Crossroads

✤

"YOU'RE AWAKE" Nicolas observed from the entrance of the strange, dark room.

 "I didn't want to frighten or interrogate you by waking you with my face too close to yours. At least, I absolutely wouldn't want that." He forcefully chuckled in attempt to lighten the mood ready the not-so-lightful news he bares with him. 

"What?" She spoke.

As her voice cracked, she tried to summarise all of the daunting questions that she was prepared to ask him, but no more words seemed to fall out. It was weird; they normally did.

The nervous boy slowly made his way over to where she sat and crouched down beside her, resting his digits on the cracked bed of wood that was barely holding the poor girl up. She gulped in and her throat became dry, but all she thought about was the sour ache of her white knuckles as they tightened with every grip of the bed cloth. 

"What am I doing here?" She thought that was the most straight forward question she could have asked before any of her others.  She also hoped that she would receive the most straight forward answer from it as well.

"It's hard to explain, I'm afraid... But I will try to sum it up as simple as possible for you, Miss No Name," He tried to search for her name in her ocean eyes, but he had seemed to have misplaced it somewhere else. It was either that, or he just didn't know it.

"It's Jolene, I think."

"You think?"

Jolene did not answer that question, she only responded with a glance, subtly raising her left eyebrow, inviting him to provide further information about the whole situation.

So he did.

"This ship has been sailing these waters for decades, and will be for many more, hopefully. That is if it lasts that long," He laughed slightly, demonstrating the rotting splint of wood that frames the crooked bed. The old patterns of dust and broken glass, soil and planks seem to follow you around the ship. Every corner you take, every twist and turn beholds these flaws that you simply cannot escape. 

He then continued, looking at the confused Jolene for the first time in what seemed like hours. "My father used to navigate this ship, until he came down with a terrible illness that spread all over his body. I'm still not quite sure what it was, as I was still too young to understand. But, since the day he died, I've not really been welcome on this ship. I think the only reason they have kept me is because of my legacy; my blood has been a passenger on this ship since my distant ancestors. My apologies... I'm rambli-"

"And who's 'they'?" He was cut off by the curious girl. 

"The uh.. Pirates, as I like to call them." He tensed his jaw and averted his eyes to his knees. It seemed to be a touchy subject, so Jolene didn't want to pressure him into saying or doing something he didn't want to;  she knew that feeling.

Yet, he continued. "They are sort of like travellers, except they don't really travel, not far anyway. And they're like... sadistic... sadistic and cruel. Like a cult, almost" 

"How do you mean?"  

"They enjoy hurting people... and they have done really, really bad things, Jolene."

He took a deep breath, and bit on the dying skin of his lip, taking it into his mouth while he thought about what he was going to tell her next.

"So when the world ended, they only got worse. They started sacrificing their own young, terrorising towns and villages, displaying rituals on the deck in a way of worshiping this... god? Or it was maybe a prophecy. But, judging by the way they think, I believe they act this way to serve the world for "saving itself". That's what John always says; that the world is "put right", now. We take in dead or undead beings that wash up or that they have killed to use them in rituals. They burn them in hopes of freeing their trapped souls and sending them off to where they belong." 

There was a long pause. Jolene tried to conjure up her next few words in her mouth, but there were too many things she wished to say and ask. So, she did what anyone else would do: she spoke it all. 

"When you say "the world ended", does that mean... the fallen ones roam your place, too? And, in every other place? So, the whole world has fallen down... and... it was-- there was never a curse on our village at all?" She processed-- or tried to process all off her thoughts at once, but yet again,  she failed. That had happened to her a lot recently.

"We heard about the beliefs of Tuskenvale. I suppose that was one of the reasons we attacked all of you. And I'm guessing you know about that too, right?"  He asked, raising his eyebrows and tilting his chin towards his ample neck.

She closed her jaw and said nothing, she just gave the boy, whose name she did not know, an unknowing expression. She then realised that; that she didn't know how people refer him. Maybe she would add that to her array of questions.

"Ah. Well, that is how you ended up here. Your family and frien--"

"What's yours? The thing people call you to catch your attention?" She was going to ask that later, but seeing as it was on her mind already, it was the first thing she could think of to distract the conversation from where she knew it was about to head. She really didn't want to hear what had happened to her family, if that is what you would call them, because she couldn't bear hearing that she really was just.. alone.

"You mean my name?"

GUNSHOTS WERE HEARD from below the decking and Jolene jolted upright as her ears almost winced. 

She looked up to the damp ceiling stupidly as if she would have been able to see what was going on through the floorboards. Maybe she could have had superpowers like those in another lifetime. 

She rushed from the bed and neared her ear to the crack of the door to get a sense of who or what she would greet if she had opened the door. Of course, when she heard the groans and roars of the fallen ones as well as the people that Nicolas spoke of, she didn't even attempt to open the door; it was a literal suicide mission. 

Where did that boy go, again?

She found herself standing atop a makeshift tower of wooden items, enabling her to reach the glass window concealed beneath layers of dust sheets.

With the force of her nimble bones and fatigued muscles, she pushed open the window. But, unbeknownst to her, the handle screw had come loose, causing the entire piece of metal to plummet instantly into the depths of the shifting oceans. 

She inaudibly gasped and peered down into the terrifying blue-grey waters.

Jolene considered risking the far drop, but she quickly dismissed it as foolish. Where would she even go? It's not like she had the strength of King Kong in that moment, and her nourishment was limited to the occasional grains of sand that found their way into her mouth. Those sandy morsels were her temporary solace, providing a fleeting distraction. Besides, even if she did manage to elude the crew, would one of them spot her and force her back on this nightmare ship? Moreover, abandoning the boy anywhere in this treacherous vessel would be heartless, as he had selflessly helped her in countless ways.

She started to panic as the cacophony of chaos pierced through the walls of the room. The bedroom, confined and claustrophobic, seemed to shrink even further under the weight of the thunderous crashes above deck. The musky scent of salt and decay mingled in the air, its grip tightening on her senses. A thin layer of dust danced in the filtered light that seeped through the tattered sheets that still hung from the breezing open window, adding an eerie ambiance to the scene.

When she realised that she had no means of escape, her head became fuzzy, and now she was certain it wasn't just the pirates on the ship - she could hear others. 

It was like fighting, almost, but she couldn't hear anyone actually dying. She knew the sound of the bloodcurdling scream people let out before they live their last few moments of respiration; it didn't sound like that. 

In the stifling confines of the bedroom, the girl's heart pounded against her chest like a drum, drowning in fear and desperation. Above deck, the raging battle grew louder with each passing second, filling the air with the terrifying sound of gunpowder and lead. The echoes of chaos seemed to draw closer, inching towards the very door that separated her from the mayhem outside. Suddenly, it was like the temperature of the atmosphere dropped, and everything froze. The noise had stopped, and it was like someone pressed pause. Then, a voice pierced through the silence, asking the dreaded question,

 "Is anyone in there?" 

The seconds stretched painfully as she held her breath, paralyzed by the impending danger. She didn't respond; she couldn't. She knew it wasn't one of them, because they wouldn't have asked. It was their ship, after all. 

A/N 

BEEP BEEP BEEP!! oh my googly moogly who might that be? 🤔

I really enjoyed writing this chapter, but i HATED editing it. anyway, the main thing is that whoever reads this is actually enjoying reading it, right? eye twitch eye twitch eye twitch.

I have SO much planned even tho im writing this before anything REALLY happens... safe to say i DO have the ending all plotted out in this hyperactive brain of mine.

PEACE OUT FELLAS...

TikTok: goblinnbbg

Tumblr: goblinnbbg

Instagram: goblinnbbg