming up to claim them, too. Breathless, Michael Owens and his friend Laura Ferrel looked on at the scene with bulging, horrified eyes and open-maw expressions.


Laura squeezed Michael’s hands and tried to talk to him over the roar and rushing of the water crashing into the battleship but she could not meet his eyes or gain his attention. He was focused not on the rushing of the water but the terrible screams there were being silenced quicker and quicker. "Michael!" Laura cried, shaking him by the shoulders.

Michael’s spell of apathetic, horrified daze was broken and he looked straight into Laura’s eyes, finding no reassurance, but feeling her squeeze his hand. It warmed him inside and at that moment he knew he was probably going to die for the young woman someday. Quit it, a resentful, bitter voice raged at him from inside him. You ain’t good enough and you know she don’t love you that way. After that, the helpful part of that bitterness kicked in. You gotta get outta here frank, it said. Michael wondered why his conscience felt the biting need to give him a nickname in a situation like this.

The bars on the cage that they resided in were anything but stable, but Michael surveyed them anyway, trying to feign a sense of calm confidence so that Laura wouldn’t break down like before. Michael took her by the shoulders this time and said, "I"m going to get you to your family, to your brother! We’re going to get out of this!" Laura nodded fearfully, taking turns looking down at the elevating water and back into his face, trying to level the sense of calm and insane fear in herself.

Michael could see perhaps one part of the cage that was more unstable than any other—there was one bar that was crooked. He knew that he would need probably two of the bars for himself to get out, but he knew Laura was slender, and she would probably only need that one to get up and start to climb on the other cages and try to make it for the door of the hold, suspended on a catwalk above. He had to get up there too though, or neither of them would be able to reach the catwalk from the highest cage. And all this thinking? The voice prodded in him. It’s wasting your damned time. Get on with it, frank.

Really developed a sense of humor, haven’t you? Michael thought to himself. Spaced about half a foot apart, now the bars were alive with shaking and shuddering that accompanied the battleship continuing to take on water. The hold was getting colder again, a sure sign that water was definitely rising even as he took his time to think. Quickly, his hand darted out and grabbed onto the crooked, bent bar and pressed his feet against the opposite two bars, trying desperately to pull the crooked one free. With all his strength he wrenched the bar out of the cage’s foundation but also with all of his strength behind the pull, he slashed himself across the face with the end of the bar and immediately blood started to trickle down his face.

"Mike! Are you okay?" Laura screamed.

Michael didn’t bother answering her; just wipe the blood out of your eyes and go on, he told himself. That could have been the other voice prodding him in unison with his own thoughts, he would not know ever. He went to work on the bar to his right and just as he began to make a little headway, Laura’s screams became shrill and he felt the icy, creeping hands of the ocean start to filter into their cage and grope at him, taking immediately away his breath with its temperature. Ge-osh, he thought. I thought everything in California was supposed to be warm.

Michael went back to work at the bar though, knowing full well now was not the time to get caught up in tourist information. The water was up to his neck before he could finally wrench the bar free and fling it out of the cage. "Go!" He turned to see Laura shivering and crying, but she was wading over to the side of the cage and already poking her body out of the gap he had made. Good girl, he wanted to say. Maybe if we get out of this we can get to know each other a little more. And that was the bitter, pessimistic voice in him again. He felt it take hold of him and think for him every once and while—an aftereffect of watching the world begin to crumble. I’ve seen much worse happen to people, so I’m not complaining, Michael thought.

Laura’s full head of black hair was only half doused in water as she swam out from the cage and climbed on top of it. Michael shouted from beneath her, "Now keep climbing don’t stop! Keep going until you’re on the top one!"

Laura leaned her weight to the edge of their cage and jumped up to grab the bars of the one above, hauling herself up while the prisoners inside the cage pawed and screamed for her to help them. The force of her jump pushed the cage right off of the huge shelf and into the water. Suddenly all went blue for Michael and he was being forced downward, into the inky-cold depths. He fought against the weight of the cage at first, but he couldn’t do anything about it. His body was halfway out of the gap in the bars when the cage twisted erratically. He heard a groan from below in the water and the battleship jolted backward, toward the ocean. What in the hell’s going on now!

He had only the time to think that before he escaped the cage and swam for his life to the surface, while spots of black started to appear before his eyes. His flailing form broke the surface of the water and he saw Laura peering down at him, sobbing and shouting for him to hurry. Michael tried to yell to her to keep climbing but the ship was jolted again. A whole row of cages exploded off of their shelves and Michael just barely missed being smashed and taken under water by their weight. The water had risen so that he could grab onto the nearest cage and heft himself up to it. He stepped onto it and eased himself onto the top of it, while frenzied hands and arms flailed and grabbed at him, cries for help going horribly unnoticed to him. I have to keep alive first. Always the pragmatist, the other voice crowed.

Growling at himself and at the uneven footing he’d bought himself on top of the cage, Michael finally jumped up to the next and climbed that one. His gaze met Laura’s and he observed she was two cages up, one away from the top cage. A quick glance back downward belayed anymore crippling fear, in that the water seemed to be tapering off, but something told him that they needed to get out anyway—he could have sworn to God that he’d seen something moving at the bottom of the ship, bigger than any passenger or cage.

Michael was able to get to the top cage about thirty seconds after Laura had perched herself on its dark metal roof but he was afraid they would put too much weight onto it and spill right over into the water. "Hurry up, Laura," he said. "I’ll give you a boost but we have to hurry,"

A fresh volley of blood-curdling screams gripped his attention and he looked downward but saw only a new maelstrom torrent of water below. He could hear someone screaming, "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Laura murmured.

Michael shook his head and interlocked his fingers and held them out for her to step onto. When her foot was inside his hands he lifted her up into the air and she clutched the side of the catwalk’s brim. "You got it?" He cried out.
Gasping, she replied, "Yeah!"

Michael felt another tremble below his feet and he knew what that preceded—he jumped, the force of the move shoved the cage he’d just been on plummeting into the water. As Michael gripped the safety railing of the catwalk and began to haul himself up, he looked back to see the cage and its screaming occupants plunge into the churning, foaming water below. There, he thought, he could see a thick, darting motion just beneath the surface. "Get up!" He cried.


Michael began to climb and the entire catwalk began to tremble under their weight and while he knew it would hold up for them to get into the doorway and out onto the deck, he needed to be on top of it and as quickly as his aching arms would allow. He heaved himself onto its surface and threw himself into the doorway. The catwalk creaked and groaned and broke off of its setting. Laura screamed and had enough of her body on the catwalk to throw herself at Michael, but he could only grip her arm, right at the elbow joint.


Just as he started to pull her up, below her the surface of the water broke and a mega-mouthed beast with voluminous rows of sharply grooved teeth jerked its gray pointed snout back and forth. The beast’s giant head knocked cages off of their shelves and freed their prisoners into its jaws. Their bloody aftermath declared the water violet, leaving only the screaming of Laura’s voice and those that were too unfortunate to stay below in Michael’s memory for the duration of the day.