This afternoon after work I whipper-snipped the grass on account of my dad's sore arm, so unfortunately that took up my blog-writing time. However, because I am the greatest that ever lived, I came back, sat down and put this post together in 15 (more like 30, drawing isn't my specialty) minutes flat.
Speaking of that, if anyone wants 'exposure', please send in some images (must look like they are drawn in paint) and I will try to come up with a story that involves me in them. Will credit you if you want me too.
Also, because it was a super short one today, here is a (very) short story that I wrote at the start of this year. I don't know if I would recommend reading it, to be really frank with you, but at least it's there and makes it look like I try.
Enjoy (or not, as the case may be (credit to Nikhil for the inspiration))
James awoke with a splitting headache. He groaned, rolled over in his berth and groped blindly for his phone, not yet wanting to face the day. Groggily, he forced his eyes open to narrow slits and laid a hand on his phone, which blinded him when he turned it on. No signal, as usual, but it was 7:20am, almost an hour later than he normally woke up. He yawned and tried to get up, almost falling out of bed as the room tilted gently. He got up successfully and stumbled to the desk in his room, holding on to the edge of it for balance. He grabbed the drink bottle secured there and checked the view out his porthole. It would be dark until noon this far north, but he could make out the outlines of a dozen mini icebergs bobbing lazily along. He looked back at his tiny bed with longing, set into the ship so it wouldn’t slide around, and equipped with rails so that he wouldn’t. He had the room to himself – one of the privileges of being an officer – but it was barely big enough to few items of furniture which were secured to the walls.
He walked to the door and flicked the heavy duty light switch that always reminded him that this ship was built for war. Nothing happened. He flicked it up and down again, to no avail – the room stayed dark. Sighing, he dressed in darkness and sat back on his bed with his head in his hands, cursing yesterday James for the position he was now in. He checked the time: 7:50. No time to dawdle. He had ten minutes to breakfast and shower before he had to get to his shift. Breakfast or shower, he corrected himself.
He trudged out the door and immediately stopped. There was no light in the corridor. In fact, the only light was the dim glow filtering through from his cabin from the phone charger still plugged into the wall. What the fuck was going on?? He turned on the torch on his phone and looked around. Bending, he saw a dark stain on the metal floor which looked like blood. He touched it in disbelief, but sure enough his fingers came away sticky and red under the white light coming from his phone. From down the corridor he heard a cry:
“Help! Anyone, pleaaa-“. The sound cut off with a wet thump and James felt a wetness spreading from between his legs and running down to the floor. Distantly, he felt the phone slip from his fingers as he stood there, paralysed. He was jolted into action when he heard something scraping the wall much closer and he barely stifled a yelp. Heart pumping, he crept back into his room and closed the bulkhead. He locked it as gently as he could and sat with his back to the door, shaking. He lifted his hands up to his face and could just see the wetness on the fingers with the dim light from the charger. Wiping the blood on his pants, he put his head in his hands and only then realised he had been crying. After half an hour remaining deathly silent, he decided he couldn’t continue to do nothing. Civilians might be in danger on the ship and it was his duty to help them.
He got up and pulled out his wall charger, waiting for the light to die before unlocking the door, not breathing. Slowly and gently, he eased it open a crack and peered through into complete darkness. Very distantly, he heard a woman scream, and even though it didn’t make a difference, he squeezed his eyes shut at the horror. He couldn’t do anything to help her now. Reaching down he felt around for his phone, and his hand hit a mangled chunk of metal and glass. It was his phone. James stepped back into his room and closed the door, and only then inspected the wreck his phone had become, a useless piece of junk that ensured that even if he did somehow find the courage to get out of his room, he’d be doing it blindly. He put it down on his bed and prepared himself. He changed into new pants and put his charger in his pocket, as well as a couple of sharp pencils and an egg timer.
One last glance out of the window calmed him down and he stood facing where he knew the door would be, gripping one of the pencils tightly, more for support than as a weapon. He slipped out of the room and crept down the corridor, ears straining. He could hear the gentle sounds of an otherwise silent ship; the creaking metal, the drip of water from a now-forgotten storm making its way belowdecks level by level. His every muscle was taut as he stepped carefully, his pencil raised in defence. He froze as he heard a scraping sound ahead of him. He opened his mouth wide and concentrated on breathing as quietly as he could. He heard a gasp, and then David, one of the scientists on the ship, suddenly shouted.
“Oh, what have we done?! I’ve doomed us all!” Half a dozen gunshots rang out, but they sounded repressed, like he was hearing them through earbuds. James flinched but stayed in place, with his legs slightly too far apart, petrified. What could David mean? And is he ok? The odds weren’t with him. James felt so exposed in the middle of the corridor; If whoever David had been shooting at turned a light on or had night vision he was as good as dead. Why did they break his phone and leave it there? He felt a cramp develop in his leg and gritted his teeth, trying to extend it slowly without shuffling over the floor. Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore and took another step. Then another.
His next step hit something soft and his stomach turned – it was all he could do not to cry out. He didn’t feel it move so he reached down and put his hand into a wet bag, with so- those are ribs, the voice in his head said, and he blanched and gagged, trying desperately not to vomit. He had taken an involuntary step backward onto a hard object. That must be the gun he heard earlier, which means that the corpse was David. He finally vomited, and his spew filled his nostrils, making him feel even worse. And he retched, loudly. He grabbed the gun and vomited again.
“Oh, what have we done?! I’ve doomed us all!” The voice came from the floor barely a metre from where James was doubled over. He scrambled backwards and aimed the gun into the darkness where he had heard the shout. He heard 6 gunshots, and his deliberation between fight or flight concluded. Flight it must be. James sprinted back to his room, caution to the wind, and panicked when he couldn’t find the door. He heard the scraping coming ever closer and fumbled with the handle.
Once inside with his back to the door again, he felt a lot better. But he still needed to get out of his room and find out what was going on.
Unfortunately, the only way out led straight through whatever thing that was he had just faced, and his sodden pants told him that wasn’t an option. He looked to his porthole. Just large enough to allow him to squeeze through and fall into the ocean, once the glass was broken, but would have no way of getting back on the ship except by climbing up to the deck. He had no choice; he’d just have to do it. Thanking the military form of everything for the first time, James raised his robust desk chair over his head, took a deep breath and tried to remember why he’d ever signed up for this. Oh. That’s right, he didn’t. Fuck conscription and fuck this. He slammed the chair into the window – it didn’t break. The funny thing was, he had voted for conscription. He slammed the chair into the window again and this time a tiny crack appeared where one of the legs hit it. His vote didn’t matter anyway, the referendum passed with 90% of the country affirmative anyway. Putting every ounce of his strength into the swing, James smashed through the window and it came away in thick, triangular chunks as he hit what remained again and again. He didn’t know how great he would be at swimming either, the last time he had done it was when his mum had made him take lessons in first grade.
“It’s just like riding a bike. Just like a bike.” he told himself. Plus, he had seen a movie where Tom Cruise had swum what looked to be a hundred yards underwater, and that didn’t seem so hard. He remembered to lay his blanket over the porthole before he squeezed through. Halfway through, he hesitated; If he wriggled out now there would be no going back, he’d never be able to climb back to his window. He closed his eyes and flopped forward.
In an instant the frigid water rushed up his nose and he choked and flailed. The world turned upside down and he couldn’t see anything through the stinging eyes that he forced open. He vomited underwater then, lungs burning, did the motions he had seen Tom Cruise do and fought his way in the direction he prayed was the surface. His head broke into the air and he took a breath of half water and half air then vomited again, still kicking and flailing wildly to stay on the surface. The taste of vomit mixed with the salt of the ocean in his mouth and he spat before submerging again in the tumultuous water.
Still disorientated, he looked around for the access ladder, but all he could make out was the vague mass of the ship. He ‘swam’ toward the back end – a mix of doggy paddle and frantic kicking when he sunk below the surface – and laid his hands on the metal. Now that the terror had subsided, the water was freezing. If he didn’t get out of the cold soon, he would get hypothermia. Shaking, he continued his half-drowning, half-swimming action until blessedly his hand hit the vertical bar which formed the ladder. Using all his strength, he pulled himself up the ladder until his torso was out of the water, then dry-wretched against the ship, hitting his head on the rung above in the process. He couldn’t climb this. No way.
He hooked his arms over the rung on the ladder and hung there, defeated. He looked out over the bleakness of the ocean at night, broken only by some floating bits of ice. Staring unfocussed, he thought for the first time about what would happen to the ship. It was a science vessel primarily, but he didn’t know what science they were doing– no one did. He imagined the funny looking scientists now; They always hurried about on what they thought was important business and kept to themselves for the most part. Was there something valuable they were working on that made it worthwhile for pirates to board a US navy ship? And there was that creature. He had to find out what was going on, then he had to escape.
James decided that could wait a minute though and hung there on the outside of the ship disorientated and fatigued. He still had a pounding headache, and although the frozen water had cured his hangover, it left him worse off as he was shivering there on the ladder. It would be warmer in the water out of the wind James – a voice said to him. He agreed, it would be. Through half-lidded eyes he saw himself slide down the ladder as he let himself go. The water, which just a minute ago had felt so cold, now was warm to his cramped legs. Just as he finally let his eyes slip closed, a scream pierced his ears.
Jolted into motion, James surged out of the water and grabbed the rung above his head and strained his arms, kicking to try and get a foothold on the ladder. His arms cramped and he fell back into the water, going under but no longer afraid of drowning. Through whatever primal part of his brain was in control, a voice of reason shone through: Use your legs you egg. James chuckled in spite of everything and started choking again.
This time, he put one foot on the bottom rung first, which was just below the waterline. Then, keeping his foot there, he climbed up the ladder one rung at a time, finally able to put his second foot on the ladder and begin the climb. It was a gruelling climb that felt like it had taken him an hour, but eventually he hauled himself on to the deck and slid behind the big MK-38 chain gun next to the ladder.
*BANG*
A gunshot rang out and he felt a searing pain in his leg. He immediately bent over double and groaned.
*BANG*
This time there was no pain.
(Actually spent another half hour editing that tonight, appreciate me)
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